There should be NO deadline for Iraq pullout

The recent clamor for a “date certain” to withdraw our troops from Iraq reminds me of why I thought this war was a bad idea long before the first shot was fired. I doubt many of you would guess my reasons.

I didn’t think we needed a permission slip from the United Nations debating society to squash Saddam Hussein like the bug he is.

I didn’t have any moral hesitation about conquering Iraq on a preemptive basis since the belligerent and criminal behavior of Saddam’s regime forfeited any expectation that Iraq’s sovereignty should be respected.

Contrary to President Bush’s lead, I didn’t base any war justification on finding WMD. For Pete’s sake, Saddam had over a year of President Bush’s saber-rattling time to hide any WMD he had in Syria. Anyone actually expecting to find WMD in Iraq when we invaded had to be a naive sucker.

I had no concerns about whether the U.S. had a legitimate strategic interest in Iraq; the oil-based Middle East is central to the world’s economy, including our own.

I had no doubt that Saddam’s Iraq was on the other side of the life-or-death war for civilization we are engaged in even though our nation is in denial about that war.

It is true that I was concerned about “owning” Iraq once the shooting stopped, and being responsible for electricity and water and food and oil production and voting and so on, but that was not my primary reason to oppose the war.

Finally, I was not dissuaded from war because there are other thugs in the world, and that some argue if we remove Saddam then we are obliged to remove all the others. Such childish equivalence is best reserved for places that have monkey bars and teeter-totters.

No, my reason for regarding war in Iraq as a bad idea is our disloyal TV news and a fickle and impatient public. Sadly, I doubt my country’s ability to undertake important and difficult missions in the world any more because we don’t have both the backbone and the endurance.

By difficult I mean missions that incur casualties, take time, and involve a significant degree of uncertainty. Like Iraq.

We have become a nation of weenies, spoiled children who expect instant gratification and perfection in forecasting and planning.

We have come to expect we will win every battle in a war, that all will go as planned and that if anything does go wrong we must hang someone by their toes.

We are totally disconnected from our own troops, whose motto is “Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome” because they know once the shooting starts, chaos reigns.

I thought the war in Iraq was a bad idea because it was inevitable, once the shooting subsided, that every anti-U.S. bombing or sniping incident would draw a rush of TV cameras to feed us our enemies’ achievements 24/7 while TV news ignored U.S. progress in the hard business of nation-building.

Our enemies learned long ago to create incidents for TV news, knowing those reports would reach their primary target, which is you, the U.S. voting public, around the clock.

Increasing public impatience with the war, led by daily doses of negative TV news, was foreseeable since the mainstream media is arguably and ardently anti-Bush and seems to want the U.S. to fail in Iraq.

The anti-war left would surely give aid and comfort to the enemy with their words and actions.

Loyal Americans would fancy themselves as millions of presidents and secretaries of defense from their living room couch, second-guessing despite little skill or data to do so.

Easiest of all was expecting that we would tear ourselves apart politically if our intervention in Iraq lasted more than a short time. We can always count on shallow-thinking politicians to seek their own advantage by publicly opposing a war effort, even while it encourages the enemy killing young Americans. And they don’t even blush as they claim to support our troops.

What absolute lunacy.

The recent Congressional bellowing for a date certain to withdraw from Iraq is an updated version of the foolish notion we should go to war only if we advertise an exit strategy. As any adult should know, the exit strategy in a war is victory, and we shouldn’t advertise our own weakness to our enemy.

About 2,500 years ago a revered Chinese general named Sun Tzu gathered his wisdom on war in a book titled “The Art of War.” His timeless insights have been studied for a century in the finest military academies and even business organizations around the world. Sun Tzu said:
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.”

Advertising our weakness by calling for an Iraq pullout deadline must make Sun Tzu shake with laughter in his grave, marking my last reason for believing protracted conflict in Iraq was a bad idea.

We are publicly open and foolish about our own strengths and weaknesses, and our enemy plays us like a fiddle behind the scenes.

All things considered, since we had choices, I thought we should find a way to deal with Iraq besides invasion. Accordingly, I would have said no to war. I also believed once our President made the decision and the shooting started, it was my duty as a loyal American to completely support my President and our troops. Too bad everyone else does not feel the same duty.

Only in America could a comic strip improve on a naval dispatch and thereby help me make my point. After the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813, Oliver Hazard Perry’s message to Major General William Henry Harrison said, “We have met the enemy and they are ours: two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.”

Pogo improved on that and described the current state of politics in America when he said, “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”