Friday, October 20, 2006

Surrendering Iraq?

Yesterday, I read an interesting post over on The Moderate Voice about how retreating from Iraq is a surrender.  The post, and the myriad comments to it, got me thinking about the language used here and how it matches up with what’s been said before about Iraq.

First off, there’s the word “surrender.” According to my American Heritage Dictionary (2nd Ed), this is the applicable definition:

surrender

to relinquish possession or control of to another because of demand or
compulsion

(The Mirriam-Webster Dictionary online definition is very similar.)

So, are we “surrendering” if we leave Iraq?  Well, that depends on whether we can be said to have possession or control over Iraq at present.  According to the Administration, we have never desired possession of Iraq, and our military is there only until the Iraqi government asks us to leave.  If that’s the case, then by the Administration’s own argument regarding possession, we cannot be “surrendering” if we leave Iraq.  This leaves control.

Can we be said to control Iraq?  Again, according to my dictionary:

control

1. to exercise authority or dominating influence over; direct; regulate

2. to hold in restraint; check

Are we exercising authority in Iraq?  Sure - we have around 141,000 soldiers in Iraq at the moment, and they’re a great source of power and military authority.  The U.S. military’s ability to get things done (building schools, for example) means that they have a significant amount of power to direct and regulate, so they are definitely exercising authority.  I guess the question becomes whether they’re a dominating influence.  Given recent relevations of the failure of the Army’s Baghdad anti-violence plan, the take-over of the city of Amara to the Mahdi Army, and the increasing number of coalition casualties, I’d have to say that the answer is “no”.  Similarly, we appear to be unable or unwilling to check or restrain the actions of the Iraqi government, so Prime Minister al-Maliki can be pressured into backing off his pledge to disarm the various Iraqi militias and to release a criminal who happens to be an ally of Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army militia.

So I guess I have to say that in one sense (the control/authority sense), we can be said to be “surrendering” if we retreat from Iraq.  Of course, in 4 other senses (the posession, control/dominating influence, control/restraint, and control/check senses), we’re not in a position to surrender Iraq at all.  If you apply some simple mathematical modeling to the definitions, you find that we’re not “surrendering” in 7 out of 8 senses of the word!  So, then, why are we “surrendering” if we leave, even though the definitions themselves only barely apply?

Simply put, American’s don’t surrender.  We’re taught from an early age that surrender is dishonorable, even unthinkable, so the word strikes a deep cultural note in our collective psyche.  And with the careful implantation of phrases like “islamic fascism,” the word “surrender” enables the Administration and its allies to point to how the U.S. didn’t surrender to the Japanese or the Germans or the Italians in WWII, that we didn’t surrender to the British in 1776 or 1812, that Lincoln didn’t surrender the Union to the seccessionists, etc.

In a nutshell, it’s great politics.  Don’t fall for it.