Stay or leave?What do I think?
Clearly things are not that simple. We’re not staying forever and we’re not leaving tomorrow. My greatest frustration here in Iraq has been the continued and ritualistic rants about the spineless ones on the left who don’t want to see this thing through. The problem is, no one has honestly asked us to see this thing though. Americans have faced the bi or tri-monthly declarations that, “history will show that this month marks the turning point and the beginning of the end of the insurgency.” A few hundred deaths and a couple months later things look the same, but after a small victory on one of the infinite fronts of this effort, the declaration of change returns. Thus the choice we’ve been presented with is reduced to ‘trust us, we’ll be right one of these times and things will get better – the details of what’s happening are not important’ or ‘pull out because we don’t know how things are going or when they’ll get better and we aren’t willing to commit the lives of Americans to an effort you’re not willing to honestly assess.’
There is a wealth of counter-insurgency experience in the world and its libraries. Unfortunately for many freedom-fries loving “patriots,” much of that experience comes from the French and their experience in Algeria. Oh well. Time to swallow the pride and start absorbing the wisdom of others. While swallowing that bitter pill, we might as well admit that a lot of smart people were ostracized from the Iraq effort from the outset due to their less-than-rosy forecasts of outcomes that didn’t center on flowers falling from the sky. We need to bring these people together and ask them to give us options. Things will change, of course, but the fragility of every plan is no reason not to have one. We need smart people, who the past few years of history have shown to be insightful, to develop several courses of action with associated markers to track our progress toward an end-state. (I use the term ‘markers’ because I have come to despise ‘measures of effectiveness – MOEs’ which are focal points of the effects based planning we operate under. MOEs are often ends unto themselves and have little connection to the efforts we can influence.)
End state. What a concept. In the Army we can hardly walk to lunch without a predetermined end state, yet this war seems to be conspicuously lacking a goal. Iraq will not be a democracy resembling Ohio in our lifetimes, so let’s set a reasonable goal. It’s clear an insurgency will linger far longer than our American attention spans, but we do have a responsibility to enable a government that can, for the most part, protect the vast majority of Iraqis who want to live, work, and raise their families in peace. There will still be violence and an ugly situation, but it was an ugly situation when we arrived.
So we have some smart people working on plans to reach a reasonable end state with progress markers along the way. Let them do their job, give them more than the 30-60 days Jay Garner was afforded to plan a coalition provisional authority, then pitch their plans to Americans. Present 1, 3, 5, 10, 25, and maybe even 50-year options with associated costs in lives (both American and Iraqi), dollars, and American international credibility. Let us know what Iraq will look like along the way and when we leave. Even after 50 years there will be disillusioned individuals prone to violence, so I don’t buy the argument that timelines enable our enemies. Let America decide what we are willing to commit to.
Those of you who know me may notice this is a pretty substantial departure from my feelings before I deployed – I formerly would have been in the get-out-now camp. But I’ve realized this thing is too important to take the easy way out…whether the easy way out is to actually leave now or to stay indefinitely because we won’t be forced to admit any level of failure. This will not be the last time we face a foreign threat from terrorism, and while this war has taught us much about how not to react, we still need to improve the situation for Iraqis.
I’m fading so I need to wrap this up, but I’d love to hear your thoughts. I realize I’ve conveniently omitted road blocks such as an Iraqi democracy that turns to Iran for protection or elects a fundamentalist leader who, with plurality support, digresses to brutal rule in the name of security, but those are discussions for another day. What do you think? Can America step back, reevaluate our options, swallow a bit of pride, and choose an option based on the future more than the past?
I hope so.
One of the most surprising think about the aftermath of the election is how much it seems to have taken the wind out of the sails of the "leave now" crowd. The drubbing the Republicans took was a catharsis. It gave the electroate a chance to express their anger at the idiots who got us into this mess. And, having done that, they are now able to better focus on the question billy bob asks: "Where do we go from here?" The problem, though, is that no one seems to have a good answer.
How you feel about the "stay or leave" question is a function of whether you think there is any hope that we can reach an "end state" (sorry bb) that is at least tolerable. There is plenty of reason to be pessimistic about that and very little reason to be optomistic. And, when you consider that pursuing the "long shot" will cost hundreds and perhaps thousands of young Americam men and women their lives and limbs (and hundreds of billions of dollars), "staying" seems like betting your life on double zero.
But two things counterbalance that for many of us, including billy bob I gather. First, there is fear of what will happen if we leave. Second, there is a sense of responsibilty. It has become commonplace to refer to this sense of responsibilty as "the Pottery Barn rule," but that is both trite and demeaning. We are not talking about a broken lamp here. We are talking by what could be catastrophe of hstoric magnitude. Inside Iraq, it could well be worse than the Balkans in the late 90's. M aybe even owrse than The Sudan today. Maybe even worse than the Hutus and the Tutsis. But frankly, that is not even the worst part. A failed state in the midst of the Middle East on the border of a soon to be nuclear Iran is a truly scary proposition. And compounding this is the propaganda victory the Islamists would get. It is hard to imagine how bad that could get. When you are the ones who are responsible making all this possible, you can't give up on the effort to avoid it so long as there is the slightest glimmer of hope.
But what to do? The dream of a secular liberal democracy in Iraq was always delusional but is now manifestly dead. The "best" end state we can hope for is stability, and the best we can probably hope for is a new Tito. I'd settle for a new Saddam. But one cannot clearly see how to achieve even that.
One idea I have heard recently is to quit trying to be neutral and unleash the Shias. My first reaction was horror at the thought. But the more I think about it, the harder it becomes to rule out. We are in the midst of s civil war that remains "low-grade" (if at all) only becuase we are there damping it down. I don't think it is possible in a situation like this to make the opposing sides reach a stable accomodation. So, one side or the other is going to end up winning this battle. We can make that happen more quickly and probably less painfully in the long run by taking sides, much like we did in Afghanistan when we aligned with the warlords and much as we have done through much of the last 60 years aligning ourselves with the anti-communists regardless of how repressive they were. And, if you have to pick sides, the Shias have at least three things to recommend them: they are the majority; they are the ones who have been repressed; and they hate Al Queda. If we have to have a theocracy emerge in Iraq, I would much prefer it to me one that has the support of the majority and an antipathy to our main enemy. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
2 comments:
Rob --
That question -- would you want your son (or daughter, or wife or even yourself) to have to go to Iraq -- is specious. One could ask the same question of any war, and the answer would always be the same: "Of course not." No one ever, ever "wants" their loved ones to go off to war, regradless of whether the war is justified or not. And that individual, personal trepidation about the risks to our own loved ones has nothing useful to say about whether we should stay or go. Ask your friend if he "wants" his children to live in a world in which Iraq is a failed state. He'll say no (if he is at all honest) and you and he will be even.
As to your larger point that we should give up on the "British experiment" and allow Iraq to dissolve into three largely separate mini-states, I couldn't agree more. But what makes you think that will bring an end to the violence or make any difference in terms of stability? The Sunnis and Shias consider each other to be apostates and seperating them into seperate states will do nothing to change that. Also, the Sunnis are unlikely to go quietly into a land-locked, infertile rump state with no oil. And then, what do you do about Bagdhad and other ethnically "mixed areas?" Are you willing to tolerate the ethnic cleansing that would be necessarily follow?
I don't think the issue is one of federalism vs unity any longer (if it ever was). The issue now is sectarian hatred and a percieved need for revenge mixed with a more conventional political struggle for power, prestige and oil.
Regarding the idea of turning the Shites lose, you mistake me in one respect. I don't think siding with the Shites is the quickest way to bring home the troops. The quickest way to get them home is keep doing what we are doing, becuase the American people are not going to put up wih that very much longer. Even if we did side with the Shia's and decided to help them bring stailty to the country, we would be there for a long time. At least as long as we have been and will be in Afghanistan. Achieving stability in this area is going to be a long process. It's just that I think taking sides in the struggle may be the only way to achieve that ever.
Beyond that, I share your reservations about "turning the Shites lose," of course. Yes, that is going to involve massive amounts of bloodshed and suffering. And yes, that will probably result in son-of-Saddam. And yes, we will have to confront the fact that the destruction we reigned on the country (and on ourselves) accomplished nothing except to substitute a despotic theocratic state aligned with Iran for a despotic secular state that was Iran's mortal enemy. But I can't escape the notion that that is what is going to happen eventually anway. If that is the case, it would be better if it were done quickly.
What we are after -- all we can hope for -- at this point is simply stability.
There is a lesson from Viet Nam that is instructive here. We abandoned the South Vietnamese to a substantially similar fate, and all of what you fear will happen in Iraq did in fact happen there. Yet what the Vietnamese communists brought with them was stability, and here we are, a scant 30 years later, with the President of the United States visiting Viet Nam trying to drum up trade.
Stability is not the only thing that matters. But it is way ahead of whatever is in second place.
We forget that our real and immediate enemy is Al Queda, and (apart from the pipe dream of a stable liberal democracy in Iraq) I suspect that a stable Shia-dominated Iraq aligned with Iran is their worst fear. Instability is the nutrient Al Queda needs to thrive.
Well, Rob, we are going to have to disagree on this one. You are proposing to "pry the parties apart" by creating separate states yet you posit the existence of a federal army that is cohesive enough and loyal enough to the central government to provide a "viable threat of instant and terrifying retribution" evenhandly on all those who continue the violence. Where would such an army come from? Moreover, even if it were possible to form such any army, would it be effective? There is such an army in Iraq today (the American Army) that is capable of massive retaliation and that has the political neutrality to dispense it evenhandly. Yet even as disciplined, well armed, well-trained, lethal and politically neutral a force as the US Army cannot control the violence, much less bring it to an end. If the history of the Middle East over the past 60 years teaches us anything it is that you cannot beat these people into submission. They are like masochists: they LIKE to be beaten; it gives their lives meaning they would otherwise not have.
A de facto division of the country into largely independent mini-states is inevitable, I think. But I fail to see how that alone is going to bring stability. Sooner or later, I think, the Shites, backed by Iran, are going to end up in control of the levers of power and they are going to end up fighting the Sunnis in much the same way (and for about as long) as the Israelis have been fighting the Palestinians. I do not think there is much of anything we can do to avoid that outcome. All we might be able to do is to accelerate it and thereby make it shorter.
I will admit, though, that our siding with the Shites is not going to happen in fact. So, the argument is almost certainly moot.
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