Lessons I take from Iraq.
1. Don’t interfere with people who don’t want your help. The Iraqi people did not invite regime change… America wanted it and instigated it. America should have sold the war to the Iraqi’s, not the American public. Most important lesson… don’t try to save people who don’t want to be saved. (this rule applies to alcoholics and others too)
2. Consider options and question everything. The media did not question or admonish the Bush administration strongly enough before the war… probably because of 9/11. The administration used this cover to their advantage. Today the media do not question the assertion that “we can’t get out of Iraq”. Why? Why can’t we leave?
If the goal is to get out of Iraq… how the heck do you think that is going to happen when the #1 premise is: “we can’t leave”? I think if America pulls out of Iraq… suddenly a bunch of terrorists have nobody to shoot. It would be like if Xxxxx started agreeing with me on Politik. It would get boring really fast. If everybody sitting in Iraq can quit fighting over America and “democracy” they can start to solve problems about electricity and water…
3. The US media is controlled too tightly by narrow corporate self interest. We must, must, must break up ownership of the media. The only way the media can represent democracy is to be democratically controlled. Today the media is a rich and powerful oligarchy.
4. Perception is everything. If we want to claim the moral high ground… we have to walk it. And if we make mistakes (like torture) we have to rebuke those mistakes strongly, swiftly and definitively. The terrorists are watching us. They know what we are doing regardless of what the US media says. The world media has done a far better job reporting the mistakes of the US administration. The eyes are on us. We are allowed to make mistakes… but we must answer to them. Lying about our mistakes only makes things worse. (just ask bill Clinton)
5. Media have changed... for the better. There is more, better, faster information. Cell phones, digital cameras, internet, handycams. A propaganda war cannot be waged in the same ways of old. There is too easy access to "collateral damage" reports. War propaganda like the staged toppling of the Saddam statue have to be done better.
6. Accountability. We need accountability. When Nixon got into trouble he resigned. What the heck happened since then? So many mistakes were made re Iraq and not one person has been fired to atone for it. The guy who said we needed more troops was fired. The guy who fired him… he’s still there. This needs to be fixed. There must be consequences for incompetence. The new game in politics is deny everything until people forget or get tired.
7. War is more than a battle. Baghdad fell. The battle was won. The American public, world sentiment, Iraqi people… all of these are important elements of the war. All must be managed. We could go into Iraq and nuke the place to kingdom-come. We won’t make friends doing it. We can kill civilians all day long… we won’t win hearts and minds. These are just some of the rules of civilized war. Terrorists have a different rule book. Grow up. Play by the rules or risk losing the game.
I can go on and on… but mostly that turns to finger pointing about all the things that have gone wrong. Unfortunately we have a climate where pointing out what went wrong has become a team sport - defend and apologize for the home team and castigate the other team.
I think some of the remedies I listed above will help us going forward.
Fire people who screw up
Break up the media
Look for creative solutions (ie, pull out of Iraq)
Atone for our mistakes
Be the change you want.
Note, I did not say muzzle the media or the American public. Putting a gag on anyone is more problem not solution. In fact, I would argue that the US media today is a gag on opinions that do not match the corporate agenda. In a better world, corporate opinions, Bush opinions, Kerry opinions, my opinions, your opinions all get a proportional representation in the media. If I am a whack job, then my 1 crazy POV is completely drown out by 300,000,000 other sane American opinions.