Iraq: ‘Oops!’

President Bush’s approval rating is at an all-time low of 34 percent, and it’s pretty clear why. Citizens are disenchanted with the war in Iraq, which will celebrate its four-year anniversary on March 20. Each day, headlines seem to report more American troops lost and more violent sectarian massacres. Democratic presidential candidates speak the voice of the nation in their calls for withdrawal from Iraq.

Luckily, President Bush’s prayers for a solution to this Middle Eastern military fiasco have been answered. On March 2, Switzerland marched 170 infantry soldiers into neighboring principality Liechtenstein (population 35,000)—only to, according to The New York Times, “realize its mistake and turn back.” Liechtenstein forgave the Swiss their accidental invasion.

This recent sequence of events offers illumination into the way that modern international relations work, and suggests that the United States’ most graceful way out of Iraq may be to just say, “Oops!”

The two situations have striking similarities. Just as Switzerland, as of this March, had 170 infantry soldiers in Liechtenstein, so too did the United States, as of this February, have 140,000 Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine personnel in Iraq. Swiss troops arrived in Liechtenstein “by mistake,” just as American troops traveled to Iraq under the misguided impression that their mission there was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

Admittedly, the situations also have some differences. Switzerland, as soon as it acknowledged its error, withdrew from its neighbor’s territory. The U.S.’s administration, even after four years, anywhere between 30,000 and 600,000 deaths, a shocking low point of 34-percent domestic approval of the war and a formal Congressional resolution dissenting with the administration’s recent decision to send more troops, refuses to consider withdrawal.

But take heart! Switzerland’s quick withdrawal and apology completely smoothed over what could have been a most unpleasant situation. Immediate U.S. pursuit of a parallel course of action regarding Iraq, it leads to follow, would do the same.

Switzerland’s recent actions demonstrate that it’s never too late to admit that you’re wrong. Sometimes, a heartfelt “sorry” and a promise of more thoughtful behavior in the future are all that it takes to right a seemingly hopeless situation. The next time that an eager journalist presses the president for a response to Clinton and Obama’s criticism of the war, I suggest that he try out a new reply.

“Oh, Iraq?” he might say, with a sheepish smile and a shrug of those good ol’ Yale shoulders. “My bad.”



Justine R. Lescroart ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, is a Romance languages and literatures concentrator in Quincy House.