Category: Iraq

We really won’t know, it seems to me, just how durable the current tactical security gains are in Iraq until troop levels start declining in the spring. But let’s assume that Petraeus does pull off an amazing feat – stabilizing Iraq at a local and regional level at least to the extent of freezing an incipient civil war. What does that do to the war debate in the US? I know some are somewhat desperately claiming "Mission Accomplished" and hoping to have the same pay-off from that slogan that they did for five minutes several years ago. But the deeper truth is: that was several years ago. The Pew poll finds a calmer, saner public. Money quote:

A rosier view of the military situation in Iraq has not translated into increased support for maintaining U.S. forces in Iraq, greater optimism that the United States will achieve its goals there, or an improvement in President Bush’s approval ratings.

By 54%-41%, more Americans favor bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq as soon as possible rather than keeping troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized. The balance of opinion on this measure has not changed significantly all year.

Similarly, Americans remain evenly divided over whether the U.S. is likely to succeed or fail in achieving its goals in Iraq; improved perceptions of the situation in Iraq have not resulted in a changed outlook in this regard. In addition, Bush’s overall job approval now stands at 30%, which is largely unchanged since June and equals the lowest marks of his presidency.

A majority, in other words, wants to seize this opportunity to get the hell out of there as fast as we responsibly can. Maybe that will shift if the security situation continues to improve. But it suggests to me that there is, in fact, no serious public support for the indefinite occupation of Iraq for the next few years, as Bush now wants (and a future president Clinton would – out of fear of Republican attacks – acquiesce in). If the election is fought over who wants to occupy Iraq for ever, then the GOP may be in worse trouble than when the question was: do you want to quit the war in the middle of a security meltdown? At least, that’s my best read as of now in a very fluid situation.

One of the emerging memes of the past couple of weeks is a slow resignation to the fact that, whatever the American people want, Washington will not reduce troop levels in Iraq below 100,000 for the indefinite future. If casualties are down, some argue, Americans will buckle under and hang in there for the duration. For what? Some glimmer of normalcy somewhere down the road. No one likes to admit defeat or futility – especially after so much money, so many lives, so much human wreckage. But here’s one factor that needs to be placed into this equation as well: even the best-run occupation will have constant casualties. Yesterday, several Iraqi civilians were killed in incidents that are understandable if obviously awful. Vehicles that don’t stop as ordered; a sudden flare of violence; a fallible soldier under insane stress: mistakes happen, innocents die, resentments build. Sure: Arabs seem to be able to generate resentments regardless of cause. But occupying a Muslim country for ever is not, it seems to me, a way to reduce tensions between Islam and the West, to defang the appeal of Islamism, to erase the notion that the US in Iraq is now indistinguishable from Israel in the West Bank in the Arab mind. Maybe this is a price we have to pay to save face and avoid wider catastrophe. But it is a price. And, as time goes by, more and more people will pay it.

A reader nails it:

I don’t have any doubt – and really, never did – that increasing the use of (and apparently, more properly deploying) American troops would reduce violence in Iraq.  And I think that although Bush did this belatedly and only in response to political pressure he deserves (along with Gates and Petraeus) to be applauded for that. But what does that have to do with the goals of the war? As I understand it, we don’t have a military goal – we have a hope that the Iraqis are able to put together a democratic government that is capable of unifying and securing the country.  That has nothing to do with whether there is a lot or not a lot of violence in Iraq.

Remember, we started out with a specific military objective – remove the Hussein regime.  We hoped that if we achieved this military objective, the Iraqis would put together a democratic government that could unify and secure the country.  We achieved the objective, but the Iraqis did not fulfill our hopes. Now, instead of a military objective, we have a military activity – maintaining security.

Or if you want, say that we have a "military objective" – reducing violence.  It doesn’t matter, really.  Again, we hope that if we do a good job of maintaining security/reducing violence the Iraqis will put together a democratic government that can unify and secure the country.

Again, there’s not the slightest reason in the world to think that the Iraqis will fulfill our hopes.

Is there some earthly reason to think that the Iraqis are more likely to put together a democratic government that is capable of unifying and securing the country just because they have some relative peace and quiet?  Why would that matter?

Again, it’s a 1960s fantasy.

Clive Crook endorses the "grueling option": "a large continuing military commitment, in support of more modest goals." My own sense is as I wrote here:

The rhetoric ranges from John McCain’s “No Surrender” banner to the “End the War Now” absolutism of much of the Democratic base. Yet the substantive issue is almost comically removed from this hyperventilation. Every potential president, Republican or Democrat, would likely inherit more than 100,000 occupying troops in January 2009; every one would be attempting to redeploy them as prudently as possible and to build stronger alliances both in the region and in the world. Every major candidate, moreover, will pledge to use targeted military force against al-Qaeda if necessary; every one is committed to ensuring that Iran will not have a nuclear bomb; every one is committed to an open-ended deployment in Afghanistan and an unbending alliance with Israel. We are fighting over something, to be sure. But it is more a fight over how we define ourselves and over long-term goals than over what is practically to be done on the ground.

The question is: do we want a president slowly withdrawing troops from Iraq to be someone who backed the war in the first place or one who didn’t? If we’re going to have a de facto empire in the Middle East, wouldn’t it be better if it were seen as a reluctant empire, rather than a continuing provocation to Muslims and a recruiting tool for Islamists? There are only three candidates for president who opposed the biggest mistake in American foreign policy since Vietnam when it mattered: Obama, Paul and Kucinich. Only one did so on entirely pragmatic grounds. If we’re stuck in Iraq, wouldn’t it be better to have a president who can legitimately claim he didn’t want to be there in the first place but isn’t reflexively opposed to all use of American power? At least that way, there’s a small chance we can escape before too long, and a smaller chance that the threat of withdrawal might precipitate some kind of functional government coalition in Baghdad.

Matt sums it up:

America playing an active role in the world doesn’t mean America seeking to dominate the world, and avoiding a quest for domination doesn’t mean eschewing the use of military force in all circumstances — it means working through legitimate institutional mechanisms.

Since the Iraq invasion, which I passionately supported, I’ve been forced, like a lot of people, to re-examine my core principles and ideas about intervention. I’ve thrashed through most of the Iraq-specific questions on this blog exhaustively, but the more general ones are worth regular check-ups. Do I oppose all US unilateral interventions in the world? Nope. I’ve long believed that America is a great force for good in the world. As a native European, I don’t doubt that. Neither do Poles or Ukrainians. I just have a much, much higher standard for supporting them than I once did, and a deeper sense of American fallibility. I’ve learned that just because the French oppose something, it doesn’t automatically mean it’s a good idea. Pre-emption? Again, I don’t think the concept should be ruled out entirely, but the criteria are much stricter in my mind than they once were. I now think we should pre-empt only when a grave threat is indeed imminent – not before it is imminent, as was the case with Iraq. After Iraq, my skepticism toward all government intelligence has, like many others, gone through the roof. I am far less likely to believe or trust the CIA or the vice-president on Iran than I once was, for example. Do I support a unipolar world in which the US is the prime global player, the indispensable nation? Here I think I’m clearer: no. A unipolar world may be a function of a short period of time – such as after the Cold War – but it is neither a desirable nor permanent state. Allowing other great powers to exercize influence in various regions of the globe is part of responsible, conservative statesmanship. To extend the American writ everywhere is to hobble a republic with the burdens of an empire. It’s an act of hubris. We should cut it out.

Did I just say "empire"?

Again, I don’t think it would have occurred to me to even use the word with respect to US intervention abroad before the Iraq debacle. But the US has now occupied a Muslim country with well over 100,000 troops for close to five years, with no end in sight. I see increasing signs that the Washington establishment would be quite happy to stay there indefinitely, if casualties declined, and the Chinese keep lending. In fact, I sense in Washington the notion that this is a natural state of affairs – for the US to be sinking down large military bases and vast embassies in foreign countries in pursuit of some global novus ordo seclorum. The Iraq benchmarks have now been abandoned, in favor of just hanging around for ever in the hopes of some kind of permanent improvement. There’s not even a pretense that getting a functional independent government in Baghdad is now, you know, urgent. So tell me this: if occupying a country without a government that far away with around 100,000 troops for the indefinite future in order to advance global stability and maximal oil supplies is not something like an empire, then what is? Is there a moment at which some of us can get off this bus? Or is our fate now sealed?

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

That’s not so easy when over $20 billion of your money is going to foreign firms in Iraq whose identity remains mysterious.

Despite local tactical success in reducing violence, the American public remains unmoved.

A reader writes:

I’m seriously skeptical of your reader’s optimism about Iraq – despite his claimed military insider knowledge – for several reasons:

(1)  There are those Washington Post articles quoting high-ranking US military officials as saying they’re still scared of the Shiite insurgencies and that the Maliki government is still stubbornly refusing to make any conciliatory moves, which don’t mesh well with his statement that the Sunnis and Shiites are starting to pal around together:

(2)  There are Gen. Jones’ maps showing that the segregation of Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad has continued to massively increase.

(3)  Last but definitely not least, we have Mark Lynch’s description today of Stephen Biddle’s latest optimistic scenario for Iraq’s future (via Kevin Drum).

I think Biddle is probably right on, and it’s important to understand what this means for the debate on the war. Marc Lynch describes the best possible outcome thus:

If everything goes right and if the US continues to "hit the lottery" with the spread of local ceasefires and none of a dozen different spoilers happens, then a patchwork of local ceasefires between heavily armed, mistrustful communities could possibly hold if and only if the US keeps 80,000-100,000 troops in Iraq for the next twenty to thirty years.  And that’s the best case scenario of one of the current strategy’s smartest supporters.

I think that is indeed the only scenario that currently keeps the "country" from exploding, which is why I do not see how this has turned into anything other than an up-front imperial project. The trouble is: no one is honestly presenting this as a choice to the American people, explaining the costs, the opportunity costs and the dangers.

An unsettling nugget from this week’s New Yorker:

"I asked Zaidan what sort of deal had led to the Sunni Awakening. ‘It’s not a deal,’ he said, bristling. ‘People have come to realize that our fate is tied to the Americans’, and theirs to ours. If they are successful in Iraq, it will depend on Anbar. We always said this. Time was lost. America was lost, but now it’s woken up; it now holds a thread in its hand. For the first time, they’re doing something right.’

Zaidan said that Anbar’s Sunni tribes no longer had any need to exact blood vengeance on U.S. forces. ‘We’ve already taken our revenge,’ he said. ‘We’re the ones who’ve made them crawl on their stomachs, and now we’re the ones to pick them up.’ He added, ‘Once Anbar is settled, we must take control of Baghdad, and we will.’ There would have to be a lot more fighting before the capital was taken back from the Shiites, he said. ‘The Anbaris will take charge of the purge. What the whole world failed to do in Anbar, we have done overnight. Baghdad will be a lot easier.’

Kevin Drum points to three pieces worth absorbing this weekend: from Tom Ricks, John Lee Anderson (above) and a post by Marc Lynch. Check this post out also – noted by Matt, by Brian Katulis. I have a feeling that this war is not "drawing to a successful close".

Lindsey Graham is surely right to worry that any security gains in the Iraqi regions mean little unless reciprocated by the Maliki government. Time is running out. But where is the alternative? James Joyner shrewdly notes:

The problem, however, is that Maliki gained power as a result of democratic processes that we helped institute. Wouldn’t this move give lie to the notion that the Iraqi government has sovereignty? … Our leverage is incredibly limited given that it’s clear we are desperate to wash our hands of the Iraqi mess. That doesn’t exactly inspire a lot of confidence. Moreover, anyone who came to power through the strong backing of U.S. political leaders would thereby be at an incredible disadvantage domestically and in no position to lead the tough reconciliation process.

I thought this war was over?