The New Way Forward In Iraq
The President’s New Iraq Strategy Is Rooted In Six Fundamental Elements:
1. Let the Iraqis lead;
2. Help Iraqis protect the population;
3. Isolate extremists;
4. Create space for political progress;
5. Diversify political and economic efforts; and
6. Situate the strategy in a regional approach.
Bush GW: 0-5; 2 K, BB. I mean, it sure is a "regional approach," isn't it? Beyond that? The Iraqis can't even get a hanging in without there being sectarian bullshit, we've been helping the Iraqis protect the population to wondrous effect over the last few years, extremists are rolling, and Iraqi pols can't go more than fifty yards before they get shot at. I mean, wow.
And the details are filled with never-gonna-happens. For example:
Work with additional Coalition help to regain control of the capital and protect the Iraqi population.
"OK. Everybody left in the Coalition--hey, Poland, where you going? C'mon, sit down for a sec. Right. We need more people to go into Baghdad. We promise you won't get shot at. Much. Any takers? Anybody? Not all at once."
And then there are these equally fanciful doozies:
Increase efforts to support tribes willing to help Iraqis fight Al Qaeda in Anbar.
Yeah. This worked really well in Afghanistan. (Or, I should say, would have, if we had kept the pressure on things there and not let the Taliban recover.) Even money that any said tribes become turncoats within a year.
Key Elements Of The New Approach: Political
[snip]
All Iraqi leaders support reconciliation.
Moderate coalition emerges as strong base of support for unity government.
Oh for Pete's sake. "All Iraqi leaders support reconciliation?" The Shiites are running the show, the Kurds are running their own show, and the Sunnis are running for cover. If you can see a moderate coalition running Iraq with any kind of coherence and competence, then you should quit your job and take over for the horoscope columnists (who sucked on today's predictions--they said bad day, I got a raise).
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So what can we gather from this? Tonight is going to be a shell game--but Bush is probably going to suck at it so hard that the American people will know where the ball is at all times.
Post-preamble: Rich Lowry over at the National Review comes in with this wish, inter alia:
He should have some pretty strong words for Iran and Syria.
OK. He's on crack. If Iran and Syria start something, what in God's name could we do at this point? Any sane conservatives out there? Oddly enough, one of the far-righties, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), turned today. Per Andrew Sullivan:
I do not believe that sending more troops to Iraq is the answer. Iraq requires a political rather than a military solution. In the last two days, I have met with Prime Minister Maliki, with two deputy presidents and the president of the Kurdish region. I came away from these meetings convinced that the United States should not increase its involvement until Sunnis and Shi'a are more willing to cooperate with each other instead of shooting at each other.
Well then.
Well that was unexpected: Per MSNBC (TV, no link sadly, and thus no direct quote), the President will say that any mistakes that were made rest with him. That's interesting. The heads analyzing on the fly are supposing that the GOPers that abandoned the President (including Brownback, Collins, Coleman, and perhaps others) pushed his hand.
Kickoff is in a minute: are we going to get body / actual language that says "chastened," or "I hear you," or "screw you all?" Kick back and relax, guys.
2001 (CST): Katie Couric says that this is "his most important speech ever." Three words: bring back Schieffer.
2004: The President is talking about stuff that could happen. Sorry--it's happening now. And now a 9-11 / Iraq reference. Great.
2006: It's not just Baghdad and environs. We've lost a couple of outer provinces too. But anyway. He's now dictating policy to the Iraqi government. And saying the Iraqi goverment is going to do this--he apparently has faith in them. Uh-huh.
2010: Americans will have the green light to go into the hood, and Iraqis will cover us. What about this says "what the hell are you thinking?" And gaining trust from the people of Baghdad turns on (a) what part of town you're in, and (b) which brand of Islam you subscribe to. I don't know about this.
2012: Training of Iraqi troops is just about the only thing that makes sense at this point, if we are going to stick around. Other than that: a washout so far.
2013: Now he gets to Anbar province, where "we are protecting the local population." Not that it shows or anything. 4,000 more troops for this? And that would defeat al-Qaeda in Anbar?
2015: Rich Lowry called it -- Iran and Syria are getting it now. They might stick out their tongue at that one, but give it no further thought.
2016: Getting Arab states to help us? That seems like a gimmick play to me--wonderful if it comes through, but really dicey in the execution. Boise State got the miracle this year; could we get a second one here?
2018: "Democracy fighting for its life." And "bloody and violent" year ahead--a hedge, that. Oh: "no surrender on a battleship." They were talking about this pre-game, how this militates against that whole "mission accomplished" thing.
2019: "Phased withdrawal" equals total disaster. As opposed to moderately-bad disaster, which is what we have now, I guess. Scrutiny is welcome, he says. Lieberman gets a mention--that wasn't an accident, I figure.
2021: "Talented civilians." Does that sound like a bunch of contractors? Pass.
2022: Softlight now on the troops, so it looks like he's winding up.
2023: "The author of liberty." Which is to say the Big Fella, who is getting tired of this shit, just as we are.
Postamble: Same old shit, really. We waited since the election for this turn around, and we got just about what we expected--not much, in the end.
Post-postamble: The Iranians hold a lot of keys here, don't they? If they push, they can make things even worse than they are now. They can't do it openly, but they can cause a lot of trouble just under the surface.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is on now, calling it what Bush wouldn't: a civil war, based on "fourteen centuries" of conflict. Time for Iraqis to "stand and defend their own nation." Can they do it? Maybe not. Can we? It shows, doesn't it?
Well, that's it. I need a drink, and there's nothing useful in the fridge. Night, all.
8 comments:
when i first scanned the post, i thought the indications of time in the speech (e.g., 2004) stood for years. which i think is much more amusing - rich lowry will probably still be calling for an invasion of syria and iran in 2015 - but also, much sadder.
though it does fit with bush's "truman complex" - "they hate me now, but in 2050, they'll understand i was right all along!" um, george, it's not like we all look back fondly on the korean war, even if truman is much higher in our estimation now.
i confess that i thought the same thing. then i thought that "talented civilians" would make a great band name. "lauren and the talented civilians." yes.
more to the subject at hand, joe forwarded me a times piece by david brooks the other day that, shocker, made a lot of sense to him. to my great surprise, i'm with him on several points re: iraq as well.
I don't know why, but I've always preferred the 24-hour clock. Perhaps it was that little p on my digital wristwatch that rubbed me the wrong way. I'm weird like that.
The merits of the column notwithstanding: David Brooks can bite me. And Paul Krugman, Marueen Dowd, and the rest of them. TimesSelect has to be the stupidest thing on the Internets. See, Lauren here has suggested that Dave has something useful to say. I might want to inspect for myself. But I cannot, because that would be beyond the firewall. C'mon Times: let your columnists be free!
(Yes. I'm cheap. And weird. Sue me.)
tom, i don't spend a lot of time following politics, so i need your help... everyone seems to be saying that more troops is the wrong thing to do. but i have yet to hear a concise, realistic alternative solution. is there one out there, and if so, can you point me to it?
not sure if this will paste properly, but here's the piece i'm talking about ("making the surge work"). information wants to be free!
"Picture the person you love most in the world. Now imagine that person shredded by a bomb or dropped off one morning in the gutter with holes drilled through the back of the head. Imagine your lifelong rage, and the terror of not knowing who will die next. Now imagine this has happened to someone in nearly every family on your block, and on the next block, and in the whole town.
This is Iraqi society.
And yet Gen. George Casey and Gen. John Abizaid wanted to put the burden of nation-building on the victims and initiators of this maelstrom. U.S. war strategy for the past three years has been to lighten the American footprint in Iraq and compel Iraqis to undertake the policing tasks we ourselves couldn't accomplish.
Over this time a chorus has arisen to oppose this strategy. The members of this chorus - John McCain, The Weekly Standard, whispering dissenters in the middling rankings of the military - argue that it's simply unrealistic to expect human beings in these circumstances to become impartial nation-builders. These dissenters have argued, since the summer of 2003, that the U.S. must commit more troops to establish security before anything else becomes possible.
For over three years, President Bush sided with the light-footprint school. He did so for personal reasons, not military ones. Casey and Abizaid are impressive men, and Bush deferred to their judgment.
But sometimes good men make bad choices, and it is now clear that the light-footprint approach has been a disaster. If the U.S. had committed more troops and established security back in 2003, when, as Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek recently reminded us, the Coalition Provisional Authority had 70 percent approval ratings, history would be different.
It is now 2007, and President Bush has finally replaced Donald Rumsfeld, Casey and Abizaid. The question now is whether the policy that should have been implemented in 2003 can still be implemented four years on - after so many thousands have died.
Many in and out of the administration think so, hence all the talk about a surge - putting 20,000 more troops into Baghdad, finally occupying the dangerous neighborhoods, finally starting a jobs program, finally forcing national reconciliation.
Unfortunately, if the goal is to create a stable, unified Iraq, the surge is a good policy three years too late. For that surge to succeed now, it would have to accomplish the following tasks: compel the Maliki government to deliver public services in a nonsectarian way; convert the Shiite theocrats who now dominate the Iraqi government into ecumenical multiculturalists; persuade the rabid Sunni leaders to accept a dependent role in the new Iraq; induce the traumatized Iraqi people to hang together as the blood flows; sustain, over 18 months, American political support for an arduous policy that begins with a 17 percent approval rating.
The odds that the surge can accomplish these tasks are vanishingly small. The tragic truth is that the social context for this military strategy has changed since 2003.
But another surge may be realistic. This surge would begin by giving up the dream of national reconciliation and acknowledging that Iraq is in the process of dividing itself.
As the best reporting from Baghdad makes clear, today's Iraqi leaders have little interest in healing the Sunni-Shiite divide. People are retreating to their sectarian homelands by the tens of thousands. In an ever-radicalizing climate, the Sadrs are supplanting the Sistanis, and genocidal Sunni leaders are replacing the merely racist ones.
Perhaps, in other words, it's time to merge the military Plan B - the surge - with a political Plan B - flexible decentralization. That would mean using adequate force levels (finally!) to help those who are returning to sectarian homelands. It would mean erecting buffers between populations where possible and establishing order in areas that remain mixed. It would mean finding decentralized governing structures that reflect the social and psychological facts on the ground.
The record shows that in sufficient numbers and with sufficient staying power, U.S. troops can suppress violence. Perhaps more U.S. troops can create a climate in which decentralized arrangements can evolve.
We can't turn back time. But if the disintegration of Iraqi society would be a political and humanitarian disaster, perhaps we should finally commit military resources, and create a political strategy, commensurate with the task of salvaging something."
Hey Val,
Joe here. As I see it, we have but three options: 1) get out, 2) more troops in service of the same strategy or 3) more troops to facilitate the breakup of the country along ethnic lines.
#2 is what GWB is doing now; I'm partial to #3. I think we have to recognize that certain ships have sailed here: namely, the notion that after two years of ethnic warfare and body-strewn streets (not to mention thousands of years of pre-Saddam history), the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds are just not going to get along and need their own semi-autonomous regions. The Kurds have one now and not incidentally, it's the safest place to be in Iraq.
Val--
Frankly, I don't know what the best option is. All of them suck, insofar as I can tell. All I know is that 20,000 more troops isn't going to do a whole heck of a lot to help the situation.
Let's say you yank everybody out of there, more or less immediately. The most likely outcome is that the Shiite militias will run over everybody, and you get a second Iran. That is just about the worst case scenario at this point. If we can get out of there without that happening, it will be the best that we can do (and, at the same time, a miracle). But putting more troops in will tend to goose up anti-American sentiment, which plays into the hands of those militias--as well as the Sunni militias who are fighting with the Shiites.
I think the best plan (presuming a one-state Iraq, as opposed to a partitioned one) is to draw down, gradually, and focus exclusively on training a broadly based police force, with an eye to having us out by the end of the year. And we have to set a firm deadline to get out. If the government wants to keep power--and, for that matter, their heads--they will do everything they can to ensure that they can run the country, and get moving on it now. We can't wait around for the Iraqi government to get their shit together; they need a good firm shove in that direction.
But David Brooks might have it right--and some people are coming around to the idea of partition. At the end of the day, though, we would have one Shiite state that would have close political and religious ties to Iran. Like I said, there isn't a whole lot about the endgame that doesn't suck royally.
i love having smart friends! thanks for the responses. after hearing extensive coverage of the criticism but no mention of solutions, this is refreshing.
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