North Star Writers Group

At the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it’s heartening to realize that someone seems to have learned a critical lesson of the Iraq debacle.

Not surprisingly, those now wiser are troops on the ground, one specialist, four sergeants and two staff sergeants. They recently outlined their combat and other experiences in the editorial pages of The New York Times.

(Since that article appeared, two of them were killed in a vehicle accident in Baghdad. Their names are noted below. Their wives and a young daughter each survive them.)

“In the end,” they conclude, “We need to recognize that our presence may have released the Iraqis from a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect (italics added). They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are – an army of occupation -and force our withdrawal.”

Just how did we Americans rob the Iraqis of their self-respect? By “saving” them from a tyrant when they never asked for our help, Ahmad Chalabi’s lobbying not withstanding. He doesn’t count, he hadn’t lived in Iraq for years and, as it turns out, was a paid agent for Iran all along.

It’s the height of arrogance to presume that we know what’s best for another country, especially when there are so many problems in our own nation that we are busy ignoring, denying, sweeping under the rug, etc. The United States may be a perfectionist nation, but that does not mean this country is perfect by any measure. And since we cannot walk on water, it is folly for us to presume to tell others how they should negotiate their sands or jungles.

Of course, the initial justification for invading a country that had no connection to the attacks six years ago was to keep said tyrant, Saddam Hussein, from using purported weapons of mass destruction against the United States. When the WMDs never materialized, evaporating the rationale for pre-emptive war faster than dew under the scorching desert sun, our leaders then proclaimed the mission to be “liberation” from despotism.

That explanation jerked a national string. After all, this is the country where “Superman” originated. Fighting for “truth, justice and the American way,” Superman is how we like to view ourselves: strong, noble and above all self-sacrificing so that others may know the blessings of the liberty we bring to them (at the point of a gun is a nit-picking little detail).

The gunpoint, however, is precisely what sticks in the Iraqis’ collective craws. The U.S. invasion demeaned them by signaling to the world that they were not competent to determine their own form of government and needed outside help. That collective humiliation is likely a strong if unstated motive for why the current Iraqi government is in no rush to implement Washington’s so-called benchmarks, which merely add insult to ongoing injury. Iraqis on all sides don’t see these mileposts as in their best interest because, once again, the mandate comes from outsiders.

This is not an argument for never helping other nations. This is an argument for Americans to grow up enough to be able to distinguish between helping and taking over. There’s a huge difference, and we still don’t get it.

Maybe this will help. We are now damned if we do, damned if we don’t in Iraq. That’s the classic signature of a takeover vs. assistance situation.

In taking over Iraq, the United States tacitly absolved the Iraqis of any responsibility for the violence and other problems in their country. All we can do now is exactly what the seven soldiers duly noted: bow out of the country so that the Iraqis are left to make their own decisions about the direction they want for their country and make peace on their own terms, not ours or anyone else’s.

A salute, then, to Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora (deceased), Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray (deceased), and Jeremy A. Murphy, for dedication and courage under fire and extraordinary candor in putting their names to that opinion piece.

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