You can usually tell things are going well in Iraq when the media is silent; they have been for weeks, focusing their attention instead on the economy. As always, their silence on important matters is a few steps behind the eight ball. They said little of al Qaeda’s growing reign of terror when Bill Clinton was in charge, nor much criticism of his assertion of Iraqi WMDs during his periodic bombing campaigns, and on the economy, they had little to say when the seeds of that disaster were being planted in the name of expanding home ownership. Nonetheless, here we are.
This small window of tactical success should permit us to make up for the strategic failure that is Iraq, a failure premised on the twin pillars of “democratic nation building” as a means of reducing al Qaeda’s appeal and disarming terrorist-supporting states of WMDs, even when those WMDs are nonexistent. Yesterday’s mistakes should not be continued simply out of fear of embarrassment, particularly if they can be undone in a way that does not have substantial collateral damage to other strategic interests. Further, developments in Pakistan, Russia, and elsewhere demand a more substantial strategic reserve than the last five years in Iraq have permitted.
The always curmudgeonly Bill Lind makes the point as follows:
The only source for additional troops for Afghanistan is Iraq. The September 2008 issue of Army magazine quotes Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen as saying, “I don’t have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq.”
Without railways running on interior lines, we cannot move three brigades from Iraq to Afghanistan this week, then move them back to Iraq again a few weeks later if the situation there demands them. That means any shift of forces requires long-term stability in Iraq. Neocon voices in Washington are now claiming “victory” in Iraq, which, if it were true, would release American forces stationed there for redeployment. This appears to be what Secretary Gates is counting on when he says we should be able to meet commanders’ request for 10,000 more troops in Afghanistan next spring or summer.
But I fear this represents a falsely optimistic reading of the situation in Iraq. In my view, the current relative quiet in Iraq is merely a pause as the parties there regroup and reorient for the next phase of the war. Unless we have the good sense to get out of Iraq now, while the going is good, we will be stuck there when that next phase starts. We will not then be in a position to shift forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, because without interior lines, any such shift much be long-term.
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I think the key to preventing renewed civil war in Iraq is to try to keep power as devolved as possible to the provinces and to keep enough of a U.S. presence in country to prevent a large conventional fight between the factions.
I think that after all the bloodletting both sides are actually very happy for the current peace, and it shouldn’t be that hard to keep it alive as long as the central government doesn’t over reach.
You’re right though that Iraq is an inherently unstable position, and at some point they are likely to be at each other’s throats again unless the current decentralization is institutionalized. It technically is not under the current Iraqi constitution.
It’s possible. I think there is a lot of weariness from many Iraqis of the 2005-06 Sunni-Shia fighting. So long as the different factions are kept reasonably at bay and the oil wealth is shared a bit with Sunnis, something stable is possible. It wouldn’t be the only country on earth where tribes that once hated each other reach some new, more peaceful modus vivendi.
I do think this shows that McCain is a bit of an idiot, though. He mocked Joe Biden’s suggestion of federalization or partition, which, at the time, was a pretty reasonable solution and one that I endorsed.
I think in the long run if Iraq is seen as a success, it won’t be because we removed Saddam Hussein, and it won’t be because we brought democracy to the region.
It will be because the moral and physical damage we suffered in Iraq is much lower than the moral and physical damage radical Islam suffered. Huge numbers of terrorists from around the Muslim world were killed, and the al Qaeda brand was tremendously hurt within the Arab world.
So before we write Iraq off as a strategic failure for the U.S., I think from a distance of a few years, we may see it as a strategic success, simply because of the relative damage suffered by the opposing sides.