The National Interest

At the end of CBS's Sunday gabfest, Bob Schieffer expressed his disgust at the Iraqi Parliament taking the month off because of the heat, while American soldiers die on Iraqi streets. Schieffer didn't recommend that the U.S. pull out of Iraq, but he did say that the U.S. should give up efforts to build democracy in the Middle East and instead act only in the national interest.

(Blaming the Iraqis for anything is ridiculous. Lots of Iraqis resist the illegal U.S. occupation of their country. Whose fault is that? The Iraqi puppet government resents the Americans telling them what to do, and don't always play along. Whose fault is that?)

Schieffer may be wrong in blaming the Iraqis, and he is wrong about not exiting Iraq, but he is right about one thing. There are no good options, there is no way the U.S. can fix what it broke in Iraq, and current policy from now on should shift from the humanitarian or ideological and back to America's own security concerns. I understand the position that we are responsible for creating the mess, and therefore we are responsible for fixing it. I understand it, but I don't agree with it. The President has a duty to protect American lives first. Not because they are more valuable than Iraqi life in a moral or cosmic sense, but because protecting American lives is the President's job, just as protecting Iraqi lives is the Iraqi government's job. The policy that America should take is that which will most likely prevent future wars, future attacks on American troops, and future attacks on American soil.

The only purpose staying in Iraq serves is to invite more attacks on U.S. troops and increase the terror threat on American soil. It is far better for the U.S. to exit Iraq - even in a dishonorable, humiliating way - than to continue tossing thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in a futile effort to bring stability to Iraq. Particularly as we are the primary cause of that instability.

A nation can recover from a military humiliation. How can it recover from bankruptcy?