I Promise to Try to Stop Blogging About Iraq
In light of the tragic death of a young Iraqi reporter, one of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who’ve died in the course of the Iraq war thus far, Matt Yglesias asks an important question.
But a military campaign with no coherent political objectives is just a slow-motion disaster. It’s not saying anything against our troops to observe that when their orders don’t have any larger purpose beyond keeping the them deployed in Iraq that they can’t possibly succeed. After all, what could they be succeeding at?
They could be succeeding in giving Iraqis the time and resources they need to build a functioning society.
Since AQI was only ever a small group of people whose importance existed primarily in administration rhetoric, why shouldn’t we be able to crush them? But at the same time, while Bush would like to claim a success on this front, officials are quick not to claim too much success, lest that success suggest that it’s time to pack our bags and go home.
Basically, if the policy’s failing, that means we must continue it. And if it’s succeeding, that means we must continue it.
This is very perceptive, but a little off. Let’s leave aside the encouraging news, and let’s leave aside the fact that political reconciliation doesn’t happen on demand. When it was determined that the policy was failing, we changed it. We also settled on a series of somewhat arbitrary metrics to measure the success or failure of the new policy. Some very good things then happened, and the policy continued to adapt in real time. There was little movement along most of the arbitrary metric, backsliding in some, and progress in others. Of course, the arbitrary metrics failed to capture the changed strategic picture because they were not designed to do so. (How could they have been?) Given this changed landscape, some think we should continue a policy of not withdrawing. Everything else about the policy is subject to change in response to an ever-changing political and military situation.
How strange is this, really? It’s not neatly captured in an aphorism, which is the great failing of those of us who care about the climate crisis. It is easy to explain to people that a higher gas tax hits you in the wallet. It is very difficult to explain to financially strapped people how their way of life contributes to ecological destruction, and why this matters to very vulnerable people and to them. But we do our best.
A key part of any successful strategy will be some minimal expectation of stability, which in this case means a sustained commitment of American forces over a long period of time. As we all know, this is not a popular position. I do think President Bush, who I frankly think should have been ejected from office long ago, has done a relatively good job of making it clear that he believes US troops will need to remain in Iraq for the long haul. To the extent there is any ambiguity on this point, I think it is right and proper for pundits like Matt to make it perfectly clear that the current strategy requires just such a sustained commitment. Troop numbers will decline, but for the current strategy, of marginalizing and defeating the most irreconcilable sectarian militias and co-opting the rest, to work, troop numbers will have to stay pretty high.
What we need are Democrats and Republicans who are willing to make this case forthrightly.
What of the news that this young Iraqi reporter was likely killed by a member of the so-called Awakening Council, which is united with US forces in the fight against AQI? I can’t say I find this surprising.
I hate cheap historical analogies, but I don’t hate them enough not to use them: As Stalin swept across Nazi-occupied Europe, his soldiers committed horrible crimes along the way. These were young men trained to kill, and sometimes to do worse. The most miserable thing about any war, I’ve been led to understand by parents who’ve lived through one, is that all of the instincts that make us human are blunted and contorted into something truly horrible. I hate to tell you this, but there are murderers and thugs in the Awakening Council, and there were murderers and thugs in the Rwandan Patriotic Front that halted the genocide and a small handful even in the tightly disciplined militaries of the West. (A movie like i>Redacted makes us uncomfortable, but crimes like those portrayed in the movie really have marred American history.) My guess is that there are more in the semiliterate tribal militias or Iraq and of Sudan’s Darfur region, and all of them are opportunistically aligned against yet other brutal killers.
This ought to make us deeply uncomfortable. It’s not clear to me how extricating ourselves from this decidedly gray world is possible. Withdrawal won’t do it: we will still be deeply implicated in the killing to come. Colonizing space is one option, though one fears the same patterns would reemerge. And frankly, I’m not quite willing to give up on this planet.
Ok, an enormous “the american scene” logo is filling the name box. This is Freddie.
First of all, the very good news, I’m afraid, is not compelling. It is only very good news if you cheat the numbers, as the administration has, as when they didn’t include car bombs in the surge numbers (with no explanation given), or when they didn’t include people shot in the front of the head, only those shot in the back of the head, or that they shifted the benchmarks constantly… the question that begs to be asked is why, if there was very good news, the administration had to engage in so many lies to tell it.
They could be succeeding in giving Iraqis the time and resources they need to build a functioning society.”
What can this even mean? I am utterly baffled by this “buying time” construction in regards to Iraq. Look, sooner or later, this country will have to be self-governing. It may be in the year 2525, but it has to happen. And there will be people who want to kill other people then. You do not outlast an insurgency. The insurgency outlasts you. This has been said before, but since you’re in the habit of utilizing cheap historical analogies— in 1972 things were going better for the South Vietnamese than they had for perhaps a decade. There had been some modest military gains and key logistical and material improvements in the fight with the NVA. And you know what? It didn’t matter<. Because the NVA and Viet Cong knew, like every insurgency knows, that it doesn’t have to win. It just has to keep losing. Biding time? For when? For the magical time when violence leaves the globe? These people live here. This is their home. They aren’t going anywhere. And what has to be remembered— what has to be remembered— is that we aren’t exactly doing wonders at providing security now. I am baffled, baffled, by people who say “if we leave, things will get really bad!” They are beyond really bad now. It is hell on Earth in Iraq now.
Who are these people, I wonder, who you think are going to create this political compromise and functioning society? The politicians have given up! They are not moving towards a political reconciliation. They have abandoned the most basic goals of the reconciliation. There is more and more evidence that the things negotiated by the politicians will have little impact on the sectarian groups fighting. Explain to me why, precisely, a sectarian militia man who has been fighting tooth and nail for a piece of land would abandon his claim at the behest of his supposed political leader.
Who is going to build this society, if it ever gets stabilized? The educated class is gone. They are dead or they have fled. The lawyers are gone. The doctors are gone. The architects and bureaucrats and teachers and engineers and professors and technicians, they are all gone. The people who fight are left. And they aren’t leaving. And they want it more than you.
What about the notion that a society can only put itself together? What about the reality of democracy, that it happens when the logistical and social prerequisites are present, and not before? What about the idea that the country will start to make its steps towards normalcy when it is forced to assure its own security, that having a nannying colonist presence prevents a country from (re)learning to walk on its own? What about the idea that having an invading army in their country makes people fucking crazy and that the sooner we can remove that aspect of Iraqi life, that enormous target and focus of anger and resentment and violence, the better? And what about Iraq’s responsibility towards us? When will they begin to live up to their ends of the bargain? Is our commitment really limitless? Is there really no end to what we owe them? I don’t believe we should intervene in Burma. As a matter of fact, I think it would be a disaster. But I watch a real, organic democratic regime get crushed with little chance of success and receive no material support from this country, and I turn on the television and watch Charles Krauthammer talk about our obligation to the Iraqi people because of our general concern for spreading freedom to humanity, and as pretentious as this may be, I swear to you I die a little bit.
You’re a very bright guy, Reihan, but on this issue I think you’ll become one of the people who inevitably says “I told you so” no matter how long it takes. Because when there is no bottom, when there literally is no eventuality in Iraq that could possibly compel you to support withdrawal— and I don’t think there is, if you’re being honest— then all you can do, or have to do, is wait. Someday, at some point, Iraqi society will put itself together, in some form or another. And once it does, you can say “See! You naive peaceniks, we only had to give it enough time.” A more discerning observer, though, might think to ask how long, precisely, Saddam had left in him, a man in his late sixties. And that person might ask whether more years of Saddam, brutal though they may be, would be preferable to the limitless chaos and bloodshed of post-Saddam Iraq. And that same observer might ask what precisely the aftermath of a natural death of Saddam might have been like, without a foreign army removing the head of state, firing the army and outlawing the bureaucracy.
That same person, if he really wanted, might ask what precisely the Iraqi state had become. It’s impossible to say, now, as there is no real Iraqi state, in any meaningful sense— not just because of the violence but because the Americans still call every important shot. But if the likely happens, and Iraq descends into stability through theocracy, or autocracy, that same person might ask what the point was. Kurdistan is held up as the example, for Iraq, the model. There is nothing resembling real democracy in Kurdistan, a region ruled by corrupt and oppressive sects. That is the honest goal in Iraq, building it from total chaos to just another failed state. Is that what we’re expending all this for? Another Uzbekistan? Another Syria? I would be so much more impressed with your position if the people pimping it could be honest, if you could stop with the Connecticut on the Euphrates fantasies and recognize the dismal prospects ahead of us, and what you ask us to sacrifice for them.
As to your final point— it’s a principled stand, I suppose. But I hope you follow it to its logical conclusions. Because if there is one thing the blogosphere has had unanimity on, since 9/11, it’s that you can never, ever call a terrorist else than a terrorist. They don’t want to hear it, not about the American Revolutionaries killing Torries or the French Partisans or the IRA or anything else. So I guess my question for you is, the next time a Palestinian rocket flies, do you bring up the people doing bad things to reach the good? I’m more sympathetic to them myself… but theres that slippery slope. And what precisely do you have to say to the Shiite militia man who believes he is doing God’s work, that he is working to halt genocide, that however brutal his tactics, he’s doing the bad to reach the good?
I don’t know. All I know is what I’m told every day, over and over again, that we’ll never get out, that I’m naive or crazy to think we will, we’ll never get, we’ll never get out….
— FreddieFffFreddie · Oct 16, 04:50 AM · #