Here is my answer to Kenneth Pollack, Michael O'Hanlon, and the latest tragic evasion and spin currently circulating in high Democratic circles:
This morning's story in the Washington Post is accurate and conforms to what I am hearing privately. Many Democrats are again missing the first principle of the matter and treating Iraq in political and tactical terms.
The latest view from Democrats is to adopt their politics and tactics around the proposition that the Iraq escalation is working but the Iraq leaders are not.
Confronted with an obsessed and intransigent president, Republicans in Congress who are endlessly submissive to presidential power and disastrous policies, and a Democratic national security establishment that is incoherent and careerist, the most likely outcome in September is this:
The President will win full support for the full escalation without any effective limitation in what would be the third disastrous Democratic failure in the new Congress, the first being their surrender on Iraq before the May recess, the second being their surrender on the constitution before the August recess.
This need not be. However, at this time, it is most probable outcome, unless something changes. Lets first understand, this was never a surge, that was a propaganda term. It was an escalation currently on course to continue for at least a year and a half, and very possibly longer, if Congress submits again.
Let's get this straight; any success in Anbar is not because of the surge, it is because of deals made with Sunni insurgents who shortly before the deals, were killing Americans, and who are now receiving American aid. This would have happened with or without the surge.
Second, in my view, history will show these deals as a catastrophic mistake. Setting aside the moral and strategic issue of giving money and (directly or indirectly) weapons to those who were recently killing Americans, the end game of these deals depends on the end game of Iraqi politics.
If one believes, as I do, that the government of Iraqi (no matter who is prime minister) is unable to ever reach a reconciliation that includes Sunnis and Shi'ites, the aid America is now giving to Sunni insurgents will ultimately be used to kill Shi'ites in escalated sectarian war, and possibly Americans.
This growing Democratic spin is incoherent. One cannot argue that the Iraqi political system is failing but the surge is succeeding. If the Iraqi political system continues to fail, the surge, or more accurately the escalation, must also fail because, in effect, the status quo ante is that America is today arming all sides in the sectarian war of Iraq.
If one believes the Iraqi government will not achieve reconciliation, the end game of the status quo is this: we will be asked to continue escalated American military force forever, with the argument that if we do not, there will be genocide when we leave.
If one believes the Iraqi government will not achieve reconciliation, by arming all sides of the sectarian war simultaneously, we will be told that we must stay forever militarily, because the more we arm all sides, the greater the genocide when we leave.
In purely military terms, under the escalation there have been short term gains in some areas, short term setbacks in other areas, a shifting of Al Qaeda attacks from some areas to other areas.
In purely political terms, the escalation has had the exact opposite of its marketed intent: Iraqi reconciliation has moved backwards, as parties view our simultaneous aid to all warring factions as reason to avoid, not achieve, reconciliation.
Don't be surprised if there is a phony Iraqi government initiative designed to win the vote in September. Don't be surprised if all Sunni and Shi'ite sectarians warriors make soundings of reconciliation so they can continue to receive American aid, and don't be surprised if Maliki is replaced through a coup or no-confidence vote, in time for our vote, in September.
In short, they all take our money (and in fact our weapons) as they position to kill each other when we leave, and, in the meantime, take our aid and wait us out.
In truth, a growing faction close to President Bush privately favors a new "Iraqi strongman" to establish some form of authoritarian rule.
Even the ubiquitous Mr. O'Hanlon raised this possibility in one of his many media interviews recently, though to be fair to him, since he hedges his bets more than a Wall Street hedge fund, it was hard to tell whether favors it, would tolerate it, opposes it, or is merely keeping his options open for future opeds and media shows.
The big winner of the entire policy has been the government of Iran. The latest entrant into this quagmire is our supposed friend Saudi Arabia, criticized by American officials for their support for insurgents, then rewarded by those same officials with massive new arms sales. This is Kafkaeqsue.
The problem with the Iraq war is the Iraq war.
The reason some of us opposed it from the beginning, unlike the fossilized Democratic national security establishment that has been incoherent or supportive at various times; unlike the radical discredited neoconservative national security establishment, and unlike the inept mainstream Republican national security establishment that often opposed the policy privately but supported it in practice, is this:
Centuries of history prove the tendency, very deep in Iraqi society, to not only break apart, but to fight wars within itself, sectarian faction against sectarian faction.
This was known long before the war began, ignored by an ignorant President with the arrogance to believe that an aggressive preemptive war followed by a corrupt Roman- like occupation could prove history and demographics wrong. It was known by a fossilized, careerist, and incoherent Democratic national security establishment with too many who want to be Secretary of State, and too few who combine clarity with political courage.
This was known yesterday; it is known today; it will be known tomorrow and the great issue is how many Americans must die before our policy matches the history, culture, politics and realities of the country we invaded so casually and are trapped in so catastrophically.
The situation today is identical to the various interludes of delusion throughout this war when progress was claimed to be right around the tunnel. The statue of Saddam fell; Saddam was captured; the Iraqi election was held; Zarkawi was killed. These were all short term events that changed nothing, each met with crowing victory claims by the President, by incoherence from the Democrati security establishment, and by submission from the Congress. Each meant nothing in the end, except rationales for the body count to rise while the carnage continued.
At every step, truth was falsified, false hopes were raised, and failure continued. At every step propaganda was used to create heroes from Pat Tilman to Jessica Lynch, legitimate heroes in real life, used as public relations pawns with tissues of lies, deceptions and frauds.
At every step, every American commander became the most brilliant, even when their private advice was ignored. Every successive American commander had his hour of profound deification where they were the smartest, the best, the greatest. General Franks, General Abizaid, General Sanchez, General Casey and now General Petraeus were all deified by the propaganda machine and turned into public relations pawns for continued disastrous war.
Our current commander, General Petraeus, is a great military thinker from a great military organization, the 101st Airborne, with a near perfect record of failure in Iraq. His original efforts early in the war led to ultimate sectarian conflict within his regional command. His next mission for training Iraqis to "step up so we step down" was terribly failed, obviously. He allowed American weapons to fall into the hands of our enemies through mismanagement during his tenure.
Shortly before the 2004 presidential election, General Petraeus injected himself into the campaign on behalf of the President through a pre-election oped in the Washington Post that exactly three years ago this September. He gave glowing reports about the Iraqi military, Iraqi police and Iraqi leadership that look ridiculous now, three years later.
Petraeus is a good man and great military thinker with a record in Iraq that was so failed and flawed that only in the George Bush era would such a record be deified, and only with such incoherence from the Democratic national security establishment and such insiderism and laziness from the major media could such a deification of past failures be accepted.
Now we learn: the "Petraeus report" will not be the "Petraeus report" but will be the White House report. We learn he will not testify about his report but before the White House rewrite of the report.
With the latest maneuvering the Administration will try to time his pre-report testimony with, you guessed it, the anniversary of September 11, 2001. Is there no shame left in Washington?
Meanwhile, every hour this escalation goes forward, our military force structures around the world are further destroyed. Troop rotation schedules move from destructive to cruel. Unmet short and long term needs for health care, disability and training escalate along with the war.
Recruitment lags and lower goals are met with lower standards that are so severe that obese criminals are encouraged to sign up for combat. Desperate commanders are forced to give aid to those recently killing Americans, with total troop levels actually higher than the announced surge through rotation abuses and greater reliance not only on Sunni insurgents but on mercenary forces and subcontracted security personnel.
Meanwhile the new British Prime Minister will soon announce British withdrawal, while the war in Afghanistan deteriorates and beneficiaries of that war are warlords, poppy merchants, and Taliban and Al Qaeda who are recruiting, and expanding within nations we call allies. Our Afghanistan mission and the true battle against terrorism are eroded by our terminal obsession with Iraq.
This is the situation the President, Republicans in Congress and some Democrats are now calling "success".
There is a better way, not easy, but possible with a greater chance of true success.
The escalation should be ended, now, with a very careful and orderly reduction of troops staring immediately and proceeding into next year. Nothing precipitous, that is a straw man from a desperate Administration. What is needed is a reversal from a war without end and an endless escalation, to a careful and orderly de-escalation proceeding in phases that would involve both some reduction and some redeployment of American troops.
Whatever chances of reconciliation exist, would rise with this new policy, because instead of providing aid to the different warring factions they would know that there is a finite limit to how many Americans we will sacrifice while they continue their sectarian wars.
Note: this change would allow even more aggressive and intense American attacks on Al Qaeda in Iraq, would strengthen our mission in Afghanistan, would allow escalated American attacks against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and on the border with Pakistan.
A redeployed American military would also allow far stronger interdiction of arms coming into Iraq from Syria and Iran, while dramatically lowering American casualties and raising the pressures on Iraqis to reconcile with cease fires and broad agreements with each other, if they choose.
Moving to a course of deescalation, now, and rejecting a course of escalation, into 2008, is far wiser and far better for our security, our troops and our true battle against terrorism than further continuing this catastrophic policy of Presidential intransigence and Democratic submission hidden by the latest generation of political spin.
Another exceptional essay/post. Agape.
From the Military Industrial Complex, to Bush declaring marshall law, to every conversation in America being examined, to the elected Democrats have no spine, to the ordinary American is just 'too stupid, lazy, fill in the adjective'.
Could the problem be with the Progressives themselves? Maybe your ideas are not mainstream or have been rejected by the American electorate. Whatever the cause, judging from the tone of the comments, Progressives seem to be on the outside looking in.
Or it could be the explanation offered to Little Big Man by Old Lodge Skins, when Little Big Man noted with horror that more and more white men kept coming and coming (and killing off Native Americans as they came): "There is an endless supply of white men. There has always been a limited number of human beings."
In a dysfunctional "state", like Iraq, created by western interests and ignorance, compromising many groups who hate each other, the "dictatorship" of a strongman may be the only way to hold it together.....this system worked well when it was to our interests of the moment......even given a brutal and depraved "strongman" in Saddam; he was a sonofabitch, but he was our sonofabitch when it suited us. I have no doubt Saddam was executed to silence him from exposing many crimes of both Bush41 and Dumbya43.
The depraved creatures who lied us into this disaster MUST also be held to account for their lies and treason, and until our cowardly or co-opted Congress grows a pair and lives up to their oaths of office and Impeaches the perpetrators of this horror, we will just continue to go round and round.....and many more will be killed, tortured, maimed and have their lives, and those of their families, destroyed while a few continue to profit.
"Evil events from evil causes spring."
-Aristophanes
For the Private contractors and the oil execs, money... But I think people give too much credit to George's humanity.
It can't be said too often: You can't conduct a war against a tactic, and it becomes difficult to even decry the tactic when many of our own actions are, in a very real sense, terrorist in intent and execution and do, in fact, inspire terror in the target civil population, just as they were intended to.
When we finally, at some date in the distant future, become mature enough to deal with our national concerns using methods other than shooting people and blowing things up we might finally realize a little of the success so sadly lacking now.
Until then, we appear to be stuck in a Mobius loop of death, destruction, and failure.
The idea that the surge is working smells of pandering to those who want to believe it. The smell of a whorehouse perfume wafts over this position.
Democrats need to stick to their guns and insist that all the mistakes of the Republicans are mistakes and not somehow well-meaning, unintentional consequences of a few minor errors that can be set straight by some form of Democrat or other.
Americans want the Democrats to have the guts to call this war wrong and wronger.
Iraq was ready to amp up oil production and had signed contracts with French and German companies.
We attacked and oil production never went up. In fact, it is down from 3 million to 2 million barrels a day.
The war has been a great success for the oil companies and the Saudis. For them, it's a win!
No reason to change that now. If we left, the Iraqis would split up the turf and start producing oil and money for themselves. Can't have that happening, so it will never get good enough to leave.
Doesn't Saddam have a living relative that we could support as a strong man, and replay history of a couple
decades ago?
Picasso
Absolutely right. Escalation knows no point of interruption and allows no shift in direction. It becomes an excuse for its own perpetuation. Our "brave" political leaders do not have the fortitude to stand in front of this run away freight train. There is no end in sight and too many more will die for the greatest mistake in history!
The Petraeus appearance (no matter what he says, or who wrote it) before Congress in mid-September should be a turning point for US policy in Iraq. Of course, the situation on the ground in Iraq, in both a military and political sense, is very well known. As a result of the surge in US forces in Iraq, it should come as no surprise that there has been some limited military progress but the question is, to what end?
Unless there is simultaneous progress on the political front, any military progress is absolutely meaningless and may even be counterproductive. Unfortunately, the Bush administration believes that they can wish political progress into being because they sure haven’t done anything to begin a process to facilitate a political accommodation among the Iraqi factions that would bring in the regional and major powers to help promote and secure any settlement.
Senator Biden is the preeminent leader among Democrats on all foreign policy and national security issues. And, as the only presidential candidate who has outlined a detailed and comprehensive strategy to begin a diplomatic process to facilitate a political solution in Iraq, he should take a highly visible leading role at this time and coalesce veto-proof support for his strategy from all quarters and across party lines and finally force the President to radically change his Iraq policy, NOW!
If Senator Biden fails to do this, then the best we can hope for in Iraq is a good containment policy to prevent chaos from spilling over its borders into a regional conflagration and he wouldn’t be doing his bid for the presidency any favors, either.
Biden, Edwards and Hillary, if they actually believed in accountability, should quit politics forever for that vote. As for Obama, although he took a correct position about Iraq at the time, his actions ever since have shown him to be a war mongerer too -- favoring "residual" forces and voting to fund the slaughter of our troops and Iraqis until the vote back in May.
We don't need the kind of expertise provided by Biden, Hillary, Edwards and Obama.
forces are doing well, that there's a sort of
temporary improvment in Anbar, but with it
would come the realization that the key moment
there will be when there are no more Al Qaida
to fight, do the Sunni forces turn on the Shia again?
'Useful', politically, because it indicates that
the Democrats are not at all interested in losing the war.
If the Iraqi political community can't shape itself up, the effort is over,
just finished. We can't do this for them, they've got to do it for themselves.
What we're hearing from Democrat politicians
these days reflects a reality that we're not
going to be out of Iraq before our election.