Blue Collar Muse

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post titled ‘Agreeing to Agree’. The post’s sentiment was that even in the midst of extreme disagreement we can often find specifics on which we can agree and use them to fashion a plan or a course of action that both sides can support.

The post was inspired by my reading DB’s post at Live, Laugh Love, Iraq, Should We Stay or Should We Go Now?’ As I stated at the time, while I found much to disagree with, I also found some things that I could support.

I had a similar experience tonight reading Remembering Partition - The Parallels between India ‘47 and Iraq ‘07′ by Fred Kaplan at Slate.com.

One of Kaplan’s observations matched up with something that DB at Live, Laugh, Love had said and with which I could agree. Kaplan said

Anyone who believes that U.S. troops can simply and suddenly leave Iraq without risk of unleashing great horror—or who regards religious or ethnic partition as a solution instead of a desperate ploy—should look back at the summer of 1947, when the British Empire packed up and India fulfilled its “tryst with destiny” (as Jawaharlal Nehru described its awakening to independence), only to plunge into a monstrous spree of ethnic cleansing (12 million people uprooted, as many as 1 million murdered) that continues to take its toll today.

…

The parallels with contemporary Iraq are far from exact. The British Empire ruled India for nearly a century and, at the end, drew the boundaries that spawned decades of conflict; they should have felt an obligation to keep the place from collapsing before they departed. India was also a real country before the British colonized it, whereas Iraq was a colonial contrivance from the outset. (For the amazing story of how the British invented Iraq, and messed up the Middle East for all time to boot, see David Fromkin’s A Peace To End All Peace.)

Still, India ‘47 and Iraq ‘07 share enough combustible ingredients to make one pause before making tremulous movements.

DB noted

I think we need to start talking about … our responsibilities to the Iraqi people. Some may argue that the Iraqi people have had four years to establish for themselves a legitimate government, even pointing to the “laziness” displayed by the current Iraqi government taking the entire summer off or the lack of the Iraqi government to meet the milestones established for it by the U.S. I don’t think any of that matters. We are responsible for causing the current status of Iraq so we are responsible for ensuring the restoration of the country of Iraq. If this were a tort case, we would be responsible for restoring the country to the condition it was in when we “broke” it. The laws of occupation are similar and require that we account for the well-being of the citizens of the country that we invaded/liberated.

To leave now would be to abandon our responsibility under international law and under our own high standard of morals that we purport to hold dear as a country. We can’t just say that we gave the Iraqis a chance to establish themselves a legitimate government and since they didn’t do it on our timeline, we get to leave and “to hell with them” for being so lazy. We got this girl pregnant and we are responsible for the proper care and development of her children even though we don’t get visitation rights and she spends all the child support on meth and lottery tickets. If there is anything we should lament, it should be that we did not consider the whole cost to see this through before entering this fray.

I have to say that I agree. We cannot simply abandon Iraq at this point in time if we wish to be taken with any seriousness by the rest of the world. Much of the early argument focused on international opinion and what impact it should have on US policy. Here is another facet of the conflict to which that argument can be applied.

Kaplan is not particularly optimistic about our chances and Slate.com is not generally known for its support of Right wing positions. Yet I am grateful to them both for this piece since it helps to navigate the remainder of our time in Iraq by pointing out a historical situation with similar issues and potentials and documents the results of following one of the strategies we as a nation are contemplating. Regardless of the source, it is thus a valuable tool to use as we continue the debate.

Hoping we all have enough interest in history to be taught by it …

Blue Collar Muse

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 7:50 pm and is filed under 2008 election season, Geopolitics, War on Terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.