Chicago Sun Times Editorial - If Iraq is sliding into civil war, we need new plan Studies confirm the obvious

Chicago Sun Times Editorial - If Iraq is sliding into civil war, we need new plan Studies confirm the obvious
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times
August 13, 2006

If Iraq still is the central front in the war on terrorism, American troops have a vital role to play there. But if Iraq is descending into a civil war, American soldiers have no place in the crossfire between Sunnis and Shiites. The only people who can tell us which is the case are the generals in the Pentagon and in the war zone. They should confer, free of political pressure, and issue an unvarnished assessment of what's happening in Iraq to our political leadership. Only that kind of clear view of the realities there can guide us.

Declaring that a civil war exists and acting on that knowledge may not be as simple as we might hope. The awful images of carnage from Baghdad have to be balanced against three elections in which millions of Iraqis risked their lives to cast ballots for democracy. Those elections cannot be forgotten, no matter how much an increasingly large number of Americans want out of Iraq. Many of those Iraqis would consider a U.S. withdrawal a betrayal. And make no mistake about it, the Islamofascists would crow that a pullout was an American defeat. We know from Israel's experience of being rewarded with war for leaving Lebanon and the Gaza Strip that our quitting Iraq could encourage new attacks. The U.S. pullout from Somalia in the 1990s led Osama bin Laden to think he could launch the 9/11 attacks without fear of serious consequences.

Yet, as powerful as these considerations are, civil war would change the dynamics in Iraq. American troops caught in that conflict would in their own defense kill Iraqis in encounters that could be trumped up as war crimes. Even short of civil war, it has been obvious for months that we have put our troops in excruciatingly complicated situations where it's difficult to tell friend from foe, where places pacified one day have to be retaken on another day, where neighborhoods seem eternally hostile and dangerous. Our obligation to these brave men and women far exceeds our commitment to the Iraqis. While the Iraqis did their part in voting, their leaders maneuvered for months in endless power struggles and bickering before producing a government. The time lag was just too leisurely for a nation in wartime. Worse, some of the new leaders now call American troops "butchers" and denounce needed measures like last week's attempt to suppress Shiite militia in Sadr City.

We believe the stakes in the war by Islamofascists on the civilized world are huge. In 2003, we thought that the Bush administration's decision to go into Iraq was the right thing to do, taking on the enemy in the Middle East, the home turf of Islamic terrorism. If civil war is inevitable, then obviously we were wildly over-optimistic in believing Iraqi society was ready to take its place in the modern world and become a beacon for democracy in a section of the world were dictators, theocrats and autocrats have ruled for too long. Civil war would mean our hopes blinded us to the realities of the attraction of tribe, clan and ruthless religious fundamentalism to the Iraqis. Yet the threat of Islamist terrorism remains ever present, as the conspiracy to blow up U.S. airliners reminds us. The British surveillance measures required to break up this plot should give pause to the critics of the Bush administration's efforts to track phone calls from abroad and monitor financial transactions. But the administration also must ask itself some tough questions about Iraq. If a thorough, critical assessment by our generals shows that Iraq remains the central front in the war on terror, victory remains the only exit strategy. But if that nation is descending into civil war, we need a new strategy. We cannot let one battle gone wrong impede the war against Islamofascism.

It is likely that every woman who read about the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics study on domestic work rolled her eyes as she did so. The study says women still do the brunt of the housework and make the meals and take care of the children and carry most of the responsibilities in the home. What else is new?

And how many other studies have there been over the past three decades saying exactly the same thing? It's like that other recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation that shows children shouldn't study or do their homework with the television on. It is too distracting. Duh. Or the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Agriculture study that Americans should eat more fruits and vegetables. It's good to have one's intuition confirmed, but think how many federal dollars and how much labor went into coming up with this information that most of us already know. Here's an idea: What we need are studies that tell us what we don't know. Not original either, but still true.