In the New York Times, no less. Reality hits someone over the head.
On the surface, recent votes in Congress appear to signal a new Democratic determination to withdraw from Iraq. But the reality is otherwise. It is not only that the resolutions were drafted and adopted with the certain knowledge that they would be vetoed. More important, even if a future Democratic president did try to implement the new plans, the results would likely end up looking oddly similar to the Bush administrations current strategy. In politics as in war, things are seldom what they seem.
If theres one thing that Iraqis and Americans agree on, its that U.S. troops dont belong in Iraq and yet even now, the troops are still there. Elected officials of all persuasions are supposed to respond to public opinion. So what explains this gap? One possibility is that politicians realize that raw public sentiment cannot be translated into practical policy without taking account of the likely consequences. It is not enough to give the public what it wants today if tomorrow or whenever the next elections are held the public will be even angrier about where things have gone in the meantime.
As the only presidential candidate with previous White House experience who has a plausible shot in 2008, Hillary Clinton in particular may be thinking along these lines. It would be easier in the Democratic primaries and maybe even the general election for her to demand a rapid pullout but what if she wins? It wont do her much good to be president if she has to preside over a spiraling escalation of quasi-genocidal rage as American soldiers come home as promised; and if she were to break a campaign promise to withdraw troops, it would hardly bode well for a second term.
Another possibility is that the politicians are reading the polls just right, and adopting policies that reflect a deep ambivalence not to say confusion on the part of the voters themselves, whether Iraqi or American. A recent poll commissioned by ABC News and partners has 78 percent of Iraqis opposing the U.S. presence and 51 percent approving of attacks on U.S. troops but only 35 percent calling for immediate withdrawal. If supporting violence against the same soldiers you wish would stay is not confusion, then nothing is. Meanwhile, American public opinion has its own internal tensions. The war is extraordinarily unpopular, but leaving too fast is seen as undesirable as well a CNN poll conducted last month shows that only 21 percent of Americans want all the troops home now.
It's a near certainty that U.S. withdrawal from Iraq under the present conditions would allow or encourage the present low-level civil war to become a full-blown conflict. Many people will die, probably even more than the many who are dying now. Eventually the civil war might burn itself out but no one knows how long that might take, which regional actors might be drawn into the conflict and even whether it would happen at all: its not clear that any of the participants Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish militias are either strong enough to win or weak enough to lose. Facing such difficult choices, its no wonder that politicians to say nothing of the fickle public are prone to vacillation, self-contradiction and flip-flopping.
Thus far, both the Bush administration and Congressional Democrats have responded to our no-win predicament pretty poorly. The president is offering his familiar muddle-through approach. First, adopt the techniques of counterinsurgency clear and hold urban space, for example that should have been used all along. Then pray that they work, because the very same doctrine of counterinsurgency on which we are now relying predicts that these tactics probably will fail given current troop numbers. The desperate presumption is that the shortfall will be made up for by Iraqi troops the same troops whose training has been a watchword of hope and a byword of failure these last agonizing four years.
But the surge isnt just a way into Iraq it is also, for at least some in the administration, a shortcut to getting out of it. If basic security can be achieved even briefly especially before the 2008 elections Republicans with influence will advocate pulling most troops back while claiming that this time the mission really has been accomplished. Its unlikely that a short-term peace will hold, but at least it might give the U.S. the cover to say that it has not lost the war. If Iraq collapses 6 or 18 or 36 months after U.S. troops are out, Iraqis can then be blamed for the failure. Erstwhile supporters of the war are already starting to justify this plan by hinting darkly that the Iraqis have to take responsibility for themselves as if they could be expected to succeed in providing security and basic services when the worlds richest superpower has so abjectly failed.
On the Democratic side, there is also plenty of bad-conscience, blame-the-victim rhetoric to be found. Its most common form lies in the claim that the Iraqis have not succeeded in taking charge and governing themselves because they are waiting for the U.S. to do it. The theory here, to the extent one exists, seems to be that the Iraqi political classes could deliver law and order and reconstruction if only they really wanted to, but their incentive to save their country is somehow reduced by the presence of the U.S. Should we depart now, or threaten to start departing if the Iraqi government doesnt meet certain benchmarks, the Iraqis will at last recognize their common interests and learn to cooperate.
It is hard to overstate how absurd this view would sound to anyone who wasnt looking for excuses to withdraw. Exactly how much incentive does a person risking his life to serve in government need to save his country, not to mention his family and friends, from total ruin? Moreover, Iraqi politicians get only a minimal advantage from the fact that their countrymen blame the U.S. for much of Iraqs current situation. The Iraqi public is strongly divided over the legitimacy of the current government. (Indeed, the worse things go, the more Iraqis seem to think their leaders arent even really in charge.) Americas presence, to be sure, has not enabled Iraqi leaders to settle their differences. But it does not follow that Americas absence would bring them together at last.
Notwithstanding the unfortunate rhetoric, the Democrats have begun to introduce what sounds like a new Iraq policy. The House has set a mandatory withdrawal deadline of September 2008. The Senate, for its part, has called for the removal of troops by March 2008 a date with no particular significance for Iraq but well suited to enable a Democratic presidential candidate to say then that if he or she were president, the troops would already be home.
But the Democratic blueprints come with a caveat. An important aspect of the new thinking, embraced in both the Senate and House bills, is the assertion that the U.S. may leave some forces in Iraq for the purpose of fighting terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Sometimes the idea is coupled with vague statements about keeping those forces in their bases or along Iraqs borders. These statements imply that U.S. troops will not be policing population centers in order to prevent intercommunal violence.
The most attractive feature of this fight Al Qaeda approach is that it acknowledges what many Americans realize: Deposing Saddam Hussein was not a genuine part of the war on terror except in the most oblique and indirect sense, but like it or not, the present conflict in Iraq is now at the heart of the struggle with Al Qaeda and violent jihadism. Just because President Bush says its so, and just because he helped make it so, doesnt mean it isnt so. It is heartening that so many leading figures in the Democratic Party seem to understand this though of course the fact sits very uneasily with the simultaneous desire to get troops out of Iraq.
And theres the rub. The fight Al Qaeda strategy may be billed as a withdrawal plan, but it almost certainly could not and would not lead to a significant reduction in troop levels. Do the Democrats really intend for U.S. troops to stand by and allow Iraqis to slaughter one another while claiming that the defeat of Al Qaeda is our only objective? To do so would be to repudiate the only clear foreign policy legacy of the Clinton years, namely the principle of no more Rwandas that the U.S. can and must intervene to stop genocide. Would the American public really be prepared to accept preventable massacres taking place before the eyes of U.S. soldiers?
Some supporters of withdrawal suggest we may be able to prevent a future genocide by imposing separation on hostile populations who still live uncomfortably close to one another. Once weve done so, the notion goes, we can then leave with a clear conscience. This sounds appealing in theory, especially to diplomats who cut their teeth on the post-genocidal reordering of the former Yugoslavia.
In practice, however, creating safe zones for Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds can be accomplished only with large numbers of troops. If a Democratic president ordered a quick withdrawal, these safe zones could not be established at all. Meanwhile, Senator Joe Biden has doggedly called for a federal Iraq in which oil revenues are shared across regions. That is a terrific idea but it is an idea that is already enshrined in the Iraqi constitution and that will not be worth much unless someone forces oil-rich Shiite and Kurdish regions to share their wealth with the oil-poor Sunnis.
Realistically, then, the fight Al Qaeda policy cannot work the way it is being promoted. It is not easy to attack Al Qaeda without taking on the larger Sunni insurgency, notwithstanding a few cases in which Sunni tribes have decided to confront Al Qaeda themselves. Most likely, troops will continue to police population centers but now under a new and more appealing name than surge or stay the course. To be accomplished successfully and without unnecessarily endangering soldiers in the line of fire, the policy would require roughly as many troops in Iraq as we have now. The result would probably look a lot like the Bush policy. And it could take years to show success.
Nevertheless, there is a certain logic to this rebranding of the war. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has done everything it can to bring on a civil war, and its unlikely the war will end before it is defeated. Allowing the collapse of the country would, in fact, mean handing victory to the most violent jihadists a result that would be irresponsible for any president who thought the United States was actually endangered by Islamic terrorism. Fighting Al Qaeda is as good a label as any for what we should be doing in Iraq trying to hold off large-scale slaughter long enough to create a stable power-sharing government that would actually be worthy of the name.
Will the public, in the U.S. or Iraq, accept a continued American presence under these terms? Now that we have rediscovered that fighting with inadequate resources loses wars, the public is understandably fed up with the whole undertaking. The larger war on terror, though, is a war that most of us still believe we need to fight. To do so, we need to avoid the kind of withdrawal that would allow Al Qaeda to claim victory while simultaneously precipitating a humanitarian crisis that would destabilize the region. We have no business starting wars we cannot bring ourselves to complete, but maybe we can bring ourselves to win a war we didnt start.
Noah Feldman, a contributing writer for the magazine, is a law professor at New York University and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
I just returned from my fifth visit to Iraq since 2003 -- and my first since Gen. David Petraeus's new strategy has started taking effect. For the first time, our delegation was able to drive, not use helicopters, from the airport to downtown Baghdad. For the first time, we met with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province who are working with American and Iraqi forces to combat al-Qaeda. For the first time, we visited Iraqi and American forces deployed in a joint security station in Baghdad -- an integral part of the new strategy. We held a news conference to discuss what we saw: positive signs, underreported in the United States, that are reason for cautious optimism.
I observed that our delegation "stopped at a local market, where we spent well over an hour, shopping and talking with the local people, getting their views and ideas about different issues of the day." Markets in Baghdad have faced devastating terrorist attacks. A car bombing at Shorja in February, for example, killed 137 people. Today the market still faces occasional sniper attacks, but it is safer than it used to be. One innovation of the new strategy is closing markets to vehicles, thereby precluding car bombs that kill so many and garner so much media attention. Petraeus understandably wanted us to see this development.
I went to Iraq to gain a firsthand view of the progress in this difficult war, not to celebrate any victories. No one has been more critical of sunny progress reports that defied realities in Iraq. In 2003, after my first visit, I argued for more troops to provide the security necessary for political development. I disagreed with statements characterizing the insurgency as a "few dead-enders" or being in its "last throes." I repeatedly criticized the previous search-and-destroy strategy and argued for a counterinsurgency approach: separating the reconcilable population from the irreconcilable and creating enough security to facilitate the political and economic solutions that are the only way to defeat insurgents. This is exactly the course that Petraeus and the brave men and women of the American military are pursuing.
The new political-military strategy is beginning to show results. But most Americans are not aware because much of the media are not reporting it or devote far more attention to car bombs and mortar attacks that reveal little about the strategic direction of the war. I am not saying that bad news should not be reported or that horrific terrorist attacks are not newsworthy. But news coverage should also include evidence of progress. Whether Americans choose to support or oppose our efforts in Iraq, I hope they could make their decision based on as complete a picture of the situation in Iraq as is possible to report. A few examples:
· Sunni sheikhs in Anbar are now fighting al-Qaeda. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Anbar's capital, Ramadi, to meet with Sunni tribal leaders. The newly proposed de-Baathification legislation grew out of that meeting. Police recruitment in Ramadi has increased dramatically over the past four months.
· More than 50 joint U.S.-Iraqi stations have been established in Baghdad. Regular patrols establish connections with the surrounding neighborhood, resulting in a significant increase in security and actionable intelligence.
· Extremist Shiite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr is in hiding, his followers are not contesting American forces, sectarian violence has dropped in Baghdad and we are working with the Shiite mayor of Sadr City.
· Iraqi army and police forces are increasingly fighting on their own and with American forces, and their size and capability are growing. Iraqi army and police casualties have increased because they are fighting more.
Despite these welcome developments, we should have no illusions. This progress is not determinative. It is simply encouraging. We have a long, tough road ahead in Iraq. But for the first time since 2003, we have the right strategy. In Petraeus, we have a military professional who literally wrote the book on fighting this kind of war. And we will have the right mix and number of forces.
There is no guarantee that we will succeed, but we must try. As every sensible observer has concluded, the consequences of failure in Iraq are so grave and so threatening for the region, and to the security of the United States, that to refuse to give Petraeus's plan a chance to succeed would constitute a tragic failure of American resolve. I hope those who cite the Iraq Study Group's conclusions note that James Baker wrote on this page last week that we must have bipartisan support for giving the new strategy time to succeed. This is not a moment for partisan gamesmanship or for one-sided reporting. The stakes are just too high.
Oil prices fell. The stock market rose. Video images of smiling British soldiers with Iranian President Ahmadinejad were everywhere. So were pictures of the 15 freed hostages embracing family members back home. The relief over the return of the Brits was so tremendous; you could almost hear birds singing.
Maybe it's because military action won't be needed or maybe it's just because the ordeal won't drag on and on, but the world is breathing easier now. A lot of folks are happy. The problem, as I see it, is that Ahmadinejad seems to be the happiest.
And why shouldn't he be? He has shown the world that his forces can kidnap British citizens, subject them to brutal psychological tactics to coerce phony confessions, finagle the release of a high-ranking Iranian terror coordinator in Iraq, utterly trash the Geneva conventions and suffer absolutely no consequences.
The UN Security Council summoned its vaunted multilateral greatness to issue a swift statement of sincere uneasiness. The EU, which has pressured Britain to rely on Europeans for mutual defense instead of the US, wouldn't even discuss economic sanctions that might disrupt their holidays. Even NATO was AWOL.
Please do keep reading . . .
Tony Blair doesn't appear to be in much of a mood for celebrating. I don't know how he could be, given the troubling spectacle of British soldiers shake the hand of their kidnapper as a condition of release. In the old days, they would have kissed his ring -- but wearing Iranian suits and carrying swag more appropriate to a Hollywood awards ceremony may have been as embarrassing. Ironically, Blair's options are fewer by the day as his own party moves to mothball the British fleet, once the fear of pirates and tyrants the world over.
Some in the West seem part of Iran's propaganda war; claiming that the release of the hostages was a victory that proves the Iranian dictatorship can be reasoned with. To misrepresent unpunished piracy as a victory is as Orwellian as the congressional mandate banning use of the term "the global war on terror." What are we Reuters?
Ahmadinejad must be particularly pleased to see "deep thinking" journalists making the case that American actions in Iraq were the true cause of the kidnappings. To believe this, all you have to do is ignore the history of the Iranian Revolution, which has been in the extortion business ever since it took power. Between the 1979 American embassy crisis in Tehran and the seizure of Israeli soldiers last year by Iran's Hezbollah proxies, there have been more than a hundred other examples.
If you include the imprisonment of pro-Democracy dissidents and non-Shi'a Muslim minorities within Iran, the number reaches easily into the tens of thousands. The dwindling and persecuted Christian population of Iran, I suspect, found little joy in Ahmadinejad's explanation that he was freeing his victims as an "Easter gift."
It is critical that we see this incident as part of a long pattern of behavior -- that will continue as long as the current leadership is in power. More importantly, it will escalate unimaginably if Iran achieves nuclear status, and with it the ability to hold millions rather than individuals hostage.
I have no idea if Ahmadinejad and those who put him in power really believe the Shi'a Twelver doctrine that they can spur the messiah to return by triggering Armageddon. You have to admit, though, that the possibility that they look forward to entering paradise as martyrs would make them a whole lot scarier as a nuclear power than the USSR ever was.
There is hope, though. The Iranian people are not an anti-Western horde. They're an educated and freedom-loving people for the most part, and reformers there have been begging us for support and sanctions that would weaken the ruling theocracy. Instead, they've just seen the Iranian dictatorship successfully bully the West into impotent submission. This is not a good thing.
We need to understand this and use every means at our disposal, starting with serious and painful international sanctions, to prevent Iran's rulers from becoming the nuclear-armed blackmailers they want to be. Unfortunately, we are hearing demands that we abandon the people of the Middle East who have stood up to Islamo-fascism because they believed us when we said we would support them.
If we retreat precipitously, the price for that betrayal will be paid first in blood and freedom by the Iranian people, the Kurds, the Afghanis, the secular Lebanese, the moderates in Pakistan and the Iraqis themselves. And America's word may never be trusted again.
Right now, the pirate Ahmadinejad is clearly more confident about the outcome of the Global War on Terror than we are. That ought to give us pause.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/08/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
I have no idea if Ahmadinejad and those who put him in power really believe the Shi'a Twelver doctrine that they can spur the messiah to return by triggering Armageddon. You have to admit, though, that the possibility that they look forward to entering paradise as martyrs would make them a whole lot scarier as a nuclear power than the USSR ever was.
#5
The US Government should demand reparations of $20 billion from the Ayatollahs for their support of the hostage taking. And Jimmy Carter should be exiled to that toilet.
#6
Maybe it's because military action won't be needed or maybe it's just because the ordeal won't drag on and on, but the world is breathing easier now.
I like the sound of "President Thompson" but it is still worth stating the obvious: Just because the hostages have been freed does not mean military action won't be needed. In fact, I am partial to the idea of publically hanging the freed hostages for dereliction of duty now they have been returned and kicking any available Persian diplomatic staff down the nearest well. We can save the special well at Qom for Ahmadinejad.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
