Wow. Lots of long faces here at Winds.
I’m not sure what to make of it. Actually I am, but I kinda don’t want to say it to my co-bloggers.
No, there’s no magic play in the Bush plan we heard about tonight that will suddenly win the war. No, the mistakes we’ve made over the last three years can’t be unwound.
Everyone is looking for a magic spell that will suddenly unlock all our troubles, or a secret hidden-ball play that will guarantee victory.
Ain’t here. Ain’t happening at all.There are a few points I’d like to make that we all seem to have forgotten.
Iraq is a battle, not a war. If we won – as completely as anyone could imagine – we’d still face a conflict that poses capable, committed adversaries worldwide against us.
It matters a lot that we win in Iraq – both in terms of the impact on the worldwide conflict and in terms of the lives of the Iraqis themselves. Bush is absolutely right – losing in Iraq unlocks a set of potential futures that we really, really won’t like.
Those of us who support (and supported) the war are losing the public argument bigtime; we’re increasingly standing alone in a corner. Get used to it; we’re not an effective political force, and our political leadership (the President…) has pretty much blown things. OK, so what’s the plan? What do we do?
Well, it’s like this.
First, and foremost, I hope we’re all wrong. I hope, more than anything, that the national collapse of belief in the war doesn’t lead to a military collapse. I hope that a military collapse doesn’t lead to a wider war.
As I say – I could well be wrong about this, and hope I am. I’d like to be.
But what if I’m not?
Well, there’s not a lot I can do about it as an individual citizen and blogger. There’s not a lot you can do as blog readers. We’re not even backbenchers right now.
But we’re looking at this as though the daily news is what matters. It’s not.
There is going to be a national debate over the next two years over what to do. We’d better learn how to participate in that debate. That will involve a lot of examination, a lot of discussion – including discussion with people who oppose us.
The Stockdale Paradox.
Jim Collins wrote a important book called “Good to Great”, and in it he described a conversation he had with Admiral James Stockdale before he died (yes, Ross Perot’s running mate).
Stockdale was one of the most decorated sailors in naval history. He was a naval aviator shot down over North Vietnam and held in POW camps for over 7 years. He organized the prisoners and kept men alive and sane, including himself. To escape being used as a propaganda tool, he mutilated his own head with a razor so they couldnt be put on film. When they tried to put a hat on him, he used a stool and his fists to destroy his own face. No-one has ever sacrificed more or endured more for his country than James Stockdale did.
Collins interviewed Stockdale about his survival, and he asked him an interesting question: who _didn’t_ survive and why:
_”I didn’t say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally, after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, “Who didn’t make it out?”_
_“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “The optimists.”_
_“The optimists? I don’t understand,” I said, now completely confused, given what he’d said a hundred meters earlier._
_“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say,‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”_
_Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”_
_To this day, I carry a mental image of Stockdale admonishing the optimists: “We’re not getting out by Christmas; deal with it!”_
We must confront the most brutal realities and carry on with faith nontheless. This is now known as the Stockdale Paradox, but it has been faced in every war by every people at one time or another. We are facing it now.
Thanks, Armed.
Just one comment for now: a lot of folks here at Winds and around the center-libertarian-right blogosphere have talked from time to time about the centrality of the “war of ideas” – the moral initiative, as it were. I’m not citing anyone specifically because it’s late. But there’s a rough concensus, for example:
> that al-Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgents see this battle as primarily a media campaign, as evidenced by their media/sniper “combined arms” units;
> that mainstream American coverage of the war provides heat, not light, as evidenced by “grim milestones,” contrasted with Arthur Cherenkoff and Winds’s own weekly briefings;
> that (by frequently invoked analogy) Tet, and particularly Cronkite’s pronouncement, were turning points in American public opinion and hence, ultimately, the fate of South Vietnam;
> that insurgents have cultivated asymetrical relationships with Western media, as in the stringer assassination photos;
> that even Americans who are quite left in outlook “can have their views on the war changed dramatically”:http://zealandactivityblog.wordpress.com/2006/11/12/inaugural-post-2006-mid-term-election/ by access to more complete information;
> etc.
I submit that the war is going as well as can reasonably be expected. Could we have done a better job at many things? Of course. But this war will be won with resolve, not with a surge, new ROE, oil trusts, or any other tactic (though each of these may demonstrate resolve). Iraq is in rough shape, but the right events at the right time – say, a rout in Anbar – could create a tipping point. It would help if conditions in American public discourse and public opinion were receptive, and that’s where we all do what we can.
“Win the war”, “Lose the war”… if that is what it comes down to, three syllable phrases, then we are in trouble.
What “war” are we talking about? Or maybe the question should be, which war? Anyway, why can’t the term “nation building” be used? Is that phrase now on G. Carlin’s forbidden list?
If we are simply up front with what is happening – nation building, or the attempt to do so, then we can talk about the realities. First and foremost, it is the Iraqies who are losing – their lives, their freedom. But screw them… no one really cares about them anyway.
Secondly, unless the US political establishment (starting with the President) can rally enough domestic and international support for a multi-year nation building campaign (which must include using the military to counter insurgents) then the cost will be born not just by the Iraqis (in bodies), but the flow of oil out of that region.
Which of course why we (and anybody else) really cares about this part of the world at all. BTW, who would benefit by Gulf region chaos (leading to oil supply instability?) Yup, the major oil resources outside the Gulf, which just happen to be Russia and Venezuela. Is it just a coincidence that as increasing Iraq instability threatens Gulf stability, that both Russia and Ven. are becoming more controlling in using their energy resources?
Opportunistic vultures (in this case a Democratic party ensemble, Chirac, and others) will always hover around to pick the carcass of any failed venture. What I hope everybody within reason will accept is that the effort to go forward and not give up (on building a modern Iraq nation) is less costly than simply giving up.
Freeto’s is a fair question. Nation building is the answer. Provisionally, a “win” is a stable democratic Iraq dominated neither by Iran/Syria nor by Saudi Arabia. “Democratic” here means that the government leaves office peacefully and on constitutional schedule.
Low levels of terrorism are acceptable; Ireland, Israel, and Spain all function with some level of ongoing attacks and could sustain much more.
Oil is an issue, but it’s more nuanced than Freeto suggests. Unstable supply in the Gulf will certainly cause short-term dislocation, but (i) there are worse things and (ii) in the long term, other regions would replace Gulf production, if at higher cost. The real reason we care about this region is that it produces people who apparently seriously and actively want to replace the Western system with a competing and incompatible ideology. The oil is interesting as a resource but more troubling as a source of cash for these people.
There are other reasons for “not giving up,” such as the nature of Saddam’s regime and commitments accepted in good faith by the Iraqis, but they will be compelling only to romatics like Freeto and me (no offense).
Timothy – no offense taken!
Agree that perfection is not the goal. People who will cast Iraq as a “lose” for the US if anything other than a perfect outcome is achieved are only trying to make the US look bad, rather than offer a realistic analysis of the situation.
A “win” is simply a functioning nation state, not the absence of all violence (which cannot happen until all hatred ends… and that is not a reasonable goal.) BTW, multiple functioning nation states would also be a “win” IMO… the name and size of the resulting nation(s) are not as important as having States who co-exist and cooperate with the greater world community (including the US.)
Yes, I (and I suspect many others here) are a bit romantic in believing that there is a greater good that also must be achieved, in moving that part of the world out of the medieval era and fiefdoms and wars of revenge… but that is not a near term (“win” or “lose” for the US) goal.
Regarding the oil… there is no place on earth that can replace the production of oil from the Gulf region. None. Which is why Pres. Carter supposedly created the Carter Doctrine. Which is why…. any policy such as Bush’s latest will inevitably talk about oil. The modern world economic system depends upon oil, which means it depends upon the Gulf of Arabia and surrounding region.
And that means we have to care about it. We have to care that that region consists of functioning nations willing to trade oil to the outside world. (Then, in a perfect world those nations would NOT use the oil revenues to fund terrorism, but that is so deeply rooted in religion we may be looking at a great deal of time to pass.)
I believe you have your timeline all screwed up. The mission failure comes before the media failure.
The American Public is not dumb. They can recognize failure. Its justa few dead-enders now in they’re last throes who believe otherwise.
“There is going to be a national debate over the next two years over what to do. We’d better learn how to participate in that debate. That will involve a lot of examination, a lot of discussion – including discussion with people who oppose us.”
Heaven help us.
In my world, the art world, there is no discussion with people who oppose a forward posture into the war on terror/war on violent atavists. From them there is only alienation, marginalization and shame strategies, career killers. Communicating with intransigent opposition is still a mystery to me… the only response I can think of is to jam stubborn issues into the conversation: Don’t you want to protect those who choose freedom in oppresive societies? How about the irony that we (culture producers) are the ultimate instigators and targets of resentful patriarchal societies? Can they deny that winning this struggle would be vastlly easier if we posed a united front… and therefore they are complicit and instrumental for the enemies of modernity?
It still doesn’t work for me yet.
What we haven’t yet considered inside our worldview is interesting too:
–How similar current events are to the Philippine War and the pacification of the rebel Islamists there that goes on to this very day. The Belmont Club comes closest to explicating this but still the lesson isn’t as sharp as it could be.
–That Vietnam wasn’t a failure despite how it ended since the worldwide push back against communism was the central effort, despite the horrors of the Vietnamese refugee diaspora and catastrophe of Pol Pot. The resistance to the spread of Communism into the end of the sixties pushed countries like Vietnam farther into the era when Communism sputtered and surrendered to the worldwide market economy.
–It is strange that we have ignored the idea that this struggle will likely take generations, that winning it involves a bloody waiting game of nerves and a contest of implacability.
talboito, that’s just wishful thinking from the anti-war perspective. Remember the fatal Afghan winter? Remember the crippling Iraqi summer? According to the media, Iraq and Afghanistan were lost before the first shots were fired.
You’re right, the American public isn’t dumb. Do some googling for American opinion of mainstream news outlets. The results might surprise you.
Very interesting post. I agree Bush is an optimist by nature but I also think that he has been chastened by realities in the last 3 years. Therefore I think his optimism is tempered and his outlook more realistic.
This ‘plan’ has Petraeus written all over it – the agressive deployment of 21,500 troops (if indeed it will be them doing the fighting) to a limited geographical area (Baghdad, Anbar) with much looser ROE. It’s Iraqi Freedom writ small. This is a better situation than 100,000 troops spread over Iraq, hidden in bases with politicised ROE and interference from Maliki’s government. The former model guarantees intervention and brutal shakedown of the militias. The latter model guarantees the status quo, which doesn’t work.
Overlayed is an agressive posture toward Iran and Syria. This will probably mean strikes against militia within their territories and perhaps assassination of key figures. Personally I can’t see how Iraq will be able to stabilise without taking out the principal agitator in the region, being Iran. With regime change there, we at least have an opportunity to decrease their interference in Iraq and also apply increased pressure on Assad by removing his patron.
Much depends on how much of all this is talk and how much is transformed into direct action. If there is real action on the two fronts, there could be some progress.
bq. –It is strange that we have ignored the idea that this struggle will likely take generations, that winning it involves a bloody waiting game of nerves and a contest of implacability.
Dennis – This is so true. What really bugs me is that *we* have forgotten this simple fact so quickly. *We* is the American body politic. Bush said this much very early on, remember? I expected the Dems to forget, to me they are not the brightest bunch, but that middle American seems to have lost sight of this simple reality is the upsetting part.
Bush has to let the military fight this with a free hand. They will fight it fairly, they are the best, most principled military on the planet, comprised of the best people we have to offer. But, we must fight this battle to win. Half measures are not to be allowed. Flush the enemy out and defeat them. It will be bloody and ugly, but the most humane course in the long run. Otherwise, the number of dead will be truly staggering. We can put off the carnage for a bit and move the focus of that carnage, but the Jihadis are *demanding* it.
The Hobo
Amen to that, it is good to hear some realism regarding the war– most of what I hear is defeatism (from the likes of perhaps, Allahpundit) or a sort of obscene optimism from others. The defeatists are mostly ex-optimists, who set their sights too short and came up empty-handed.
The realistic posture is that we can’t know what we can’t know– I.e. we don’t know when or where a ‘tipping point’ will occur– and given other facts, hoping for it soon is fantasy, and will only lead to a broken heart.
PS, I think the Democrats always want to have their cake and eat it too– which is precisely why they always turn out cakeless and hungry. Which is to say, they want a victory in Iraq that is both good for our interests and also multi-culti ‘humbling’ and ‘warm and fuzzy’.
The only case where that would be so would be if we signed a treaty with the Care Bears.
Bush has behaved such reckless abandon in the past it is extremely difficult to believe he has the ability to give his commanders on the ground, Petreaus(Grant?), the flexiblity to pursue this new course of action. The fact that much of the Marine and Army brass went so meekishly along w/ Bush’s actions makes me wonder if they are looking to save their own besmirched reputations or dump the reponsibility on Petreaus(A wonderful parallel for the democratic party leadership as the noose of presidential elections approach after the Nov deadline).
The good news is that Petreaus appears to have the right stuff(Trudy Rubin is impressed as a liberal). The question remains though is it enough boots on the ground to acheive the security of Baghdad. I fear that much of it will become house to house and to avoid US casualties heavy airpower(fighterbombers) will be used.(I am thinking more helicopters along the way Israel uses them in hunting their enemies). The Hama/Hue result is very possible and that is a political problem.
The other piece of good news was the calling out of Syria. As it is a proxy for Iran saying Syria would have been enough and leaves the fears about nukes off the visual table(I would have liked to have seen a B-2 strike on an Alawite city the day after the Lebanese PM was assassinated and an announcement of a put down rebellion as its cause as the correct message to them).
The bad news is first and foremost the timetable of November. It is bad everything. The exigencies of fighting in Baghdad is likely to delay that timetable. If there is no drawn out fighting the political pressure to withdraw-partial or whole will become intense on both sides of the aisle as presidential elections loom and both the AQ elements and the sectarian strife may put the fighting on hold. Further it does nothing to bring in the Democratic legislators, especially the new ones w/ military experience, to present a plan of action. Both sides politically would like the total pullout on the horrible theory there would be a clean slate to start over with conviently ignoring the slate has holes punched in it.
On the military side it is wrong as well. Given that training the Iraqi army as a viable force does not mean training them to American standards what are the realistic numbers that can be brought to bear. For example, the numbers I have seen to bring the US Army and Marines up to the new 30,000 asked for is 7,000 a year. Is that enough to secure all the provinces and left unspokenwas the challenges in the Kurdish controlled portions of the country.
Mentioning Turkey was not enough. Is it possible that Turkey will allow some autonomy for their Kurdish population? Is our political system and Europe’s ready to bring Turkey into the EU as part of a grand compromise in a two year time frame(this is a good way of reminding them about the consquences of ignoring the mess we’ve made in Iraq)? Nothing was articulated clearly about this. It is important because diplomatic approaches were part of the speech and once you mention a country you have to articulate to the body politic what you mean.
Another piece of bad news left unspoken about w/ military and political consquences is the perception of the battlefield through the media. It seems to me Bush needed to offer the media an opportunity to imbed w/ the units carrying out the strategy. Even if at first it is just someone Petreaus trusts to explain how a counterinsurgency operation works in theory. Yes that is right go on Sunday morning for the next number of weeks and explain where Iraq is; what it borders; what is in these countries ethnicly(?), politically, religiously and economically?; why the instability is a threat to the world’s economies?; what is in Iraq; where is there stability in Iraq?; why is stability there? how does a counter insurgency plan work in a city vs the countryside;why did the British succeed in Malaysia: why so many troops are need to make it work?; why the combat is media/sniper teams and media/booby trap teams on their side?; why we can not talk about counterinsurgency in sound bite form?
I do not know if it will work. But the alternative is the continuing posturing of the political elite in front of an agonized public. The public is agonized not by the loss of life and resources but by its fundamental ignorance about what is causing these losses. As ignorance and supression of information(Shalikashvili)is removed a more realistic resolve may be able to take place.
Lastly, I do not know if taking responsiblity at this late date is enough to galvanize American public support for this new course of action. It would be nice if we had a parlimentary form of government so that leadership and authority could be transferred to another but that is not the case. So the course that is left is to get over our anger and move on. That means realizing the danger we are in is the real issue at hand and we must neutralize that danger.
Robert M makes a good point about Bush. Is he finally ‘getting’ it, and even if he is does he have the follow through to push through what needs to be done?
There is just so much that isnt being acknowledged in Iraq- which is why i brought up the Stockdale Paradox. We still havent accepted that there is an average of only a few hours of electricity in almost all of Iraq. We still havent accepted that the Maliki government is either toothless or co-opted. We still havent accepted that we trained a number of pretty good Iraqi Army brigades to do what we are now sending more US forces to do in Baghdad, but the defense ministry either couldnt make them or refused to deploy most of them.
Bush has taken some steps in facing up to some of the brutal truths in Iraq, but I dont know that he has really accepted all of them. Until that happens I am extremely leery of any of his plans.
This is a war of ideas, and we tried to fight it with guns. We’re getting whipped, because we’re using the wrong weapons for the war we’re really in. Now we want to add a few more guns, and see if that helps.
We’ve tried to fight terrorism by catching and killing terrorists. Tempting and commonsensical as that sounds, it doesn’t work. Our inevitable errors in that process are exploited by our enemies, and we lose the war of ideas. Their inevitable errors just inflame the chaos they live on. It’s an asymmetrical contest.
It’s worth understanding what we should have done in Iraq, not just to point fingers (satisfying though that may be), but to know how to do things right in the next place (Somalia?). We could defeat the Iraqi army with a small, lean force, but we should have had half a million people in Iraq, many civilians, immediately after.
For nation building, you need police, not an occupying army. People say that our armed forces are not trained as policemen. That’s a problem to fix, then. We should have had enough policemen (military and civilian, in tight communication) in Iraq, to guarantee law and order. Perhaps that takes half a million, even a million people, in various capacities, not just trained military. The key is *overwhelming* force, not to defeat their army, but to squelch rebellion when it’s small, and maintain order. And most of those people should be building infrastructure and training the locals, not just in skills, but in values.
The tipping point comes when the bulk of the people, who really just want to get along with their lives, realize that they have a stake in the current law and order, and are prepared to identify and turn in the terrorists as a threat, not to the occupying army, but to their own civil order.
The only way to lose as big as we have in Iraq is to be blind-sided. To wear ideological blinders that prevent us from understand the nature of the real threat, and the real weapons needed to meet that threat.
Regarding Iraq today, I feel like a specialist in chemotherapy that works pretty well on Stage I and Stage II cancers, with a patient who was treated by a quack until he reached Stage III or Stage IV. Maybe there’s a radical surgery that can solve the problem he’s got now, but it may have metastasized beyond all hope.
I think people have been missing the main point of the speech, and the new policy in general. The “Keene-Kagan” focus is misleading. The extra troops are significant, but the main focus of the strategy is not military, it’s political.
Basically, Bush has just burned the Iraqi leadership’s boats.
He’s just publicly committed them to an imminent showdown with the Mahdi Army. He’s also publically committed them to an oil settlement, de-de-Baathification and local elections (among other things) later this year. If these things now don’t happen as promised, the failure will be painfully obvious to everyone. And that’s the plan. It’s now do or die for the Iraqi parliament. If Maliki can’t or won’t deliver, then some other government will have to. If no-one steps up and things don’t improve – Bush doesn’t have to make any threats, he can just point to the events of 2008 and 2009 in the US political calendar. Whatever happens, more months of political drift are no longer an option.
I agree, Anonym.
While I quietly winced, and then seethed, at a variety of mistakes in Iraq that have cost lives, treasure and momentum, I was never an optimist in Stockdale’s sense re: what we are doing there.
I see the war in Iraq, the wider confrontation with militant / violent / nihilist Islam and the deep political divides here in the US, as various symptoms of a much larger situation that we face. In less than 200 years we have gone from the earliest steps of the Industrial Age to the Age of the Internet, of 24/7 gobal information access, financial markets, cheap airflights to the other side of the world.
It’s no unique insight on my part to note that these technologies, which have led to unprecedented economic and political benefits for many, have also been extremely disruptive to others. Ultimately they are disruptive here too, because they change the very foundations of our economic, political and social structures. The result is more than the loss of high-wage union-protected manufacturing jobs in the States, or the challenge by blogs to corporate media monopoly on news analysis.
More deeply we are seeing an erosion of the nation-state system around which most of what were once called the First and Second worlds (the west and the communist bloc) were organized. Jihadis and non-state terror networks in general are only one part of this erosion. AQ Khan’s nuclear proliferation activities are only one symptom, as were Saddam’s terror enabling activities. The state of our southern border is a larger symptom, as are the forces for devolution of Scotland and Wales within Britain.
But the nation-state’s time is not over yet. For many reasons it is IMO an important way to organize ourselves for a long time to come. Which means that we have to find ways to try to deal with destructive forces like the jihadis through nation state mechanisms — and in the middle east, that is inevitably tied to forcing change in the structures of government there.
Iraq is the place and the last few years were the time when we went in to try to do that. We’ve done so in halting, half-hearted ways with a President whose election was the cause of much self-indulgent bitterness (and self-indulgent triumphalism) even before 9/11. We’ve done so with entrenched intelligence and State Dept. bureaucracies determined to protect their short-term advantages rather than deal with the large and ill-defined challenges we face. And we’ve done so in the context of alliances like NATO whose design and functioning are less than optimal for today.
But if it hadn’t been Iraq in this way, it would have been somewhere else in another way, probably equally messy and equally fumbling. Because what we face isn’t a neat set of clearly defined tasks to accomplish (find bin Laden), much less a few criminal acts on 9/11 to punish judicially. Instead, we are facing a pivotal point in history based on technologies that have radically changed how we can and are living, working and interacting.
And if you think the computer/communications revolution has been deeply disruptive, it’s not over. Genetic engineering is just starting to be felt as a force, as the rather talking-past-one-another state of the debate on stem cell research illustrates.
I’m not an optimist. We may be facing the equivalent of Rome in the 4th century AD. But one thing I’m sure of is that Iraq is just one part of a much bigger set of challenges facing us. And maybe of opportunities as well.
Molon Labe: at that longer time scale, I agree with you about the magnitude of the changes that will take place. For an excellent discussion of the implications of technological change on warfare, but also on society in general, Google “Why the future doesn’t need us”, and read this important essay by Bill Joy, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems. If it doesn’t scare the pants off you, you’re not paying attention.
good post by AL, and several good comments.
I agree, right now theres not much we can do. I dont think US politics matters much at this point – no ones going to stop the surge, and the Iraqis on the ground know that whether it works or not is the key influence on Washingotn, not the other way around.
It seems as good as we could have asked for. There arent really any more troops that could have been shaken out, the ROE change is as good as could be managed (no, shooting more Iraqis at checkpoints,even if it helped win the battle in Iraq, wouldnt help win the global war) etc.
Now its all upto Maliki and the Iraqi pols, and the American and Iraqi troops on the ground. And to Petraeus and Odierno. It either works or it doesnt. Right now Id give it 50/50. If it works, we have daylight to keep improving things, and move on a virtous cycle. Maybe we dont get democratic dominoes across the ME, but we get basically a satisfactory finish.
If it fails, well, thats the last shot for a win based on US force. Perhaps we could push Maliki out and try somebody else, but in all likelihood at that point we will be losing leverage. We basically go back to the Casey-Abuzaid strategy of gradual drawdown of US forces, and hope the Iraqis can win on their own. Which could well mean a bad outcome – either an Iraq subordinate to Iran, or a chaotic Iraq out of which AQ has carved a ministate. Or both. Which we will only be able to try and contain.
Containment wont be pretty, and is a far worse idea than winning, but the USA will survive.
My only quibble with the Bush plan is wrt Syria. The only choices discusses seem to have been Baker-Ham of making deal with Iran (and bringing Syria along for the ride) or steadfastly refusing to talk to either. It seems to me still quite possible that baby Assad isnt sure Iran can bail him out, and so it might be worth trying to turn him. In fact, given Israeli-Syrian contacts today in Madrid, I suspect that may be happening now. If so, it might have been useful PR to have said so – at least to show that this isnt strictly a military strategy.
Plant a mine field a mile deep across the Syrian border and ring it with razor wire. Why must we always reinvent the wheel?
liberalhawk –
re negotiating w/Syria and Iran; there’s a path through this that looks a lot like what we’re doing that leads to fruitful negotiations.
I’ll have a post up soon, but it’s based on the notion that as of now, they have little reason to negotiate meaningfully with us. We’re about to give them a good reason to – the question is whether we’ll be smart enough to not overshoot.
A.L.
liberalhawk, are you still a Democrat or are you an independent now?
I personally think the politics are attrocious. We’re close to a tipping point in which over half of Americans believe that the U.S. should mind its own business internationally and let the world f@#k itself. I don’t see any national leaders at this point that are suited to ride that wave of neo-internationalism, but it seems quite possible to me that the next president, be he/she Democrat or Republican, will have a very difficult time marshalling national will on the world stage.
Mark B, every time I hear someone complain about Bushitler’s humanitarian crimes against Iraq, I will have to remember that at least he didn’t use land mines. I’m not disagreeing that land mines don’t have a legitimate and appropriate use, but it’s not going to happen. You know that right?
I know we’re losing this war.
How many lives are jihadis sneaking in from Syria taking vs how many innocents would stumble into a clearly marked mine field surrounded by razor wire?
Peacetime we can afford to wring our hands about depleted uranium and landmines and the like, but it should be obvious by now that those distractions arent a patch on what real war looks like. We can dig up landmines or set timers on them. Can we put the bodies of Al-Askari bombing back together?
This all goes back to whether we really want to win this war or not. Freaking landmines. I cant believe we’re even having this conversation. Is it more important to keep iraq out of Iran and AQ’s hands, or keep Lady Di’s legacy burning in our hearts? Sometimes i feel like im living in Oz.
Mark B.
It seems to me that there is no way in heaven or on earth that we are going to keep Iran out of Iraq. The Shiites have a solid absolute majority. They have incredilby close ties to Iran both religiously and as a place of haven for the last decades. Once they assume power–and they will assume power, by ballot or by battle–they will be as tight with Iran as we are with Canada. The only two possible ways of preventing it are not going to happen. We are not going to occupy Iraq forever. We are not going to re-establish a government by the minority.
Of all the reasons that this war was a mistake from the beginning, the strengthening of Iran was always foremost.
_” The Shiites have a solid absolute majority.”_
That could be true if the Shiia acted as a unified block, but that has never been the case. Thats about equivalent to saying ‘ Christians in America have a solid absolute majority’. True, but meaningless in context.
And last I checked there were enough votes between the Sunnis, Kurds, and independent Shiia/mixed parties to overturn the UIA’s hold on power. See “here”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_legislative_election,_December_2005
They would simply have to work together to do so, and that obviously hasnt become a big enough priority to happen.
_”They have incredilby close ties to Iran both religiously and as a place of haven for the last decades.”_
Again, you are speaking of the Shiia as some monolith, which is not true. Hundreds of thousands of Shiia were also killed by Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war. The history of Iraq/Iran is far more complicated than you are letting on. They are not exactly soulmates by any stretch, which is a major reason there is an Iraq and an Iran as it is.
The point is until the Sunnis, Kurds, and progressive Shiia decide to put the breaks on the radical Shiia, this government won’t improve. But in a parlimentary system, that isnt all that difficult to do. At least in theory. Another case of the Iraqis needing to figure out exactly what they want and what they are willing to do to get there.
Mark B.
I didn’t mean to suggest I believe the Shia are monolithic. Far from it. Nor does my assessment require that they be. But the Christians in the US analogy doesn’t quite work on the other extreme. The differences are too vast to ennumerate, but the principle one is that US Christians come from culutes all over the world and are spread out over a vary large and diverse piece of real estate, whereas the Shiia in Iraq are a fairly indiginous & bunched up bunch.
They will coallesce as much as is necessary to meet fluid situations in order to retain power. Independent Shiia are just likely in the long run to turn toward Iran as any other block of Shia. The ties are geographic, cultural AND religious….not just religious. they don’t need to be soulmates to have close ties. Iraq and Iran are not the same country because one is Persian and the other Arab. But they have a great deal more in common with each other than either has with, say, the west or, for that matter, the Kurds.
Oddly, you use the fact of the Shia parties never having worked together as factor in deciding that they will continue to not work together and yet, in the next breath, you use the fact of the Sunnis, Kurds & Independent Shiia never having worked together as an indication that they soon might.
I’d argue that a unified Shia collective is much more likely to occur than a mixed coalition if only because it is more likely to be able to successfully govern w/o compromising values dear to its constituency. Also, so long as Sistani lives, he won’t allow a non-Shiia coalition to form. That could be a short-lived force, I grant.
But overall, on the whole, it will be much more to the Shiia interests to gravitate toward Iran than to any other centers of gravity once we leave. And, make no mistake, we will leave.
A.L.,
You are the LAST person who should lecture anybody on “There is going to be a national debate over the next two years over what to do. We’d better learn how to participate in that debate.”
Actually, the “long faces” have to do with the fact that people are looking at the specifics, and realizing they don’t work. And YOU, who always abstract, abstract, abstract to gauzy, funny sayings about the war – “its going to be long!” “it’s going to be tough!” mark YOU out as someone who refuses to participate in the debate, outside of “image” statments.
Address actual substantive criticisms – your “buck up Johnny!” rhetorical abstractions without substance – aren’t you getting tired of them yet?
Do you support the president’s plan? If so, why? Address Hagel’s substantive criticism:
_I think what the president said last night — and I listened carefully and read through it again this morning — is all about a broadened American involvement, escalation in Iraq and the Middle East. I do not agree with that escalation, and I would further note that when you say, as you have here this morning, that we need to address and help the Iraqis and pay attention to the fact that Iraqis are being killed, Madame Secretary, Iraqis are killing Iraqis. We are in a civil war. This is sectarian violence out of control — Iraqi on Iraqi. Worse, it is inter-sectarian violence — Shi’a killing Shi’a._
_To ask our young men and women to sacrifice their lives, to be put in the middle of a civil war is wrong._
_It is, first of all, in my opinion, morally wrong. It’s tactically, strategically, militarily wrong. We will not win a war of attrition in the Middle East._
Address that – without any gauzy fact-free strawmen, bad analogies to past historical conflicts, or reference to the media.
Really? No they are looking for a ‘decisive batle’ or some ‘magic strategy’ that will make Iraq 90% better in six months. Ain’t gonna happen. It’s an insurgency, and I’ve been saying for a long, time that it’s going to take six to ten years to know how we’re doing.
I said at the outset that it would, and that if we lacked the bottom to stick it out and slowly win we’d better not go.
The alternative, sadly, is Duncan Black’s version of deterrence. And I don’t really want to play that game; genocide makes me kind of queasy. He appears to have a stronger stomach.
You?
A.L.
Hagel regards our presence in Iraq as elective. My own view is that we are going to have to deal with the issues that took us into Iraq one way or the other. They won’t go away just because we retreat.
Iraq is not a promising place to begin reform of the middle east and to attempt to bring the badly-governed, mostly ill-educated-but-equipped-with-Western-technology non-Core countries into the global network of interdependency.
It has the one redeeming quality that it’s more promising than all of the alternatives. Like AL, I’m not fond of the genocide approach — and I do think the jihadis will push us in that direction sooner or later if we don’t establish momentum in a more promising direction.
Pakistan is less than a sterling ally, to the dismay of the Taliban and their ilk. Iraq is a sectarian mess to the delight of the Sunnis and the Shia militia who want to keep things in turmoil to advance their own cause. But we’ve stuck with Perv so far, leaning on him heavily from time to time, and I’m willing to stick with Iraq a little longer.
But not under the crappy ROEs we adopted for the last year or so. And not with a kid-glove approach to the militia-ridden Iraqi government currently in power.
The term “civil war” denotes something more dignified than what is going on in Iraq. Now, war involves kidnapping and terror bombings of civillians? The war worldwide is between modern civilization and atavistic warlords/tribal chieftains. Even if we now find ourselves caught between Sunni warlords and Shiite warlords, in the midst of them are Iraqis who wnat to live in the world that we are living in: free markets/democracy et al. It is for the modern amongst them that we wade into the bloody field.
The argument “To live and let live” doesn’t work when you are up against “Live and let die”. This conflict is real world war, and it was on long before 9-11, it will probably last for more than our generation.
The biggest problem is that we are so reluctant to wage war at the gutteral level it is being waged against us. The highway of death on the road to Bagdad turned our stomachs. The invasion of Iraq was the most bloodless of wars in history. We averted our gaze as each terror provocation punctuated our calendars: marine barracks, the USS Cole, the embassies, two attempts on the WTC… if we could shoot the guns out of thier hands and tie them up in our lariats, singing songs as we ride home, we would do it. But that’s Hollywood, not this life.
We didn’t choose this war.
Why can’t we use (Some? All? of) the 50k+ troops stationed in “old” Europe to increase the available troops for use in the ME? I have not seen this discussed anywhere, ever, and it doth vex me muchly. Are they trained in a manner that would allow them to be used, or all they all still practicing set-piece maneuvers to plug the Fulda gap? Or are they all playing trombones like the Belgians?
Mark
AL, AL, AL,
I ask ONE thing from you – stop abstracting to “arguments”, is that you commit to details.
You do this a lot – Eric Martin noticed it last – you don’t answer the questions you are asked.
Funny that.
Mark – “It seems to me that there is no way in heaven or on earth that we are going to keep Iran out of Iraq. The Shiites have a solid absolute majority.” “The ties are geographic, cultural AND religious….not just religious. they don’t need to be soulmates to have close ties.”
Certainly this alignment is at once a pretty unfortunate outcome and a distinctly possible one. Iraq is majority Shia; loyalty is primarily to tribal and secretarian groups; a democratic Iraq is Shia run; birds of a feather, qed.
But to play devil’s advocate for a second, what would that Iraq outcome look like for Iraqis? I would guess either (1) a theocracy with some level of Sharia, along the lines of current Iranian society and reporting ultimately to the Supreme Leader; or (2) a simple vassal state, similar to the recent relationship of Lebanon to Syria.
Iran is certainly trying hard to engineer one of these outcomes – hard enough to stir Saudi Arabia. But do the Iraqi Shiites really want either one? With Iraq’s oil reserves and educated population, Iraq doesn’t need the patronage of Iran; it can be a regional power and control its own destiny, if only the Shiites can work out a modus vivendi with the Kurds (or the Sunnis, I suppose).
I’m speculating a bit here and would be interested in reactions to this.
No, Eric and I had an open question which I’m trying to find the time to compose an answer to.
What do I think of Bush’s speech? Well, he’s not quitting, so I’m quite happy. The changes in ROE, the combined military-civil actions, the persistent presence in neighborhoods (all of which reflects the Carter suggestion I’ve referenced in each post as well as elements of the Kagan strategy) are all great. But the reality is that on a tactical level we’re doing relatively well…or so the troops say.
While I think the surge in troop count will be of some use, I think it’s window dressing. It’s a symbolic gesture designed to convey determination. It’s liekly that no one would presume that he was committed otherwise, so – fine.
We don’t have enought troops overall, and that’s a broader failure we’ll be paying for over the next five years.
Specific enough?
A.L.