The Politico, July 23:

…Congressional Democrats have made real progress in facing down a recalcitrant and isolated president on the top issue that voters really care about: bringing an end to our involvement in Iraq. Pelosi and Reid have skillfully handled this issue so that it is now clear to the public that the only thing standing in the way of an orderly change in policy is an incredibly blind and wrong-headed president…

…Pelosi and Reid kept their respective caucuses united in favor of a series of benchmarks and deadlines for ultimate U.S. withdrawal. They lost the initial showdown with the president over a timeline, but they continued to press their case in an orderly and respectful way…

There you have it.  Congressional Democrats’ prime concern is with “our” involvement, and of course, their main focus should be on Americans.  But that the war, if unwon when U.S. forces withdraw and “our” involvement ceases, is almost certainly going to drag on, and likely spread, doesn’t seem an issue worth unduely worrying about?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, as quoted by the BBC, the Iraqi foreign minister does feel that should be a matter worth considering:

..Hoshiyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, has already warned that a rapid withdrawal could lead to the “partition of Iraq and a regional war“. He said the country might even “collapse altogether“…

But if one doesn’t agree with an Iraqi, how about a Frenchman? According to Olivier Roy, a political scientist at the French National Center of Scientific Study:

…”Iran’s expansionism is a mechanical outcome of the U.S. intervention [in] Iraq. If the Americans leave,” he speculated, “there will be a confrontation between intermediaries — between Saudis and Iranians.”

“An American departure from Iraq won’t mean a stabilization of the region,” he concluded grimly…

Thus Congressional Democrats are seriously misleading Democratic voters and the wider American public, in trying to paint a picture of an Iraq war that “ends” with the conclusion of direct U.S. participation . . . if only they could get the “recalcitrant and isolated” president finally to see it that way.

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But that’s a familiar refrain, of course. The biggest problem with their premise is the enemy this time is not a singular group of nationalists/communists. It’s a global jihadist movement whose aims do not end at the “liberation” of Iraq, but will instead see any U.S. withdrawal on anything perceived to be non-U.S. terms as a major defeat for the West. And it will be hard to argue that it isn’t. So try to wish it away we might, but we simply cannot avoid the fact that if the U.S. departs Iraq before the Shia-majority government congeals (and there we were, thinking Democrats always favored “majority rule”?), or a partition agreeable to all parties is negotiated, America will likely have to cope with far worse in the region, and well beyond.

What’s particularly scary currently is that there is no major discussion of the “post-withdrawal” scenario within the wider withdrawal debate. “Withdrawal” is, instead, wrongheadedly perceived as some sort of satisfactory end in itself. For, as the Politico pointed out, what matters most, we are told, is to end “our” involvement.

As if it were a rerun of 1973.  If only it were that simple, this time.  For, unlike 1973, it is quite likely that such a withdrawal won’t truly end “our” involvement anyway.  Given the region of the world in which Iraq sits, and that chances are the war will worsen, we will get dragged back. 

So if Americans are indeed nationally “depressed” now, just imagine how they will feel when there is a far bigger problem in the Middle East in years to come after many (mostly Democrats, but some Republicans, too) have presented them with a far too rosy picture of what will be? 

This other realization unsurprisingly isn’t much helping the national psyche either.  It’s sadly no secret this President and the U.S. Congress have made many mistakes regarding U.S. policy in the Middle East since September 11, 2001, and in Iraq in particular since March 20, 2003.  However, they usually did so because they, as did most Americans generally, followed our instincts and applied experiences learned elsewhere previously to the current Middle East: specifically, that there is a layer of “universal normalcy” waiting to shine through, but which could be reached only by tearing off the horrid top layer of rusted dictatorship.  Remove that rust (as with Nazi Germany, militarist Japan, fascist Italy, the communist former Soviet Union, and most other similar places as was the case in the 20th century) American leaders and quite a few Americans not unreasonably thought, and one would surely find that buried layer of human universality and a craving for true peace and freedom just below.

The single worst miscalculation regarding the Middle East appears to have been in our failing to realize that beneath that rust layer . . . there was actually a lot more rust. Where’s the “normal layer”? It’s probably underneath there somewhere; but it’s clearly going to require a lot more scraping away than was initially believed necessary. Do we have the stomach to stay engaged to help those in Iraq and elsewhere in the region, as they struggle to bring it to the surface? It doesn’t much seem so.

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Which means we are in trouble.  And, according to The Telegraph:

Britain faces a critical 18 months in Afghanistan and may need to send troops in US-style “surges” to defeat the Taliban, a senior Foreign Office official has warned…

Thus matters hardly seem on the upswing in Afghanistan either, almost 6 years after 9/11.  And as the British military historian Allan Mallinson wrote yesterday in The Telegraph:

We shall be in Afghanistan for as long as we were in Northern Ireland, said Brigadier John Lorimer, the Army commander in Helmand province, last week…

Anyone told U.S. Congressional Democrats what the British have already figured out?  If they do know, interestingly, though, few of those Democrats seem nearly as all-consumed about “our” evidently to be open-ended involvement in that country.

However, will we really still be there as long as the British army presence in Northern Ireland?  For following any hurried withdrawal from Iraq, the coalition’s defeated forces will certainly face a far more complicated strategic challenge.  Now an isolated bastion, surrounded by states riding the crest of the wave of America’s humilation in Iraq, NATO will face an enemy in Afghanistan that much hungrier to eject coalition forces and bring down the elected Afghan government.  For that enemy will know, of course, that they will certainly be able to do so, if only they can manage to raise the cost of NATO’s being there to the same level that ultimately drove the coalition from Iraq. 

So, Afghanistan, too, will become increasingly untenable, especially if Pakistan (a country with nuclear weapons) develops a full-scale jihadist insurgency, too.  (And given events of recent weeks, that does not seem entirely out of the question.)  What will follow then will almost inevitably be a call for withdrawal from Afghanistan also, and with that, final defeat for the War on Terror — a final defeat despite, since the launching of the counterrattack post-9/11, the West having suffered no major military setbacks.

John at Shield of Achilles — who having served in Iraq ought to know a bit about this — has explained “11 Common Myths about the Iraq War“. Amy Proctor has detailed why the coalition is winning. But fewer and fewer Americans are apparently listening.

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Our Democratic friends appear to believe that history began in the Gulf of Tonkin, in August 1964.  (”Everything is Vietnam.”)  Personally, though, I prefer a rather more expansive take on the sources that produced our world today.  Ring any bells, this?: 

…The imprudence of Valens and his ministers had introduced into the heart of the empire a nation of enemies…

…One of the most dangerous inconveniences of the introduction of the Barbarians into the army and the palace, was sensibly felt in their correspondence with their hostile countrymen; to whom they imprudently, or maliciously, revealed the weakness of the Roman empire…

…In the disastrous period of the fall of the Roman empire, which may justly be dated from the reign of Valens, the happiness and security of each individual were personally attacked; and the arts and labors of ages were rudely defaced by the Barbarians…

…the effects which were produced by the battle of Hadrianople on the minds of the Barbarians and of the Romans, extended the victory of the former, and the defeat of the latter, far beyond the limits of a single day. A Gothic chief was heard to declare, with insolent moderation, that, for his own part, he was fatigued with slaughter: but that he was astonished how a people, who fled before him like a flock of sheep, could still presume to dispute the possession of their treasures and provinces. The same terrors which the name of the Huns had spread among the Gothic tribes, were inspired, by the formidable name of the Goths, among the subjects and soldiers of the Roman empire. If Theodosius, hastily collecting his scattered forces, had led them into the field to encounter a victorious enemy, his army would have been vanquished by their own fears; and his rashness could not have been excused by the chance of success. But the great Theodosius, an epithet which he honorably deserved on this momentous occasion, conducted himself as the firm and faithful guardian of the republic. He fixed his head-quarters at Thessalonica … from whence he could watch the irregular motions of the Barbarians…

…The advocates of Theodosius could affirm, with some appearance of truth and reason, that it was impossible to extirpate so many warlike tribes, who were rendered desperate by the loss of their native country; and that the exhausted provinces would be revived by a fresh supply of soldiers and husbandmen. The Barbarians still wore an angry and hostile aspect; but the experience of past times might encourage the hope, that they would acquire the habits of industry and obedience; that their manners would be polished by time, education, and the influence of Christianity; and that their posterity would insensibly blend with the great body of the Roman people…

That was some of Gibbon’s famous description of the run-up to the Roman army’s crushing defeat outside Hadrianople, and immediately afterwards.  A generation later, in 410, Rome fell to those Goths. And less than 70 years after that, the remnants of the Western Roman empire collapsed completely.

It’s hard not to be chilled rereading that.  For today, our own leaders short-sightedly seek to pursue much the same, almost sure to fail, “hull-down”, focus on “America-first” at home, (supposedly) defensive strategy.  Iraq is being fed weirdly by not just the enemy (from whom one expects such) but by some Americans to Americans almost gleefully as some sort of incipient crushing defeat and turning point, a ”Hadrianople” for American arms.  As if that were a good thing?  And most Americans, hourly bombarded with that interpretation, unsurprisingly are growing testy, fearful and wonder from where inspiring new leadership will emerge, and some are even pondering whether prevailing over “the victorious barbarians” is even possible. 

A first week in August in some ways could not be a better time for this post.  It is in this week that we are reminded how, essentially, our global West (thus including Japan), worn out both morally and physically by two horrendous ”civil wars” and the communist/capitalist clash in the 20th century, has proven easy pickings for jihadists (and their Western apologists) who arose in the final decade of that century.  While they suffered heavy losses, those jihadists have since largely absorbed and withstood the “twitchy response” that the badly divided West somehow managed to mount briefly in the early-middle 2000s.  That half-hearted response is now, itself, petering out right before our eyes.

And night spreads still further among us.  So where are we?  Well, the Romans loved poetry, so how about a (weak, I grant you, but it’s original) poem?:

Our new leaders inform us we can prevail if we reposition, and redeploy,
Those who stood with us, fought with us, abandoned to their fates
As those leaders tell us the global center is actually Nevada, and Illinois.

It matters not if the next test comes at us from South, or farther East,
For the morally vacuous West will have little to offer in response
With its remaining power being sharply reduced, to perhaps the least.

So thus recedes our badly divided West’s final, irresolute campaign,
Leaving us no choice but to hunker down for whatever time we have left Hoping They aren’t at our airport or sitting adjacent, on our bus or train.