The side I've always been on
Saturday, March 31, 2007 at 5:08AM A lot of readers, most notably those we've picked up from Hewitt, wonder why I don't stick firmly with Bush/Petraeus during the surge. They wonder why I would argue that it's a good thing for Dems to tie Bush's hands in his remaining time.
So let me reiterate to be clear:
I supported Bush's Big Bang decision to topple Saddam. To me, it was never about WMD, which is an overblown fear (it's not the ultimate Rubicon now that global war is off the agenda, it's just a super-weapon that we must deal with). To me, it was about a rule-set breaker who flouted the will of the global community for years on end. We got up the nerve to stop him in the early 1990s, and then, true to our Powell Doctrine roots at that time, we refused to finish the job.
9/11 happens and we respond to the apparent source in Afghanistan. Then Bush and neocons get up the nerve to finish the job in Iraq, ending the horror of the sanctions regimes, finally rescuing the courageous Kurds (well on their way to nationhood thanks to the northern fly zone), and giving the Shiia a chance to avenge the genocidal warfare rained upon them by Saddam with our implicit okay in the early 1990s (our southern no-fly zone eventually ends that). The Sunni Serbs responded as expected, Al Qaeda and others take advantage, and the insurgency begins.
The insurgency need not have grown so formidable, but the Ford reruns of this administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld) knew what they knew: 1) don't do Vietnams and 2) restore the presidency destroyed by Watergate. So they planned a truly brilliant war (Just Cause on steroids) and then with almost criminal neglect they didn't bother to plan for the peace, and stubbornly fought the postwar's entire unfolding.
Bush, so decisive in the first term when it came to kinetics, is lost when it comes to the non-kinetics. Saddled with two amazingly weak SECSTATES, both of whom were picked to be exactly that (weak, talking-point deliverers and nothing more), this administration has been adrift the entire second term, just as I feared (thus my call for Kerry). Bush was effective in changing the rule sets and putting the Middle East's board in play, but he's been amazingly ineffective when it comes to convincing others to adhere to that new rule set, in large part because he lacks--along with his entire administration--any significant strategic imagination.
Bush refused to take advantage of the changes he himself set so effectively in motion in the region. There was a huge groundswell of change across the Middle East the first 18 months following the war. When he had the chance to start regional dialogues that addressed the real fights of the region (Iran v Israel, Iran v Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda v House of Saud), he did not. He stubbornly stayed the course in Iraq, pretending an internal solution was possible in what quickly and logically became a regional conflict that all players on all sides are effectively conflating in a host of asymmetrical ways.
Bush's first great answer was to rerun the entire WMD drama on Iran.
Bush's second great answer was the surge. As I wrote several times earlier: the surge with serious regional diplomacy--that I would gladly support.
But the surge without serious regional and international diplomacy--that I do not support.
I do not support it because it is designed to fall.
I do not support it because I think it's Bush's ruse to Iranify the Long War.
I think that if Bush attacks Iran on his watch, he'll screw up the Big Bang permanently and could quite easily trigger a long-term rivalry with Russia and China in the region.
I find these pathways beyond stupidity, and so I do not support them.
People who act like you either support Bush's mismanagement of this postwar or you're un-American are myopic in the extreme. They're acting like we should put our entire team on the field for the extra point when we need to score a couple more touchdowns before the game clock runs out.
We are told: Why negotiate with people who don't want us to win?
I will tell you why: because we're not going to win--or lose. We're either going to keep the Big Bang rolling or we're going to let it die and let the region go right back to what it was. Not every play in this game is going to be for positive yardage. Sometimes we'll punt and play for field position.
And yeah, when we screw up royally, we'll take our medicine.
We've screwed up Iraq (outside of Kurdistan) and if we want to cut down our exposure, we'll have to accept many compromises. You can get mad about that and blame Bush or you can get mad about that and pretend the Left "stabbed us in the back." But stubborn is as stubborn does and Bush made all the big decisions, so whine about that or move along, because when the Dems tie his hands now it's not about preventing some illusory "win" in Iraq, it's about stopping a strategically idiotic war with Iran, which won't fix Iraq but make our entire effort there to date a complete waste of blood and treasure.
Bush, in my mind, has no idea how to win at this point. He pretends we can screw up and then take no pain for our efforts, so he eschews negotiations with people who have no intention of helping anyone but themselves (duh!). So both they, and everyone else involved in Iraq will continue to screw us, and both our blood and our treasure will continue to go largely wasted until Bush loses the stubbornness or simply leaves office.
I have no anticipation of Bush gaining strategic smarts any time soon, nor Cheney, whose Manichean world view makes him far more of a menace to America than any of our enemies. So I want the clock to run out on them with no further damage being inflicted on our strategic position.
I want to win. I just don't pretend we can come back on a single drive from being behind several scores.
As for those who do, they're free to have their own opinions.
But I can't peddle that sort of crap. It just won't get me in front of audiences like the 250 senior officers of CENTCOM I briefed on Monday. I just would never get those chances with that mindset. And you know why? They're totally interested in winning, not who gets the credit, so politics doesn't interest them one bit.
The point right now is how we move ahead, not how we save this presidency.
I believe in the United States, not in any one leader.
And I want to win in the end, not on the next play.
So let me be clear as crystal: my guys never leave office. They are there administration after administration. They know exactly what I'm about and I know exactly what they're about, and we get along just fine.
The politicians, meanwhile, get exactly what they deserve.
Reader Comments (18)
You have lost faith in the Bush administration's ability to get it right and, given your democrat leanings that is understandable. I don't understand why you believe the dems plan to get out of Iraq as soon as possible enhances the cause of shrinking the Gap.
We are losing the propaganda war very badly and leaving Iraq gives the jihadis another huge propaganda victory. One which may well mean the next Big Bang will have to be much bigger and much louder as well as far more difficult.
My feeling is, that if we leave Iraq, it will be near impossible to muster support for any kind of Big Bang unless we have suffered another catastrophic attack.
Of course I'm a Vietnam Vet who has never quite gotten over the way we stabbed the anti-Communist Vietnamese in the back. It certainly colors my thinking.
You have to read me a bit more clearly. I have never advocated leaving Iraq.
What I advocate is garrisoning our forces in Kurdistan and keeping a far smaller and more behind the scenes mil training and SOF presence in the rest of Iraq, plus keeping a significant off-shore naval presence.
That's hardly giving up on Iraq. As I said in last week's column, it's about getting what we can now and working the rest over the long haul. Trying to control two sides of a civil war plus fight an insurgency is not sustainable, not when we alienate our allies and friends to the extent that we're well over 90 percent of the boots on the ground.
I expect more reasoning than that. Are we supposed to bomb by the list? Yes, I think pushing the region toward needed change is more important than getting our rocks off on Iran right away. If that doesn't make me seem tough enough, then so be it.
We need to think more effects based and less bombs on target--as in, how about we trigger a revolution in Iran as quickly as possible?
Do you think that attacking the regime now will get us that? Or do you think, given past experience with Iran, that such an approach will prove counterproductive?
Look where we've pushed connectivity and won: former Soviet Union and China and Vietnam.
Look where we've pushed isolation and propped up dictators: Cuba, North Korea, Iran.
My argument has been simple and consistent: topple totalitarian regimes and soft-kill authoritarian ones.
And show some respect for sequencing and load-bearing.
That's why I'd advocate doing what is necessary to make Iraq work and let Shiite Iraq play Poland to Iran's Soviet Union.
Grand strategy isn't just pulling triggers.
1. Under new management, we open earnest dialogs to draw in the EU and other regional actors to do something (but what?) Do we threaten to actually leave and see what they do? And God forbid we betray the Kurds to appease Turkey or Iran!2. Or we allow a semi-controlled burn and let the shiite/sunni pressures in the region bleed themselves out? But, can the world energy market survive this if Iran disrupts the shipping there?3. Or we continue to hold down the insurgency and wait Iran's shakey economy and fading demographic out.4. Meanwhile what about the possible meltdown of Pakistan? Do we have the luxury of time to wait?
Thank you for you sharing of your analysis and view on this site.
I'd say Tokyo has problems with this idea. Beijing? New Delhi? Italy. South Korea. The EU. They have huge vested interests here. Here's your Yalta-like split. You think India chooses us over China? This fake tough guy bullshit is pathetic.
Iran is significantly above where it was 12 years ago, more than either China and Russia; although, given where it started...
These perhaps extraneous observations aside, I wonder if Tom's observation,
I think that if Bush attacks Iran on his watch, he'll screw up the Big Bang permanently and could quite easily trigger a long-term rivalry with Russia and China in the region.
does not quite match up with an old 5GW dream he had. Certainly, actual rivalry with China and Russia in the region is not a great scenario, although it could mask the "fake loss" for the U.S. and give China and Russia more incentive to invest their own blood and treasure in the region -- and share in the problems there. If Iran isn't willing to upgrade its economic freedoms to the U.S. standard, it might upgrade to the lower China/Russia standard, which would still be an improvement. (Having such benefactors would require accepting some of their demands, perhaps.)
But not at the expense of many U.S. lives and the extraordinary domestic strife such a move would engender, particularly if the attack on Iran did not go as smoothly as the attack on Iraq. So pulling back to Kurdistan and "losing" that way would probably be a better scenario.
So what is the end game here? That is, how long do we alone sit on Iraq? The whole board is in play; COIN and god-machine in Czech. is not good enough.
Personally, I don't give Bush credit for invading and occupying Iraq. You go to war with the politicians you have in charge and Bush&Co have demonstrated they were the wrong group. It was extremely likely from the beginning that they would mismanage everything after the fall of Baghdad. As you note, they could derail the best thing going on internationally in the last 50 years. Our only hope is to survive another 18 months without any further major damage.
As for redeployment of most forces, it will happen after Bush leaves. We will keep trainers and anti-Qaeda units around and help the Kurds get underway. Until then, we will just keep bleeding our military to exhaustion. That will be Bush's legacy.
Hold on. OK, here we go.http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/pa12_murtha/pr051117iraq.htmlNov. 17, 2005
"My plan calls:
To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.To create a quick reaction force in the region.To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines.To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq "
And I think, for example, Pelosi and H. Clinton have more or less endorsed versions of that plan. (Could be wrong about that, frankly.)
And in terms of big picture, the ISG report roughly agrees with those goals. Not the over-horizon-part, I don't think, because they talked about embedded forces. And there's lots of argument about timetables.
Anyway, the point is, the Dems have been reasonably consistent about the alternatives they have offered. Even Obama, probably the most consistently opposed to the war of the major Dem candidates, has an Iraq plan based on the recommendations of the ISG.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/
And now I suddenly feel like a flack for the DNC. Anyway, the point is, even in opposition, the Dems are offering plans.
Not that I disagree with you in regards to what an attack on Iran would mean, particularly as it relates to Russia and China, but I was wondering, if you could think of any way in which we could attack Iran without ending in a situation where we would not "trigger a long-term rivalry with Russia and China in the region"?