Ashton Ellis
Staff Writer
If the conventional wisdom regarding the 2008 presidential election is accurate, the Iraq war will be over when the next commander in chief takes the oath of office. But the situation with Iran will likely remain.
No matter who is calling the shots, though, the next president will face the tough decision of whether to surrender a valuable piece of strategic real estate. If he (or she) does, the momentary catharsis will not be enough to mask an immediate onset of seller’s remorse.
There is an inconvenient truth confronting every White House contender: Maintaining ready access to military bases in the Middle East is essential to ensuring a quick response to Iranian aggression. With its central location, Iraq is a pivot point to launch future missions or maintain regional security. Although the facts underlying the use of preemptive force in Iraq are flawed, the doctrine of preemption may not be going out of style any time soon.
A person need only drive the Malibu stretch of Pacific Coast Highway to understand the value of real estate turning on the maxim “location, location, location.” Property values are higher for land that many people want but only one can get. In the arena of international affairs, the currency exchanged for prime real estate includes both blood and treasure.
Yet despite Patton-esque rhetoric to the contrary, Americans do not love to fight. We pick our battles. Like any society, war is waged when our interests are involved, and these interests do not include the mass slaughter of non-Americans or the violation of such peoples’ civil, human or natural rights. If there is any lesson to learn from the experience in Iraq, it is that the cost of helping other people to set up their own government is too high a price to pay. American losses of more than 3,000 are worth more than the freedom of 20 million Iraqi civilians, so says the American public and the Democratic Congress.
President Franklin Roosevelt knew this well. Although he pushed Congress to become more involved with the war in Europe, he was unable to persuade a majority of U.S. representatives to take the inevitable step of going to war in a foreign land. Like Winston Churchill, FDR was convinced that Hitler’s ambitions stretched beyond the European horizon into other, less defensible regions. Then the attack on Pearl Harbor happened. Americans were killed and defense (or revenge) could be pursued righteously. Perhaps FDR accepted what Bush will not: The American people can only go to war and win if they perceive it as an act of self-defense.
For a decider in chief critiqued in the light of Lincoln, there is a Lincoln-approved policy that President Bush has yet to pursue. Soon after the Civil War began, Lincoln authorized the military takeover of several slave states likely to join the Confederacy. Called “border states” because they acted as buffers between North and South, they were held under martial law, but were also given an exemption from a law binding on other slave states. No slave owner residing in Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland or West Virginia needed to comply with the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a compromise Lincoln made in order to change the focus of the war while maintaining the restive compliance of border state citizens.
So too should President Bush refocus America’s view of our occupation of Iraq. It may well be that Americans are not willing to sacrifice lives and tax returns to help Iraqis stave off tyranny from the worst elements of their society. Perhaps the only viable policy available to President Bush combines America’s need for a self-defense rationale with the military’s need for air, land, and sea bases to deter (or engage) likely regional provocateurs, particularly Iran.
To this end, President Bush ought to treat the occupation of Iraq like Lincoln treated the occupation of the border states. Like federal troops in the border states, American military personnel in Iraq will push the front line of the war onto Iran’s doorstep. This will divert Iranian resources away from further assisting Shia death squads targeting American soldiers in favor of strengthening Iran’s internal security.
The Iranian threat is not going away. Every week brings news about further development of a nuclear weapon, sponsorship of a Holocaust denial conference, or a promise to destroy the state of Israel. Every time it looks as though America may leave Iraq to its own devices, Iran’s dreams of Middle East dominance brighten. Occupying Iraq may not be politically popular, but for any president, it is the only responsible choice.
02-08-07