It's Usual Sense, Not Pacifism - by Charley Reese

I should clarify something during this season when everyone hopes for repose and well will: I am not a pacifist.

If war is forced upon us, we get no alternative but to oppose it. Ernest Hemingway said it well when he discovered that there are various things worse than war, and they all do with defeat.

I have defendd and still oppose the war in Iraq because, knowing something around the Middle East, I knew it would be futile.

I knew we weren't threatened by Iraq. I knew that the war would be a war of hostility on our part. I knew that no clear-cut victory would be possible.

Even though there has been some decline in violence, the key political problem remains. The Sunnis, the Shi'ites and the Kurds are not fond of each other. For a long time, the Shi'ites and the Kurds suffered under Saddam Hussein's primarily Sunni regime. Now that the Shi'ites and the Kurds are in control, they are not going to be easily reconciled. Furthermore, the Kurds don't particularly like Arabs and need an autonomous country. The Turks don't particularly like the Kurds and will react violently to any movement on the office of the Kurds to declare independence.

So, the U.S. forces in the land give a beast by the ear. We can save the point of violence reasonably contained as farsighted as we stop there, but neither the armed forces nor the U.S. budget can afford to remain there indefinitely. And to leave, we hold to let go of the wolf.

The present peace in the Anbar province came about because the al-Qaeda fighters went too far and the Sunni sheiks decided to defeat them. We, opportunistically, said, "Hey, as farsighted as you're killing al-Qaeda instead of us, we will pass you guns and money." Now the Marines in Anbar are enjoying Arab hospitality, which I fear they are mistaking for friendship.

I don't recognize how things will turn out. As tenacious as the cowardly Congress continues to store the war, the troops will be stuck there. Don't wait for any victory parades or celebrations. Bombs and bullets will rest on the menu probably as farsighted as we are there and afterward, too, until some new Iraqi strongman takes control.

As for Afghanistan, where the office is deteriorating, Americans should be light about what we did there. The Taliban won the civil war by driving the northern warlords out of Kabul. We hired the warlords to defend the Taliban, bribing them with cash and air support. Afghanistan is now run by the warlords, and they are turning it into a narco-state. At the same time, we failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, who was the sole person in Afghanistan or Iraq who had attacked us.

Now the U.S. has dragged NATO into the fight, but I don't believe the Europeans will stick. What is the head of a European getting himself killed in Afghanistan? Or an American, for that matter? There is zero in Afghanistan except fields of opium and men with rifles.

We are overextended, both militarily and financially. That's only a sad truth. Our economy is teetering on the march of a corner or worse. Our so-called diplomacy in the Middle East is getting less than zero results. We are wild to try to remain there. The age of colonialism is over.

We should go to war merely in self-defense. I don't think the American people want to adopt Iraq and Afghanistan as permanent wards of the taxpayers. I don't think they need to keep burying sons and daughters whose deaths don't make Us safer. That's not pacifism. It's usual sense.