Everybody Look What's Going Down...

With 60% of Americans now dissapproving of the Bush Administration's war in Iraq, prominent U.S. Republican senator Chuck Hagel has joined the chorus of criticism, saying that Iraq is looking more and more like Vietnam. Hagel, a decorated Vietnam veteran, also stated that far from making us safer, the conflict has helped further destablize the Middle East:

"We should start figuring out how we get out of there," Hagel said on "This Week" on ABC. "But with this understanding, we cannot leave a vacuum that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur."

Hagel said "stay the course" is not a policy. "By any standard, when you analyze 2 1/2 years in Iraq ... we're not winning," he said.

Hagel's statements come on the heels of an announcement by the Army's top general that the Army is making plans for a "worse-case scenario," in which US troop strength would be maintained at its present levels, over 160,000 soldiers, for the next four years. Hagel, once a partisan of greatly increasing troop strength in Iraq, now believes that we are past the point where more troops can bring any greater stability to Iraq:

"We're past that stage now because now we are locked into a bogged-down problem not unsimilar... to where we were in Vietnam," Hagel said. "The longer we stay, the more problems we're going to have."

Moreover, he described the Army contingency plan as "complete folly."

"I don't know where he's going to get these troops," Hagel said. "There won't be any National Guard left ... no Army Reserve left ... there is no way America is going to have 100,000 troops in Iraq, nor should it, in four years."

Hagel added: "It would bog us down, it would further destabilize the Middle East, it would give Iran more influence, it would hurt Israel, it would put our allies over there in Saudi Arabia and Jordan in a terrible position. It won't be four years. We need to be out."

To put a capper on this misbegotten, morally dishonest venture, word out of Iraq today on the new constitution is that the US is conceding to Iraqi Islamists:

Islam will be "the main source" of Iraq's law and parliament will observe religious principles, negotiators said on Saturday after what some called a major turn in talks on the constitution and a shift in the U.S. position.

If agreed by Monday's parliamentary deadline, it would appear to be a major concession to Islamist leaders from the Shi'ite Muslim majority and sit uneasily with U.S. insistence on the primacy of democracy and human rights in the new Iraq.

(IF the draft is approved - Sunni representatives have just appealed to the US to help stop this draft from being pushed through parliament by majority Shi'ites and Kurds, warning that it will worsen the crisis in Iraq).

So there you have it. Every justification this administration made for this war has now officially been swept into the dustbin of history. Wasn't one of the reasons we fought this war to prevent the expansion of radical Islamists? Can a government based on Islam possibly be "dem0cratic" in any real sense?

Of particular concerrn is the status of women, who, at the risk of stating the obvious, have not fared well under Islamic regimes. Sharia law has been used to justify women's lack of suffrage, unequal right of inheritance, of divorce, to control their freedom of movement, their access to education, as an excuse for physical abuse, even murder, at the hands of their husbands and fathers and brothers. I'm going to quote blogger Digby here, as he puts it better than I can:

Iraqi women have enjoyed secular, western-style equality for more than 40 years. Most females have no memory of living any other way. In order to meet an arbitrary deadline for domestic political reasons, we have capitulated to theocrats on the single most important constitutional issue facing the average Iraqi woman --- which means that we have now officially failed more than half of the Iraqis we supposedly came to help. We have "liberated" millions of people from rights they have had all their lives.

This is not to say that an Islamic theocracy is fine in every other way. It will, of course, curb religious freedom entirely. Too bad for the local Jews and Christians --- or secularists, of which there were many in Iraq. It will restrict personal freedom in an infinite number of ways. Theocracies require conformity in thought, word and deed.

And all of this must be viewed within the conditions that exist in this poor misbegotten place as we speak. The country is on the verge of civil war. Chaos reigns. Daily life is dangerous and uncomfortable.

It simply cannot be heroic for the richest, most powerful democratic country on earth to claim the mantle of liberator only to create a government that makes more than half the population second class citizens and forces the entire country live in conditions that are less free and more dangerous than before.

It is certainly not acceptable for that country to take any credit for spreading freedom. Creating an Islamic theocracy is anything but noble. It is a moral failure of epic proportions.

As an update, Digby passes us over to James Wolcott:

Reuel Marc Gerecht (American Enterprise Institute, neo-con war hawk), discussing the forthcoming Iraqi constitution on Meet the Press, August 21: "Women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy. We hope they're there, I think they will be there, but I think we need to keep this perspective."

Gosh. Thanks, guys. Good to know that this Administration's war architects don't think women's rights fundamentally contribute to democracy. Funny, I'm somehow not surprised...