Middle of the Road Possibilites in Iraq

The thing missing from Bush’s supporters who are hopeful about the surge, noting things like the general bad luck of insurgencies, is that it ignores the demographic and political context. We’re on neither the Sunni and Shia side in Iraq; we particularly oppose radical Shias allied to Iran–such as the Badr Brigades–or radicals hell bent on genocide against Sunnis and ridding the region of US influence. Obviously, we don’t support revanchist Iraqi Ba’athists, who are almost all Sunnis either. Instead, we support a fiction: a multiethnic, multireligious, power-sharing, democratically-elected Iraqi state with a strong central government committed to fighting Shia and Sunni extremists for the benefit of the majority of peace-loving Iraqis. No such government existed, nor are most Iraqis prepared to support such a government, and it’s high time the US had a reality check, whether in the form of Iraqi federalism, a military coup, or otherwise.

A lot of bad things that happen if we leave. There is no denying this. It may be the best choice, but it won’t be costless. It is worth considering, what is the next best alternative if the surge fails to deliver and witdrawal is taken off the table. These include things like moving our forces to border bases with Iran and leaving a rapid reaction force to protect our stalwart Kurdish friends, while also keeping a force in place to prevent Jordanian and Saudi intervention. The latter development would not be a good thing for us, for Iraq, for oil prices, for al Qaeda’s prestige, or anything else that is in US interests.

In other words, it should be a plan that maximizes our conventional strengths, upholds American honor, keeps Iranians in check, fights al Qaeda where they can be found, and minimizes costs, casualties, and US involvement in the ongoing Iraqi civilian war. Charles Krauthammer of all people is speaking realistically and hard-headedly on these mattesr, viz.:

The administration view — its hope — is that, whatever Maliki’s instincts, he can be forced to act in good faith by the prospect of the calamity that will befall him if he lets us down and we carry out our threat to leave. The problem with this logic is that it is contradicted by the president’s simultaneous pledge not to leave “before the job is done.”

In this high-stakes game of chess, what is missing is some intermediate move on our part — some Plan B that Maliki believes Bush might actually carry out — the threat of which will induce him to fully support us in this battle for Baghdad. He won’t believe the Bush threat to abandon Iraq. He will believe a U.S. threat of an intermediate redeployment within Iraq that might prove fatal to him but not necessarily to the U.S. interest there.

We need to define that intermediate strategy. Right now there are only three policies on the table: (1) the surge, which a majority of Congress opposes, (2) the status quo, which everybody opposes, and (3) the abandonment of Iraq, which appears to be the default Democratic alternative.

What is missing is a fourth alternative, both as a threat to Maliki and as an actual fallback if the surge fails. The Pentagon should be working on a sustainable Plan B whose major element would be not so much a drawdown of troops as a drawdown of risk to our troops. If we had zero American casualties a day, there would be as little need to withdraw from Iraq as there is to withdraw from the Balkans.

We need to find a redeployment strategy that maintains as much latent American strength as possible, but with minimal exposure. We say to Maliki: you let us down and we dismantle the Green Zone, leave Baghdad, and let you fend for yourself; we keep the airport and certain strategic bases in the area; we redeploy most of our forces to Kurdistan; we maintain a significant presence in Anbar province where we are having success in our one-front war against al Qaeda and the Baathists. Then we watch. You can have your Baghdad civil war without us. We will be around to pick up the pieces as best we can.

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