My 'Feud' With Bret Mathew

A few weeks ago, a student at Brandeis previously unknown to me published an article in Brandeis's 'coomunity' (read: low-budget) newspaper, The Hoot:

Being a person who believes in fairness, I have reserved a few comments for my own party, the Democratic Party. For those of you who watch or read anything about politics, you have probably noticed that Democrats, in particular Democratic presidential candidates, are currently engaged in a game of “Who Can Bash The Iraq War The Most”.

There is nothing wrong with having an opinion on the war, whether positive of negative. I would have hoped, however, that anti-war Democrats would have a better war strategy than the one many currently favor. It looks a little something like this:

Leave.

Now.

Now isn’t that helpful?

Anyone with any common sense knows that the U.S. cannot just decide to leave Iraq tomorrow and hope for the best. The country will fall into chaos and anarchy, and a new, Saddam-like dictator is likely to gain power and turn his country against America, prompting yet another Iraq war.

So what can we do?

Well, we can start by looking at other countries that America has occupied during wartime. Germany, Japan, and South Korea are still home to U.S. Military bases, and the wars fought in those countries were finished over fifty years ago. Clearly, we cannot expect to completely abandon a developing country that we have only occupied for five years. A strong, democratic Iraq could be just what the Middle East needs in order to stabilize. Although critics may laugh at the notion of a strong Iraq, they need not look any further than Germany, Japan, and South Korea. These nations are home to a strong U.S. Military presence, and they are stable, economics powers. Iraq can be made peaceful. It has been done before, and it can be done again.

I personally would like to hear a new sentiment from the Democrat-controlled Congress. Instead of claiming to have the backbone to completely withdraw from Iraq (mostly for the purpose of gaining votes), Congress would be better off working with the military. With less arguing and more action, we could make Iraq strong enough to stand up on two feet on its own. Only when that is done should the word “withdraw” be uttered in Congress.

Patience. It is not one of America’s strongest qualities, but it can be learned. It must be learned.

I dispatched an admittedly sharp-worded letter in response:

It's not often I get to read an article (though it barely resembles an article) as jaw-droppingly inane as the one by Bret Mathew in the last issue of the Hoot. Even though all three Democratic front runners refuse to commit themselves to full withdrawal by 2013, much less 2009, Mathew claims that the Democratic Party line is to simply remove troops As soon as possible.

Having dispensed with any and all withdrawal plans, Mathews hits upon a shocking and new idea: make Iraq stable and prosperous. Well I'll be a monkey's uncle; I never thought of that one before. The fact of the matter is that it's the very U.S. presence in Iraq which has destabilized it and finished the decline (started by Saddam) into a fractured third-world nightmare in what used to be the most prosperous country in the Middle East.

It's almost as if the last four and half years never happened. Mathew should start living in the present.

This got Mathew riled up and HE said:

Welcome to a special edition of the Book of Matthew!

I would like to thank Noah Klinger ’08 for giving me the idea for today’s column. I appreciate his efforts to contradict my views, because that is exactly what democracy is all about. Of course, I can’t let him get off that easily.

The problem that I have found with many debates is their lack of a good rebuttal. It’s always fun to watch campaigning politicians make statements that their opponents misquote, and its even more fun when these politicians do little or nothing to clarify their words. So, after reading Mr. Klinger’s letter to the editor regarding my article on the Iraq War, I realized that he made several points that merited a rebuttal. Therefore, beginning with today, once a month I will devote an article to addressing letters to the editor that I believe merit a response. As I do this, I encourage readers of The Hoot to write further counterpoints, in order to extend the debate.

In his letter, Mr. Klinger seemed disappointed with my article and decided to insult me, calling my article “jaw-droppingly inane” and suggesting that I “start living in the present.” I do hope that I never sink to such a level in my own argument. I am here to discuss my opinion on an issue, and though I admit I do argue strongly, I am not trying to make any arguments personal.

I still hold firm my position that the Democrats are taking the wrong stance on Iraq. However, when I said this it was not meant to merely refer to the Democratic presidential candidates, but to the party as a whole. For example, this spring Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared, “the war is lost,” an extraordinarily rash statement for a person of his position to make. Unfortunately, he is not the first Democrat to say something like this. Most Democrats in Congress share his view, and the Democratic presidential candidates are not much better. They share a disdain for the war, with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton, who has flirted back and forth to try to find the position that gets her the most support. Barack Obama, on the other hand, calls Iraq a “dumb war”; while Dennis Kucinich promises a complete withdrawal within three months of the day he takes office.

Sadly, the anti-war tendencies of the Democrats are caused by politics and the news media, which are both horrible sources. Since a Republican president initiated this war, the Democrats feel bound to oppose it as soon as it is not going absolutely perfect. Then again, it’s hard to see how the war is going at all.

Every time we turn on the nightly news there is another report on the death toll in Iraq, usually accompanied by some pictures of horribly burned bodies. Hate to break it to everyone: war isn’t pretty and it never has been. Yet, the war in Iraq is much lighter on American casualties than other wars of the 20th century of similar length (as bad as this sounds to say). However, the news media has chosen to horrify and frighten the American public in a way that terrorists envy. Every combat death is reported to the finest degree, while the gains that our soldiers make are often forgotten. Now, I do not mean to sound cruel to the troops; on the contrary, I support the troops as much as anyone. But every soldier who joins the military joins with the knowledge that war is possible, and no soldier is forced to join.

Despite what Mr. Klinger says the U.S. military has done more good than harm in Iraq. Sure, Iraq was peaceful before, but only on paper. Saddam Hussein’s iron fist kept his citizens in line, and it is possible that we will never know the full extent of the atrocities that he committed while in power. How can the removal of such a leader be a bad thing?

Anti-war critics keep saying that the effort to stabilize the country is taking too long. Of course it’s going to take long! The Iraqi people have not had a democracy for decades, and it will take some time to get used to. However, I am convinced that once the Iraqis learn what it means to be democratic they will bring their country back from chaos themselves. We must do whatever it takes to make this happen, even if it means drastic measures, like partitioning the country along ethnic lines.

We can win this war, and we will win once the Iraqis have a democratic government stable enough to handle their challenges themselves. This will take time and patience, but it will pay off in the end. The only way we can lose is if we let our patience run out, and leave Iraq to be destroyed before it is ready to take care of itself.

So by all means readers, send in your views. I don’t expect you to take my opinions lying down anymore than I would take yours, and I know there are plenty of you out there that can present good arguments about anything. I look forward to writing back in next month’s special edition.

So finally, I wrote a complete article, thus:

Argentine revolutionary Che Guevera thought that the Vietnam War was the greatest thing since sliced capitalists. He saw costly, pointless, destructive wars against militarily much weaker foes as the bottomless pit into which the American empire would hurl its wealth and resolve to no end. Toward the end of his life, he declared there should be not one but ‘Two, three, many Vietnams. That is the watchword”.

Comrade Che has found two unlikely allies: President Bush and Bret Matthew. In his most recent article, Matthew took issue with my claims about Iraq and argued for a continued US presence ‘until the job is done’. Instead of simply responding to Matthew point by point, I feel it is necessary to take a broader look at Iraq and the Iraq debate, and take stock of the situation rationally instead of attacking any particular party or ideology.

So far as the American military is concerned, the war is lost. When I say that, I mean that the situation on the ground is such that the insurgent groups are so large, well-funded, well-armed and entrenched that an occupying military power cannot root them out. The troops know this already, by the way. American soldiers are not stupid. They see the situation on the ground far more clearly than the pundits on the Sunday morning talk shows.

Of course, there are those who say that if we cannot win, we should hold on for a stalemate. Part of this argument claims that, compared to other wars, the war in Iraq has been relatively cheap. Since it is considered uncouth to mention Iraqi losses, I will focus on the Americans. I personally don’t count a war of choice costing thousands of lives and nearly half a trillion dollars as ‘cheap’, but even if you compare it to the Vietnam War, after five years of hostilities fewer than 3,000 American servicemen had been killed, compared to 3,800 for Iraq over the same period.

Some argue that withdrawal from Iraq will cause the nascent Iraqi government to collapse, and ethnic cleansing, civil war, and genocide will break out. All of those things are already happening, right under our noses, and the American military has neither the ability nor the directive to stop them. We cannot harm people by leaving if we cannot protect them by staying.

So what is there to say after such a grim assessment? The good news is that there is plenty of hope, just not for us. Like it or not, the US is going to emerge from Iraq weaker than when it went in. The question is how we can soften the blow.

First, we should do everything we can to make it clear to the Iraqis that they are in control of their own country. This means dismantling or abandoning the enormous military bases we have there, letting them nationalize the oil, and setting a clear timeline for withdrawal of combat forces.

Second, now is the time for humility. We must reach out to all our allies for humanitarian assistance. We should reach out to countries that are not our allies but have an interest in the region – namely Iran and Syria – and find the middle ground with them. It will hurt our pride more than anything else.

If we as a country can bring ourselves to admit what everyone else has known for years, maybe then this nightmare can end.

There you have it; what passes for a political feud these days. Get me a spot on the MacLaughlin Group!