Michael Young thinks critics of the Iraq war are acting in bad faith:
The withdrawal of American combat forces from Iraq last week brought muted reactions from those who had opposed the invasion of the country in 2003. This was partly understandable, since the United States will continue to exert considerable influence in Baghdad. But there was also discernible bad faith in the criticsâ?? refusal to acknowledge that Iraq had entered a fundamentally new phase.Perhaps that was because the template of disapproval when it comes to American behaviour in Iraq has for so long been framed in the narrowest of terms: that George W Bushâ??s administration organised an imperial war on Iraq (not â??withâ? Iraq or â??overâ? Iraq, or heaven forbid â??forâ? Iraq), and this war had as its overriding objective the imposition of American domination of the Middle East â?? with Iraq and its natural resources as the cornerstone of the grand scheme.
And indeed, as Young documents, there was plenty of boorish and absurd criticisms of the Iraq war along "anti-imperial" lines. Of course, many supporters of the war framed pro-war arguments in terms of the importance of Iraq's oil, strategic position and sustaining American preeminence of the Middle East. But these war supporters didn't march around, wear goofy costumes or draw ridiculous and offensive posters so perhaps we shouldn't demand mea-culpas of them.
But beyond that, there were objections to the Iraq war which weren't grounded in a crude Chomksyism but on more pragmatic concerns: that such an endeavor was unnecessary and would prove to too costly. And lo and behold:
A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of , empty. A $165 million children's hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.As the U.S. draws down in, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds has been wasted on these projects â?? more than 10 percent of the $53.7 billion the US has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.
Empire or not, a boondoggle is a boondoggle.
(AP Photo)
