Editorial
Out of Sight
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On Sunday night in Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed four American soldiers. The casualties made it 4,000 American lives lost since the United States invaded Iraq five years ago, a figure that's sure to grow in the coming months. Even for a country by now used to the consequences of prolonged military conflict, the mounting casualty count has become hard to swallow.
The tragedy of American involvement in Iraq is rooted less in the loss of American lives, though, and more in the ill-conceived logic for American military engagement. Over the last five years, unilateralism and misrepresentation have alienated the United States from the rest of the world. American foreign policy under the Bush administration has demonstrated a startling impatience for diplomacy, and perhaps even more worrisome, a "shoot first" mentality that has embroiled this country in a seemingly counterproductive foreign conflict.
Five years after the first U.S. troops touched down in Iraq, the American political discourse has shifted focus to a potential exit strategy. The question has become less about our warrant for conducting this war and more about extracting ourselves from a war with no end in sight. Americans are unhappy with what they see on TV, and they are disappointed that American soldiers are dying for a goal still too amorphous to latch onto.
Today's war protester, though, is of a different kind than the counterculture activist of the Vietnam era. Americans at home are largely divested from the war effort; our classmates aren't dying abroad, and our brothers aren't waiting to be drafted into the American military. The generic protester of today is compelled by politics and ideology, not a personal attachment to someone on the battlefield.
Much has been made of this generation's perceived political apathy. Where are the demonstrations, people ask, the sit-ins and the campus-wide protests that clean out academic buildings and get professors off the track to tenure?
The truth is that such political activism is not in the cards for this generation, in this war, at this point in American history. Young people cannot feel for an American soldier in Iraq as young people once felt for an American soldier in Vietnam because ours is a generation removed from conflict. We are shielded by the security of our own lives, and we are indeed privileged to have that security.
American soldiers, though, are not alone in this war. Alongside Americans in Iraq are the Iraqis themselves, living today with less security than they could have ever imagined. Americans at home may never feel the compulsion of generations past to lobby for the return of American troops, but Americans can feel a decidedly strong responsibility to make Iraq safe for those who still call it home. Our reasons for engaging in war may have been flawed, but we cannot abandon the Iraqi people.
The five-year anniversary of the War in Iraq may mark a turning point in the mentality of this country. Americans mourned the loss of 4,000 American soldiers, much as they mourned the day the first American troops were killed in Iraq five years ago. That loss, though, will never be enough to bring Americans closer to the conflict. Only a sense of responsibility, responsibility for the Iraqi people and responsibility for the actions of our government, can compel us to speak out as we should. We may be outside the line of fire, but we cannot forget those who suffer for our foreign policy.