What He Said…

Masoud Shafaee goes over six reasons why a continued troop presence is a bad idea, even if causalities can be reduced as McCain wishes

Imperialism Never Works - Iraq Edition No. MCXVI

Max Boot complains that the natives aren’t being grateful enough:

Sticking points include whether the U.S. will continue to control Iraqi airspace, whether U.S. soldiers and private security contractors will maintain immunity from Iraqi prosecution, and whether the U.S. will continue to have the freedom to carry out combat operations and to detain terrorist suspects without Iraqi approval.

From Washington’s perspective, these are measures necessary to ensure the safety of U.S. troops as long as a substantial number of them remain in the war zone. U.S. commanders could not in good conscience continue to fight with too many restrictions on their ability to protect their soldiers and accomplish their mission.

So why are Iraqi leaders trying to hinder the very military operations that have been making their country safer and thus strengthening their own authority?

One factor is the approach of Iraqi elections — provincial elections this fall, national elections next year. In the competition for votes, Iraqi politicians want to flaunt their nationalist credentials, and one of the surest ways to do that is to make a public show of not being patsies for the Americans.

Let’s translate that for a domestic Iraqi audience. Maliki is supposed to tell his supporters and the people of Iraq that not only does he support a foreign military occupation of his country, but that the occupiers should control their country’s airspace, allow mercenaries to be immune from local prosecution for the crimes they commit and allowing the military to run around the country without approval from the supposedely sovereign government. And although Maliki very much needs American troops to stay in Iraq, he can’t very well maintain domestic support by letting the US gets everything they want.

Boot is right, for the US to engage in an occupation/low intensity counter-insurgency, they probably need full flexibility in the theater, protection from local law and total control of the air. But it’s obvious that any self-respecting sovereign government or sovereign populace wouldn’t want to give all that up under just about any circumstances. But Boot (and the Bush administration, for that matter) will have to continually insist to get everything because they want an essentially permanent foothold in Iraq. The problem is that even the most pro-American factions in the government know that allowing that to happen would be political suicide. For all the US military’s coercive power, the only way to achieve “sucess” in Iraq (if anyone can even define what that means) is for their to be a legitimate, sovereign, popular government we can work with. But if the way to achieving the type of security environment where that’s possible involves asking the current government to make all sorts of concessions they don’t want to make, then that presents a pretty big problem for any hopes for “sucess” in Iraq.

The Labor Movement and the Eustonite Left

A constant refrain of the Eustonite Left is that, despite the mistake the invasion initailly was, we’re obligated to stay in Iraq because otherwise, Iraqi trade unionists would be slaughtered by religious fascists. Although, on face, it’s a highly admirable position reminiscent of the Spanish Civil War or some other great, principled stand in left-wing history, it’s also a highly odd position to take. After all, there are a huge number of factors and costs involved in the war besides the well-being of trade unionists, and despite their overall goodness, it makes little sense to elevate their interests above all others.

It’s also representative of the somewhat myopic view that many British Eustonites take about Iraq. After all, it’s in England where the soi-disant anti-totalitarian left is the strongest and people like Nick Cohen or Oliver Kamm think that the Iraq War is the most important liberationist struggle of our time. I’d chalk this up to two things. In England, much of the “mainstream” left - or at least the type that has a strong voice in the public sphere - is much more anti-American, anti-West, soft-on-Islamism etc than anything comparable in the United States. And so Nick Cohen et al actually have a coherent, strongly represented worldview to argue against. But it’s also impossible to ignore the fact that England doesn’t bear the great costs of the Iraq War. It’s not England that’s spending 1 trillion dollars on the war, that’s lost 4,000 men and women, that’s had its international reputation trashed, in short, advocating for continued war carries considerably fewer costs across the pond.

But what’s even odder about the almost-deontological stance that Eustonites take with respect to trade unions and the war is that it isn’t at all clear that Iraqi unions support the occupation. This Sami Ramadani piece references some trade union opposition to the occupation, and this May Day declaration against the occupation by trade unionists seems to indicate that, at the very least, it’s hardly a unanimous opinion among the Iraqi labor movement that the occupation is right and just.

Via Spackerman

Would You Wear A Kaffiyeh With That?

Spencer Ackerman steals another great idea of mine:

And the U.S. thinks it can outplay this guy on his own turf? Could Dick Cheney have survived Saddam Hussein’s goons? Moqtada Sadr is the new Che Guevara. Bring on the t-shirts for every sophomoric lefty college student.

I have no proof to back this claim up, but I’m pretty sure that my brother and I thought up the idea of putting Moqtada on t-shirts n late 2005 or so. We also though that the “Mahdi Army” sounded like a great name for a rap crew. One problem though: Moqtada, despite being a certified anti-American badass (I’m not saying that what he does is good, just that he’s one bad SOB, as evidenced by Patrick Cockburn’s book), doesn’t really look that cool on a shirt. He kinda looks like a very chubby, very angry baby. But he could still be adopted by rappers. There’s very solid precedent for terroristic, anti-American figures being seen as badasses by rappers. In 2Pac’s hatikva-sampling some Jewish-liturgical-music-I-can’t-identify sampling classic “Troublesome 96″, he name checks a series of murderous, anti-American world leaders including Qadaffi, Castro, Idi Amin, Mussolini, “Hussein Fatal” and “my nigga Napoleon.” So who wants to join my crew, Ayatollah MZ and the Mahdi Army?

I Prefer My Discussions of Power and Knowledge Vulgar

Kathy G suggests that had the American military been told to read Orientalism by Edward Said, as opposed to the anti-Arab filth that is The Arab Mind, perhaps things would have been different:

Yet at the same time, as Foucault noted, knowledge itself constitutes power relations. Books and ideas can have a profound impact. I don’t think it would have been quite as easy for the Bush administration to do what they did if racist, imperialist attitudes were not so prevalent amongst the military and foreign policy elites. And if those same elites had read Orientalism instead of The Arab Mind, I’m not so sure that said elites would have been quite so comfortable in their racism and imperialism. A powerful book, which Orientalism (which I have read) certainly is, and which The Arab Mind (which I haven’t read) apparently is as well, can change minds. It can persuade readers who have no fixed views on the subject, and strengthen the views of those who are already inclined to agree with the author.

If Orientalism had been widely read among the military and foreign affairs folks, perhaps the attitudes of some highly influential people would not have been quite so smug. Perhaps they would have entertained a few more doubts. Perhaps the thought of torturing their fellow human beings might have made them a bit queasy.

Although I have an quasi ironic respect for Edward Said and hold the view that the last few years have tragically vindicated Orientalism’s thesis (trust me, it’s very complicated) I think Kathy is ignoring how a more straightforward discussion of knowledge and power could explain why The Arab Mind found its way onto military reading lists. That’s because it’s a whole lot easier to launch a war against utter savages, as opposed to rather normal human beings whose reactions are very similiar to ours. I mean, anyone would know that breaking into people’s homes, taking the men out of the houses, humiliating them and forcing black hoods on their heads would anger your average European, but for Arabs, it would make them fear and respect us.

The Iraq War was what social scientists like to call “overdetermined” - it had a whole lot of caues, one of which was the Fouad Ajami-style depictions of Arabs as simplistic brutes who could be cowered into submission and parliamentary democracy. But I don’t think you needed that intellectual substructure for the war to happen, it was just one of many causes.

And on the subject of Orientalism more broadly, it’s odd how it’s come under such fearsome assault, as it’s thesis was being so decisively proven. That thesis, being “that when it came to “the East” scholarship itself had become a means of serving and legitimating imperial dominance over the Oriental “other.”” And so, more than 30 years after Said’s book we are in the midst of an imperial war in the Middle East, which was partially justified on the back of depictions of middle easterners as alien, other and totally opposed to the “West.”

And so, is Said being recognized as a prescient, far seeing public intellectual? Sure, those who originally read the book and subscribe to The Nation think he’s the shit, but in more conventional liberal circles, he’s the avatar of anti-American intellectuals that one can look really good loudly bashing. The Eustonite Left, Marty Peretz and that whole gang are only upping the ante in Said bashing. In the past few years, we’ve seen a a proliferation of anti-Said tracks. At least 1/3 of the issues of Democratiya - the Eustonite British politcal journal - have included some sort of denunciation of Edward Said. Many of his critics, who aren’t scholars of the Middle East but instead political opponents, point to Roger Irwin’s Dangerous Knowledge. While Dangerous Knowledge itself is a legitimate scholarly work that takes issue with Said’s treatment of specific Orientalists, especially those Germans who were actively opposed to Imperialism, it largely misses the forest for the trees. Although Irwin is certainly right that Said plays a tad fast and loose with the facts in order for them to fit his thesis, the basic thrust of Orientalism is undeniable: Western imperialism and Orientalist scholarship were “co-productive” in producing the conditions to subjugate the East. Daniel Varisco and Ibn Warraq  have also both written book length criticisms of Orientalism. Although Varisco is broadly sympathetic with Said’s political agenda and Warraq is incredibly hostile, it’s no surprise that Democratiya is trumpeting them as weapons to wield against the Saidite menace. Said’s ghost haunts more than just discussions of his own book. All of the hysteria we see surrounding Columbia’s Middle Eastern Studies Department and abominable treatment of Nadia Abu El-Haj can be explained as the expression of the endless frustration that “pro-Israel” types and conservatives felt at never being able to take Said off his pedestal.

This is not to say that I endorse all of Said’s political stands. On Israel, Kosovo and the first Gulf War, I think he was profoundly wrong. But on his main scholarly point, he was unfortunately correct.

But They Wanted To!

Dana Goldstein captures a particularly inane bit of the hearings:

Sen. Lindsay Graham just asked Gen. Petraeus, “Why did they [Al Qaeda in Iraq] come to Iraq?”

Petraeus responded, “To establish a base in the heart of the Middle East.”

Okay, right. But why was that possible? Because we destabilized the region through the invasion and occupation of Iraq, giving terrorist groups a new foothold.

Dana’s obviously right - the key variable in Al Qaeda setting up shop in Iraq was not anything intrinsic to AQ, but instead the fact that we created a near perfect environment for them. Not only did we, as she said, destabilize the country and create a lawless zone in which they could fester - and even this isn’t entirely accurate as much of AQ wasn’t/isn’t foreign - we also gave Al Qaeda a chance to do their favorite thing: shoot at Americans and their allies! Graham’s logic, whereby Al Qaeda does what it wants and then we respond, is backwards: we enact policies and then Al Qaeda is able to act in our wake.

Al Qaeda and such are almost like parasites or viruses in the international system. They have very little agency and can’t just do what they want, when they want, in the same way that a state can. They instead depend on all sorts of conditions and circumstances to be right to implement their agenda. Look at, for example, the occupation of Saudi Arabia or the US funding of guerrillas in Afghanistan. Before that, plenty of people wanted to fight the Soviets with big guns, but couldn’t until we gave them said large guns. And while Bin Laden wasn’t a big fan of the US before the Gulf War, when we had troops in Saudi Arabia, he could make a convincing case that Americans were occupying the Arab world. Also, if you look at terrorist attacks in Europe, they probably wouldn’t have happened (Spain certainly) without the invasion of Iraq.

I think it’s more useful to look at the threat of transnational terror as an emergent property of the world order rather than some sort of exogenous force that is entirely independent of outside influence and is entirely self-directed. To use a comic books reference, transnational Islamic terrorism is not like the Phoenix Force - it’s not the “immortal and mutable manifestation of the prime universal force of life. Born of the void between states of being, a child of the universe…the nexus of all psionic energy which does, has, and ever will exist in all realities of the omniverse“

The problem with making this type of argument these days is that when you do, people claim you’re “blaming America first” or that you’re saying there’s “moral equivalence” between the West and Al Qaeda. To be very clear , I don’t “blame” the US for terrorism, clearly terrorists are responsible , I just want to point out how many of our policies and actions certainly don’t help reduce the threat of terrorism, and how many of them exacerbate it.

Why Not Sadr?

The first thing I’ll say about the hearings is that everyone should reading Dana Goldstein et al at TAPPED and Spencer Ackerman at The Independent Streak for Petraeus-Crocker liveblogging, and also should watch Juan Cole’s and Daniel Drezner’s Iraq-themed bloggingheads. Speaking of which, this one bit brings up a very important point vis a vis Iran:

from bloggingheads.tv posted with vodpod

Surely, Iranian influence and increased power in the region isn’t something we should feel great about. One of the huge strategic errors of the war was giving this huge geopolitical gift to Iran. And even more worrying is that the two biggest centers of power - Maliki, ISCI and the Badr Group AND Sadr and his minions - both draw upon significant Iranian support. So, when we eventually withdraw, it’s basically assured that Iran will have significant leverage in Iraq. So who do we want in charge when we leave? Sadr or Maliki, ISCI or Mahdi?

As far as constraining Iranian influence, it seems like Sadr would be the best choice. For starters many leaders of ISCI were clerics who hid out in Iran while Saddam was in power, and Badr was started by the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and some Bard members are even drawing Iranian pensions. Sadr, on the other hand, has significant tactical and logistical support from Iran, but that’s largely because we’ve decided that we’re friends with ISCI and enemies of Sadr, and so he’s been able to get Iranian support. What makes this weird is that Sadr is the nationalist and if he were in power when we left, he would be marginally more likely to resist Iranian influence. Cole also makes the point that Sadr was worried about Iranian “special groups” gaining within the Mahdi Army, and part of the reason for his cease fire was that he wanted to isolate those Iranian loyalists. Maliki and his minions, however, don’t seem to be so worried about Iranian influence per se, just that Iranian influence which hurts them.

But the important thing to remember is that neither Maliki nor Sadr nor anyone who could possibly come to power in Iraq will just be acquiescent to Iranian “colonization” or anything resembling outsize Iranian influence. There’s the basic thing that no one likes foreigners running their nation, not to mention the huge amount of bad blood from Iran-Iraq War and the fact that Persians and Arabs tend not to be best buddy. In many ways, US troops are the glue that binds Iran and Iraqi Shia’s together, without a common enemy or source of tension (US, Saddam) there’s no exogenous motivation for them to be especially close.

PS - For the definitive look at Iranian connections with the current ruling party in Iraq, check out Matt Duss.

No, That’s Not How It Happened

Abe Greenwald, in the course of excoriating the Times for writing a sympathetic profile of the person who first thought up the much-lauded Anbar Awakening strategy and is now languishing in jail, just says something that is not true:

But Mr. al-Kharbit’s policy on tribes is to extend “tribal hospitality” to even the most despicable criminal co-member of one’s sect, as he did in the case of Saddam Hussein. Is this not the exact opposite of the policy the U.S. is enforcing amongst tribes in Iraq today? The Sunni Awakening and various efforts among the Shiites are geared towards getting Iraqis to look past sectarian affiliation and towards statehood. The Sunni Awakening is Sunnis turning on Sunnis; last week’s Basra battle was, in some sense, Shiite on Shiite. Only if members of both sects turn on the problem elements within each group can stability be achieved.

I’m sorry, but no. It’s easy to look at Iraq as simply Shia v Sunni v Kurd and to think that all can be explained by looking at those three groups, and I’ll admit that I fall into this comfortable schema too much.  But the events of that last few months, starting with the Awakening, prove that it’s not that people are shedding their sectarian committments for a national Iraqi one, but instead that their committments are too smaller groups than merely “Shia” or “Sunni.” So when the Sunnis in Anbar go after al Qaeda in Iraq, they aren’t doing at as “sunnis” or “iraqis” but instead as members of their own tribe.  Similarly when al-Maliki tried to conquer Basra, while the army was the official Iraqi one, it was really just a conflict between two Shia, Iranian-backed militias.   This is not to say that the Sunnia/Shia divide doesn’t exist, and  even assuming that it does, Greenwald is still wrong.  That’s because the people in the Anbar Awakening have no intention of working on behalf of “iraq” - which to them is just another Shia militia - in fact, the government has steadfastly refused to integrate the Awakening forces, but has easily been able to hire some 10,000 Badr brigade and Dawa fighters.  Hawks need to get around that Iraq’s state capicity, authority and monopoly of legitimate violence has only decreased recently, and largely as part of the security strategy that they have lauded.

What Would Happen If We Withdraw?

Mark Lynch has a very thoughtful and thorough look at the political consequences for the major factions in Iraq - green zone politicians, Sunni insurgents, Sadrites and Shiites and Al Qaeda.  There’s not a whole lot to add, except to note his strong opinion that what the Surge has accomplished - the weakening of the central government and the further factionalization of Iraq - does not make the prospects for withdrawal any rosier:

The single most important question shaping the possibility of US withdrawal is whether it takes place in the context of a relatively strong, competent and effectively sovereign Iraqi state.  US strategy should be oriented towards producing that core condition. The strategic failure of the “surge” has been that it has eroded the capacity and sovereignty of the Iraqi state by building up mutually hostile armed groups outside national institutions.  The US must work to strengthen state institutions, and to force the integration of the Awakening Councils into the national army and police in advance of its withdrawal in order to avoid sectarian warfare.  Despite the current American fashion in favor of decentralization, Iraqi support for a centralized Iraqi state remains strong: in last month’s BBC survey, 66% of Iraqis preferred a unified Iraq with a strong central government, while only 23% favored the federation of strong regional governments.

A withdrawal will be more likely to produce positive effects if it is preceded by building Iraqi national institutions and mobilizing regional support.  The  most vulnerable remaining populations should be protected as long as possible. Intra-communal power struggles will likely be increasingly significant flashpoints with or without a US withdrawal, but will likely intensify in anticipation of a withdrawal which would likely significantly weaken the current ruling elite.   I do not expect a withdrawal to proceed smoothly, given the legacy of five years of wrong paths, mismanagement, and sectarian violence.  But it is also not impossible, especially if steps are taken now to improve the odds, and it is made more likely by a  credible commitment to withdrawal.

This brings up the real question for a Democratic administration.  Are we too far down the road of a degraded Iraqi state and set of political institutions to hope that a change in US policy could every actually get us to a place where we our withdrawal would have fewer negative effects than it would now?  And, would it be worth the strategic oppurtunity costs and the loss of American life and treasure to try and reach this point?

While Lynch is hopeful that we could push towards centralization because large numbers of Iraqis support a strong centralized state, it’s worth noting that 34% don’t - much higher numbers than you’ll find in any well-ordered country. Also, Lynch’s conditions for a strong state that we could properly withdraw from with minimal negative consequences may be slightly fantastical.  For instance, he says that we have to “force the integration of the Awakening Councils into the national army and police in advance of its withdrawal in order to avoid sectarian warfare.”  At the moment, there seems to be little reason that the Shiites who largely dominate the police and army would want to accept the Sunni Awakening Councils or why the Councils would want to lose their autonomy and support by entering into an Army that is staffed by their enemies.  If this really is the “lynchpin” (haha) for achieving a “successful” withdrawal, then I think we should just withdraw now.  Our policies have gone too far in encouraging the dissolution of any sucessful Iraqi state and the only large enough shock to the system would actually be a credible plan for withdrawal, as Lynch himself says:

No Iraqi actor would scream more loudly or offer more dire warnings of impending doom than the current Green Zone elite – and, not coincidentally, these are the voices most often heard in Washington and by politicians on short visits to Baghdad.   But their warnings should be understood at least in part as expressions of their own political self-interest.   No Iraqi actor is more likely to quickly readjust its behavior and calculations should such a withdrawal be announced.  With the US set to depart, the whole range of national reconciliation initiatives which are currently seen as at best luxuries and at worst mortal threats would suddenly become a much more intense matter of self-interest.  The integration of the Sunni Awakenings, for instance, would move from a challenge to Shia hegemony over the security forces into the best possible way to pre-empt their military challenge.  The credible commitment to withdrawal would give the US much-needed leverage over the Green Zone leadership.

From reading this paragraph, it looks like planning for, and then executing, a withdrawal would hit two birds with one stone. For one, it would probably be the only move extreme enough to reverse the poor strategy of the surge and supporting the Anbar Awakening at the expense of centralization, and it would also get us out of Iraq.  This may seem tautalogical, but I think it’s still useful:  only a withdrawal can create the conditions that would allow for withdrawal.

Anti-Genocide, Anti-War, No Contradictions.

Michael Young’s most recent Reason column celebrates Samantha Power’s fall from grace, because apparently she’s a hypocrite for writing about America’s silence in the face of genocide and yet still advocating a withdrawal from Iraq:

Power’s sin was to be frank, as the debate over Iraq continues to be distorted by falsehood. What none of the Democratic candidates will admit to, even as they deftly contradict themselves to later justify an about-face, is that there is little prospect of the U.S. leaving Iraq without sectarian conflict ensuing. Allowing this outcome would indeed be the betrayal Obama warned against in Boston, before betraying his rejection of such a betrayal by issuing his promise of a timed pullout that he is again likely to betray.

What Young, and he’s hardly alone, gets wrong is his notion that sectarian conflict will just magically spring up as the US leaves. The problem with Iraq is that despite increased troop levels, all the ingredients for a bloody civil war are still there. Even as we’ve put in more troops, gotten Sadr to declare a ceasefire and bribed the Sunnis to turn against Al Qaeda, we have a weaker central government, more distrust between Sunnis and Shiites, no effective national army and generally, no steps towards political reconciliation. What this means is that when a troop draw down happens, as it inevitably will, a huge blow up is all but inevitable. There have already been hints that the (relative) respite in violence may be ending, like the car bomb that killed more than 40 people in Karbala. So it’s wrong for Young and his ilk to say that withdrawing from Iraq will inevitably lead to ethnic conflict and then just assuming that there’s anything current or any propose US policy can do to stop it. If the last five years have taught us anything, it’s that the US presence hasn’t done much to resolve the root causes of violence in Iraq, if anything, it has and will continually exasperate it.

What makes Young’s lame game of gotcha even less convincing is this quote he dregs up from Obama, which apparently proves that the “truth” of the War is that no one actually supports a quick withdrawal:

And that was nothing compared to what Obama said in 2004, the day after his keynote address at the Democratic national convention in Boston. Speaking at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, he had declared: “The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster. It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died…It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective.”

Young assumes that the exact same analysis could be made today. And, superficially, he’s correct. But notice one major difference. In 2004, there were 900-plus American war dead, today, there are over 4,000. What Obama has come to realize - and what Young hasn’t - is that our strategy there is futile. If another 3,000 dead has gotten us nowhere close to eventually being able to leave behind a stable Iraq, why are we to assume that the next 3000 dead will be able to accomplish anything more? What we’ve seen since 2004 is continual assurances from people like Young that the situation in Iraq is improving and that there will be horrible violence if we withdraw. What instead has happened is that the violence has remained and the underlying causes of the sectarian violence remain. To call Power and Obama hypocrites for trying to resolve our greatest strategic failure in generations is just galling. The hypocrites are those who, after five years of futile war and brutal occupation, think that the only answer is more war.

What They Got Wrong

Slate has a very good feature entitled “Why Did We Get It Wrong” in which three liberal hawks - Kenan Makiya, Fred Kaplanand Chris Hitchens- all appraise their stance on the war.  Kaplan, of course,  turned against the war before it even began and Makiya is still convinced that it was noble to “knock down the walls of the great concentration camp that was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq” but is now indecisive about whether the war itself was a good idea.  Both Kaplan and Makiya demonstrate admirable introspection about why they supported the war and how evidence accumulated to make them change their minds, or at least rethink.  And then there’s Hitchens.

Hitchens is, of course, unapologetic and thinks that he can separate his support for the war from the horrible execution of it, which he takes no responsibility for.  And here’s his conclusion:

And that is what I call the Bishop Berkeley theory of Iraq, whereby if a country collapses and succumbs to trauma, and it’s not our immediate fault or direct responsibility, then it doesn’t count, and we are not involved. Nonetheless, the very thing that most repels people when they contemplate Iraq, which is the chaos and misery and fragmentation (and the deliberate intensification and augmentation of all this by the jihadists), invites the inescapable question: What would post-Saddam Iraq have looked like without a coalition presence?

The past years have seen us both shamed and threatened by the implications of the Berkeleyan attitude, from Burma to Rwanda to Darfur. Had we decided to attempt the right thing in those cases (you will notice that I say “attempt” rather than “do,” which cannot be known in advance), we could as glibly have been accused of embarking on “a war of choice.” But the thing to remember about Iraq is that all or most choice had already been forfeited. We were already deeply involved in the life-and-death struggle of that country, and March 2003 happens to mark the only time that we ever decided to intervene, after a protracted and open public debate, on the right side and for the right reasons. This must, and still does, count for something.

You’ll notice something interesting.  As far as Hitchens sees it, it’s not our responsibility to look at the consequences of advocating for an invasion.  Instead, all that matters is that we intervened on the “right side for the right reasons.”  The problem with looking at a decision this way is that it discourages the exact type of analysis that everyone admits needed to happen before Iraq.  Namely, what would the consequences of the invasion be besides removing Hussein from power? Kaplan says that part of the reason he turned against the war was that he determined that “in no shape—diplomatically, politically, or intellectually to wage [this war] or at least to settle its aftermath.”  Questions of whether of Hussein’s Iraq was “a concentration camp” or whether we were on the “right side” necessarily bracket off the types of considerations that even Hitchens and Makiya think that we ought to have made.  Hitchens is also being incredibly glib when he says that we intervened after an “open and public debate.”  Last time I checked, when advocates for a policy are presenting skewed intelligence in support of their war, no debate will be “open and public.” Also, constantly accusing ones opponents as being soft on genocide/fascism for opposing a preemptive war is hardly fulfilling the Habermasian ideal.

I’ll also note some noteworthy abscences - really just one - from the Slate symposium. Jeffrey Goldberg.

When War Was Horrible

After World War I, when entire generations of young men had died in trench warfare for nothing, many Europeans developed a strong, instinctive reaction against war and militarism.  While it’s easy to say with historical hindsight that those who didn’t want to militarily engage Hitler earlier were naive appeasers, we have to remember that in the battle of Somme, for instance, 19,000 British soldiers died - in one day. That’s almost five times the number of American dead in the five years of the Iraq War. One wonders if the American aversion to ground war, which we developed after Vietnam, will return when we finally entangle ourselves from Iraq.  Can we imagine, in 30 or 40 years, conservative politicians hectoring us about getting over the Iraq syndrome?

The reason I want to talk about World War I is because the last French soldier who actually fought in the trenches is now dead.  Lazare Ponticelliwas 110,  lied to get into the French and fought in the trenches.  When he was in his 30s, he joined the resistance. By 1947, he was fourty years old and had fought in two world wars.  I fear that with the passing of the World War I generation, our societal memory of just how awful war is will be eroded.

Below the fold is Wilfred Owen’s poem about trench warfare, Dulce et Decorum Est.

Rosen v Kagan on the Surge

There are plenty of people out there who could advocate for the Surge’s effectivness and that in general, the American strategy is working.  So why does the News Hour, which is the best nightly news show, call on Fred Kagan to debate Nir Rosen on the Surge.  It’s not that Fred Kagan isn’t qualified to debate it out, it’s that he was the principal architect of the Surge itself.  There is no possible world in which Fred Kagan wouldn’t declare that the Surge is a success.  It’s also true that Nir Rosen isn’t exactly the least biased observer out there (he did advocate withdrawal as early as December of 2005) but he doesn’t have as intense a personal and professional interest in the outcome of the Surge.  Of course, I wouldn’t want them to get Kimberly Kagan to advocate for the Surge, but maybe Eli Lake?

Also, if you watch the video (or read the transcript) you’ll see that Kagan tries to claim that the US presence in Iraq isn’t an occupation - citing UN resolutions and international law.  This is an amazingly flatulent statement.  If you ask Iraqis whether they wouldn’t call some 160,000 foreign troops in their country, regularly engaging in military actions all over their country, killing Iraqis and dropping bombs an “occupation” because of some technicalities of international laws, you’d be laughed at.  The reason why occupations, and imperialistic foreign policy in general, rarely work is because the people being occupied nearly inevitably get pissed off and extremely violent.  Kagan, who unlike Rosen hasn’t been in Iraq on-and-off since the invasion, doesn’t really seem to get the distinction between homegrown violence and foreign, occupying violence and why people consider them to be different. He also fails to explain how after we heavily arm and support these “Concerned Citizens” of Iraq, who were mostly ex-Sunni Insurgents, why they won’t just turn on their enemy Shiites in the central government.  The reason they turned against Al Qaeda was two-fold, us giving them money and AQ threatening them and their territory.  So they’re still very provincial, and well, tribal.  So why do we expect them to not want to take on the Sunnis.  Kagan also doesn’t address what happens after the Surge, which is still the most important question for Kagan, McCain et. al to answer.

De-Baathification…

Remember that de-baathification law that would allow low-level ex-Baathists to enter the Iraqi government and reintegrate into Iraq life?  The one that Fred Kagan, Jack Keane and Michael O’Hanlon all pointed to as evidence that the Surge was working at establishing the conditions for political reconciliation?  Well, as was widely discussed in the blogosphere when the news originally broke, the law is nothing close to a full-up re-integration of low level Baathists and looks to be a ploy by Shiites who supported the bill to purge more of their political enemies:

But now, under new legislation promoted as way to return former Baathists to public life, the 56-year-old and thousands like him could be forced out of jobs they have been allowed to hold, according to Iraqi lawmakers and the government agency that oversees ex-Baathists.

“This new law is very confusing,” Awadi said. “I don’t really know what it means for me.”

He is not alone. More than a dozen Iraqi lawmakers, U.S. officials and former Baathists here and in exile expressed concern in interviews that the law could set off a new purge of ex-Baathists, the opposite of U.S. hopes for the legislation.

And even if the law, as written, didn’t just provide for a more effective purge of political opponents, since it’s being implemented by people who have no interest integrating former baathists, it’s unlikely to do anything of substance:

  But unlike the draft, the legislation approved by parliament Jan. 12 would restrict division members from working in a host of government agencies, including the Defense, Interior, Foreign and Finance ministries. Since scores of division members — at least 7,000, according to the de-Baathification commission — occupy jobs in those ministries, that means the new law could purge them from their current positions.

“The new law is much harsher than what the Americans wanted,” Chalabi said.

U.S. officials say they believe the law is likely to result in more ex-Baathists returning to government and hope none will be removed. But they recognize that the outcome depends on implementation, which will be overseen largely by a seven-member commission nominated by the Iraqi cabinet and confirmed by parliament.

What’s unforunate is that many people knew these details of the bill and why it was unlikely to be effective and yet it still being reported as a key sign of political progress.  For the sake of the public, who has been inundated with stories about the surge’s tactical success, they’re likely to see that a check box on the reconciliation list “de-baathification” has been marked off.  There’s likely to be little reporting of how, in six months to the year, after the bill is a failure, that the bill was always flawed.  Instead, those like Keane, O’Hanlon and Kagan, who are serially incapable of saying anything bad about the current strategy, despite the uptick in violence as the surge is ending, will laud anything they get as a reason to stay in Iraq indefinitely.   The strategy is flawed, there are no real goals that our military presence is supposed to accomplish, and a good portion of the commentariat is constantly moving the goal posts for what constitutes the minimal level of success necessary to keep the troops in.

Civilian Control is soooo 00s

Eli Lake recommends that when it comes to force levels and our political relationship with the government of Iraq, it doesn’t matter who the elected commander-in-chief is, but instead whatever General Petraeus thinks:

And just to put the Democratic Party aspirates further on the spot, who is the logical person to decide what kind of American force levels are going to be required to help protect voters — remember those brave souls with the purple-stained fingers at whom all of us thrilled — from the assassins and saboteurs who are lurking? Why, the logical person is General Petraeus. Talk about your willing suspension of disbelief. Is Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama going to gainsay the general’s judgment on a matter like this? Particularly because the 2009 elections are so key to the long term stability of Iraq. If Iraqis elect new leaders, or their example in throwing out some confessional terror parties persuades others to reform, then the country can emerge from the ashes of the war its neighbors waged against it.

This is radical stuff.  Decisions about force levels around the 2009 election are not tactical, but instead are strategic and political.  The person whose responsibility it is to formulate the best policy for the “long term stability of Iraq” and the American national interest isn’t General Petraeus, but whoever is in the White House.  Now, if this were a mere tactical question, like, “how many troops should be we deploy to Ramadi,” then Petraeus should be making that decision, but when it comes to “when should we start to withdraw troops” or “should we keep troop levels high for as long as possible or gradually draw-down”, that’s unambiguously a decision that the president should make.

John McCain, who is running on how qualified a commander-in-chief he is, has been making a similar point in many debates that his Iraq policy will essentially be decided by General Petraeus.  One of the more fruitful developments in our post Korean War history is the decline of the overly powerful, politically influential, popular, and partisan general who people expect to dictate policy to the president.  I fear that because of the abysmal leadership Bush has shown, the basic civil-military assumptions have collapsed and now that we have a General who is impressive in all the ways Bush isn’t, there has been a huge rush to cede unprecedented amounts of authority to him. It’s not supposed to work this way.

What’s With Columnists Named R. Cohen?

First it was Richard Cohen with his six degrees of seperation, racially charged, jew-baiting smear of OBama, and now it’s Rogen Cohen telling us that McCain is “too honorable to dismiss at a moment so critical to U.S. standing in the world.centrist candidate.”  From the very first sentence, we know that Cohen is up to some hard core McCain fluffing, “Nobody’s been right all the time on Iraq, but Senator John McCain has been less wrong than most.”  Cohen is right, with the exception of many Middle East scholars, more than half of the Senate Democrats and Barack Obama, nobody has been right all the time on Iraq.  While McCain was right that the strategy was poor, he was wrong on the central question — whether the war was a good idea and whether it’s a good idea to pursue it now.  Democrats and liberals like Matt Yglesias, Matt Stoller and Josh Marshall all were wrong on the war initially, but have since strongly reversed their positions, putting them in a better spot that McCain.

Cohen also misdiagnoses why McCain was “dead” just a few months ago.  He argues that McCain was “undone by his backing of President Bush’s Iraq policy.”  Wrong again, in the GOP primary, you don’t lose points by backing the president on foreign policy.  Instead, McCain was undone by his opposition to the whole of the GOP on immigration, as any two-bit analyst would be able to tell you.

Cohen then goes on to insinuate that all who opposed the ” misbegotten, mishandled, bloody and costly war” are soft on fascism and that because Saddam invaded a foreign nation and gassed his own people a decade before the war began, we absolutely had to invade.  And McCain was right in this decision, not because of a thoughtful weighing of the cost and benefits of the war, but because McCain was “imprisoned…and know[s] what terror means: death of spirit, soul, life itself.”

Cohen and McCain — they both argue that the worst foreign policy blunder since Vietnam was OK because they can feel it, because they couldn’t have been soft on a nation whose militaristic expansionism was ten years old  and was no threat to the greater Middle East, so that they could stop genocides and wars that weren’t happening in 2003. These two were made for each other.

PS - Not only does Cohen paint McCain’s war mongering in the best possible light, he also describes as a “straight talker,” as McCain’s media fluffers are want to do.  For the proper antidote, everyone should go read Matt Welch’s message to newspaper editorial boards preparing to endorse McCain.

Even McCain and Lieberman Can’t Escape the Truth on the Surge

The Dueling Duo of Superhawks tell us that “The Surge Worked” in the opinion pages of today’s Wall Street Journal.  Their declaration is a bit strange because I remember when McCain and Lieberman were pushing for the surge and they claimed that increased troop numbers would provide “breathing room” for Iraqi politicians to address the underlying issues that are the motivation for the sectarian violence.  This process has not happened, instead, and McCain and Lieberman acknowledge this effect, our massive troop levels have simply reduced violence, as one would expect them too.  But for the surge to “work”, it needs to do more than reduce violence; for any new strategy to “work” in Iraq, it needs to get us closer to being able to withdraw from Iraq and leave a stable country left behind.  I, for one, don’t think any US military effort can achieve this goal, and it that isn’t worth the cost to maintain troops there, so I favor immediate withdrawal.  But surely McCain and Lieberman need to have a higher standard for what constitutes success in Iraq.

The second important point to remember when discussing the surge is alluded to in the piece’s title — the surge is ending. Notice how McCain and Lieberman say “The Surge Worked.”

First, it is unknown whether the security gains we have achieved with the surge can be sustained — and deepened — after we have drawn down to 15 brigades. Until we know with certainty that we can keep al Qaeda on the run with 15 brigades, it would be a mistake to commit ourselves preemptively to a drawdown below that number.

While it would nice to imagine that we could maintain the current troop levels indefinitely, as Fred Kaplan explained, it’s simply infeasible to do so.  Unless we want to destroy the all volunteer military, the troop levels have to be reduced.  By July, and certainly be September, the surge will be completely over.

McCain and Lieberman acknowledge these two inescapable truths about Iraq — the surge hasn’t led to meaningful political progress and it can’t be sustained — and yet they still think that we should have a Roman style Triumph for David Petraeus.  Unfortunately, it’s just about impossible to envision a scenario in which McCain and Lieberman wouldn’t say that we needed to stay involved in a military conflict, so perhaps celebrating their pseudo-recognition of the surge’s ultimate folly is a bit pointless.

How’s the Surge Doing?

Steve Negus, the Financial Times Iraq correspondent has one of the more cogent pieces exploring exactly what the surge has accomplished and why it isn’t the panacea so many make it out to be.   Especially interesting is his observation of what exactly has been necessary to quell violence in the parts of Iraq where we’ve deployed more troops:

According to American officers, the surge worked by allowing the US and Iraqi governments to blanket strategic districts, in some cases placing troops in positions where they could overlook virtually every main road junction.

While it’s certainly true that in the sense of reducing US and Iraqi causalities, the surge is working, it’s impossible for Army to maintain enough troops to patrol every intersection and it’s highly unlikely that the American public will support this type of long term, high intensity occupation of Iraq forever.  But on a more short term basis Negus makes the now irrefutable argument that the surge has failed at its own stated goals — namely that security brought by increased troops levels would provide “breathing room” for politicians to reconcile and build trust in the Iraqi state.  This process, despite claims of “bottom-up reconciliation” simply has not occurred, and thus the surge is failing to meet its own ends.  Surge advocates ought to be more honest when they say its working, and admit that so far, the only strategy for tamping down on sectarian violence has been massive troop deployments, and it is not sustainable:

It could be the US troop presence, rather than low-profile trust-building measures, that is the crucial factor in keeping the feuding factions apart. “The Americans can [prevent local conflicts] now because they have leverage through the military,” says Mr Hiltermann.

The US surge does appear to have interrupted the cycle of violence that a year ago seemed to be pushing Iraq inexorably into all-out sectarian war. But it has not bought Iraqis enough time to resolve their differences and it is unclear whether local ceasefires can last without US troops to help resolve disagreements and prevent groups from settling their disputes by force.

And when the violence starts to ramp up in the summer and early fall as troop levels fall, maybe Fred Barnes and Ann Althouse will know why Democrats won’t admit that the surge is working.

The Alternate McCain Universe

Andy McCarthy argues that if McCain were elected in 2000, he wouldn’t have invaded Iraq. I think he’s pretty wrong, in 2000, McCain was running as a much more hawkish candidate than Bush.  While Iraq wasn’t really on the front-burner then, McCain had advocated for ground troops in Kosovo, lambasted the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea as appeasement,  advocated for “rogue-state rollback”, took the basic Kagan/Kristol position that America’s hegemonic role necessitated more interventions and had Kristol and most of the Weekly Standard behind his campaign.  If Bush, who was running on a “humble” foreign policy, was so adamant about invading Iraq, then certainly McCain would have been as well.

Who’s Taking a Holiday From History?

John Podhoretz’s post, claiming that Bhutto’s assassination is the turning point from venal campaign riff raff to serious talk about foreign policy, seems to have captured the emerging CW. While I agree that candidates using Bhutto’s assassination as a chance to talk about their foreign policy is a good thing, J-Pod is wrong in saying that up until now, the campaign has just been about silly stuff.

On the Democratic side, foreign policy has been constantly discussed. Obama’s judgment on the Iraq war is why many Democrats are supporting him. They realize how serious a foreign policy disaster Iraq was, and they want a candidate who won’t make the same mistake. When Clinton harped on Obama for promising to meet with foreign leaders or pledging not to use nukes against terrorists or saying he would bomb Pakistan, that was a serious foreign policy debate. When Obama and Edwards go after Clinton for voting yes on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, it’s because they think that giving Bush any war-making authority with Iran would be a huge error for America’s security and foreign policy.

It’s on the Republican side, however, that we’re seeing the “holiday from history.” With the exception of Paul and Huckabee, the Republican candidates are in lockstep with Bush on Iraq and on foreign policy more generally. When Mitt Romney talks about “doubling Gitmo” or when Rudy says that the problem with out foreign policy is that State Department officials don’t advocate for America enough, that’s taking a holiday from history. I could go on and on with the un-serious, inane or just batshit insane ideas Republican candidates have about foreign policy, but I think you get the point.

But we all know that when Podhoretz talks about moving “foreign policy, the war on terror, and the threat of Islamofascism back into the center of the 2008 campaign” he clearly means that the campaign should become a contest to see who will invade the most Muslim countries and crack down on civil liberties the hardest. Which makes us wonder, why is he disappointed with the GOP race so far?