By Their Fruits

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." - Mark Twain

Now that opponents of the war in Iraq have the majority, what's next? "I told you so" is not too helpful right now. It is time to reform our thoughts - that is, rethink the situation and form our thoughts again.

It doesn't matter why Bush and his team have made such destructive mistakes. It'll matter to historians and analysts who have the benefit of hindsight, who have a responsibility to draw lessons and increase our knowledge. Right now we're in the middle of a horrible catastrophe, and our only responsibility is to survive it. So we don't need to explain why the president led us here. It doesn't matter how his religious beliefs might influence him, or what his motives are, or how honest he's been. We only have to recognize that his leadership is incompetent and has had disastrous results. If we understand the bad situation we're in, and start to act to get out of it, we'll be thinking rightly. All the rest - including the preternatural desire on every side to place blame - distracts from that. Focus on what is essential, or we'll die from what's inessential.

Last night I was talking with a friend about Barack Obama. Obama, Democratic senator from Illinois, was explaining why the Democratic party has been so quiet. There's a saying in politics, he said: "When your opponent is in trouble, stay out of the way."

Well I've got to stop getting exasperated so much. Everyone always calls Obama a rising star in the Democratic party, and people seem to listen him. The Democratic party, as a party, has indeed been quiet. Obama sums up the reason for its silence succinctly. Back before Bush was in trouble - when his poll ratings were still above fifty percent - the Democrats were cowards. They didn't want to deal with charges from Cheney and his ilk that they were traitors, ready to help the enemy. Now that the Republicans are in trouble, the Democrats want to stay out of the way - no need to pile on when your opponent is doing all of your work for you.

Obama's remark about the current reason for the Democrats' lack of leadership is just as exasperating as it is revealing. The two parties are so deeply sunk in partisan thinking now, that is the only way they _can_ think. How can we get an advantage over the other side? How can we dodge their shots, and land our own? All their thinking amounts to strategy for getting an advantage in the next election. The Democrats might be happy the Republicans are in trouble, but many citizens, less partisan, see a bigger picture. The country is in trouble. The country needs competent leadership. The country needs courageous people who can take hard steps to solve hard problems. What claim do the Democrats have on our loyalty if all they think about is how to take some votes away from the Republicans? What was political business as usual before 9/11 is appalling and intolerable pettiness now.

Often the competition between the two parties serves the country well. It doesn't take that much vision to make the balance of forces in our domestic politics productive for all of us. These times are unusual, though, and the leadership on both sides is especially bad. The Republicans are incompetent criminals. The Democrats are gutless wonders. Obama's explanation for their silence may in fact be a sound principle of politics in normal times. We're in post 9/11 times, though, and the country needs unity to win the war that started on that day. We can't win the war without unity, and we can't have unity without good leadership.

We know we're not going to get good leadership from the Republicans, and now we know we are not going to get it from the Democrats, either. Stay out of the way, they say. Let the Republicans self-destruct. Let the country self-destruct, too. Who do they think will want to follow them in 2008? What do they think the voters are going to say then? The Republicans failed us. Let's give the cowards a chance. We can see that arrogance didn't work. Perhaps moral cowardice masquerading as sound political strategy will do the job.

All right, I have to concede that many Democrats are more than partisan hackers. Some, for example, support the war in Iraq on principle. Others oppose it and have said so. So few have opposed it with the passion of Howard Dean or John Murtha, though. It's all such cautious opposition. I don't know what Obama's position on the war is, though I don't think he's been too vocal an opponent. I don't even know enough about him to say he's practicing hacksmanship, but I do wonder where his voice has gone. We'll have to look outside the Democratic party for reasoned, forceful opposition to the debacle in Iraq.

We've traveled so far down the road from 9/11 now, we don't even know what we're talking about when we say _the war_. Let me tell you what I mean. On the radio recently, I listened to a Virginia defense analyst speak in support of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Several retired generals have called for Secretary Rumsfeld to resign, and the analyst figured he ought to say why Rumsfeld should stay. He acknowledged that Rumsfeld has a hard time admitting mistakes, that he doesn't show much humility in the face of our current troubles. Humility and willingness to concede mistakes are just the qualities we don't need now, he continued. A leader who reacted that way would not have the resolve necessary to win the war. War is a test of wills, the speaker reminded us, and only the utmost determination can prevail in such a struggle. Rumsfeld has shown he has the requisite determination to see the war to a successful conclusion. A humble man, the analyst suggested, would fold.

As soon as this gentleman started talking about _the war_, I started shaking my head. Our terms of discourse are so distorted by this criminal enterprise in Iraq. The war we should be fighting against Al Qaeda is displaced by aggression in Iraq, and commentators talk about them as if they are the same thing! We have come so far down this road now, the war in Iraq is the only one we know. References to the other war, the real war, the war against Al Qaeda, sound odd now, out of tune, irrelevant. What do you mean, the _other_ war, people must think. We're in _this_ war, the one in Iraq. That's the one we have to win. That's the war we're fighting against the terrorists.

Well let me tell you something: if you think most of the fighters in Iraq are the same people who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, if you think that even now, we are certainly not going to win any war anywhere. People who so deeply misunderstand the nature of the conflict they're in aren't going to win. Yes we have to make the best of a deteriorating situation in Iraq. The fighting is so bad there now that we can't even keep hold of our conceptions of victory anymore. We are at a loss now to propose a solution that anyone believes in. The significant thing in this context is that we have completely disregarded the _other_ war, because we are in so much trouble where we are.

We can't even say _the war_ anymore, because it begs the question of _which war_. We all think of Iraq as the war now, and if someone responds that the war started on September 11, 2001, not in March 2003, Bush and Cheney can say that it's the same thing. They have made it the same thing, and no one can pull the two apart now. We can't win the 9/11 war without finding some reasonable resolution to the current conflict in Iraq.
Here are eleven points to help us find our way. You could call them a roadmap but Bush has already discredited that term. Take these points, think about them, and see where they lead. Notice that they don't include any timetables.

1. Find new leadership for our country. Ignore our current leaders, who are proven failures. Be creative about fighting together under leaders we trust. Do not listen to the people currently in office, and do not obey them. They do not obey the law, and have no claim on our fidelity. They do not speak for us, and we do not owe them anything as citizens. We have to find other sources of authority.

2. Admit our mistake to the world, and ask for its forgiveness. Do so in a way that does not dishonor our fallen soldiers, but do so in a way that clearly acknowledges the fault of our leaders.

3. Ask the United Nations to help pacify Iraq. Then work closely with that institution to make the effort successful. The UN would have both a civil and a military role. This step can only take place after we have regained some trust from UN members, starting with the apology in step two. Truly invite them in - the idea can't work if the UN simply covers our withdrawal. Even if they were capable of that kind of operation, and they aren't, that is not the kind of role I'm suggesting here. The particulars of their contribution will become clearer as the situation unfolds.

4. Let Iraq break into three separate entities - Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center, and Shias in the south. Let the arrangements voted into place in the constitution take effect. Stop pressing for a national unity government.

5. Invite all of Iraq's neighbors - yes, I mean _all_ of them, including Iran - to assist the UN in Iraq's transition. The breakup of a state is a complex process, especially when it is accomplished by war. Iraq's neighbors can make this process successful.

6. Engage the political process in Iraq in productive ways. Listen carefully. Deal with leaders wherever we find them, and don't rely primarily on Iraqis in the Green Zone. Don't expect military leaders to do most of this labor intensive, delicate work. Civilian troubleshooters devoted to that kind of work should do it.

7. Make Afghanistan the fifty-first state. It's an expression, I know, but most people know what I mean. Build an interstate highway system, high speed data network, secondary roads, communications of every sort, supply depots, airfields, business enterprises, and every other kind of improvement you can think of. No asset that increases our military presence and strength is too costly. Make it the largest outpost we've ever built. Realistically, we can't accomplish this step soon. We can only prepare for it, and hope that we haven't lost our chances for success in Afghanistan forever.

8. Gradually redeploy our soldiers and military material to other locations. In particular, as we rotate men and material out of Iraq, rotate people and equipment into Afghanistan.

9. As our strength in Afghanistan grows, and as a sign of our peaceful intentions toward people who have not attacked us, establish and improve friendly relations with Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and other countries along Afghanistan's northern border. Ask them to help us fight the war against Al Qaeda, and mean it.

10. Repair relations with our allies across the Atlantic: Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and all the other countries in Europe that helped us or opposed us. Tell them we'll listen to them, and mean it.

11. Establish unity here at home, and use that unity as a basis for increasing the size of our army. When we have enough soldiers on the ground, engaged with our real enemy, with an enemy that all good people everywhere recognize, we'll be respected again. Other people will want to help us again.

I should add a twelfth point here that is more general than the others. We have to regain control of our own foreign policy in the Middle East. Right now we have placed our success, or lack of it, in the hands of other parties. We devise plans that we have no control over. Outcomes depend entirely on what others do. "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" embodies this idea: what we do depends entirely on other people's actions. An alternate epigram, "As we stand down, the Shias and Sunnis will work things out," gives us quite a bit more freedom than we have now.

By their fruits you shall know them. Bad men, with bad intentions using bad means, produce bad results. Hitler sincerely believed that what he was doing was best for Germany. He persuaded others that what he was doing was best for Germany. Historians say that if he had died in 1938, Germans and others would still see him as a hero. But he lived long enough for the consequences of his actions to become apparent.

How will it be with George W. Bush? Will he live long enough for the consequences of his actions to become apparent? I've said that in twenty-five years, Iraq will be stable, and the Republicans will take credit for it. But however things are in Iraq, twenty-five years may be long enough to see the consequences of our aggression, not just in Iraq, but throughout the region and all over the world. Dire your plight, you pretenders, who think you are good enough to save the world. Instead you'll destroy everything that is good, because you couldn't see the evil in what you did.

Who _will_ rescue us? Where is the wise leadership we so clearly need now? How will we find it? When we do find a wise, practical, successful leader, the individual won't be a Democrat or a Republican.