In direct contravention of my wife's explicit instructions, herewith I inaugurate my first blog. Long may it prosper.

For some reason, I think I have something to say to you. You think you have something to say to me? Email me at: gideonsblogger -at- yahoo -dot- com

 
So, in the spirit of constructive criticism, lets take a look at a recent piece from NRO - "Kana's Iraq." Younadem Kana is a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, a leader of Iraq's Assyrian Democratic Movement. He's supportive of the U.S. and of democratization. Let's take a look at what he has to say.

Actually, before we do that, let's explain who the Assyrians are. The Assyrians are a Christian, non-Arab indigenous Iraqi people. Saddam ruthlessly suppressed the Assyrians. But he was far milder in his treatment of the Chaldeans - also Christians. Indeed, Tariq Aziz - Deputy Prime Minister under Saddam - was a Chaldean Christian. And the Chaldeans in America were less enthusiastic about ousting Saddam than were the Assyrians. Why the disparity?

Well, the Chaldeans and Assyrians are pretty much the same people, ethnically, and they are both Christian. But the Chaldeans are an Eastern Rite Catholic group and the Assyrians are, generally, Nestorian Christians. And the Chaldeans are scattered throughout Iraq while the Assyrians are concentrated in a pocket of the Kurdish north (and have complained about persecution not only by Arabs but by Kurds). These differences have had important political ramifications; the Assyrians, with a national church and geographic concentration, have a far stronger national identity, and so bore the brunt of Saddam's brutal program of Arabization to a considerably greater degree than the Chaldeans did. Saddam basically was following a "divide and rule" strategy: turn the Chaldeans and the Assyrians against each other.

In any event, the point of this digression is just to set the stage for where this guy is coming from. He is likely a very good guy, but that doesn't mean he's an objective source. The Assyrians, in particular, really need the whole federal but unified Iraq thing to work out: if Iraq were partitioned, they'd be alone against the Kurds in the north; if there's a Shiite theocracy, Christians are in trouble; and if there a new Sunni dictatorship, they are in even bigger trouble. So you would expect Kana to tell an audience of pro-war Americans exactly what they want to hear to keep them in Iraq.

(I can't stress one thing enough: I'm not saying he's not telling the truth, or that he's not worth listening to. I'm just saying we have to be a little more sophisticated than good-guy = tells-truth, bad-guy = tells-lies.)

Okay, that's out of the way. So what does he have to say?

For the first time in the history of Iraq — for the first time in 14 centuries — our neighbors, and the majority of people today, recognize us [Assyrian Christians], and acknowledge us. We are all together on the Governing Council, and the cabinet; our rights are guaranteed under the fundamental law" (referring to the provisional constitution signed on March 8).

So far as I can tell, the only fact here is that Kana is a member of the Governing Council. How we extrapolate from that to universal acceptance of Assyrian autonomy by the majority of the people, I'm not clear on.

"The media are very bad," Kana observes regretfully. "This is mostly because they are the tools of Islamist fanatics; because they are unhappy with the democratic freedom process." It's not just al-Jazeera: "Even the Western media are very bad. They are trying to sell their product, so they keep exaggerating the bad spots.

I am really tired of hearing this sort of thing, and very disappointed to discover that our Iraqi friends have learned their talking points so well.

Over the Abu Ghraib scandal, Kana is unruffled. "Yeah, we condemn that — but it's certainly not the official or normal policy of American troops in Iraq. . .If Iraqis are upset with the American troops, it's mostly because they are very nice — too nice — with these criminals, dealing with them as prisoners of war. But they are not prisoners of war, they are criminals; they are killers. But Geneva Convention rules put pressure on the Americans to be nice, and to take good care of them."

There are two distressing things about this little quote. First, here's an Iraqi ally, and he has - or wants to project - the kind of sneering contempt for humanitarian norms that was popular stateside in October of 2001, not now. What does that say about our real image over there? Second, this guy is supposed to be one of the authentic leaders of Iraq. We know that a large number of prisoners processed through Abu Ghraib were subsequently cleared and released - in other words, they were suspects, but turned out not to be criminals. Where's the hint of sympathy for them? From a fellow Iraqi? Or perhaps he also hasn't read the report. But third, and most important, here's an Iraqi democrat eager to talk about how you can't be "too nice" with prisoners. Somehow, that doesn't reassure me of his democratic credentials. And neither does this quote:

Kana explains, "we will be imposing Iraqi laws, and there will be no more Geneva Convention conditions. The death penalty will be back again; he who kills will be killed. And in my opinion, this will bring the violence down very much. So I call on public opinion to be more confident that, on July 1, things will change."

Yes, that's very encouraging. No Geneva Convention in the new, democratic Iraq.

(Before you object: yes, I know, the Geneva Convention is designed for war between armies, not for operations against terrorists and criminals, and you *could* interpret what he's saying to mean just that the Iraqis, dealing with a domestic insurgency, would have the lattitude to deal with the insurgency appropriately rather than have to debate whether the Conventions apply or not. But that's a lot of nuance to extrapolate from what sure sounds to me like swaggering with a nightstick.)

Finally, there's this:

Kana insists that once the Coalition moves out, foreign extremists will lose their strongest card. They will no longer "be able to move the emotions of simple people by saying they are fighting a holy war against the occupier," because, after June 30, there will be no occupier. He adds that the U.S. troops that do stay will be removed from danger, in safer camps. "When we need them, we will call on them, but they will no longer be easy targets in the streets."

Now, here's what I want to understand about this. First, what makes Kana think that he and his fellows won't be considered to be lackeys of the Americans after July 1? And if they are so considered, in what sense will the extremists have lost their strongest card? Second, if, after July 1, the Americans can retreat to distant bases, and the Iraqis can take over policing, why can't they do it now? What is going to happen in the next six weeks to radically change the situation on the ground? And third, why should Americans think it's a good thing that an Iraqi government can order our boys into combat against their domestic enemies, but a bad thing that an American occupation government can do so?

The best way to convince yourself that things are going badly in Iraq is to listen to those with an interest in propagating the view that things are going well.
posted by Noah at 5:10 PM

 
I started this blog, like so many people did, as an emotional response to 9-11. I found myself obsessively reading the news in a way that I didn't before, and I needed an outlet for that obsession. The blog's continued to be useful for long past the waning of the obsession, because it's helped me figure out what I really think, and you know, that's a good thing in its own right.

Well, since things started to go pear-shaped in Iraq, the obsession has heated up, but blogging has tapered off. Why? Partly because things have gotten busier at work - and at home (Moses is now a toddler, and takes a lot more parental attention than he did as an infant). But partly because I have much less confidence than I once did - and not only in my own opinions. In the past, when I thought a problem was complex (for example: how to deal with postwar Iraq), I'd feel like simply turning the problem over, exposing the complexity and wrestling with the various options was a service. I figured smarter and better-informed people were wrestling with the same questions, and the answers would emerge from dialogue.

I don't feel that way anymore. I feel like the urgency to arrive at good (or at least best-of-bad) answers has increased dramatically, even as my own confidence in the basic quality of information has dropped, and my confidence in those smarter and better-informed folked has dropped precipitously.

So I've fallen back on, increasingly, critiquing the "information" that comes my way. It seems to me to be much more important to critique the material coming from the pro-war right because (a) that's the camp I've come from; (b) that's the camp with the main responsibility for the situation, and hence the principal obligation to figure out how to deal with the situation; (c) that's the camp with a certain problem of too much self-censorship and not enough self-criticism.

What this means is, I spend too much time writing critiques of stuff at NRO and the like. It's not what I most enjoy doing. I'd like to be rooting rah-rah for the side. I desperately want America to win this war. But it's what I can do, mostly, and I do think it's constructive. Anyhow, there you have it.
posted by Noah at 11:27 AM

 
Hmm. I feel like Charles Krauthammer wrote his latest column with me specifically in mind. Remember how I divided war supporters into "still sane" and "deranged" camps? He's still sane.

Meanwhile: I wrote off Michael Ledeen a while ago as no longer worth listening to. But remember how he warned pre-war that attacking Iraq was extremely risky simply because it would give Iran an opportunity to attack us there, and possibly gain decisive influence over Iraq post-war? Prescient, no, given that Iran seems to have given material support to Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda-aping Sunni thugs along with al Sadr and his Mahdi army?

Finally: Bret Stephens tries to buck himself up by reminding himself - and us - of the alternatives to war with Saddam, and how questionable those alternatives were, strategically. But this doesn't buck me up; this is why I'm depressed. If Saddam was unacceptable, and post-Saddam Iraq is dangerously unstable, and our position with or without war was untenable, that's not a very pretty picture, is it? How is that supposed to buck me up?

Anyhow, going home. Hopefully I'll have more . . . hopeful thoughts next week.
posted by Noah at 4:52 PM

 
I really do feel for Arab liberals like Fouad Ajami. They understand, correctly, that Iraq is their last stand. Even if America "succeeds" in Iraq by stabilizing the situation, bringing things to some kind of modus vivendi, avoiding outright civil war or a return of Saddam II, the prospects for radical, democratic change in the Arab world look bleak indeed. And, having just fought a war to bring said change, America's stomach for more of the same will be very limited.

But look: for all his poignant despair, for all that I want the same things for the Arab world that Ajami does, there's a hollowness at the heart of his complaint about the Bush Administration. To whit: he wants America to stand firm with the democrats of Iraq. But who are they? And where are they?

Look, Ajami is a lovely man by all report. He's also a Lebanese Shiite of a pro-Western and modernizing type. The reason he says all these things that we want to hear - and that he believes - is that he is utterly unrepresentative of the region. And he knows it.

Listen to him on Jordan: "President Bush apologizing to King Abdullah II of Jordan for the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Peculiar, that apology -- owed to Iraq's people, yet forwarded to Jordan. . .Jordan in particular had shown no great sensitivity toward Iraq's suffering. This was a dark spot in the record of a Hashemite dynasty otherwise known for its prudence and mercy. It was a concession that the Hashemite court gave to Jordan's "street," to the Palestinians in refugee camps and to the swanky districts of Amman alike."

Jordan is, as he knows, the closest thing the West has to a genuine ally in the Arab world. But the Hashemites know that their own people are far more hostile to the West than the ruling class is. It's not the regime who idolized Saddam; it's the people who did so.

He complains that the Jordanians showed no sympathy for Iraqi suffering. Partly, that's because of Pan-Arab anti-Western ideology. But it's also because the Palestinians of Jordan are Sunni Arabs pretty similar to the Sunni Arabs of Iraq. And guess what? These folks understood the Baathist ideology to be their ticket to the top. The Hashemites are a bunch of Bedouin foreigners from Arabia; no wonder the people are the ones who were enthusiastic for the strongman from Tikrit.

The absolute best-case scenario I can imagine at this point for Iraq is something akin to the old dispensation in Ajami's Lebanon: a delicately balanced power-sharing arrangement between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. I can just imagine - just - that we pull something like this off. Having handed Fallujah back to the Sunni strongmen who most want to drive us out of the country, we turn to the Shiite leadership, and say: look: we are eager to help you negotiate a power-sharing arrangement. But we are not going to hand you the keys to the country. You're going to have to compromise with the folks in Fallujah; we're not going to kill them all for you. Then to the Kurds: look: we want you to keep your high degree of autonomy that you've had for the past 10 years. But you're not getting an independent state. If you push us, we'll let you choose between fighting the Turks or the guys from Fallujah. Then to the Sunnis of the triangle: look: we're in no hurry to leave. 80% of the country would love us to massacre you all. Now is the time to make a deal. Right now, there's still a functioning central government, and we're assuring it a chunk of the oil revenue and we're assuring you effective veto power over changes to the power-sharing. This is the best deal you're going to get. Take it, before the offer is withdrawn. As the offers are taken, redeploy American troops: out of the major cities, to the borders, oil centers and ports. Make it clear that all we're interested in doing is protecting Iraq from foreign incursion while we train a multi-ethnic Iraqi army to handle that task. Let ethnic militias operate within their zones to keep the peace internally. Let the UN supervise elections.

Would that work? I doubt it. The Shiites are behaving very well lately, trying to talk down that hothead Sadr. Very good. They're probably spooked by Fallujah. But you don't know how long that'll last. Iraq doesn't have a real leadership. It's a free-for-all. If Afghanistan, we negotiated deals with a bunch of established warlords who'd been kicked out of their fiefs only a few years before by the Taliban, and had never stopped fighting them - and while that's worked out OK, it's also got its problems (like, we care a lot more about getting the al Qaeda guys than they do; all they really want is to keep the heroin flowing). The Kurds have an established leadership we can deal with, but the Shiites and Sunnis really don't. That's why we're propping up guys like Latif, hoping they'll fill that void.

Iraq has a history of instability going back millenia - to before Saddam, to before the Ottomans, to before Islam. It's partly a function of the geography of the place - a flat plain open to invasion from the mountainous regions to the east, north and west. And if the Arabs were inclined to take a good deal when offered, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have been settled long, long ago. I am too pessimistic to think that we can readily cobble together a power-sharing arrangement that all sides will see is in their enlightened self-interest. Enlightenment is in short supply in that neighborhood. What's needed is bravery in a difficult cause, and that's always in short supply under the best conditions.

And even if we got the deal on paper, how long would it last? People should remember what destroyed Lebanon, and what stabilized it again. It was destroyed by the combination of Yasser Arafat (foreign agitator) deliberately trying to create chaos, coupled with Christian over-reaching in their attempts to hold on to the reigns of power. The parallel to Iraq is easy to see; plug in al Qaeda for the PLO and any of Iraq's ethnic groups for the Christians. Then came the Israelis, who succeeded in kicking out Arafat but couldn't figure out how to get out of the country safely once he was gone. Again, the parallels are pretty clear. And finally, the Syrians took over the bulk of the country, which they substantially control to this day. The parallel to Iraq is Iran, which dominated Mesopotamia repeatedly over the milennia. Iraqi Shiites might prefer living under an American aegis today. But tomorrow, inviting in the Iranians might seem more promising.

I was pessimistic before the war about the prospects for Iraqi democracy because there is no Iraqi nation, and only nations can be democracies. But I never appreciated the depth of the downside potential to the war. Iraq is consuming our military, leaving us exposed on every other front and potential front. If we leave it in chaos, no one will ever trust us again, and our terrorist enemies will gain a huge victory. But how many of us can stay for how long?

James Webb asks in a recent speech: what are the conditions to exit? Not what's the "exit strategy" - that formulation suggests that exit is the objective, which begs the question of why you entered in the first place. What are the conditions to exit - what would justify exiting? And what is the strategy for achieving those conditions? Saying that "victory" is the condition for exit is saying nothing; what does "victory" look like?

At this point, victory means an established government, recognized by the international community and the Iraqi people generally, capable of defending Iraq's borders, and not engaged in the kind of internal genocide that Saddam specialized in. The absence of civil war or external war, and the absence of al Qaeda-affiliated elements in the country. That's defining victory well short of a democratic transformation of the Middle East. And I'm not sure it's achievable. We may be there a very long time.
posted by Noah at 11:30 AM

 
So, if Rummy were to go, who'd be the right replacement?

Let's just take all the Bush "character issues" off the table for a moment, and ask ourselves: what does the U.S. need in a SecDef right now?

- Someone with a strong personality, capable of winning the respect of the brass, not someone who simply rolls over for them.

- Someone with a clear and compelling vision for how the American military should be structured, who has absorbed what was right about Rumsfeld's vision (the importance of speed and a light footprint) and what was drastically wrong (ignoring the political dimension of military conflict, disdain for peacekeeping and police work).

- Someone with credibility in the Senate, so he'll be confirmed.

- Someone untainted by the mistakes and failures of the Iraq war.

That's not a terribly extensive list of requirements, is it? So who does it rule out?

Well, it rules out Powell, who we can rule out anyhow because he has no interest in continuing to serve this President. Powell would absolutely roll over for whatever the Army wants. To a lesser extent it rules out Armitage, whom I still respect a lot more than Powell.

The third and fourth requirements rule out Wolfowitz, certainly, and also Cheney, not that either was especially likely.

Tom Ridge was never a very appealing candidate, and his performance at DHS inspires no particular confidence.

People talk about Senator McCain. Leave aside the fact that he'd never be offered the job. What do we really know about his views on the current war? I was very pleased with his performance during the Kossovo war; contrary to what most paleos think, there was a very good reason we embarked on that adventure (President George H.W. Bush had explicitly threatened military action in Kossovo if the Serbs tried to cleanse the province), and McCain was absolutely right in saying that ruling out ground troops from the get-go was a mistake. But do you know what he thinks we should be doing in Iraq? What we should be doing generally in the war on terror? Do you know what he thinks our military's force structure should be? I sure don't. His website lists almost nothing of relevance since the start of the Iraq war. Most of his defense-related activities amount to constituent service: getting better benefits for servicemen and vets, that sort of thing. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't exactly give you a picture of what he thinks we should be doing with our military. We know he thinks we should have more troops in Iraq, but not much more - nor do we know what he thinks the implications are for the overall size and shape of America's armed forces. The one thing you can definitely say: McCain would not roll over for the services from a procurement perspective. That's important. But is it the most important thing, right now? From a political perspective, McCain would be a great choice. From a policy perspective, maybe, but I just don't know. Anyhow, it doesn't matter because he won't get the job.

Who's that leave?

Well, Bush should probably pick a Senator or former Senator, to smooth confirmation. He should pick someone with independent ideas, who is neither going to be focused on covering his own rear, or sucking up to the President, or rolling over for the services. He should pick someone who is an internationalist and favors a forthright defense of American interests, but who has absorbed the lessons of the Iraq war, whether that person favored the war initially or not. Ideally, he should also pick someone who actually cares about terrorism and has some ideas on that front.

I can think of three plausible candidates, each with different strengths and weaknesses: Senator Dick Lugar, former Senator Dan Coats, and former Senator (and Democrat) Bob Kerrey.

Dick Lugar has a number of sterling qualifications for the job. He's got decades of experience in foreign affairs. He has focused on the threat of WMD terrorism in the past, and has been a leader in trying to control nuclear proliferation. He has been pointed (but polite) in his criticisms of the conduct of the war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He has enormous credibility abroad and he would sail through confirmation. A Lugar choice would unquestionably represent a change in policy, but not a retreat from the war effort. There is no question Lugar would keep us in Iraq until the situation is stabilized; he's not going to cut and run. But he has no prior commitments either to a course of action or to individuals that would complicate making strategy with a view to American interests. Lugar would represent not a turn towards the isolationist, Buchanan wing, but to a more traditional American internationalist realism - to Hamiltonian foreign policy rather than Wilsonian or Jacksonian. There's a good argument to be made for just such a turn. Of course, Bush will never pick Lugar; the guy has no swagger, isn't part of the team, probably reminds him of his father. Shame, really.

Dan Coats would be a bit more of a continuity choice in that (a) he was Bush's original choice for Secretary of Defense, and (b) he is strongly identified with the same "transformation" plans that Rumsfeld has pushed at Defense. These plans are essential to the long-term future of the American armed forces, and it would be a good thing if the next Secretary made them a priority, as Rumsfeld has. Coats has been supportive of the Iraq war, but he's not someone who was involved with the planning, so his hands are basically clean. There's no way he'd advocate cutting and running, but he'd have the freedom to change course if necessary. Coats reputedly was nixed for the SecDef job in part because of his commitment to ending the Clinton-era "social experiments" in the military - i.e., efforts to expand the role of women and (to a far lesser extent) gays in the services. I always thought the gay issue was basically silly (there have always been gays in the military, so there's no need to go on a witch hunt, but the need for someone in uniform to be aggressively "out" is obscure to me as well), but in the wake of Abu Ghraib my own and others' concerns about the increasing presence of women in combat or near-combat roles should be heightened. If Coats' position on these matters were a stumbling block last time around, it should be an asset next time. Coats has been Ambassador to Germany for the past few years. It'd be interesting to know what he learned from that experience, and whether it would help him be more diplomatic than Rummy has been. It's not inconceivable that Bush would pick Coats. But there were reputedly some "chemistry" issues along with the women thing. And those "chemistry" issues reputedly revolved around Coats wanting assurance that he'd have the President's backing when he made tough decisions. Bush thought it showed insecurity for Coats to ask for that assurance. Maybe. Or maybe Bush thought Coats was being uppity, not loyal enough, suggesting that Bush might *not* back him up. There's that character thing again . . .

Bob Kerrey, though a Democrat, would also be a continuity choice from an Iraq perspective. He was very strongly supportive of the Iraq war, as a sponsor of the original Iraq Liberation Act and as one of Ahmad Chalabi's circle of Washington supporters. That doesn't necessarily disqualify him in my view; I didn't start to pay really close attention to Chalabi until 2002, before that simply assuming that, since he said the right things, he probably was a good guy. I don't blame folks too much for supporting him in 1998. In any event, Kerrey has an interest in terrorism that stretches back well before his performance on the 9-11 commission. Picking him would go an enormous way towards convincing the country that Bush is more focused on winning the war against al Qaeda than on winning political points. And Kerrey knows something about counter-insurgency as well - from personal experience. It might be useful to have a former Navy SEAL take a look at the structure of the U.S. military; Rumsfeld's an old fighter jock, which isn't the best vantage point to consider handling teenagers with RPGs. Would Kerrey take the job? Certainly not before the election. But after? Who knows? Frankly, I think his reputation for bi-partisanship is richly deserved. He did a great job skewering the Clinton foreign policy team, both back when they were in office and during the 9-11 Commission hearings. He'll never have a job in a Kerry Administration; McCain's a more likely choice than Kerrey is. Why not? Well, the main reason why not is that Bush won't put anyone on the team who isn't beholden to him, so they'll stay fanatically loyal. But I said we were going to put the Bush "character issues" aside, didn't I?
posted by Noah at 8:56 AM

 
Follow up to the last post: on further reflection, Bush probably will tough it out for the sake of toughing it out, and Rummy won't resign. As I think about it, Bush approaches all of these sorts of things as a game of chicken, and I don't think he'll flinch here. And he may be right - politically speaking - to do so in this case. If Rummy goes, that'll look like weakness, first of all, and second, he'll have to get a new SecDef confirmed in the middle of the election campaign. That's not a palatable thought. Better to tough it out for the sake of toughing it out. Better to just say to the country: the system works. The military discovered the abuse, is investigating it, will prosecute the malefactors, and will make public all relevant information, as it has so far.

That's probably politically right, I say. It's not really right, because there are really two issues at issue with Abu Ghraib (apart from the propaganda disaster of the whole business, which isn't an "issue" in its own right). First, there were clearly a handful of people who are sadists who took advantage of the situation to perpetrate abuses that have truly outraged. But second, grossly inadequate training, staffing and supervision, combined with what appears to be a policy of applying psychological pressure through humiliation and terror - faked executions and the like - to detainees with suspected high intelligence value to create a culture where abuses of varying degree of seriousness were widespread. In other words: the few bad apples are part of the story, but they are not the whole story. To the extent that Rumsfeld stands by the policy, I'd like to hear the defense. To the extent that the deficienciess of manpower, training, etc. had a profound impact, I'd like to hear about that, too.

No one thinks Rumsfeld personally ordered people stripped naked and faced with snarling attack dogs, much less physically abused or even killed in custody. Nor should anyone question the seriousness of the response to the situation once it came to light within the military, which so far seems exemplary. The legitimate question is whether these events were easily forseeable and preventable within the context of fighting a guerilla war in Iraq, and whether the Secretary of Defense didn't do what should have been done to prevent what was forseeable.

Senator Lindsey Graham had it right: blaming this all on low level people just isn't right, and is a disservice to the ordinary GI. The sorts of people who should take a bullet for the cause - politically, I mean - are political appointees, not grunts.
posted by Noah at 10:53 PM

 
And this, in turn, brings us back around to the question of Rumsfeld.

Let me dispose, first of all, of the most recent reason people are calling for Rummy's resignation: the prisoner abuse scandal. Rumsfeld's position has become untenable, and for this reason he ought to resign. Rumsfeld is far less culpable for the tortures at Abu Ghraib than Janet Reno was for the deaths at Waco - Reno, after all, actually gave the order to sic tanks on American citizens (or is it too black helicopter of me to bring this up?) - and yes, the military is and was doing the right thing by investigating before anything came out (indeed, the story broke because of the military's internal investigation). But Rumsfeld's at the top of the chain of command and the bulk of the abuses were quite clearly policy - that is to say, those on the receiving end were overwhelmingly detainees perceived to have real intelligence value, and the purpose of the humiliations, etc. was not wanton sadism but to extract information. That's policy, not wayward conduct by a handful of sadists, though it seems the latter took advantage of the former as well, as should have been expected. We shouldn't blow the incident out of proportion, but at this point a defense of Rumsfeld is a defense of the policy that led to Abu Ghraib, and I just don't see the Administration mounting that defense, nor do I see even Bush toughing this out simply for the sake of toughing it out, which would be, admittedly, his preference. I think Rummy will do the right thing and go quietly. But what do I know? I'm almost always wrong about everything.

In any event, there are three far more substantive raps against Rumsfeld. First, that he was the prime mover in advocating this war. I think this is just wrong. Powell was the prime opponent of the war; virtually everyone else in the Administration was an advocate: Cheney, Rice, Tenet, Rumsfeld and the President himself. Even blaming Bush for the fact that we are in Iraq must reckon with the fact that the pre-war situation was unstable and untenable long-term, and that Clinton went to the brink of war in 1998 that had as its objective pretty much the same outcome that Bush sought in 2003 (ending the WMD threat and regime change). Blaming Rumsfeld is just silly.

Second, that he's recklessly and needlessly pissed people off - the Army brass, foreign leaders, the State Department - with his high-handed arrogance and browbeating manner. Well, he's guilty of that; I don't have a defense for him. The fact is, lots of us indulged in a taste for Rumsfeldian condescension in the months after 9-11; it was wonderful to glory in a guy who was hard-charging, aggressive, unapologetic. Well, that thrill is gone. Frankly, I don't think it's the Secretary of Defense's job to be a diplomat; I think it's a measure of the failure of our diplomatic corps that we assume he needs to be. But he needn't take pleasure in making their job harder than it already is.

Third, and most significantly, he's damned for refusing to allocate sufficient troops to the war in Iraq, and for refusing to expand the size of the armed forces generally. This attack comes from all directions, right, left and center, and it's worth examining in detail.

Let me start by saying that I think our force structure is too small, simply because I think the burden of global security falls so disproportionately on the United States that we must maintain an outsized force structure to be prepared for multiple, simultaneous contingencies and deter the emergence of major rivals. It would be wonderful to have a robust alliance structure to magnify American power and I think we've done too little in the last 10 years to bolster that structure, most particularly in the western Pacific. But the fact is the largest allied military - Britain's - is a fraction of the size of America's armed forces, and always will be.

That said, there are a few problems with this critique of Rumsfeld. For one thing, there is a yawning gap between what the anti-war Rumsfeld critics think was necessary to secure Iraq, and what the pro-war critics think. Bill Kristol thinks we need 30,000 more troops. General Shinseki thought we needed 300,000 more troops than originally allocated - essentially, the entire force - and for an extended period of occupation. Shinseki's numbers aren't crazy; they are a reasonable extrapolation from the size of the army needed to keep the peace in places like Bosnia and Kossovo. If that's the kind of force you'd need for 2-3 years to nation-build in Iraq, then no politically conceivable American Administration could contemplate occupying Iraq. But if the Kristol's of the world are right, then Rumsfeld looks inexplicably stubborn in refusing to up the force structure at least later in the game; if 20,000 or 30,000 troops would turn things around, why on earth wouldn't he send them? Something doesn't compute.

The bottom line is that Rumsfeld does not believe in nation-building. That's not what he thinks the U.S. armed forces are for, and it's not clear he believes it can even be done. I'm not sure he's wrong. I'm mystified why he's identified as the epicenter of the clique of "hard-Wilsonians" or "Jacobins" or "right-wing Trotskyites" or whatever cuss-word is used these days for the folks who want to spread democracy at gunpoint. This is just not what the man believes, whatever his deputies might say.

If you are opposed to "American Empire" and want this country to defend its vital interests with a minimal footprint in foreign countries, with minimal risk of being held hostage to foreign powers, then you really want Rumsfeld to be right. He doesn't care whether we keep bases in Iraq; he wants to have such a mobile, expeditionary force that we don't need many in-theater bases at all. Almost the last thing Rumsfeld wants is to be bogged down in an endless counter-insurgency; the absolute last thing he wants is to have ten times as many troops bogged down in an endless peacekeeping effort. Is he so wrong?

Well, he looks like he was wrong on the facts. Whether he drank the Kool-aid or just played along, he backed the folks who backed the wrong horse. He read the local culture and power-structure totally wrong. He did not want to get us into a guerilla war. He got us into a guerilla war.

But the folks baying for his head need to seriously think about the alternatives to the Rumsfeld Doctrine of quick, light and mobile. The Powell Doctrine amounts to looking for your keys where the light is: don't fight based on whether our interests are at stake, but based on whether it's an easy war to win. (Remember, "we do deserts, not mountains"? And he didn't want to do deserts, either.) If the Rumsfeld Doctrine did not take the threat of insurgency seriously, and we're not simply going to refuse to fight wars that might involve counterinsurgency (are we going to acquiesce as Islamist groups take over the southern Philippines, for example? I hope not), then we need to build the force structure in part around such contingencies. But otherwise, it seems to me the things Rumsfeld got wrong were mostly things that shouldn't have been his job; Rice and Powell should have had at least as much to say about the political management of the postwar as Rumsfeld did, and if they didn't then they should be faulted at least as much as Rumsfeld is.

Rumsfeld should go. But whoever replaces him has got to build on what he was doing, not trash his work and go back to the fantasy that big, heavy armored divisions are what we most need to fight the wars of the future. That's what a Powell Doctrinaire will build, while a Shinseki would focus on a force designed to be subordinate to a UN peacekeeping mission. (And if Senator McCain wants to be Kerry's SecDef, I'd love to know what he thinks our force structure should be.)
posted by Noah at 2:40 PM

 
So, with the last post in mind, I'm still primarily interested in how to win. I know why we have to win, and the why has gotten more urgent, not less. I also know that we are losing. I want to know how to win - not get out quickly and paper over our mistake, but win. Not because that's the only way to justify our investment so far (that's a sunk cost) but because the costs of failure in Iraq are huge.

Perforce, therefore, I turn to those who promoted this war, and try to separate the wheat from the chaff - those capable of thinking critically from those who are Administration flaks or, worse, have simply gone off their heads. But even those who still seem entirely sane among this war's supporters - Bob Kagan, say - who clearly see how bad things have gotten, can resort only to happy-talk scenarios as a way out. They can trim their optimistism with pessimistic hedges, but it still amounts to happy-talk.

"Democratize faster" is the new mantra. With elections, we're told, "those who continued to commit violence in Iraq would be understood to be attacking not only the United States, but also the elections process, and therefore democracy." Moreover, "American military actions could be seen not just as an effort to suppress rebellious Iraqi movements but as a vital support for the elections process, and for democracy."

I'm sorry, but this sounds to me like desperate fantasy. Look, get this: the guys who are advocating democracy in Iraq are not the guys shooting at us. The guys shooting at us are shooting at us because Iraq has $1 trillion in oil reserves and whoever takes control of the country controls that incredible store of wealth. So what the "democratize faster" strategy assumes at heart is that the advent of elections will cause the great mass of Iraqis spontaneously to rise up and fight the thugs who are trying to drive us out and take over the country.

Does that sound familiar? It should. It's not terribly different from the pre-war "plan" for the post-war period: don't worry, because ordinary Iraqis will be so pleased to be liberated that they'll shower us with garlands of flowers.

The fact is, lots of Iraqis still want us around - among the Shiites and particularly among the Kurds. But we're still fighting a guerilla war against Sadr's Mahdi Army because *he* doesn't want us around. And he's got friends. If there were a democratically-elected regional governor in Basra, would that mean that we wouldn't have to hunt down Sadr and his boys anymore? Or that thousands of Shiite volunteers would join militias to hunt him down for us? I don't think so. I think we'll still be fighting the same war. What does speedy elections get us?

The only way democratization could work is if there were an identifiable, legitimate Iraqi individual or group of individuals around whom the people of Iraq could rally. The neo-cons actually understood this, which is why they wanted so badly to believe that Ahmad Chalabi was that individual. But he isn't. I'm sorry, but he isn't.

And democratization on a piecemeal basis in the absence of a stable constitutional structure would raise some other thorny problems. Example: the new governor of Basra announces that the oil revenues from his region will now be used only for local purposes; nothing will be sent to the central government. What's our response? Remove him from office? Accept his coup and side openly with the Shiite south against the metropolitan center in Baghdad? This is the kind of thing we're going to have to deal with about six hours after the first democratic election in Iraq. Any proposal to democratize faster has to deal with it, but none of the pundits advocating this course have done so, to my knowledge. We're still making it up as we go along.

There are two other arguments for democratization in the piece: that it will help on the international front and that it will force us to deploy more troops. I think the former is wishful thinking. If Germany really wants to help us out in Iraq, they can do so now. I think that even if they wish to do so, they will not do so until after the American election because the political consequences of appearing to knuckle under to the Americans are too grave. After the American election, things might get better, regardless of who wins (if Kerry, because everyone can turn over a new leaf; if Bush, because with four more years the consequences of refusing to do business are far more serious than they are now, so the possibility of cooperation is greater). But you know, this assumes anyone wants to help out. I'm not convinced they do. I'm not convinced anyone on earth wants to stick their hand into the Iraqi thornbush to help us pull ours out, regardless of the diplomatic sweeteners we supply.

As to the second: what, precisely, is the argument here? The same government that would presumably be calling for new elections (i.e., the Bush Administration) is the one that refuses to send more troops. And the main reason we refuse to *send* more troops is that we don't *have* more troops - not in the numbers needed by most estimates. Saying "we should hold elections so that we have no choice but to send more troops" is just a sillier way of saying, "we should send more troops"; the former amount to forcing our own hand, as if we don't know what we ourselves are doing. (No, don't say it. Please.)
posted by Noah at 1:00 PM

 
I'm getting very depressed.

My boss came up to me the other day and said, "Noah, you've soured on Bush a little, haven't you?" I admitted I had. "This Iraq business looks pretty bad, doesn't it?" I agreed it did. "You know," he said, "I don't know why we're getting all bent out of shape about these prison torture pictures. We shouldn't be upset about that; we should be upset that they're still killing us there. 'Cause it seems to me if this doesn't work, the only solution left is the nuclear one."

Oh, I asked? What's the target?

"Does it matter?"

This is why I'm getting depressed.

I remember a conversation I had in Brooklyn on 9-12; my friend and I were debating just how many and which places needed to be nuked to make sure 9-11 never happened again.

Now, we're just a couple of guys in Brooklyn, and we've certainly cooled down since then - did so within a few days, in fact, to the point that we were no longer openly talking about lobbing nukes hither and yon. But we're a couple of (basically) liberal guys, whatever party we vote for. We believe in freedom, in justice, in decency. We're cosmopolitan people. Yeah, there are people in Brooklyn whose reaction was to rally around the Muslims of Atlantic Avenue to protect them from reprisals (reprisals which, needless to say, never came). But there are a lot more people whose reaction was closer to our own. I think we were fairly typical.

This country's patience with the Middle East is wearing very thin. The Iraq war was launched with a lot of hubris and poor planning, but with a lot of idealism as well. The impetus was the desire to "stop swatting flies", to solve the Middle East's problems, or at least put them on a path to solution. If that looks impossible, people are going to stop looking for a solution. That doesn't mean they'll stop fighting to defend our country's interests. It means they won't care how many innocents on the other side die in the process.
posted by Noah at 10:59 AM

 
Okay, Mr. Frum, let's take it item by item.

Frum: ITEM: Up until now we were supposed to believe that the INC produced no useful intelligence – that it dealt only in fantasies and lies. Now suddenly the INC is accused of being in possession of accurate and valuable sensitive information. How did Chalabi go from know-nothing to valuable intelligence asset overnight?

Me: Um, the old accusation is that Chalabi provided us with lousy or fabricated intelligence to advance his agenda. The new accusation is that Chalabi is feeding the Iranians intelligence about us. Provided to him by, well, us. So, he went from being a useless intelligence asset to us to being a valuable intelligence asset to our enemies because we gave him access to valuable intelligence. Is that so hard to follow?

Frum: ITEM: Chalabi has been caught talking on the phone to the Iranians. But wait – hasn’t the State Department been arguing for months that the US should talk to the Iranians about Iraq? In testimony to Congress in October 2003, State number 2 Richard Armitage explicitly disavowed regime change in Iran and called for discussions with Iran on “appropriate” issues. In January 2004, Secretary of State Powell openly called for “dialogue” – and the Bush administration offered to send Elizabeth Dole and a member of the president’s own family to deliver earthquake aid to Iran. (The British sent Prince Charles.) Since then, the hinting and suggesting have grown ever more explicit. What, pray, is the difference between the policy Chalabi is pursuing and that which his State Department critics want the US to pursue?

Me: Guess what: the State Department and other departments of the American Executive branch had discussions with the Soviet Union all through the Cold War. We had an embassy there and everything. Does that mean that any soldier of fortune claiming to be a friend of America wouldn't be under suspicion if he had regular contacts with the Kremlin? He would? But why? What's he doing that's different from what we're doing? Maybe - just maybe - the difference is that he isn't an officer of the U.S. government, charged with protecting and advancing American interests, and entitled to the presumption that he is acting in good faith until proven otherwise?

Frum: ITEM: Chalabi is now accused of playing a “double game” in Iraqi politics, an offense for which he must forfeit all rights to a role in Iraq’s future. This “no double game” rule is a new and impressive standard for judging our allies in the Arab Middle East. Question: Will that same standard apply to those former Republican Guard generals whom the State Department is now so assiduously promoting? Will it apply to the former Baathists that Lakhdar Brahimi wishes to include in the provisional Iraqi government? Will it apply to Lakhdar Brahimi himself? Will it apply to the Saudi royal family? Will it apply to the Iranians? Or is it only Ahmed Chalabi who must swear undeviating loyalty to the US policy-of-the-day in Iraq?

Me: Ahmad Chalabi is a 100% creation of the American taxpayer. He has no local support, no independent source of funds, and no power base other than the United States Armed Forces. He may or may not be a good guy at heart, but he's not an ally; he's a client. It is one thing for us to deal with countries in the region that have interests that differ from ours, and - guess what? - sometimes rank those other interests higher than keeping America happy. Even the Kurds can plausibly claim that they helped us get rid of Saddam, so they don't just owe us, we owe them. Chalabi has no right to independent interests.

Frum: ITEM: Salon magazine last night published a lengthy attack on Chalabi by John Dizard. In it, former Chalabi business partner Marc Zell calls Chalabi a “treacherous, spineless turncoat,” for failing to deliver on Chalabi’s alleged promises to open Iraq to trade with Israel. I don’t know that these promises were ever made – and if made, I wonder whether Chalabi ever suggested that they would rank first on a new Iraqi government’s list of priorities. But never mind that: Chalabi has not exercised executive power in Iraq for even a single day. How exactly was it ever possible that he would carry out any promise about anything to anyone?

Me: Hey, don't breeze by the fact that key Chalabi promoters picked their man because he promised to normalize relations between Iraq and Israel. A legitimate case can be made for that goal as a foreign policy priority, but it seems to me the neo-cons have been spilling a lot of ink denying that Israel had anything to do with the case for war against Iraq. But even letting that breeze by: is Frum claiming that Dizard made the line up? Or is he saying that Dizard was a fool for taking Chalabi's promises at face value? Or what, precisely, does he mean by "How exactly was it ever possible that he would carry out any promise about anything to anyone?" Is he seriously suggesting that the problem with our war effort so far is that we haven't installed Chalabi as dictator yet, so that he'd be able to fulfill his promises to guys like Zell?

Frum says that Chalabi is "one of the very few genuine liberal democrats to be found at the head of any substantial political organization anywhere in the Arab world" and "compared to just about every other political leader in the Arab world - the imperfect Ahmed Chalabi is nontheless a James bleeping Madison." Note what he doesn't say: that if Ahmad Chalabi - James bleeping Madison though he be - were on a ballot today in Iraq, he would not have a prayer of getting elected. I suppose Frum would say that the people of Iraq have not yet learned to appreciate the James bleeping Madison in their midst, but with time and tutelage they'll no doubt see the error of their ways.

This has gotten beyond embarrassing. It's become dangerous.
posted by Noah at 12:30 PM

 
Tell it like it is, George.
posted by Noah at 8:44 AM

 
I am, by the way, very disappointed to discover Natan Sharansky, whom I admire, firmly in the "no" camp. I understand all his arguments. But I don't see a lot of evidence that he understands the contrary arguments, or appreciates the diplomatic stakes for Israel, after Bush's letter, of rejecting the Sharon plan. I expected more wisdom from him.
posted by Noah at 6:52 PM

 
And now, belatedly, a couple of words about the Gaza referendum.

The kindest thing I can say about the Likud voters is that they behaved like Palestinians. They believe the Land is theirs, and they will not vote to leave it - whatever the consequences. They will now find out what the consequences are.

I'm very apprehensive about the pullout plan, specifically for the security implications. I don't think it will be that easy to get rid of Gaza. But getting rid of the Gaza settlements in exchange for ratification of the legitimacy of the "consensus" settlements, and ratification of Israel's refusal to countenance a Palestinian influx into Israel, is a huge win for Israel. And anyone on the Right who doesn't understand that is living in a dreamworld.

Bush took an enormous risk in supporting Sharon, as Sharon took a significant risk in proposing the plan in the first place. Sharon just lost his bet, and therefore Bush has lost his. Now comes the question: what will each man do?

If Bush is wise, he will hold Sharon's feet to the fire, and demand he find a coalition that will support the pullout. If that means civil war within Likud, so be it. If that means a unity government without the far Right, so much the better. Sharon knows where the center of gravity in Israel is, and so should Bush: it's with the pragmatists of Shinui, not the rightists of National Union or the doves of Shachar. There is a majority for disengagement, and a portion of the minority favors a more dovish course; only an electorally impotent (though large) minority would vote for a right-wing alternative to Sharon. Bush should make Sharon call the Right's bluff.

Whether he's wise or not, meanwhile, Bush is going to pay a price elsewhere for the Likud electorate's decision. Had Likud voted to support the pullout, Bush could have explained to King Abdullah that all he's trying to do is pull Israel in the direction of disengagement, getting Israel out of the Palestinians' lives, and that this is the best course towards ultimate peaceful coexistence given that Arafat has continued his warfare and no moderate alternatives to Arafat have real power. Now, everyone knows that Bush can't even deliver a guy from his own neighborhood, so to speak. Bush will pay a price. I hope America doesn't, but I expect we will. Sharon should know that, and he should tell Netanyahu and everyone else in the "no" camp in Likud what the consequences are on that front - because if America pays a price now, Israel will pay a price later.

What should Sharon do? Well, if Bush pushes him, he should do what he must. Sharon is not Bibi; he has spent his term winning the country's affection, not its contempt. He has built up Likud, not destroyed it. If there are new elections, Sharon's platform will win a governing majority, even if Sharon's party does not. And there's a good chance Sharon will still wind up as Prime Minister.

But if Bush does not hold his feet to the fire, Sharon should probably try to square the circle. Daring Likud to dump him would be taking a risk on top of a risk. The safer course would appear to be deception; the trouble is, who will be deceived? Can Sharon appear to implement his plan over its detractors objections while also appearing to have scuttled the plan to placate those detractors? Personally, I don't think it will work, and in the end the Right will not be deceived. They'll have to put up - and vote to dump Sharon - or shut up.
posted by Noah at 6:50 PM

 
Follow-up: I just read Robert Kagan's eloquent complaint about, on the one hand, those on the Right who are beginning to throw up their hands about Iraq and, on the other, the Bush Administration's obvious flailing about which is promoting said throwing. Kagan asks the key question of all those who favor "lowering our sights" - namely, what's the alternative plan? How do we create a stable Iraq without pursuing democratic legitimacy? And how do we exit Iraq without doing irreparable damage to our national interest without first establishing said stable, legitimate regime?

Good questions. If we start evaluating alternatives solely on the basis of "what gets us out quicker" then we're headed for a world of hurt, hurt brought on by self-delusion no less acute than that which dazzled us pre-war with visions of flower garlands tossed at American liberators. Perhaps the best way of talking about Iraq is not in terms of democracy or stability but legitimacy: how can we constitute authority that will be legitimate in Iraqi eyes and congruent with American interests? Elections, even if they lead to a questionably liberal result, would certainly do more to assure legitimacy than other methods of choosing a government, as Mickey Kaus points out.

But his questions beg another question: alernative to what plan? What, precisely, is the plan that gets us to stable, democratic legitimacy in Iraq? Is there one? Does Kagan have a suggestion beyond keeping on keeping on? Would he have reduced Fallujah to rubble, damn the consequences, to teach the jihadis a lesson? Does he think we're giving al-Sadr too much rope - or just enough to hang himself with? Shouldn't he have to lay this out in the same kind of detail that he demands of the cut-and-run set, or do idealists get a pass here? If he knows better than Paul Bremmer how to do his job, oughtn't he to enlighten us?

Many of Kagan's questions are more answerable in retrospect than in prospect. I have been skeptical from the beginning of the prospects for stable Iraqi democracy precisely because of the fragility of Iraqi national identity. But granting that, we now know some things. We know that Sistani is the most credible leader among the Shiites - and he's religious leader who resolutely refuses to hold political power to boot; how about that?. Guys like that don't come by the dozen. We also know - and knew beforehand - that Jordan had a potentially pivotal role to play in postwar Iraq. The old Iraqi royal family was the same Hashemite clan that reigns in Jordan, and ethnic ties between the Jordanians and the Sunni Arab Iraqis are strong. Jordan is also among the most liberal Arab societies and about as solidly pro-American as Arabs come these days. It would be hard to think of an Arab country in a better position to be helpful in Iraq than Jordan, and harder to think of a more potentially helpful Arab family than the Hashemites. (According to the Belmont Club, the Jordanians have been involved in training the new Fallujah Brigade, by the way.)

So in retrospect, if we cared about having a stable Iraq, maybe we should have gotten the Hashemites more closely involved pre-war. Maybe we should have consulted more closely with Sistani in the immediate post-war period. Maybe there are things other than more troops - do we not have enough troops to reduce Fallujah? I rather think we do, but we still haven't reduced it - that we could have done to make this business go better. Maybe we could have backed a stronger horse when there was still time to do so.

Oh, and what do the Jordanians and Sistani have in common? Well, one thing that comes to mind is that they hate Ahmad Chalabi. Chalabi was convicted in absentia of defrauding a Jordanian bank; even those who question the political motivation of the charges can't deny that this suggests he is not loved in Amman. Is this because Chalabi is a Shiite democrat? Hardly; Sistani has been a forceful advocate for the Shiites and against clerical rule, and Sistani will not deal with his fellow Shiite, Chalabi. And in this, the Jordanians and Sistani are in tune with the Iraqi people, who also can't stand Chalabi, according to all poll results.

Chalabi was the man we placed our bets on pre-war, and we continued to bet on him post-war (and we're still betting on him, at least a little bit). And we've lost our shirt on those bets. We were cool pre-war to the idea of bringing the Hashemites into the equation, in part because Chalabi objected. (Indeed, he claimed that bringing them in would be a betrayal of Iraqi democracy, and would justify resistance to the Americans. This kind of statement still didn't get us to drop the guy.) We kept Sistani at arms length for months, in part because Chalabi was cool to him. Chalabi has extensive connections in Tehran, a dubious personal history, and no support in the country, and we've been having as bad a time as we have in Iraq in part because of him.

So here's my message to Robert Kagan - and to every other war supporter whom I still consider credible, and look to for sane advice on how to deal with the mess we're in. I have a new credibility test for you: whether you are willing to say bad things about Ahmad Chalabi. They don't have to be terrible things; you don't have to say he's the goat-buggering spawn of Barry Minkow and Imelda Marcos. Just that he's been a complete flop and everything he's told us has been a self-serving fiction. Just that he has no popular support and that people we really need to rely on don't trust him. Just that he was a mistake that we - all of us who supported the war - made, and that it behooves us to vet our past statements and positions and identify those conclusion that depend on "Chalabist" premises, and expunge them, and then look at the problem before us anew.

I'm not listening to lectures from people who are still backing such a weak and deceptive horse.
posted by Noah at 6:25 PM

 
Tactics and strategy. There's a reason why we have two different words: because you cannot automatically infer one from the other.

So, David Frum and Tacitus, we cannot conclude from the tactics deployed at Fallujah that America's strategy has changed, or failed, or is incoherent. So far as I can tell, Frum's idea of what our strategy should be is to do whatever Ahmad Chalabi says, and if that doesn't work do more of it. Such a strategy pretty much obviates the need for discussion of tactics. And so far as I can tell Tacitus' strategy is to kill the enemy, wherever he is in however many numbers with whatever consequences follow. That's certainly appealing, but such a strategy also obviates the need for discussion of tactics. Because for too much of the pro-war camp, tactics are increasingly simply deduced from strategy (which is, itself, deduced from first principles), it is natural to infer strategy from tactical maneuvers. And so they - along with much of the increasingly-respected anti-war right - have deduced from recent events in Fallujah that America is cutting and running and we are about to lose the war in Iraq.

This is obviously over-blown. If failing to reduce Fallujah means losing the war, presumably failing to reduce Tora Bora means so even more. Presumably, in fact, the entire Afghan campaign, where we relied on local proxies (some of them with nasty relationships and histories) to do the bulk of the fighting, was fatally flawed, and we need a massive occupation force for that country to make sure the Taliban know they are beaten. Presumably as well our failure to confront Taliban-allied elements in Pakistan directly, relying on Musharraf to do his fitful best instead, is a mistake, read by our enemies as weakness. Where does it end?

By the same token, the folks at the Belmont Club seem to have reassured people too much. I have no way of knowing from this distance whether the tactics being deployed at Fallujah are going to be successful or not, and frankly neither does anyone else blogging from the 'States. All that's clear is that our maneuvers there are tactical, and they may work or not. But just as tactics cannot be deduced directly from strategy, tactics are not a substitute for strategy. And the strategy is what is unclear.

I think we can confidently predict that the same corners of the pro-war right who are agonizing now about the betrayal at Fallujah will be crowing if the Fallujah Brigade gambit works out. This tactical decision will be hailed as more evidence of George W. Bush's sublime strategic wisdom, just as if the gambit fails the decision will be denounced as more evidence of how badly things go when the strategic vision of our leader is subverted by striped-pants types who opposed the war to begin with.

But what does that sublime wisdom consist of? Granted that the only appropriate exit strategy is victory. What is the strategy for victory? For that matter, how will we recognize victory when we see it?

The fear the Belmont folks are not addressing is that strategy has been subordinated to tactics, because the strategic vision on which the invasion was premised has proved hollow, but no other vision has been put forward to replace it. Here's the situation in sum: we thought Saddam had to go. We back a weak horse - Chalabi - to replace him. That hasn't worked out. We haven't found a strong horse to replace Chalabi, and it's not clear a strong horse can be found. And so we've got an open-ended commitment, and we're pursuing a variety of tactics to reduce the cost of that commitment, even as we lose sight of the strategic goal.
posted by Noah at 12:38 PM