The Hundred-Years War

A staunch Republican relative of mine looked across a plate of oysters the other night in a Paris brasserie and said confidently, "The Iraq thing, that's over, right?"

"You would think so," I said with as much diplomatic ambiguity as I could muster. I squeezed a little lemon over the shellfish. A couple of the oysters cringed.

I was, yes, avoiding a fight. People believe what they want to believe. When you see a look of defiant expectation in their eyes, there's only so much you can sensibly say or do, especially in a presidential election year, and especially if they're relatives.

But when I heard Sen. John McCain talking this morning about the "success" of the war in Iraq, I was the one cringing. Admittedly, I live across the Atlantic, but I had to wonder: has the whole country gone as crazy as my contentious relation, Mr. Republican?

Let's hope not. And I think not. But one senses in the GOP a hint of furor and fantasy akin to 2003, when authoritative and experienced men like Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, the walrus and the carpenter of American policy, persuaded the president, the public and Congress that embracing war was the best way to bring peace to the Middle East. Supine as oysters, the vast majority gave their assent.

Now McCain would have us believe that more war, and then still more war—"bomb, bomb Iran" to the Beach Boys' melody—remains the best course to follow. "We will never surrender," he likes to say, "and they [meaning Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama] will."
A more realistic appraisal: McCain will never come to his senses.

"My friends, the war will be over soon … for all intents and purposes—although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years," McCain said yesterday, trying to explain why he said in January that it would be "fine with me" if American troops stayed there for 100 years. "It'll be handled by the Iraqis, not by us," McCain said. So … why will we be there? As spectators? Cheerleaders? Perhaps as bettors?

Fortunately, some of the same sane and responsible voices that warned about the dangers of invading and occupying Iraq before the disastrous fact have just come out with a fresh appraisal of the "New Middle East" that has been created by five gruesome years of Republican policy. The report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is refreshingly if brutally accurate:

"Despite the presence of over 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of 2007 and an improvement in the security situation, Iraq remains an unstable, violent, and deeply divided country, indeed a failed state," write the authors, five respected experts on Iran and the Arab world. "The balance of power between Iran and Iraq has been broken, increasing the influence of Tehran in the Gulf and beyond," while "Iran continues its uranium enrichment program undeterred by United Nations Security Council resolutions or the threat of U.S military action."