Wednesday, August 24, 2005

The drafters of the Iraqi constitution are enshrining Islam as a "fundamental source" of law. It is the one thing that the constitution is fairly clear on. In other words, we are now fighting to install sharia law in Iraq.

My professor of Greek History, Donald Kagan, said the Athenian mistake in the Pelopennesian War, which destroyed the Athenian Empire, was that they did not go into the war with an idea of what victory would look like, and therefore had no way of ending the war even if they had fought it successfully -- which at a few points, they did.

The given reason for this war was Saddam's imaginary WMD's (which, to be fair, he was doing his level best to insinuate he had). The next reason given was to promote "freedom." Now we're fighting so that the 1,700 dead men and women shall not have died in vain, which is circular reasoning at best.

But the main issue I now have is: even assuming the insurgency really was in its "death throes," what exactly are we fighting to achieve? An Islamic republic dominated by the Shiites? I don't buy that Iraqi Shiites will be under the thumb of Iran's Shiites -- the Persians and the Arabs don't speak the same language either literally or figuratively -- but how does it help us to have an Islamic republic in Iraq? How is that better than what would likely happen if we left. Iraq would quickly splinter into three countries, a Shia theocracy in Basra, a largely secular Kurdish republic in Kirkuk, and a secular and probably dictatorial, impoverished, oil-less, bitter Sunni rump state in Baghdad.

How would that be worse?

At least when we fought in Vietnam, we knew what we were fighting for: stop Communism in South Vietnam. What are we fighting for in Iraq?

For the first time, I'm starting to think we should just get out.

1:05 PM

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