A US Economic Miracle Will Compensate for "Victory" in Iraq

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The Pentagon submitted contingency plans "Go Big, Go Long, Go Home." Congress held hearings involving General Abizaid. Soon, the Iraq Study Group will provide its assessment. All are reflective of attempts to find a solution to the war in Iraq. Yet, all are also ongoing symptoms that Bush's constantly repeated pledges to achieve "victory" and "to stay the course" until "the job is done" continue to fail.

Victory and getting the job done are vacuous public relation phrases which do not reflect reality. Victory cannot possibly be achieved in Iraq's confusing mess that is without a front line, without an enemy government with which to negotiate victory, stalemate or defeat and within a framework of a highly fluid situation in which the variety of opponents change, stop fighting, restart fighting, change venues, engage in hit and run attacks, swarm here and there to terrorize the population into stupor or flight.

In sharp contrast, the insurgency has tasted victory not unlike the Viet Cong in Vietnam. All recent developments ranging from the election results to Rumsfeld's resignation to the appointment of the Iraq Study Group, among others, encourage the insurgency and signal to its elusive leaders that they have a superpower on the defensive. The historically ironic event of Bush attending the APEC summit in Vietnam and having a giant Ho Chi Minh image looking down on him can only encourage the insurgency, too. It raises the dreadful specter of a future President standing below the image of Osama bin Laden. Perish the thought. But given the religious underpinnings of the insurgency---an underpinning far stronger and longer lasting than the unworkable communistic one in Vietnam---this potentially tragic development cannot be excluded. An unresolved Israeli-Palestinian problem perennially fuels the insurgency which also gathers in and draws support from global anti-American resentment.

And then there was Rice's recent call for other nations to follow the example of Vietnam. That statement, too, was ironic and, no doubt, gave another boost to the morale of the insurgency. It admitted that Vietnam is evolving into the right direction in spite of America's defeat and without America's guidance. (Do historians dare to conclude that this favorable development was actually postponed and delayed by LBJ's military policy and is the same now happening in Iraq?) To top it off, a fossilized Kissinger, charged abroad with murder and war crimes, chimed in that victory was no longer possible. Cynics can say: thanks, Henry, for encouraging the insurgency, too.

In any case, no matter which government will evolve, be it an American-imposed one or not, it will sooner or later adjust to reflect the democratic sentiments of the Iraqi people. Those sentiments are highly anti-American and will be for a long time to come given all that we have done to Iraq since the first Gulf War. Unlike the Vietnamese, the Iraqis and Muslim extremists will not easily forget or forgive having suffered through the slaughter of the '91 Gulf War, having sanctions imposed that caused the deaths of tens of thousands of children and placed horrible burdens on everyone during off and on bombings that lasted more than ten years and that then were followed by the current war with its torture policies and arrests of countless innocent people.

All of this calls for immediate withdrawal before more costs are incurred by either Iraq or our soldiers and the American taxpayer. The U. N., the Arab League and the Muslim nations have to resolve the issue. To compensate for the cost of an impossible military strategy and its global repercussions, Congress has to redirect its attention immediately and intensely from foreign priority to domestic economic priority in such manner that a long overdue American economic miracle would get off the ground. In turn, this could and would be so stunning and have such favorable impacts, both domestically and diplomatically, that it would counteract the temporary loss of global prestige and restore America's economic standing. It would aid in solving budget deficits, trade deficits, refurbish a decayed infrastructure, eliminate slumerica, reduce outsourcing and loss of manufacturing jobs, give people hope of upward mobility, diminish drug addiction and generate untold other favorable results such as having a constantly rising wage relative to inflation. In fact, inflation itself would permanently disappear. To achieve this, the unrelenting, extensive and serious malinvestments which have characterized the U.S. economy for decades have to be stopped. They ranged from a thousand fold nuclear overkill to moon shots to billions spend on sports stadiums to palatial corporate office buildings, etc.. Once malinvestments have vanished and the economic miracle is lunched, the favorable results would prove the superiority of economic over military policies. In its wake, the dollar, would finally start to strengthen again after more than forty years of constant decline.