Yes or No To Bush?

You are a Republican legislator, retiring after this, your fifth term. Last night, into midnight hours, you composed a questionnaire for yourself. You vowed to submit to it before your committee speech. You'd flower up the language a bit — but not the thought. You wake up this morning and turn to last night's self-quiz.

(1) Is it a strain to send more troops to Iraq?

No. A country of 300 million has resources insignificantly depleted by the proposed increase in troops.

Yes, there would be sacrifices. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to spend 10 seconds describing the anguish of the families of soldiers wounded or killed, which does not diminish that anguish. We are talking in clinical language. Hospitals don't pause to bemoan the deaths that occur on their premises. America has been at war in Iraq for nearly four years. No sacrifice of a corporate character has been asked of the American people. Taxes haven't been raised, gasoline hasn't been rationed, passports haven't been recalled.

Life in free countries produces victims in every field. In the past four years, 3,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq. In the same period, about 170,000 Americans have died in car accidents, and about 1.6 million have died from tobacco-related illnesses.

(2) Is our Iraqi enterprise worth a corporate commitment by America?

That is the taxing question. If success in Iraq would bring an end to the movement of which Iraq is now the apex, the answer would clearly be yes. Has the president persuasively argued that it would do so? No. He has said that "failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States." He hasn't said why. Great countries do lose great engagements. We did in Vietnam and Korea, and the Soviets did in Afghanistan.

Would America be less threatening to its armed enemies if we pulled out of Iraq? That depends on a single element: Iran. Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria are all, in this epoch in history, living direful lives. But only Iran has or is developing the dispositive weapon.

(3) How does the Iraq question bear on the Iran question?

If Iran did not exist, Iraq could proceed with its sectarian strife with consequences only for Iraqis. But Iran is critical in several ways. Iran is training, inflaming, transporting, and supplying all Muslims within reach to join in the fighting. We have moved to toughen sanctions against Iran, but they have not proved sufficient to effect a regime change.

(4) Then doesn't it follow that the American role in Iraq is indeed critical?

No, actually. America could help the Maliki government in Iraq fight the insurgents. But the evidence, in the last two years especially, is that the strength of the insurgents lies not in their military organization but in their techniques. Our losses are mostly from IEDs — improvised explosive devices. An elevation in American fighting forces in Iraq doesn't diminish, pro tanto, the number of IEDs that will be set off.

The threat in Iraq is from the apparently inexhaustible flow of insurgents who plant the IEDs and who engage in wanton killings of Iraqi defenders. What no strategist, American or Iraqi, has successfully addressed is the question of how to diminish that noxious flow. One American general petitioned the Iraqi government to be more forceful with captured insurgents, many of whom are simply released. But nothing like a galvanized rout of apprehended insurgents is in prospect, which problem touches on —

(5) The sectarian character of the Iraqi population, which is the source of divisiveness extending beyond any dislike or resentment of America.

A geographical division of Iraq is inevitable. The major players are obvious. It isn't plain how America, as an outside party, could play an effective role, let alone one that was decisive, in that national redefinition. And America would do well to encourage non-American agents to act as brokers — people with names like Ban Ki-moon.

On the basis of this analysis I will vote against supplementary American involvement in Iraq.