Staying the course

Paradise asks about Staying the Course. Here's this woman's view:

LISTEN TO THE IRAQIS!!!

A podcast by National Catholic Reporter with an Iraqi Dominican nun who has a very relevant viewpoint. In addition, Sister Joan Chittister reports on the Women's Global Peace Initiative conference with Iraqi women.

Stay the course? In the view of these women, maybe we should, assuming we can figure out what that course really is. Just yanking the troops may not be the answer as Sr. Joan reports:

“Your government is running our government,” a third woman told us. “We are not free and independent.”

“You removed the One Dictator,” one woman said, “but now you have left us with many” -- meaning no one is in charge and everyone is in charge at the same time.

And yet, at the same time, even though the U.S. military is acting neither as border guards nor as police, they pleaded for American troops to stay. Otherwise, they say, they will simply be prey. To whom? To everyone. Border nations, insurgents, al- Queda. Everyone.

And while they pleaded for help, they argued with one another about just how bad was bad and how liberating the liberation had really been. “The tyrant is gone,” some said. But others said, “You had no plan. That’s why all this has happened.”

“Mission accomplished” the president called it?

It sounded more like “Mission not yet begun” to me. “You destroyed the country,” one woman said; “you should fix it.”

Read what these women want.

“What we need now,” one of the Iraqi woman said, “is the end of the blood-letting. Women are very necessary to this operation. Fifty-five to 60 percent of Iraqis are women. The minority is ruling ... Women must interfere in the affairs of men. We should take over.”

What comes first on their agenda?

“And what is the first thing that must be done to rebuild the country?” we asked them. I sat with my hands over the keyboard, sure that the list would be long and varied. I was wrong. To a woman, the call was clear: “Take care of our children.”

And it doesn't end there. They clearly see us as a young, naive country, for all our blustering. I wonder if the Great Decider will ever recognize the wisdom of this statement:

“Democracy will never be done by troops, guns and random shooting,” another woman told us ominously.

The decision of what to do in Iraq is not simple. We have created the conditions that are currently harming the Iraqis. But just leaving does nothing to resolve those problems aside from ensure that civil strife continues, and likely escalates.

The Great Decider may be able to point and make decisions, but he lacks wisdom and he is losing the support of key Republican leaders. Unfortunately, the Democrats have not offered much aside from troop withdrawal. You read what the Iraqi women have to say, and you can only conclude that there is so much to be done and no one is really doing it. Our leaders need to level with us on what it will take to rebuild Iraq and Americans need to accept that history will judge us based on what we choose to do next. Given our apparent unwillingness to commit to fixing what we have irrefutably broken, I must conclude history will judge us harshly.