We lost control in Iraq a long time ago
Monday, January 29, 2007 at 12:40PM ARTICLE: Iranian Reveals Plan to Expand Role in Iraq, By JAMES GLANZ, New York Times, January 29, 2007
The dynamics here are so predictable.
Iran's been involved in supporting Shiia in Iraq for a long time. Now we're "discovering" this like crazy and revealing it to our public, but it's been well known and well documented all along.
Now that we target this, the Iranians are signaling they can go as long and as hard as need be on the subject. They're betting this is a struggle they've got legs on while clearly the Bush administration is under fire at home and therefore needs obvious wins in the short term.
I don't believe in fair fights. I also don't believe we've made this unfair enough to Iran, so I think we're picking a fight we will not win.
As sectarian violence picks up across Iraq, Iran will ramp up support to Shiia and Saudi support to the Sunnis will also ramp up. Both flows of support will enable the killing of Americans. Don't expect any crack down on Saudi support any time soon.
This is classic Rumsfeldian "enlargening the unsolvable problem in search of a larger solution." Problem is we're not offering Iran anything, so Iran's gonna simply wait us out.
The sectarian strife is the dominant dynamic now, which means we lost control of the situation in Iraq a long time ago. Now Iran's more in the driver seat, thanks to the Shiia being majority. We haven't solved Iraq, now Iran naturally thinks it's their turn.
And, quite frankly, they're right. "Victory" in civil wars--as Niall Ferguson so aptly points out--comes when winning sides are supported by outsiders. I would pick the Shiia over Sunni, and so when Iran does the same, they just access the solution set faster than we do. Our picking a fight with Iran won't change this underlying reality which our previous incompetence set in motion.
The Bush administration simply won't admit that our actions to date in the Long War have dramatically empowered Iran (my point all along), so they compound past failure with future failure. We made the choice to empower Iran, but Bush simply doesn't want to deal with that. He and Cheney are being completely unrealistic about what comes next. Their "my way or the highway" is cute when we're in the driver seat, but we're not anymore on Iraq, so pledging undying support to their continuing incompetence ain't patriotism, it's simply surrender to the current correlation of forces that they themselves have created.
Reader Comments (8)
The question is what can be done now.
My thought is that action needs to be taken primarily outside of Iraq.
Most immediately the US should initiate action to clear the cluster bombs in Lebanon. Yes this is a slap on the wrist to our ally Israel. But it is the right thing to do and might begin the process in which the US is viewed as the world peacemaker.
Globalization with the US perceived as the driving force for peace will make the US stronger and in the long run much more powerful.
Chaos led by Iran - Robert Baehr, former CIAhttp://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1583523,00.html?cnn=yes
Or WSJ's article - The American Iraq - Faoud Ajami 1/30/2007 (subscription required)
My addition would be that both visions are affected by the recent Mahdist cult failure, and favors the latter vision of a Shia majority government prevailing over the present events.
[comment edited for length]
From my distant perspective one side (us) has immense power but lacks the will to use it effectively. The otherside (the insurgents of every stripe, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia et al) have the determination to persist if not the resources to prevail. They know they don't need to win, they just need to avoid being obliterated and eventually America will hand them the victory. The President has tried to fight this war on the cheap and is losing it, the same way as his predecessors have lost or at best gained a draw in every conflict since WW2.
Think this is an over dramatization? Think about Korea, Bay of Pigs, Viet Nam, Laos, Sudan, Kosovo, 1st Gulf War and soon Iraq. What were the beginning and ending correlation of forces?
The one exception is the Cold War where the deciding factor was leadership, determination, and the willingness to expend political capital on behalf of a just cause. Of course a morally and economically bakrupt enemy also helped.
The simple fact is that even a bad strategy will work if one has the will to pulverize one's opponent (And no I'm not a proponent of the lets nuke Iran school of intelelctual pablum). But, in the absence of the latter, the best strategy will fail. We, collectively, lack the will to prevail in campaigns that require an ongoing commitment. The reasons for this are primarily cultural and we will continue to lose until these are addressed or until our enemies so over reach that even the most accomodationist member of the political/media classess acknowledges the threat.