Reports from Baghdad suggest that, alongside the continuing carnage, the U.S. troop surge combined with new tactics may be having some effect in quelling the insurgency. It's too soon to draw conclusions — the insurgents, remember, are a resilient and adaptable bunch — but this at least suggests the possibility that, given time, something resembling a semi-successful outcome might yet be achieved in Iraq.
Considered in that light, congressional efforts to set a deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal appear to have at least as much to do with American politics as with what's happening in Baghdad. But to reason that because we were wrong to go to war four years ago — as, in fact, we were — we can somehow rectify our mistake by a hasty pullout now is dubious logic, to say the least.
Still, even to speak of "success" in relation to Iraq requires setting aside the unrealistic expectations of 2003. Iraq is hardly on the road to becoming a model of democratic stability in the Middle East. Even more to the point, any success that might conceivably come about there couldn't change the fact that this conflict never did meet the criteria of a just war, nor could it cancel the loss of life and other harm.
High up in the catalogue of harm has got to be the injury done to America's standing in the world.
"After 9/11 there was unanimous sympathy and support for America in my country. But not any more. Iraq put an end to all that." The speaker was a Catholic layman from an Asian country with whom I was having breakfast in Rome last month. This was no knee-jerk spewer of an anti-American party line. Here was a serious-minded, deeply concerned individual distressed by the recent direction of American policy.
He wasn't the only one. A Vatican nuncio, visiting the home office, took the same line in a friendly chat. Even an American who works at the Vatican and who backed the war four years ago was decidedly iffy this time. On the evidence, it isn't just our enemies but also friends who see Iraq as a world-class American mistake.
To be sure, die-hard unilateralists will respond to that news by saying simply, "So what? We're a superpower, aren't we? We don't need anybody's approval to do what we think is necessary and right."
If you ponder that statement with tunnel vision, it's true. But it's also beside the point. There are compelling reasons why America needs friends and allies at least as much as anyone else. Events since 2003 have increased that need.
There was a time, after all, when the United States might conceivably have mounted an effective unilateral response — short of bombing, that is — to the threat posed by the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran. Not any more. Such hope as may exist for negotiated settlements of those crises requires the involvement of powers like China, Russia, and Japan. The unilateral alternative for America is bombs-away — and what sane person wants that?
Realism about our diminished standing in the world is essential in these difficult times.
An American working in a Scandinavian country e-mails me to report being shown videos purporting to prove that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were staged by the American government to justify war. Crazy? Of course it is. Along with everything else, Iraq has been a gold mine for anti-American crazies. No matter what we do next, it's going to remain that for years to come.
