As Warner struggles on Iraq, so should we

It isn't unusual for Mark Warner to consider his words before he answers a question. So it wasn't surprising that the U.S. Senate hopeful hemmed a bit when I asked him about America's "moral obligation" in Iraq, toward the end of a marathon editorial board interview this week.

His answer was even more discursive than usual, and emphasized the earthly over the ethical, as politicians tend to do. America owes Iraq "a declaration that we have no permanent intentions for Iraq....We can't be referees to a civil war there." When I ran into him the next day as he stumped on Suffolk's Main Street, it seemed as if the question was still working on him.

Some might find it disappointing that Warner was unsure how to describe that obligation, even now, after five years of fighting. But to watch him grind on the subject, weighing that debt, was somehow reassuring, especially for those of us still struggling to decide how it complicates an American exit.

If I'm not sure how to answer my own question, I am increasingly positive that coming to grips with that obligation will haunt us long after this election is settled. But in the rush to get our guys out of Iraq, in between the sound bites of a campaign, it's a question too easy to ignore and too hard to answer.

The saddest result of the early mishandling of the war is that so many Americans died regaining military and strategic victories surrendered by sheer managerial incompetence. Perhaps next is the billions of dollars redistributed from taxpayers to profoundly corrupt and connected corporations.

But certainly somewhere in that list are the divisions this war has created at home.

Instead of reasoned debate over the wisdom of withdrawal or persistence, for example, we endure endless arguments over the difference between a timetable and a "time horizon" - as if either matters to an American soldier at a checkpoint, or to an Iraqi who has to pass one.

It doesn't help that a heated presidential campaign has forced Democrats and Republicans to hone their positions to the thinness of bumper stickers: Barack Obama's 16-month withdrawal vs. John McCain's open-ended commitment, which his surrogates suggest might be shorter than 16 months.

Warner, campaigning against Jim Gilmore, is eager to bring U.S. troops home. But he has refused to endorse either idea backed by the presidential candidates.

That ambivalence, rather than immunizing him from attack, ensures only that he'll get it from every side.

Rhetoric about the war has descended into a veritable parody of political debate, a chaotic jumble of absolutes about victory and defeat, courage and cowardice. It is jingoism countered by pandering, and it completely ignores the simple issue contained in the couple of words that stopped Warner: moral obligation.

Such 18th century notions seem quaint in America's cutthroat 21st century politics, but a nation that can't find a way to talk seriously about such things is a nation unworthy of leadership in the world.

Iraq is a broken place, without functioning civil institutions, without basic infrastructure, without the ability to defend itself, or to prevent terrorists from taking control. Whether we like it or not, America caused that, and we are duty-bound to undo it, or at least fix what can be fixed.

Colin Powell, when he was secretary of state, warned that the U.S. invasion would carry with it a promise to safeguard Iraq's 27 million people. Five years of war, more than 4,100 American deaths, more than 29,000 wounded, an Iraqi civilian death toll in the tens of thousands and a war weariness in both Baghdad and Washington don't erase that duty. Perhaps nothing can, or ever will.

But America owes it to Iraq to try, as it did in Korea, as it did across Europe.

In the rush to escape Baghdad while stability reigns and in the midst of a presidential campaign, U.S. politicians, if they want to be something other than a talking stick for a consultant's words, need to come to grips with this debt.

Every politician - far beyond one Senate candidate from Virginia - owes it to both Americans and to Iraqis to measure the size and weight of this moral obligation, and to tell us how they'll ensure it is satisfied.

Donald Luzzatto is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

E-mail him at donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.