Placing the Blame for Iraq (again)

Americans, especially journalists, tend to look back on the origins of the Iraq war too much in my opinion. I'm not talking about the assessment of blame for the ensueing debacle -- there no doubt needs to be a whole lot more accountability for faulty pre-war intelligence, suspicious allocation of "defense" contracts and the astonishing lack of an exit strategy that will leave America mired there for years to come, if not in terms of troop presence then in terms of the region's impact on our ability to deal with increased terrorism abroad. But that does us no good in fixing the problems that plague the region now, which should be a top priority, especially for those politicians who voted for the war and are now defending their vote as unavoidable at the time. The truth is, politically, it was the right thing to do at the time
In the beginning the Bush administration and Congress displayed what most of us now recognize as gullible optimism, something that, we should have realized by now, is never an asset in war. The worst sin, though, was the media's inability to recognize it at the time. At the time I halfheartedly supported the war because there didn't seem to be much reason to oppose it. Saddam was an awful dictator to be sure, but I have trouble believing that living under him was a worse experience than living in anarchy, at least for most Iraqis. Torture, rape and murder were not uncommon under Saddam, but they are seemingly less uncommon now, and the future certainly doesn't look any better, especially after American troops leave and Iraq loses its best stabilizing factor.
But looking to the origins of the war doesn't seem to do us any good at this point. America's prerogative today is finding a way to withdraw from Iraq without leaving an ineffective government in place. The media, to its credit, has atoned for its earlier lack of good reporting and has done its part in exploring the options. The best solution I've seen to date was explored "The New Republic" writer Peter Galbraith, who writes that we should partition Iraq into three segments, one for Sunnis, one for Shiites and one for Kurds, in his article "Iraq: What's next? Divide the country." The Kurds, he writes, have already voted by a 98% majority for independence, and the Sunnis and Shiites have largely approved of that.
The Shiites and Sunnis create a more complicated situation. If American troops leave sometime in the next two years, a period of increased instability will most likely follow. The danger is that Iran may choose to take advantage of that instability, a prospect that would no doubt push us back into war, especially with Bush, who is already exploring military options to deal with Iran (we know that thanks to the Seymour Hirsh, one of the few journalists who seemed to realize what the consequences of the war would be before it began), in the White House. Three separate Iraqs would no doubt be weaker than the one Iraq was under Saddam, but may be more powerful than the chaotic semi-anarchy that seems to exist today, or at least that would exist to a greater extent without the presence of American troops.
Another imperative should be allowing Iraqi citizens without ties to the insurgency into America with little or no wait period. It's a little bit of a pipe dream to think that this could work, but it's the only moral solution I could come up with. Iraq was no picnic before the invasion, but it seems to have only gotten worse in the ensueing years. Granting refugee status to the Iraqis who would choose to come to the United States -- and a great number of them have illustrated their willingness and desire to leave the country, just look at all those flowing into neighboring countries -- would be a good way to right some of the wrongs of the war.
But there is of course no easy or clear cut solution. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. I hesitantly supported the troop surge in the sense that it offers a little bit of hope that we can turn Iraq around, but it's easy for me to say that, I'm in no danger of being killed by a suicide bomber from 10,000 miles away.