William F. Davnie: Yes, look in their eyes. (Look deeply.)

03/30/2008

We can't judge the war solely on heartwarming tales of gratitude -- because for every such story, there's an opposing tragic tale.


By WILLIAM F. DAVNIE
Star Tribune
March 28, 2008


Katherine Kersten chirpily tells us in her March 23 column that the U.S. effort in Iraq is worth it because of "the look in his eyes" -- the eyes of an Iraqi interpreter who has been forced to leave his country and seek refuge in Minnesota. To be precise, she quotes an American officer telling us it's worth it because of the look in the Iraqi's eyes, but I have to assume she agrees. To which I ask:

•What would we say about the Iraq campaign if we looked into the eyes of the 2 million Iraqi refugees forced into neighboring lands, where their welcome has quickly worn thin? Or into the eyes of the additional 2 million Iraqis who are refugees within their own country, and therefore are called, in the tender words of international humanitarian law, "Internally Displaced Persons"? (As a proportion of population, these numbers would be like 50 million Americans.)

•What we would say about the Iraq campaign if we looked into the (dead) eyes of the (bare minimum) 80,000 Iraqi civilians who have died in the course of the five years of our military presence in that land? I know, only a small portion of that number were killed by U.S. forces -- terrorists did more damage -- but they are dead nonetheless. And spare me the claim of how awful it was under Saddam. It was awful, but the death rate was far below what it has been for the past five years. (Again, in proportion, we would be talking about nearly a million Americans.)

•What if we looked into the eyes of our children and grandchildren -- and their grandchildren -- who will be paying for this war? This war was so important to our security that we had to initiate it over significant domestic and international objection -- but not quite important enough to pay for out of current income. So not only its direct costs, not only its indirect health costs, but even its interests costs will be borne by future taxpayers.

•What if we looked into the eyes of the Afghans, who honestly did see us as an improvement, only to watch our interest flag and our focus shift to Iraq before we had even begun to finish the task of stabilizing Afghanistan, and who now watch their land slip backwards?

•What if we looked into the eyes of the human-rights activists in Burma and North Korea and China and in the Arab world, who used to be able to look up to the United States as a model and to look to us for help? Now, to be identified with the Americans in many lands is a kiss of political death, and the helping hand we have been able to offer over the years is too dangerous to grasp.

I'll stop my invective here -- though I could go on -- and make it very clear that what the United States does from here on in Iraq is a serious question that demands thoughtful, reflective analysis -- and these comments of mine have not been that. However we got there, we are there now, and we have to decide what to do next. But to suggest that the experience of one refugee -- who has had to flee the land he obviously loves -- tells us anything serious about how to set a path for the United States in Iraq is to recall how this country managed to get itself into that one in the first place: Iraqis abroad, refugees who couldn't go home, told us how we would be welcomed and how everything would go smoothly. I don't (necessarily) question their sincerity -- but sincerity has little to do with political and military realities.

We need a serious discussion of what America does and does not have at stake in Iraq, and what we will pay for that stake. I can lay out arguments on both -- actually on many -- sides of this multifaceted issue, because it really is complicated. What we don't need are people thinking that heartwarming stories substitute for serious engagement with the primary foreign-policy challenge facing our nation.

William F. Davnie is a retired Foreign Service officer who served in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad from April through July 2007.