Dessert: Repurposing the Green Zone for U.S. lawmakers to discuss war

ShareThis

We gave the Iraqis the term "Green Zone." Now we've given them another addition to their language: "White Elephant."

With their keen eye for real estate -- location, location, location -- the American proconsuls who arrived in Baghdad to work our promised miracles confiscated five square miles of choice land in a bend of the Euphrates River.

To be fair, Saddam Hussein had already chosen the site for his palaces, his famous crossed-swords arch, ministerial offices and the homes of favored officials. Even though he was universally beloved -- at least if you believe the results of an election in which every single Iraqi in the country voted for him -- ordinary Iraqis were excluded from the zone.

The new overseers expanded the Green Zone, fortified it even further with 17-foot blast walls, excluded even more ordinary Iraqis and set about creating an upscale Sunbelt suburb in which our diplomats, young Republican payrollers and generously compensated private contractors could feel at home.

But as of the end of the year, the place emptied out of Americans. The Green Zone became the International Zone and now, increasingly, the Iraqi Zone. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's home and office are there, and so is the parliament. They apparently don't trust the ordinary Iraqis any more that we did because they are fortifying the zone even more.

Now that the zone is under the full control of the Iraqis, The Washington Post says it has become a ghost town. As the Iraqis are intent on forcing the few remaining U.S. businesses outside the walls, the zone is becoming even ghostlier.

Having put so many U.S. dollars in the Green Zone, it seems a shame to let that space go to waste because its very existence contains valuable lessons.

In the U.S. capital, you don't have to listen very hard to hear the war drums being beaten by the same people who urged the war on Iraq. An influential right-wing journal that ran a cover story titled "Why Not Invade Iraq?" has written another cover story called "Why Not Invade Iran?" And Syria is now getting favorable attention as possibly in need of an invasion.

Congress has trouble focusing in Washington, distracted as it is by gays, contraception and that crippling web of federal regulations that prevents coal companies from turning West Virginia into Kansas.

It is only reasonable that we require Congress to rent out the Green Zone for all future discussions of wars, why we fight them and how we pay for them, two questions that went largely unanswered the last time around.

Grizzled veterans of the run-up to the Iraq war can recount the great tales of how that came about. How we would uncover vast stocks of immensely destructive modern weapons and prevent New York from going up in a mushroom cloud. How the people would welcome us as liberators with flowers and candies. How the Iraqi army would happily accept forcible disbanding and eagerly return to an economy that had no jobs for them. In return for rebuilding Iraq's oil industry, American companies would receive generous concessions. Age-old religious and ethnic hatreds would dissolve in the golden glow of American good intentions.

And the war would be short. The 2003 invasion began March 19 and President George W. Bush declared victory on May 1. The fact that almost another eight years and 4,408 American military deaths would transpire before the last U.S. soldier left shortly before last Christmas might be treated in Congress as pusillanimous quibbles.

One suspects that the presence of 17-foot blast walls in the Green Zone would bring some sobriety and humility to lawmakers' deliberations. And if Baghdad isn't available, there's always Kabul.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

JUST DESSERT