One, Two, Three, Four — W, We Don't Want Your F,***in' War

William Safire — the Trickster's speechwriter — has begun demonizing those who oppose the Iraq policy: merchants of dismay. It won't be long before Safire resurrects Love it or Leave it. In the meantime, fine young people are dying in Iraq. Let W walk the streets of Bahdad in his flight suit. Let W put his life where his mouth is: Bring 'em on! Even LBJ went to 'Nam. I wish Rummy had walked the streets of Baghdad. All hat, no cattle. If this be (fair & balanced) treason, make the most of it.

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Column: The U.S. Must Leave Iraq Now

By P.M. Carpenter

With hat in hand, the Bush administration now wants -- or, rather, needs -- a United Nations peacekeeping force in Iraq. As all the world knows by now, only a wretched combination of lies and gross miscalculations put beleaguered American troops there to begin with, and of course that folly was compounded by the administration's postwar insistence on exclusive occupational rights. To the Bushies, Iraq was a sandbox in more than one sense, and it was all theirs to control -- at least, that is, till everything under the blistering Iraqi sun started unraveling.

Virtually all major editorial pages have applauded the administration's new-found spirit of global cooperation and recognition of reality. The ruling neocons finally get it, say these observers. The United States cannot go it alone, and, however belated, their appeal for international teamwork is the right step in a much better direction.

Hogwash.

The famously corrupt rationalizations for military intervention made a productive U.S. presence in postwar Iraq not just untenable, but impossible. And that, precisely, is what the United Nations Security Council should tell the hapless Bushies as they commence begging. For everyone's security -- and that includes ours -- U.S. troops should be sent packing, replaced by a true coalition of peacekeeping forces. Each added day of American occupation assures only snowballing violence and perpetual disruption.

George W. Bush and his principal handlers have reveled in needless hardball tactics since day one, thumbing their go-it-alone noses at every difference of sensible world opinion. Their Ramboism has brought even greater turmoil to the Middle East; heightened Islamic hatred and distrust of the United States; turned a non-terrorist state into a leading manufacturer of terrorism; and converted an economically abysmal nation into an absolute basket case.

With or without U.N. assistance there is no way the United States can now turn things around for the better. Our presence is beyond redemption. Continuing it at any force level will just make things worse. The U.S. must go.

Naturally, the Security Council won't reciprocate the administration's maximum hardball tactics. It won't say what needs to be said and it won't unveil the obvious. It won't, in short, tell the now-supplicant Rambos to stuff it -- for their own good, if nothing else -- and let adults take over. Instead, the Security Council will tinker with and bicker over the administration's submitted resolution, assume as fact a continuing presence of American troops, and thereby prolong the misery.

Yet, just as naturally, the Rambos wouldn't listen anyway. After all, according to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, his boss's radical reversal of postwar philosophy isn't even a mild departure from what previously stood. How does one get through to distorted, deceptive minds like that?

The consequences of this self-imposed mess are staggering. The worst, of course, is that of lost lives. As hard-liners in their comfortable domestic settings persist in a doomed policy abroad, America's youth will continue dying daily -- and in vain. There is no greater cost, no greater waste.

And the financial fallout? It plunges off the radioactive scale. Forty-five billion dollars for the official war and a projected $300 billion for a 5-year occupation. A few billion for immediate humanitarian aid, a few billion more for Iraqi salaries, $3 billion for refugee resettlement and about $7 billion to restore the public utilities we blew up -- all of which is peanuts compared to a lowballed 10-year miscellaneous tab of another $200 billion (roads, communications, hospitals and so on). Keep in mind that Treasury doesn't have any of this money, so it will borrow and dun us for the interest as well.

To editorially applaud the Bush administration for reaching out to others at last is as wrong-headed as the war was itself. Such approbation only encourages more of the same: the drip-drip torture of an ill-fated occupation. The U.S. must go. That's the message.

Mr. Carpenter holds a Ph.D. in American History and is a syndicated columnist.

Copyright © 2003 P. M. Carpenter