Iraq - Yes, it was a war of aggression!

Commentary By Ron Beasley

I suppose there is some kind of brutish justice to having the oppressed
assume the role of the oppressors, but it is hardly noble.

~Daniel Larison

Marty Peretz did some premature playground bully chest pounding today.  All he really proved is that he is a sociopath and I'm not even going to repeat any of it here. If he's not on some serious drugs he should be.  Fortunately we have paleocon Daniel Larison  to bring us some Iraq reality.

Who Would Want Credit For Iraq?

Whenever possible, I refer to the Iraq war as a war of aggression, because that is what it is and has always been. One thing that has often puzzled me about the reflex to declare victory in Iraq, as a Newsweek cover story did recently, is that I don�t know what it could possibly mean to achieve a victory that anyone would want to celebrate as the result of a war of aggression. Tens and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans are dead. Tens of thousands of Americans are injured, some of them severely, and Iraq now boasts one of the highest percentages of disabled people in the world. Millions of Iraqis were turned into refugees or displaced within their own country. All of this has come about because of a war that did not have to happen. All of this has come about because of a war we started. It is bad enough that our government unleashed this hell on people who had never actually done America any harm, but it is unconscionable that any of us celebrate what has been done as if it were something good and worthwhile.

It's true that millions of Iraqis voted today but what does the say about the future of the country and it's Democratic future?  John Simpson of BBC:

Nevertheless, the system of democracy with which Iraq has been
lumbered scarcely helps this process.

A single glance at the
ballot paper shows how unwieldy and awkward it is: there are more than
6,000 candidates, from more than 80 parties, chasing a mere 325
parliamentary seats.

This fragmentation ensures that, whatever the results on election
day, there will be weeks, perhaps months, of negotiation before a new
coalition government can be formed. And that means more political
weakness, and a further drop in the respect in which politicians here
are held.

Whether the moderate Islamist Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki stays in power, or the more secular Iyad Allawi comes back in,
we will not know for some time.

Either way, Shia Muslims will
continue to rule this country, and it is not clear how many politicians
from the embittered Sunni minority can be induced to join the new
government.

The extremists will not end their campaign just
because Sunni politicians decide to join the government. But there will
be even less support for them among the Sunni population if the new
government is genuinely open and inclusive.

Back to Larison:

When I refer to the Iraq �surge,� I usually make a point of emphasizing
that its political goals have still never
been met. The promise of facilitating political reconciliation was
central to the purpose of the �surge.� Perhaps this was always an
unrealistic claim, but it was the one the previous administration made.
This was the thing that was supposed to make the �surge� different from
previous escalations in troop levels, and it was one of the main ways
to measure the success of the plan. As far as security was concerned,
the �surge� of brigades did help improve things. This was aided by
successfully turning Anbar Sunnis against jihadists that were killing
their people. The Awakening was a product of successfully applying
counintersurgency doctrine, but it predated the arrival of the
additional brigades, whose presence was temporary and which ended over a
year and a half ago.

Bottom line - Iraq remains clusterfuck nation.  The surge failed it's primary objective.  And as for victory - it's the Iranians who can claim victory.  I said this in comments of a post on Karl Roves new book over at The Moderate Voice.

When it comes to the Iraq war and WMD Rove and the Bush administration
have two choices.
1. They knew that the Iranian agent, Chalabi was
lying but used it anyway because it was what they needed to get us into
the war.
2. They were stupid enough to believe an Iranian agent,
Chalabi, who's only purpose was to get the US to take out Iran's number
one enemy at the time, Saddam.
Sorry Karl, those are the only choices
and regardless of which one you chose Chalabi and the Iranians are the
winners.

Larison concludes with this:

Of course, there is nothing else that war supporters can point to other
than the quite meager fact that Iraq�s new heavy-handed, illiberal
government happens to be an elected one favored by a majority of the
population. Had another major power launched such a war for the
explicit purpose of toppling Iraq�s government, most Westerners,
including most war supporters, would be demanding that its leaders be
tried for war crimes. Instead we are treated to the absurdity of
dressing up an illegal, unjust war of aggression that has laid waste to
an entire country as a noble victory of which we are supposed to be
proud.