Cross-posted at The Conjecturer. I hope you all survived a few days last week without my daily aggravations; I was on travel.
Defense
- I call it “Reckless Victory Mongering.” I’m really quite annoyed reading the illusion that there is victory to be had in Iraq. I comfort myself, however, with the knowledge that this view is now a deep minority. But to call a withdrawal from Iraq “surrender” (or its variants pushed by guys like the Instapundit) stretches the bounds of credibility. So, now that Al-Qaeda has taunted us into invading Iraq, and they want us to stay, so therefore staying is not surrender? I don’t get it. If anyone thinks Al-Qaeda has much say in what happens in Iraq, they’re fooling themselves: Iraq is a toxic pastiche of dozens of violently competing militia groups—most of the violence is Iraqi-Iraqi, not Iraqi-American. Tragic as it may be, we cannot control the situation (Michael Yon has inadvertently demonstrated this with his reporting of the horrendous atrocities; we just do not have the manpower to keep 20 million people safe). What’s worse is: our presence there serves as a unifying force, a lightning rod giving common cause. I feel the way now I did a year ago: let them fight it out. We don’t have to sacrifice our descendants any more to the gods of war.
- Why am I not worried about Iran occupying Iraq should we withdraw? Well, Al Qaeda in Iraq really doesn’t like Iran, and just as I’m sure Iran isn’t funding its enemy the Taliban in Afghanistan, I’m certain they won’t stand for AQII on the opposite bank of the Shat al-Arab. I’d rather let Iran fight the insurgency, ya know? Oh, and also wasn’t the U.S. military bragging at one point for having killed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi? Oh yeah. What else can we just not believe the military has done?
- For further context, there are an excellent pair of posts by the inimitable Ms. Bonnie Boyd, in which she makes two really good points: 1) the NYT has actually had really good overall war coverage (even the Right’s favorite warbloggers, Roggio and Yon, have said glowing things of NYT reporters), and 2) we must look at the many mistakes that led us into this war not with anger, but with the desire to understand why we got it wrong and thus to evaluate what best to do now—stay or go. She is, of course, right.
- We can defeat the deadites… with science. Of course, they can defeat us with the internet. Let’s hope the DoD doesn’t fall for the same trap.
- Who runs the CIA? Private companies, of course, some of which are foreign-owned. Unlike the Dubai Ports World debacle, which was a lot of racist hubub over nothing, this is something that actually deserves very serious scrutiny, but receives little. RJ Hillhouse’s book, Outsourced, is a fun and well-written fictionalization of how PMCs are distorting the War on Terr-uh. I highly recommend it.
Around the World
- Apparently we know Nicolas Sarkozy is a true right winger, not because of any of his policies, but because of his jogging. Curse that American infatuation with physical fitness! He should be sitting in a cafe drinking dark espresso and inhaling packs of Gauloises.
- Why would Iran build tunnels near its nuclear facilities? Maybe protection from anticipated bombing?
- The world chose a giant statue of Jesus over the Eiffel Tower and Stonehenge. Hax!
- Good old Uncle Berdi—bling daddy.
- At the airport yesterday, I wrote an essay, combining several Registan.net posts, on the relative decline of America’s soft power in Central and South Asia. It’s worth a read (that is, I believe it worth a read).
Back at Home
- Michael Savage apparently hates oppressed women. I really wish I wasn’t surprised… but I am. Go figure.
- Nothing like press releases disguised as reporting… especially about IT. Seriously, the idiocy of tech reporters continues to amaze me, especially when they fundamentally misunderstand basic technological and political processes.
- SRSLY, I H8 spammers. Since this morning, Conjecturer.com has been pinged 248 times. Argh!
- One of my sort-of friends, who lives in Manhattan, is always accusing me of having Williamsburg envy. He’s referring, of course, to the Brooklyn neighborhood, not the historic town that hosts the College of William & Mary. I always deny this vociferously—if I am attached to a hipster neighborhood in New York City, it is Park Slope, Brooklyn, where my best friend Chris lives; not Williamsburg. Gurl please. I have class.
I would say it’s a shame that you are “annoyed” by those of us who wish to see a positive outcome in Iraq, and in fact find it a moral obligation now that we are there, but I’ve abandoned any hope of convincing those who are against the war that they are simply hastening greater doom and destruction. I will never understand people like you who cannot fathom hope. And I haven’t the words to express to you how disappointing it is that many of my fellow Americans seem to be rejoicing in the possibility of handing al Qaeda a victory.
I do have one question: if you think that we sould be fighting back against al Qaeda and its adherents, why should we leave the one place that we know they inhabit? Your ironically rosy view that Iran won’t abide by al Qaeda setting up in Iraq notwithstanding, how do you think it helps us, or anyone for that matter, to lose in Iraq?
And before you even start, please don’t try to claim that we will not have “lost” and that we shouldn’t be influenced by what al Qaeda will claim as far as victory. That is a naive view at best and a supremely dishonest one at worst. If we abandon Iraq now, we will have lost the Middle East for ages to come. That is a very sad fact. One that I’m pretty sure you’re aware of.
I’m sorry Joshua, but if nothing else Zawahiri’s last release (to which you refer) pretty much snuffs the idea that by withdrawing to Iraq we’re not surrendering Iraq to Al Queda. If there is a way that this would be in Americas interest or the world’s interest, long-term or short-term, well— go for it.
yours/
peter.
Oh yeah, or Iraq’s interests too…
=P=
As many of the military officials I work with constantly remind me (in discussions on China, but the concept applies): hope is not a strategy. Even the current strategy now at work in the surge has such a miniscule chance of accomplishing anything at this point I fail to see how it could work — and we’ve been burned by the military really strongly hoping things would magically turn out right. What assurances do we have that they somehow got it right this time? We don’t. We lost Iraq (and what would “victory” look like? Hoping really hard that somehow the sectarian violence will stop?). Will staying help or hurt things? Because right now we’re really discussing which kind of defeat we want. And honestly, there’s room for debate on that (Lance in particular makes very convincing arguments in favor of staying), but writing off people who advocate leaving as “surrendering” and “America haters” and “rejoicing in Al Qaeda’s victory” and so on is just pathetic, and needlessly inflammatory.
That, by the way, is who I was referring to, and that is what annoys me – not you, and not Peter Jackson (though your comments here are making me reconsider that). And I’m not rejoicing in any of this – I consider Iraq an unimaginable tragedy, one we have created. As such, I think we have an obligation to take a cold hard HONEST look at the place, and see if we can make it better by staying or leaving. Hope doesn’t factor into this; what we can realistically accomplish does. And when we only have a few thousand troops to spread thinly across a few provinces to defense 20 million people from violent slaughter should they be seen collaborating with us, I don’t think we can make anything better.
As to the rest of your points: Iraq is not the one place we know “they” inhabit. It is the one place entrepreneurial terrorists have found they can attach themselves to the actual Al-Qaeda leadership cleverly ensconced in Western Pakistan. Zarqawi had to hem and haw for almost a year before he could get Al-Qaeda’s endorsement, and then it was only because we had already invaded and he had proven himself effective at bombing troops.
The Al-Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11 isn’t in Iraq, even now. Some of its followers are, but they are there because we are (in that sense, the “flypaper strategy” was sort of a success). The Al-Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11 is in South Asia. We should be fighting them there, and fixing the one country still dealing with the popular political movement that openly and joyously supported them.
As for what will happen in Iraq: none of us know. But we can make (again) cold, hard, honest guesses. Al Qaeda in Iraq already wants to fight the Shia overlords of Iran – as you’d expect radical Sunni crazies to do (even my former roommate, a Jordanian who was the most pleasant guy you could imagine, became visibly agitated when I asked him to explain Ashoura to me). Similarly, Iran would never stand for Sunni crazies to take over Iraq again. On a broader level, the reason there is still any sort of cooperation between the various militias is because we are there are a unitary enemy – they collaborate (spontaneously and for limited engagements, which is its own interesting sociological phenomenon). If we were to leave, they would have no one to fight but themselves, and I discount the possibility of a single charismatic leader rising among them because, again, of the presence of Iran next door. They want Iraq in chaos only so long as that allows them to tie us down (and, possibly, make deep inroads into Afghanistan). If we were to leave, keeping a violently chaotic neighbor from spilling over their borders would become their responsibility. I would rather let Iran handle that.
Further, to address Peter’s points: making the Middle East handle its own problems with extremism is in everyone’s long term interests. The presence of foreigners there has given the dictators an excuse to deflect domestic anger outwards, and getting out of Iraq would remove one of the primary grievances and recruiting tools the terrorists use. Forcing Saudi Arabia and Iran to collaborate to control Iraq would be for everyone’s good as well, including Iraq’s – even if it is nothing more than a proxy war for a time. The deep social divisions in the fake country have been allowed to fester under a tyrant for far too long; just as Europe and Asia needed to work out their differences through violent and horrific struggle, I can’t avoid thinking that Iraq must do the same — it is not rejoicing in what is happening, but merely trying to understand it.
I do not understand how our continued presence in Iraq contributes to any of the region’s long term problems. I supported the invasion with the hope (there’s that word again) that a democratic Iraq would be a positive force for good. The exact opposite has happened, even as Iraq adopted the superficial machinations of democracy. Everyone in charge has proven himself totally incapable of “fixing” a country I don’t think we could ever have fixed. Why we should continue to remain in the name of nothing but hope, when everything else we’ve tried has made things worse, completely eludes me. I leave it to you to explain.
But I’m not talking about strategy, and neither were you when you said:
Were talking about the attitude of the American public, and Eric Scheie was specifically talking about the leadr of the Fourth Estate (i.e. the NYT). It is exactly that attitude, that all is lost and there is no hope of a good outcome, that those such as myself call defeatist. Because, what else can you call a precipitous withdrawal from the battlefield where the enemy will immediately claim victory (and indeed is already predicting it)?
Wrong. We don’t lose” until we leave. That’s when we’ll have lost. And what assurances do we ever have? Can you name a single war, hell a single battle, in which everything went as planned? That’s just not how things work.
Victory will look like al Qaeda being decimated, an Iraqi government that can stand on its own, and an Iraqi population that is tired of the violence and would rather turn to the election box than to the militias. It will take time, and I don’t believe everything would turn perfectly. But if we don’t at least get behind the mission, then there is no chance of it happening at all. Then what happens?
I’m sorry. Did I misread your initial sentence?
And I’ve yet to come across any supportable argument that withdrawal isn’t a surrender. We’re taking the fight to al Qaeda and radical Islamists right now. If we leave Iraq, we will leave Afghanistan shortly thereafter, and we can kiss any sense of security goodbye. The terrorists will be emboldened by such a foolishly short-sighted action. You can take that to the bank.
You want to take an “HONEST” look at the situation and yet you bristling at calling a precipitous withdrawal “surrender”? I’m not afraid to discuss the ugly parts of our efforts in Iraq, but I am unwilling to pretend that leaving now won’t have dire consequences.
Well, again, you’re switching to the strategy being used, and displaying an uniformed view if that’ what you think the surge is doing. The surge has always been about clearing and holding using Iraqi troops. Of course, the Iraqi’s are not doing a very good job of holding up their end of the bargain, but according to sources, they are getting better at it.
To be sure, I think criticism of the Iraqi government and the willingness of the people to stand up an fight is not only legitimate, it is necessary. The entire effort will certainly fail if the Iraqis don’t help themselves. On that point, I think the congressmen who are pushing the idea of holding Iraq accountable for it’s own future are onto to something.
But that being said, I simply don’t understand why we would simply give up, get out, and expect everything to turn out hunky-dory. There is no logical or empirical reason to believe that it would.
So Iraqis are lying when they say that, for example, Baqubah was infiltrated by al Qaeda?
And what difference does it make if it’s the same exact al Qaeda that attacked us? That sort of mindset fails to comprehend the point of terrorism. It’s not about body-counts and military tactics for them. It’s about striking terror into the hearts and minds of both those whom they mean to rule (i.e Muslims) and those who would fight them (i.e US). al Qaeda has never been about a centralized command and control, it has always been a loose affiliation of radicalized groups working towards a common purpose.
[Screeech] Huh? If none of us know, then why so certain that we’ve not only lost already, but that our continued travails will serve no good purpose? Even the BBC has more hope than you, Josh:
When anti-war correspondents for the BBC are willing to acknowledge progress, you really have to wonder if there is a path to success in Iraq. I believe that there is, and that the surge is part of that path. I’m not willing to abandon all hope just because the mission is difficult. Admittedly, I also contemplate 10-point plays and the like when my team is down at the end of a game, but looking at events on the ground, I just don’t think we are in that a bad a position. Not yet.
Again with the “honest.” Great! But that includes calling a spade a spade. If we leave before the job is done, it will be a surrender. There isn’t any wiggle room on that point. Perhaps surrendering has value (I certainly don’t think so), but let’s not pretend that the plans being pushed by the Dems in Congress are anything other than that.
As far as Iranian involvement, I fail to see how your assessment militates towards leaving Iraq? It seems to me to be yet another reason to stay.
To a certain extent I think you are right about the common enemy, but you’re wrong about who that enemy is (if I’m understanding your comment correctly). The militias (and many of the local sheiks) are co-operating against the terrorists. And it won’t take ” a single charismatic leader” so much as a glimpse of what the alternative to incessant violence looks like. If the Iraqis are offered a better alternative, they may just take it. It wouldn’t be the first time such a phenomenon took place.
Well, isn’t this just a “frying pan/fire” argument? How is having Iran in control of Iraq any better? Do you honestly believe that an empowered Iran wouldn’t try to take bolder action against us? Of course, I have grave doubts about Iran’s ability to do anything of the sort, and I’m not the least bit convinced that al Qaeda, et al. will turn their attention to Iran before making further advances against the West.
Agreed, and that is something we should have been doing a better job of all along. But if they weren’t handling it before we got there, why would they do so now?
And if we leave, the dictators will find another bogeyman.
You may be right about Iraq having to go through a civil war. I honestly pray that they don’t, but you are correct that history tends to suggest otherwise. (And I don’t think that means you are rejoicing in potential failure in Iraq.) The monkey wrench in the historical works, however, is the presence of such a dominant world power?
The most obvious thing that our presence does is that it provides time and space within which a mature Iraqi government and trained Iraqi forces can grow. That’s really what they need. Iraq is much like a premature infant whose lungs need time to develop. Shots of cortisone will help, but the baby really needs a safe, incubated environment to get to the point where it can breathe easily. If we can continue to provide that time and space, and training Iraqi forces, Iraq will be able to stand on its own. And if Iraq can stand on its own, as a stable, functioning democratic entity, the the whole landscape of the Middle East will change. Not overnight, but the seeds will have been planted.
If we leave too soon, there is no hope at all for the Middle East for a long time to come. Radicalism will declare victory, and fear will rule the day. THAT is the violence that I don’t want to see spill over into Asia, Europe and the United States. Eventually, I am positive that is just what will happen if we abandon Iraq now.
Joshua!
I realized quite some time ago that most political arguments have almost nothing to do with logic and almost everything to do with differing premises. I’m sure that if I believed that we were already defeated in Iraq my arguments and conclusions would closely resemble yours.
Therefore the brief comm
ents I’ve made in response to your posts were aimed at the mostly tacit premises which undergird your arguments as I’ve been able to discern them. They’ve mostly been premises concerning precepts such as the nature of victory and defeat and how each are generally had or lost in war, such as the chess comment I made a while back for example.
One thing I infer from most anti-war folks in general and you regarding the war in Iraq is an unrealistic expectation of the efficacy of military power, especially American military power. Yes, we are very strong relative to our enemies in Iraq, but that doesn’t mean that
they do not possess their own agency and thus represent their own locus of discretion. To use the chess analogy again, even if white retains most of his high-value pieces and black only has a couple of pawns and a knight, black still gets to move. When black does move, he will occasionally be effective—but just because he is effective doesn’t mean that he’s any more likely to win.
But we still know “they” are in Iraq, so the fact that they exist in other places as well means we shouldn’t attack them in Iraq? That’s very similar to the anti-war rejoinder to the fact that Saddam was tyrant that the world is full of tyrants and we can’t overthrow them all. So what?
If our only motive were vengeance, I’d say you have a point here, but although Al Queda has certainly earned our vengeance the primary goal here is to not get attacked by them again—ever. This requires their destruction.
You say hope is not a strategy, but to expect this to occur by our pulling out of Iraq sounds to me the most hopeful strategy of all, especially that part about Saudi Arabia and Iran working together.
Iraq currently has a government, and a legitimate government at that. There is no question that the vast majority of Iraqis support that government. We don’t owe them a solution to there sectarian problems, but we do owe them the government they’ve managed to build by protecting that government until it can protect itself. We’ll know we’ve been defeated in Iraq when that government stops being able to recruit soldiers and police. As long as the Iraqi government is able to grow their forces, improve their quality, and continue to take full control of more and more of the country—as they have thus far been able to do—we will eventually win.
yours/
peter.