So much has been written on Iraq over the past few years that I hesitate to add anything; I don’t know if there’s any angle that hasn’t been looked at.

But what the heck, everyone else is doing it.

I’ve argued for some time that there’s really only two reasonable options to our situation in Iraq; either

A) escalate massively, truly committing whatever we need to put in there to make the country safe and cement a good, honest, free society; or

B) get the heck out and let them slug it out.

Neither are particularly good options, in my view. A is probably what we owe from a moral point of view, and would be the choice from a Buddhist point of view. In our daily recitation of portions of the Lotus Sutra, Nichiren Buddhists chant these words…

Mai ji sa ze nen. I ga ryo shujo. Toku nyu mu-jo do. Soku joju busshin.

The translation of this is:

“At all times I think to myself:
How can I cause living beings
to gain entry into the unsurpassed way
and quickly acquire the body of a Buddha?”

These are the words of Shakyamuni Buddha, in the “Juryo” chapter of the Lotus Sutra. The point that Shakyamuni is making here- the vow that he’s taking- is that since he reached enlightenment, his continual thought is that he wants to bring other living beings to Buddhahood (enlightenment and ultimate happiness).

(That’s what “acquire the body of a Buddha” means. It doesn’t mean to get all big and chubby and cute, like what we think of when we think of a Buddha body!)

So from a Buddhist point of view, it would seem that safeguarding people’s freedom to choose their own path and religion, secure their physical safety from those who would do them harm, and have a community with clean running water, sewer systems, power, all the things needed for a decent existance… all of these things would be the quickest, best way to provide for and protect the people of Iraq. That way they can gain happiness and eventually enlightenment.

The problem with this is both theoretical and practical. In theory, it should work, but a pretty strong argument can be made that people have to choose to set themselves up in this situation. Democracy, freedom of an individual’s right to choose religion according to his/her own conscience, and so forth cannot be imposed upon a people by an external conquering force.

I don’t know if I buy that argument; modern-day Japan is a good example. Shattered and destroyed by the effects of World War II, Japan could have easily devolved into a warlord-dominated society, but the United States’ occupying forces didn’t allow that to happen. Instead, they essentially laid out the rules of the new, modern Japanese nation that was going to rise from the ashes.

And, for the most part, it worked out pretty well. Japan has some strange (to American sensibilities) practices and restrictions on some types of speech, but people are generally free to choose their own religion, to choose their political party and so forth.

On the flip side, I think that to successfully impose a big change onto a people like that (as we’d have to do in Iraq) requires that they are ready for it. Japan, Germany, Italy, and other successful changeovers were ready simply because their previous systems and ways of life were so thouroughly destroyed. Iraq hasn’t been completely blasted like that; in many ways and places, it’s still a reasonably functioning society.

Ultimately, I think that for the United States to successfully implement and force a Western-style free society would require a committment of well over a million troops to Iraq alone, billions of dollars of investment- maybe even a trillion dollars or more- and something along the lines of 15 to 25 years of dedicated effort.

And, frankly, there’s no way that’s going to sell, politically. Bush hasn’t even asked the American people to sacrifice and raise taxes (or just return to the pre-Bush era levels) to pay for this much more limited war effort, probably because he knows he’d lose.

So. That leave us with option “B”, which is even worse, because it’ll lead to untold suffering. There are real concerns that letting Iraq go into an all-out civil war between the Sunnis and Shiites will lead to a wide-spread, regional confrontation. Despite being Persian (not Arab), the Iranians identify with the Shiite majority in Iraq (which has many of the holiest sites in the Shiite world.) Much of the rest of the Arab world (notably Saudi Arabia) identifies with the Sunnis.

Then you throw in the Kurds, whose people live not just in Iraq but stretch from Turkey through Syria, across Iraq, and Iran; they’d love to declare an independent Kurdistan and break away from their crazy neighbors to the south (Sunni and Shiites), but those other nations are vehemently opposed to a separate Kurdistanian nation and might well attack.

So there’s a powder keg here. One hopes that the grown-ups among the various sides would realize this and not let things get out of hand, but I don’t know that we could count on it.

Additionally, the amount of oil in the neighborhood is ridiculous, and a big war would probably wind up with enough disruptions that the world’s economy would be set back into recession.

In other words, Bush has managed to mis-manage and dick up everything.

So what do we do? Beats me. I think we have to get out of there, I think we have to seriously engage the Iranians and Saudis and Syrians so they hopefully don’t blow things up, and I think we have to work something out between the Turks and the Kurds so that the latter can do their own thing without the former freaking out.

Additionally, we have to figure out a way for the reasonable people in Iraq (and there’s probably a lot, although many of them have fled the nation) to have a fighting chance at setting up a true democracy that allows for the rights of all and can prevent the ethnic cleansing that’s already occurring.

I do know this much- Bush’s plan, which is essentially “more of the same”, isn’t working, won’t work, and he is the wrong guy to be handling things. I’m more convinced than ever of the need for impeachement, and frankly if I had it my way we’d impeach him and Cheney at the same time. Of course, that would lead to President Nancy Pelosi, and the right-wingnuts would self-combust and America would be a giant mess, so that scenario isn’t going to play out.

But whatever we do, it’s time to start getting out. We’re not doing any good, we’re costing ourselves thousands of our own guys’ lives, and in many ways we’re only making things worse.