

In "The War as We Saw It," an eloquent Op-Ed article published in the New York Times in August, seven sergeants summarized the futility of their fifteen months of fighting in Iraq: "To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is farfetched." After penning that crie de cour, two of the soldiers died in Iraq and a third was severely wounded.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post printed "The Real Iraq We Knew," by twelve former Army captains, all of whom served in Iraq. It begins: "Today marks five years since the authorization of military force in Iraq, setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion. Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on Iraq is in shambles. As Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we’ve seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it’s like to be stretched too thin. And we know when it’s time to get out."


Yes, it costs the taxpayers, but so do the Halo 3 video games they are purchasing in record numbers, and for most Americans, Iraq is a make-believe war. Even the cost seems unreal, as Bush is the first President in US history to cut taxes in a time of war, with the result that more than a trillion dollars in long-term obligations will not come due while his Administration has to foot the bills.


The most fraudulent neocon claim was that pro-Western, even pro-Israel Iraqis, like their favorite, the now totally discredited Ahmed Chalabi, would police the country as surrogates for the US, and that Iraqi oil sales would pay for it all. The twelve captains, who worked with the locals, are very clear as to the forlorn outcome of that plan: "…many of us witnessed the exploitation of U.S. tax dollars by Iraqi officials and military officers. Sabotage and graft have had a particularly deleterious impact on Iraq’s oil industry which still fails to produce the revenue that Pentagon war planners hoped would pay for Iraq’s reconstruction."

As for that other ongoing illusion–that we are turning power over to Iraqi forces we have trained–the captains write: "Iraqi soldiers quit at will. The police are effectively controlled by militias. And…corruption is debilitating. U.S. tax dollars enrich self-serving generals and support the very elements that will battle each other after we’re gone."


As the captains put it: "There is only one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately." Enough said.