J
Joe S.
Guest
Victory Is Not an Option
The Mission Can't Be Accomplished -- It's Time for a New Strategy
By William E. Odom
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B01
The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf
that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war.
Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in
Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of
producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus
judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.
Its gloomy implications -- hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in
rubbery language that cannot soften its impact -- put the intelligence
community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to
the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of
control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still
asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.
Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure,
and our politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibility
for anything resembling those un-American outcomes. So they beat around the
bush, wringing hands and debating "nonbinding resolutions" that oppose the
president's plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.
For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, the
president's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety has
paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage of
democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not
inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "who
gets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that will
vastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East.
No task is more important to the well-being of the United States. We face
great peril in that troubled region, and improving our prospects will be
difficult. First of all, it will require, from Congress at least, public
acknowledgment that the president's policy is based on illusions, not
realities. There never has been any right way to invade and transform Iraq.
Most Americans need no further convincing, but two truths ought to put the
matter beyond question:
First, the assumption that the United States could create a liberal,
constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just about everything known by
professional students of the topic. Of the more than 40 democracies created
since World War II, fewer than 10 can be considered truly
"constitutional" -- meaning that their domestic order is protected by a
broadly accepted rule of law, and has survived for at least a generation.
None is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. None has deep
sectarian and ethnic fissures like those in Iraq.
Strangely, American political scientists whose business it is to know these
things have been irresponsibly quiet. In the lead-up to the March 2003
invasion, neoconservative agitators shouted insults at anyone who dared to
mention the many findings of academic research on how democracies evolve.
They also ignored our own struggles over two centuries to create the
democracy Americans enjoy today. Somehow Iraqis are now expected to create a
constitutional order in a country with no conditions favoring it.
This is not to say that Arabs cannot become liberal democrats. When they
immigrate to the United States, many do so quickly. But it is to say that
Arab countries, as well as a large majority of all countries, find creating
a stable constitutional democracy beyond their capacities.
Second, to expect any Iraqi leader who can hold his country together to be
pro-American, or to share American goals, is to abandon common sense. It
took the United States more than a century to get over its hostility toward
British occupation. (In 1914, a majority of the public favored supporting
Germany against Britain.) Every month of the U.S. occupation, polls have
recorded Iraqis' rising animosity toward the United States. Even supporters
of an American military presence say that it is acceptable temporarily and
only to prevent either of the warring sides in Iraq from winning. Today the
Iraqi government survives only because its senior members and their families
live within the heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy
and military command.
As Congress awakens to these realities -- and a few members have bravely
pointed them out -- will it act on them? Not necessarily. Too many lawmakers
have fallen for the myths that are invoked to try to sell the president's
new war aims. Let us consider the most pernicious of them.
1) We must continue the war to prevent the terrible aftermath that will
occur if our forces are withdrawn soon. Reflect on the double-think of this
formulation. We are now fighting to prevent what our invasion made
inevitable! Undoubtedly we will leave a mess -- the mess we created, which
has become worse each year we have remained. Lawmakers gravely proclaim
their opposition to the war, but in the next breath express fear that
quitting it will leave a blood bath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a
"failed state," or some other horror. But this "aftermath" is already upon
us; a prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists.
2) We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in
Iraq. This is another absurd notion. One of the president's initial war
aims, the creation of a democracy in Iraq, ensured increased Iranian
influence, both in Iraq and the region. Electoral democracy, predictably,
would put Shiite groups in power -- groups supported by Iran since Saddam
Hussein repressed them in 1991. Why are so many members of Congress
swallowing the claim that prolonging the war is now supposed to prevent
precisely what starting the war inexorably and predictably caused? Fear that
Congress will confront this contradiction helps explain the administration
and neocon drumbeat we now hear for expanding the war to Iran.
Here we see shades of the Nixon-Kissinger strategy in Vietnam: widen the war
into Cambodia and Laos. Only this time, the adverse consequences would be
far greater. Iran's ability to hurt U.S. forces in Iraq are not trivial. And
the anti-American backlash in the region would be larger, and have more
lasting consequences.
3) We must prevent the emergence of a new haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq. But it
was the U.S. invasion that opened Iraq's doors to al-Qaeda. The longer U.S.
forces have remained there, the stronger al-Qaeda has become. Yet its
strength within the Kurdish and Shiite areas is trivial. After a U.S.
withdrawal, it will probably play a continuing role in helping the Sunni
groups against the Shiites and the Kurds. Whether such foreign elements
could remain or thrive in Iraq after the resolution of civil war is open to
question. Meanwhile, continuing the war will not push al-Qaeda outside Iraq.
On the contrary, the American presence is the glue that holds al-Qaeda there
now.
4) We must continue to fight in order to "support the troops." This argument
effectively paralyzes almost all members of Congress. Lawmakers proclaim in
grave tones a litany of problems in Iraq sufficient to justify a rapid
pullout. Then they reject that logical conclusion, insisting we cannot do so
because we must support the troops. Has anybody asked the troops?
During their first tours, most may well have favored "staying the course" --
whatever that meant to them -- but now in their second, third and fourth
tours, many are changing their minds. We see evidence of that in the many
news stories about unhappy troops being sent back to Iraq. Veterans groups
are beginning to make public the case for bringing them home. Soldiers and
officers in Iraq are speaking out critically to reporters on the ground.
But the strangest aspect of this rationale for continuing the war is the
implication that the troops are somehow responsible for deciding to continue
the president's course. That political and moral responsibility belongs to
the president, not the troops. Did not President Harry S. Truman make it
clear that "the buck stops" in the Oval Office? If the president keeps
dodging it, where does it stop? With Congress?
Embracing the four myths gives Congress excuses not to exercise its power of
the purse to end the war and open the way for a strategy that might actually
bear fruit.
The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply
prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of
Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal
will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy
our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with
us in Iraq and the region.
Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the
Middle East.
Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually
destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to
prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the
hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the
stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.
Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not
primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so
they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a
"tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That
single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region,
where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs
shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order,
albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.
Realigning our diplomacy and military capabilities to achieve order will
hugely reduce the numbers of our enemies and gain us new and important
allies. This cannot happen, however, until our forces are moving out of
Iraq. Why should Iran negotiate to relieve our pain as long as we are
increasing its influence in Iraq and beyond? Withdrawal will awaken most
leaders in the region to their own need for U.S.-led diplomacy to stabilize
their neighborhood.
If Bush truly wanted to rescue something of his historical legacy, he would
seize the initiative to implement this kind of strategy. He would eventually
be held up as a leader capable of reversing direction by turning an
imminent, tragic defeat into strategic recovery.
If he stays on his present course, he will leave Congress the opportunity to
earn the credit for such a turnaround. It is already too late to wait for
some presidential candidate for 2008 to retrieve the situation. If Congress
cannot act, it, too, will live in infamy.
diane@hudson.org
William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general, was head of Army
intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald
Reagan. He served on the National Security Council staff under Jimmy Carter.
A West Point graduate with a PhD from Columbia, Odom teaches at Yale and is
a fellow of the Hudson Institute.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901917.html
The Mission Can't Be Accomplished -- It's Time for a New Strategy
By William E. Odom
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B01
The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf
that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war.
Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in
Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of
producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus
judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.
Its gloomy implications -- hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in
rubbery language that cannot soften its impact -- put the intelligence
community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to
the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of
control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still
asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.
Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure,
and our politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibility
for anything resembling those un-American outcomes. So they beat around the
bush, wringing hands and debating "nonbinding resolutions" that oppose the
president's plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.
For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, the
president's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety has
paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage of
democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not
inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "who
gets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that will
vastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East.
No task is more important to the well-being of the United States. We face
great peril in that troubled region, and improving our prospects will be
difficult. First of all, it will require, from Congress at least, public
acknowledgment that the president's policy is based on illusions, not
realities. There never has been any right way to invade and transform Iraq.
Most Americans need no further convincing, but two truths ought to put the
matter beyond question:
First, the assumption that the United States could create a liberal,
constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just about everything known by
professional students of the topic. Of the more than 40 democracies created
since World War II, fewer than 10 can be considered truly
"constitutional" -- meaning that their domestic order is protected by a
broadly accepted rule of law, and has survived for at least a generation.
None is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. None has deep
sectarian and ethnic fissures like those in Iraq.
Strangely, American political scientists whose business it is to know these
things have been irresponsibly quiet. In the lead-up to the March 2003
invasion, neoconservative agitators shouted insults at anyone who dared to
mention the many findings of academic research on how democracies evolve.
They also ignored our own struggles over two centuries to create the
democracy Americans enjoy today. Somehow Iraqis are now expected to create a
constitutional order in a country with no conditions favoring it.
This is not to say that Arabs cannot become liberal democrats. When they
immigrate to the United States, many do so quickly. But it is to say that
Arab countries, as well as a large majority of all countries, find creating
a stable constitutional democracy beyond their capacities.
Second, to expect any Iraqi leader who can hold his country together to be
pro-American, or to share American goals, is to abandon common sense. It
took the United States more than a century to get over its hostility toward
British occupation. (In 1914, a majority of the public favored supporting
Germany against Britain.) Every month of the U.S. occupation, polls have
recorded Iraqis' rising animosity toward the United States. Even supporters
of an American military presence say that it is acceptable temporarily and
only to prevent either of the warring sides in Iraq from winning. Today the
Iraqi government survives only because its senior members and their families
live within the heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy
and military command.
As Congress awakens to these realities -- and a few members have bravely
pointed them out -- will it act on them? Not necessarily. Too many lawmakers
have fallen for the myths that are invoked to try to sell the president's
new war aims. Let us consider the most pernicious of them.
1) We must continue the war to prevent the terrible aftermath that will
occur if our forces are withdrawn soon. Reflect on the double-think of this
formulation. We are now fighting to prevent what our invasion made
inevitable! Undoubtedly we will leave a mess -- the mess we created, which
has become worse each year we have remained. Lawmakers gravely proclaim
their opposition to the war, but in the next breath express fear that
quitting it will leave a blood bath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a
"failed state," or some other horror. But this "aftermath" is already upon
us; a prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists.
2) We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in
Iraq. This is another absurd notion. One of the president's initial war
aims, the creation of a democracy in Iraq, ensured increased Iranian
influence, both in Iraq and the region. Electoral democracy, predictably,
would put Shiite groups in power -- groups supported by Iran since Saddam
Hussein repressed them in 1991. Why are so many members of Congress
swallowing the claim that prolonging the war is now supposed to prevent
precisely what starting the war inexorably and predictably caused? Fear that
Congress will confront this contradiction helps explain the administration
and neocon drumbeat we now hear for expanding the war to Iran.
Here we see shades of the Nixon-Kissinger strategy in Vietnam: widen the war
into Cambodia and Laos. Only this time, the adverse consequences would be
far greater. Iran's ability to hurt U.S. forces in Iraq are not trivial. And
the anti-American backlash in the region would be larger, and have more
lasting consequences.
3) We must prevent the emergence of a new haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq. But it
was the U.S. invasion that opened Iraq's doors to al-Qaeda. The longer U.S.
forces have remained there, the stronger al-Qaeda has become. Yet its
strength within the Kurdish and Shiite areas is trivial. After a U.S.
withdrawal, it will probably play a continuing role in helping the Sunni
groups against the Shiites and the Kurds. Whether such foreign elements
could remain or thrive in Iraq after the resolution of civil war is open to
question. Meanwhile, continuing the war will not push al-Qaeda outside Iraq.
On the contrary, the American presence is the glue that holds al-Qaeda there
now.
4) We must continue to fight in order to "support the troops." This argument
effectively paralyzes almost all members of Congress. Lawmakers proclaim in
grave tones a litany of problems in Iraq sufficient to justify a rapid
pullout. Then they reject that logical conclusion, insisting we cannot do so
because we must support the troops. Has anybody asked the troops?
During their first tours, most may well have favored "staying the course" --
whatever that meant to them -- but now in their second, third and fourth
tours, many are changing their minds. We see evidence of that in the many
news stories about unhappy troops being sent back to Iraq. Veterans groups
are beginning to make public the case for bringing them home. Soldiers and
officers in Iraq are speaking out critically to reporters on the ground.
But the strangest aspect of this rationale for continuing the war is the
implication that the troops are somehow responsible for deciding to continue
the president's course. That political and moral responsibility belongs to
the president, not the troops. Did not President Harry S. Truman make it
clear that "the buck stops" in the Oval Office? If the president keeps
dodging it, where does it stop? With Congress?
Embracing the four myths gives Congress excuses not to exercise its power of
the purse to end the war and open the way for a strategy that might actually
bear fruit.
The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply
prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of
Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal
will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy
our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with
us in Iraq and the region.
Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the
Middle East.
Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually
destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to
prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the
hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the
stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.
Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not
primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so
they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a
"tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That
single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region,
where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs
shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order,
albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.
Realigning our diplomacy and military capabilities to achieve order will
hugely reduce the numbers of our enemies and gain us new and important
allies. This cannot happen, however, until our forces are moving out of
Iraq. Why should Iran negotiate to relieve our pain as long as we are
increasing its influence in Iraq and beyond? Withdrawal will awaken most
leaders in the region to their own need for U.S.-led diplomacy to stabilize
their neighborhood.
If Bush truly wanted to rescue something of his historical legacy, he would
seize the initiative to implement this kind of strategy. He would eventually
be held up as a leader capable of reversing direction by turning an
imminent, tragic defeat into strategic recovery.
If he stays on his present course, he will leave Congress the opportunity to
earn the credit for such a turnaround. It is already too late to wait for
some presidential candidate for 2008 to retrieve the situation. If Congress
cannot act, it, too, will live in infamy.
diane@hudson.org
William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general, was head of Army
intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald
Reagan. He served on the National Security Council staff under Jimmy Carter.
A West Point graduate with a PhD from Columbia, Odom teaches at Yale and is
a fellow of the Hudson Institute.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901917.html