What's the Matter Here?

Imagine that you have grown sick of your current career. Imagine that you feel that your boss lacks significant vision and management skills and you think you could do it better. You have access to resources, so you know that if you do go out on your own, you would probably be well taken care of until you get your feet on the ground and your new venture starts hitting on all cylinders. So, what do you do? Do you quit and hang up your own shingle? Or do you wait until someone else notices that you do not like your job? Do you wait until that other person accuses your boss of not being very nice? And do you then allow that person to set up this new venture for you based on what they think is right? Or do you do all of the above yourself?

If you follow the first path...where someone comes in and does all the work for you, chances are, you are not going to end up much happier than you were initially. As a matter of fact, there is a decent chance that things could end up even worse. If you follow the second path, you will feel empowered. You will feel that you made things happen and that everything you ever wanted could be yours because you are in charge of your own destiny. That would seem to be the most desirable path.

I think you know where I am headed here....you see, throughout history, this same absolute truth has applied to governments. If a large enough group of citizens is not happy with their current boss, they do what is necessary to make the change. And, yes, they often times get foreign assistance, but the fight and the change is on their shoulders. Think of the French Revolution...the American Revolution...The Red Army...Mao Tse Tung. Not all revolutions that the citizens of this country were ecstatic about, but they all succeeded. And the key to their success was that they had ownership of it. The revolutionaries took it upon themselves to make the necessary sacrificies for change. The revolutionaries had a vision of how they wanted to run their country and they followed that.

And then, you have the situation in Iraq. Did the people rise up against their oppressor? Did the people have a leader who brought the country together with a common purpose and vision for what they wanted and how they wanted to be governed? A Thomas Jefferson or a Vladimir Lenin? Did the people even have a passing interest in getting rid of Saddam Hussein? I can answer the first two questions very easily....short answer, NO...long answer, Hell no. The third answer is more difficult, but I would guess that the answers to numbers one and two would lead you to believe that the answer to number 3 is the same. NO.

So, what the hell are we doing over there? To hear the current excuses, it is to establish a free and democratic society so that the people of Iraq can live a better life. Hmmm. Let's, for the moment, forget the fact that the initial reason we went over there was because the Iraqis posed an "imminent threat". Though many would argue that Bush and his minions never used these exact words, the message was loud and clear...if we don't do something now, Hussein could not be trusted to not do something crazy. Anyway, the current excuse (remember the "getting rid of Hussein made it all worth it" argument?) is that we wanted to establish a free and democratic society for the people of Iraq.

Well, here is the answer to the title of this post...What's the Matter Here? What's the matter is we went over there trying to cook up a revolution, but we had all the wrong ingredients. Hell, we even had the wrong recipe. As I stated earlier, the ingredients are pretty simple. The citizens of a country have to initiate the process. The citizens of the country have to lead the fight. The citizens of the country have to possess the vision. None of this existed or exists in Iraq. That is a big problem. The recipe is just as easy...take all of the above and stir it up. So, regardless of whether we knew the recipe or not, we decided that we would substitute ingredients and hope that would suffice. I mean, WE had the means to initiate the process. WE had convinced OUR citizens early on that the fight was worth it (had to lie, but all is fair in love and war, right?) and OUR government had a perfect vision for what the country should look like moving forward. That should work, right? What is the worst that could happen?

Well, we are witnessing the worst that could happen. A country in chaos. An occupying US force in a country that greatly resents occupying forces (especially non-Muslim ones). A situation that has no end in sight that looks the least bit attractive. A real mess.

So, now what do we do? Stay the course? Bring the troops home? Set benchmarks? Believe it or not, I have the answer. Here are the 5 steps for getting out of Iraq in the most graceful manner possible.

1. Realign the way we interact with the Iraqi Security Forces. Rather than US Forces running all the operations with the ISF sitting in the background, we need to have fewer forces and they need to have more and we need to be nothing more than advisors and trainers. This needs to happen immediately.

2. Start to slowly withdrawal troops, starting with those assigned to run operations with the ISF. They won't be needed once Step 1 is implemented.

3. Break up the country. Prior to the British playing empire builder with the Middle East after World War I, Iraq was three distinct regions. From the looks and sounds of it, they would like to be that way again. The only stumbling block seems to be the question of oil revenue and that can be managed through diplomacy and agreements.

4. Ask for help. The biggest mistake that was made in this whole debacle (outside killing tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens), was the diplomatic errors the Bush administration made that resulted in our standing in the world taking a complete nose dive. Now is the time to go back and mend those fences and build new relationships. Our relationships with our oldest allies who lost respect for us need to be mended. We need to reach out to those nations around Iraq and engage them in the peace process. Only then, will we truly be able to succeed.

5. Continue to provide the "Right" level of support for the Iraqi government. That does NOT mean fighting their battles. It DOES mean providing guidance, financial and military support. Think Israel.

Once we get to this point, we can say, with conviction, "Mission Accomplished". Let's hope it happens sooner rather than later.