Whether to Achieve Victory in Iraq or "Surrender"

Thursday 05 June 2008

by: Camillo "Mac" Bica, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

US soldiers of 1st Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, embrace each other after attending a memorial service for three fellow soldiers who were killed in battle.
(Photo: Erik de Castro / Reuters)

In the wake of Scott McClellan's scathing indictment of the Bush regime's sprint to war, some administration pundits argue that to continue to debate why and how our country went to war some five years ago is a distraction from the more crucial issues at hand. The details and minutia of the complex decision to invade Iraq is better left to the historians to untangle. Rather, we should concentrate our efforts and attention on how best to capitalize upon the more recent "successes" of the "new" military strategy in Iraq.

Even were such optimism regarding the surge warranted, however, what these pundits fail to realize, is that military success and improved strategy does not of itself afford a moral and legal basis for continuing the occupation. Understanding how and why we invaded Iraq is relevant not only to ensure the accuracy of the historical record but, more importantly, to decide whether to continue the occupation in the hope or achieving a yet to be defined "victory," or in the words of John McCain, to "surrender," accept defeat and withdraw.

Civilized nations and individuals accept, at least theoretically, that human beings have inalienable human rights - among them the right to life and to live in a nation that enjoys political sovereignty and territorial integrity (sometimes referred to as national rights). Such rights are the basis of "noncombatancy," and provide a natural immunity from, among other things, being injured and killed unjustifiably and having one's nation invaded and occupied without warrant. To kill an innocent person, a noncombatant, is murder, and "the (unprovoked and unjustified) invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack" is aggression.

Continued . . .