Iraq, Round Three
2008; Hoover Institution; Issue: 151 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0146-5945
Autores Tópico(s)Military and Defense Studies
ResumoWE ARE NOW seeing a third generation of books about the five-and-a-half year-long Iraq war. After the spectacular removal of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, a number of quickly written accounts by journalists and historians such as John Keegan, Bing West, Bob Woodward, and Karl Zinsmeister praised the conventional military professionalism of the Anglo-American-led coalition that had so quickly in three weeks removed the Baathists at so little cost. Those were heady times. Not just neoconservatives, but a consensus of Democratic and Republican observers alike believed that the quick removal of Saddam Hussein, coming on the heels of the flight of the Taliban, might usher in a new democratic era for the Middle East that would eventually undermine radical Islam. But as the Iraqi insurgency spread and coalition losses mounted, by late 2003 gloom began to set in. Soon even zealous former advocates recanted their support for the war. Polls showed that the American people went from a 70 percent approval rating of the effort when Saddam's statue fell to less than a majority by early 2004. The general feeling could be best summed up as My brilliant three-week was ruined by fouled-up long occupation. This new legion of anti-war critics cited the absence of Iraqi arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, poor planning for the occupation, and flawed decision-making in Iraq on the part of Gen. Sanchez and Proconsul Paul Bremmer. Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and other high-ranking Pentagon officials were vilified, and in succession most all eventually resigned. Their story is only now beginning to surface and no doubt will counter many of the often one-sided portraits offered by their critics thus far. Even the emergence of an elected Iraqi government, the new military leadership of Gens. George Casey and John Abizaid, and the popular expulsion of Syria from nearby Lebanon during the so-called Cedar Revolution of spring 2005 did not bring quiet to Iraq. Accordingly, exposes of the supposed American quagmire continued to come thick and fast from 2004 to 2007. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Michael Gordon, Thomas Ricks, Bernard Trainor, George Packer, Bob Woodward and scores of others tore apart the Bush administration, ridiculed the out-of-touch Green Zone sanctuary, suggested Abu Ghraib was more typical than a mere aberration, questioned the competence and morality of the U.S. military, disclosed the ineptness of American diplomacy, and offered a dismal prognosis of failure and withdrawal. Their more detailed symptoms of failure were nearly always the same: We had too few troops to quell the insurgency; our equipment and tactics were ill-suited to battle a largely urban insurgency; we had wrongly disbanded the Iraqi army and could not reconstitute it in time; we underestimated Shiite-Sunni hatred; and we were clueless about the nefarious role of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria in fanning the violence. These widely referenced books provided the intellectual support for a growing antiwar movement, especially in the halls of Congress where motions to cut off funding were introduced and supporters of the war, even among Republicans, soon became almost impossible to find. BUT NOW THERE is yet another cycle of war reporting from Iraq that takes account of the dramatic decline of violence and the growing confidence and competence of the Iraqi elected government. The current turnaround is largely due to the combination of the surge in American troops in 2007, the innovative counterinsurgency tactics of Gen. David Petraeus, the growing Iraqi abhorrence of both the fundamentalism and the decadent violence of al Qaeda, and the cumulative attrition of jihadists brought about by five years of hard fighting by American soldiers. It is no exaggeration to suggest that parts of Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit are now more dangerous than is Ramadi or Fallujah. Had the invasion of Iraq been seen as a necessary war by the American people; had we, like Americans in the 1940s and 1950s, been a generation with a more tragic view of the horrors of war; and had Michael Yon written for the New York Times, Reuters, or the Associated Press, then he would now probably be famous in the tradition of World War II front-line correspondents like Ernie Pyle and Richard Tregaskis. …
Referência(s)