Iraq? I Wreck? I Run?

Please read the whole blog! Iraq has got us all emotionally fried. Every time I write or speak about it, people want to yell at me, tell me I am wrong. I’m okay with that if they’ve taken the time to understand what I am suggesting. Often I find that the person who is yelling at me the loudest for being a dim wit agrees with me the most. They just haven’t taken the time to listen. Besides, my goal is not to be right. It’s to get us all thinking more creatively. To get us all to take the time to listen to each other’s point of view. To consider something different. It?s a “Both + And” world. Instead of trying to be right, we need to “plus” each other to get to a whole new level of solutions.

As of Monday, April 9, 2007, at least 3,281 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,641 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers. (USA Today) And 27,000 more American men and women soldiers have been wounded. Often causing amputations or permanent brain trauma. Military psychologists estimate as many as 100,000 of our soldiers suffer from post traumatic stress.

Human sacrifice is all a part of war. But for what? Iraq is a “liberated” but devastated country. Freedom without safety or security is anarchy and chaos. As one army medic recently said, “We are all patriotic. We believe in duty and doing our jobs. But these powerful inner motivations are easy to exploit. I wonder if we’ve been manipulated by our leaders.” (thepurplecouch.com)

WHAT ARE WE THINKING?

Many historians have observed that an open democracy will not tolerate prolonged wars with ambiguous, unrealistic goals. The horrors of war are too great to bear except for cases of clear, direct threats. When a free society wages war, its outcome must be speedy, decisive, and worthwhile.

We are in a mess, not because we are tough on terror, but because we are not tough enough. It now seems clear that we should have spent our energy fighting the direct source of terrorism, Al-Qaeda. But that target was too shadowy, so we attacked one easier to see. We wanted to make a statement. Even that might have worked, but we lacked the wisdom to build peace from temporary conquest. We needed to secure Iraq’s borders. Establish law and order. Rebuild water systems, the electrical grid, hospitals and schools and provide an international interim government that allowed free democratic institutions to have a chance. We knew all of this. But instead, we conducted this war as if we could liberate Detroit by hanging the mayor, firing the police, destroying the schools, hospitals and businesses and turning it over to gang leaders to fight it out. It wouldn’t work in Detroit, and it’s not working in Baghdad. It’s too late now. We made a mistake and we missed our redemption. Now there is hell to pay.

The vast majority of people in the world want peace, safety, education, fresh water, electricity, and a chance to give their children a better life. Some of us don’t believe that. Some of us think most Muslims want Jihad. That’s exactly what terrorists want us to think. They want to scare us into thinking every Arab or every follower of Islam is a violent enemy. As long as we think that, the terrorists exaggerate their power and polarize the world. It’s an old, old trick, and we have fallen for it.

What if we had tried something different? What if we had used all the powerful human energy of the Twin Towers tragedy to respond in wisdom instead of fear and revenge? This isn’t sissy talk. Suppose we had marshaled all of our military resources on capturing or killing the terrorists that mattered. At the same time, what if we had committed our hundreds of billions of dollars toward expediting the technology for renewable energy so that we would no longer need Middle Eastern oil? What if we spent another hundred billion on helping create secular free schools in the Middle East and actually modeled the moral high ground we claim? We will only win this war if we win the war of ideals.

Of course there will always be terrorists. We had a chance to isolate the world’s most radical terrorists in mountain caves. We had the whole world on our side. Instead we let the lunatics of the Middle East bait us into a war they only have to survive to win. They cannot beat us, to be sure, but they can outlast us. And that’s all they need to do. They blindsided us and taunted us, and we responded exactly the way they wanted us to. Like suckers on a playground.

Fighting a bad idea only gives it more strength, more resistance. Pouring energy into better ideas starves the bad idea out and causes it to wither and die.

You may think I am naive. Perhaps. But what is most naive is to think what we are doing is working. We need to reduce the level of terrorism to the fewest possible crazies and work on positively changing the minds of the rest. Most of all - and this is a giant Duh - we need to minimize our economic dependence on their resources. This will not be achieved with small ideas. It requires entirely new thinking. Decisively eliminating real threats and pouring new solutions into the root causes.

To find out more about the war, visit Iraq War pros and cons.

Where do you stand? What are your ideas to solve this problem?

Let us know. We want to hear your voice.

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