Haivng read the Baker-Hamliton commissions recommendations, I'm reminded of a stanza from Rudyard Kipling's poem, "The Young British Soldier." It was written at the apex of British overseas power. It was also a comment on a recent Afghan incurison. One which had ended badly for Whitehall:
"When you're wounded and lie on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Just roll to your pistol and blow out your brains,
And go to your gawd like a soldier..."
What Kipling - himself a child of empire - understood far more readily than people who still believe this is a matter of either raising troop levels or bugging out early, is that foreign incursions mean Colin Powell knew what he was talking about when he cautioned that "yuo break it, you buy it."
This means, in sum: Even if you don't agree with invading other countries, once the die is cast, you have a responsibility to the invaded, even if it takes a century. The British Raj operated this way - albeit in a far less socially responsible climate - for nearly three centuries, because they understood that wars are won quickly, but insurgencies take decades, or more.
So here we are - squarely in two countries with weak central governments and hostile forces all around. And rather than pretend we can hand anything but a living disaster over to the Iraqi government in a year, or ten, we should at least have the decency to admit we know a quick handover is a death sentence for large parts of the civilian population. A new approcah is needed, sure. Retreat will pacify U.S. voters, and, in the short run, hand the Democrats a much-needed victory. It may even assuage the anger of most Americans, who feel the current KIA ratio of our own service personnel is unacceptable.
But if we pull out soon, The Young British Soldier will likely be transformed, in actual lifeblood spilled on Afghanistan's and Iraq's plains, into The Innocent Civilian.
So next time, we should do well to remember this, regardless of ideological stripe: Either don't go. Or go with a plan to stay a century. That's the math. Everything else is a variation on indecision.
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