Four the past few months I have worked on writing our section on the Iraq War for our historycentral.com website. I cannot say I did any original research. No memos uncovered, no special interviews, just slogging through years of newspaper articles department of Defense releases and books such as Cobra II. It has been a very depressing experience. I have learned nothing earth shattering that I did not already know. However, the weight of reading the day-to-day events in Iraq has been heavy. I supported the war. I first bough the arguments that Saddam had weapons of Mass Destruction, then I bought the arguments put forth most eloquently by columnist Thomas Friedman on the need to transform Iraq and through that to transform the Arab world.

I realized early on that many mistakes were made in the conduct of the War primarily in not sending nearly the number of troops required to secure the streets not to mention the borders. I still believe until recently that maybe the mistakes could be overcome, maybe it would work out in the end. As I have revisited the events of the last three and a half years, it has become clear that this has been a fool’s errand from the start. The concept that we would be able to transform a country with repressed ethnic tensions and religious conflict in an age of a rise in Islamic extremism was never realistic.

The problem is what do we do now? I frankly do know Colin Powell is quoted as having said, “You break it you fix it”. We have been trying to fix it for the last three years and have not been successful. I have no idea what are next steps should be and am glad I do not shoulder the responsibility to implement them. What I know is that every day I receive E-mail from the Department of Defense notifying me and the American people of another death(s) and every day I think of the mothers and fathers, husbands and wives who have lost what is most dear to them. I have no solution but we need one desperately.

Comments

[kris]

Well said...

War is rarely an answer to any problem.
Usually it just involves lots of innocent people getting killed.

The big question though is, how DO we win the heart and mind of an enemy? (perceived or otherwise) surely killing just makes matters worse.

I simply don't understand it!

[Paulette H. Burney]

What we must do is pray for our leaders and ask our God to give them the answer to resolve the problem. We do not want another civil war to occur, however, many people feel that we are headed for one if Saddam Hussein is put to death.

All born again-Christians across the nation must come together and pray for a God given solution. It is our God that has the answer; just as Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, the solution must be a God given one. Our prayers for our leaders to be lead by God for his divine answer is the solution to end the war in Iraq.

[HIStorylover]

i think its great hat we have a secton on the website for the iraqui war and all those lives lost-- war is sad, but so is the way ppl express thier hate about it

[Bron]

The main problem with the military campaign (i'm not going into the ethics here i'm mearly going on what i've seen of the military campaign) has been that the american and British military (while there are other nations in the "coalition of the willing" these are the main ones and the others are minimal) hasn't learned from the last time we invaded Iraq and the successful campaign fought by the resistance in the 1920's caused the British army to pull out due to huge losses in men, leaving it to the RAF to control the country with armoured car patrols local levies and bombardment from the air. Basicly it is impossible for a power to control a nation by military power alone when faced by determined popular resistance, examples have been yugoslavia during the second world war as well as greece to a limited extent in the same conflict, however there have been many examples China, vietnam, the philipenes, cuba, haiti, afganistan, algeria, south africa, Ireland and the united states of america itself. Combined actions have to be used with military and non-military action being used in a co-ordinated manner such as britain used in malaysia as well as some other incidences, however there is also the tactic of divide and rule where social, ethnic or religious groups are pitted against each other, this seems to have been the tactic used in iraq, while the americans have been the most obvious at doing this with their "interegation centres" the british have also been doing this as shown by their failed black ops mission and the botched rescue (2 SAS officers were arested by the iraqi police force while they were dressed as members of the marhdi army and transporting bomb making equipment, later the regular army came to rescue them and were blocked by the local populace defending the police station so that night they drove an armoured vehicle through the station and killed large numbers of police officer in an armed assault) as well as the attacks on unarmed demonstrations by armed red caps and the recent torture scandles. Basicly i'm saying that the war is going badly and its too noticible about the divide and rule tactic for it to work, therefore the best option is to withdraw before it gets worse. When people say that we caused this so we must fix it I find it amusing on the grounds it seems to me to be like saying "oh dear I've shot you, i'll keep shooting you till you are okay again" it seems if the problem is soldiers being there then having more of them or keeping them there longer isn't really going to help.

Also I appoligise if any of the wording is a little odd or the spelling or grammer is off but i'm welsh so i'm not working in my first language here (added to the fact most of the readers of this seem to be american and so have different spelling and so on anyway to us British chappies anyway)

[Derek]

Suggestion to those who want to write history: Research, Research, Research! For erudition on the American propaganda system read: "Taking the Risks Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda"; "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky or "Necessary Illusions" by Chomsky; and anything by Ben Bagdikian. Also anything by the father of American propaganda, Edward Bernays. These selections will give you a good understanding on how thought control in our society persuades many Americans that there is a constant threat that we must defend ourselves from; actually, it's the oldest trick in the book going back to the Ancient Greeks. As Walker Lane succinctly puts it in his essay "All Wars are Lies!", One wonders why no lessons are learned; why each generation, and in some cases the same one, are able to be fooled each time the reigning politicians discover the next grave threat to the nation. Remember H.G. Well's reading to Americans over the radio of his book "War of the Worlds" about how Martians were invading us? Absolute hysteria following his broadcast which made headlines on the front page of the New York Times. If Americans can believe Martians were invading the US, then they can believe anything US state-corporate propaganda throws at them to justify a permanent war economy. George Orwell's famous words. "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." Also his most famous, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength....