An Important Article
We’re going to have to deal with the prospect of a possible Barack Obama presidency sooner or later. We’ll have plenty of opportunity to dwell on the historic nature of his candidacy, as well as the ‘rock star’ aspects of the Obama juggernaut. I want to focus on policy for the moment, though, particularly on Obama’s pledge to bring the troops home from Iraq.
We ALL want to bring the troops home from Iraq, of course, but by making the removal of troops rather than victory the focus, Obama may soon be in a position to throw Iraq right down the toilet. We don’t need to hash and rehash the initial decision to go to war here; that’s done, and Obama cannot undo it as president. What he can do is decide what to do now.
Anthony H. Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes in the Washington Post:
No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are wars that can still be won. They are also clearly wars that can still be lost, but visits to the battlefield show that these conflicts are very different from the wars being described in American political campaigns and most of the debates outside the United States.
These conflicts involve far more than combat between the United States and its allies against insurgent movements such as al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban. Meaningful victory can come only if tactical military victories end in ideological and political victories and in successful governance and development. Dollars are as important as bullets, and so are political accommodation, effective government services and clear demonstrations that there is a future that does not need to be built on Islamist extremism.
The military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are very different. The United States and its allies are winning virtually every tactical clash in both countries. In Iraq, however, al-Qaeda is clearly losing in every province. It is being reduced to a losing struggle for control of Nineveh and Mosul. There is a very real prospect of coalition forces bringing a reasonable degree of security if decisions such as Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr‘s announcement Friday to extend his militia’s cease-fire six months continue over a period of years.
Military victory is far more marginal in Afghanistan. NATO and international troops can still win tactically, but the Taliban is sharply expanding its support areas as well as its political and economic influence and control in Afghanistan. It has scored major gains in Pakistan, which is clearly the more important prize for al-Qaeda and has more Pashtuns than Afghanistan. U.S. commanders privately warn that victory cannot be attained without more troops, without all members of NATO and the International Security Assistance Force fully committing their troops to combat, and without a much stronger and consistent effort by the Pakistani army in both the federally administered tribal areas in western Pakistan and the Baluchi area in the south.
What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war. Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don’t end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020.
If the next president, Congress and the American people cannot face this reality, we will lose. Years of false promises about the speed with which we can create effective army, police and criminal justice capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot disguise the fact that mature, effective local forces and structures will not be available until 2012 and probably well beyond. This does not mean that U.S. and allied force levels cannot be cut over time, but a serious military and advisory presence will probably be needed for at least that long, and rushed reductions in forces or providing inadequate forces will lead to a collapse at the military level.
The most serious problems, however, are governance and development. Both countries face critical internal divisions and levels of poverty and unemployment that will require patience. These troubles can be worked out, but only over a period of years. Both central governments are corrupt and ineffective, and they cannot bring development and services without years of additional aid at far higher levels than the Bush administration now budgets. Blaming weak governments or trying to rush them into effective action by threatening to leave will undercut them long before they are strong enough to act.
Any American political leader who cannot face these realities, now or in the future, will ensure defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Any Congress that insists on instant victory or success will do the same. We either need long-term commitments, effective long-term resources and strategic patience — or we do not need enemies. We will defeat ourselves.
I broke from practice and quoted in entirety because I think this message is that important. It’s not a partisan message. My biggest fear, when viewing the prospect of a President Obama, is not that a Democrat will regain the White House. Party fortunes come and go…but we won’t get a second chance in Iraq or Afghanistan…and even if we do, it will be at horrendous cost, even more so than what we have currently paid.
We made a big mistake in invading Iraq upon mistaken intelligence, and we made another big mistake in our handling of the immediate postwar (or if you prefer, post-major combat) aftermath. In spite of that, and thanks in large part to the tenacity and inventiveness of the American military, we can still win…if the politicians don’t throw it away.
The American people are sick of the Iraq War and want it to end. That’s clear…but, painful as this is for a man who loves his country as much as I do, the American people have forgotten what it means to sacrifice. We are a strong nation, but we have grown soft in our abundance – we are consumers now, not warriors, and for the most part, that’s a good thing. Right now, though, we need a little help with our backbone, and we need our politicans to lead, rather than follow public sentiment, because the consequences of failure are unbearable to contemplate.
That’s as good a reason as any to support John McCain as you will find…but it will be a hard sell. If Barack Obama makes it through the primaries and to the White House, he will be beholden to many party activists who will demand an end to the war as the price of their support. But he will also be privy to an abundance of intelligence and information from the field of battle. My sincerest hope is that he will be flexible enough to put the interest of his country in front of the interest of his party should the decision become his to make.
Leave Iraq? Yes, by all means, and may it be sooner rather than later…but let it be as a consequence of a victory won, not a campaign promise…
My God, I’m not surprised that the Washington Post would publish such drivel, but it still infuriates me.
“No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are wars that can still be won.”
What does that even mean?! How in the world do we win “the war” through combat? The problems, as he sort of half points out, is that the Iraqi government is corrupt and incompetent. The continued presence of our troops has absolutely nothing to do with solving that problem. If the surge has not solved it, why am I supposed to believe anything else might? This argument is completely incoherent and relies on my willingness to predict the future with no reference to the past. I think I am quite done with that, but thanks anyway.
The trouble is, if he were to become president we dont know what he would do. His lack of experience leaves us mostly blind to what his actions will be. Is he cunning enough, when the intelligence is presented to him, to double talk his way into keeping a significant military presence in Iraq and keep the left happy? (I think Hillary would likely do this, which is why I support her over Obama on the D side.) Possibly for a new set of right reasons. Or is he dead serious? Will he withdraw as soon as possible at the cost of Iraqs democracy and people for the sake of whimsical bruised egos and a fools concept of the world.
But even though the msm has declared Obama the next president, thats a mock scenario of course. I look forward to watching McCain back Obama into a corner in the general election. Four more years of listening to the left point to an Iraq with a strong military presence chanting “look at what Bush did” will be a lot better than watching Iraq turn into chaos again with escalating deaths listening to the left chanting “look at what Bush did.”
Yeah, it’s a good thing we’ve solved that “chaos in Iraq” problem. If there’s one thing the Bush foreign policy team has been dead right about this entire time, it’s that we can create stable democracy by simply imagining it exists. Those silly Democrats and their facts.
As for “a fool’s concept of the world”: let’s just say I’m disinclined to take seriously that kind of talk from a group of people who have been consistently wrong about literally every single foreign policy question for seven years running.
Ryan, I guess I will take a stab at this also. First, in Iraq and Afghanistan we are trying to establish the rule of law. Once this is established, stable systems can be established. It takes a doctor 12 years of training, a lawyer 8, why do you think an uneducated population can be left to function with only 5 years of training? Who is being the fool here?
Senator’s Biden and Hagel wrote before the war that it was going to take a long time and they wondered if President Bush had the patience to see it to conclusion. Now it is the Democrats that have no patience. I keep asking liberals about Darfur. Why should the US intervene. At least the UN backed us in Iraq. They can’t even pass a resolution on the Darfur religious civil war.
Look, I understand the arguments. It’s not that I don’t get it; it’s that it’s so obviously incorrect or arrogant, or both. How in the world do we reconcile the fact that large swaths of the Middle East think we’re imperialist invaders with the fact that you think the Iraqi people are in desperate need of an education from us? And how many teachers end up dead in the average training period for doctors and lawyers (periods which are, technically, quite a bit shorter than 12 and 8 years, respectively – although that’s not the point)?
In how many countries has the rule of law ever been handed down fro above except by the sword? Is it the position of the de facto imperialists of the bipartisan consensus that we become, instead, de jure imperialists? There would at least be some consistency to all this if we were forthright about the white man’s burden. It would be disgusting and immoral, but so is the current policy. At least being upfront about it has the virtue of honesty.
And, for the record, I’m not at all convinced that armed intervention in Darfur is an appropriate course of action. It seems deeply unlikely to accomplish much of value. I mean, using the GOP’s metric for Iraq, we could probably save a lot of people from state-backed genocide while simultaneously stirring up multiple other disasters and getting a lot of people killed for different reasons. Since I don’t consider that a great policy success, my inclination is to find different ways to approach the problem.
One last thought on the incoherence of this policy. John McCain says:
“And by the way, that reminds me of this hundred year thing. I was asked in a town hall meeting back in Florida, how long would we have a presence in Iraq? My friends, the war will be over soon, the war for all intents and purposes although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years, but it will be handled by the Iraqis, not by us, and then we decide what kind of security arrangement we want to have with the Iraqis…”
What in the world is he even saying? The war will be over soon but the insurgency will continue? There is, frankly, no way to make any sense of this. Either the war ended when the insurgency began or the war will end when the insurgency ends. There is no intelligible sense in which we can currently be in a war that is independent of the insurgency. Obviously, that’s all semantics and not a particularly substantive argument, but the point is that McCain’s vision of this thing, like that of everyone who agrees with him, doesn’t make a bit of sense. It’s all frantic searching for arguments and evidence in favor of a position that has already been thoroughly discredited by the large majority of arguments and evidence.
Ryan, I am curious why you feel the need to label every viewpoint that diverges from yours as ‘incoherent’. Of course the war can be over and the insurgency continue. It’s not hard to understand. There is a continued presence of people who wish to do harm to Israel constantly surrounding it, and yet we can still label a definite end to the recent War in Lebanon, for example, or the Six Days War. Sometimes the beginning and end of a war are only clear in retrospect. There are phases in warfare, after all, and we needn’t get tripped up in semantics.
I think it is clear what McCain is saying in the quote you spotlighted: that the role for U.S. combat troops (although not necessarily military advisors and a certain contingent of troops for security needs) will end soon, but the insurgency will not fade into the darkness easily – it’s just that we hope to have an Iraqi government and military that is strong enough to handle the situation. Is that really incoherent? You can argue that it is mistaken, but I don’t see why it is unclear.
Similarly, because Col. Cordesman reaches a different conclusion than you, you ridicule this extremely straitforward statement:
“No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are wars that can still be won.”
What does it mean? It means that he’s been there, in person, and he came away with the impression that we can still win! Is that hard to understand, or do you merely disagree with it?
By the way, I referred to Cordesman as a colonel for some reason above – he is not. Confused this article with another, maybe, or just early senile dementia setting in, perhaps…
Ryan-
I’m not sure the word “incoherent” means what you think it means.
Here’s a good example of actual incoherence:
“The problems, as he sort of half points out, is that the Iraqi government is corrupt and incompetent. The continued presence of our troops has absolutely nothing to do with solving that problem. If the surge has not solved it, why am I supposed to believe anything else might?” (from your first comment on this post)
In sentence 2 you assert that troop presence has no (direct) effect on Iraqi governmental competence.
In sentence 3 you argue that if an increased troop presence cannot bring about Iraqi governmental competence, it’s obvious nothing else could.
This is the very definition of incoherence. Your third sentence assumes the total negation of your second.
(In passing, it’s the new elections in October, as well as the increasing power of the provincial governments and the rise of credible provincial and local leaders, that give some hint of hope on the Iraqi self-government front. These developments were not unrelated to the Surge and its successes.)
Mark, your first sentance should read:
“Ryan, I am curious why you feel the need to label every viewpoint that diverges from yours as ‘incoherent?’
Well, it’s not the most elegant sentence – one might even say it’s incoherent…
“Hope is a dangerous thing,” says “Red” to “Andy” in the 1994 film “The Shawshank Redemption.”
Red, played by Morgan Freeman, means that Andy, played by Tim Robbins, risks despair if he hopes to get out of prison.
The sentiment is worth considering when it comes to politics.
Can too much trust in a politician also be dangerous and lead to despair, even cynicism?
Those old enough to recall the political scene in the ’60s when first John F. Kennedy and then his brother, Robert, were
assassinated, know the dangers of hope and what can happen when such hope is crushed. In the ’60s, crushed hope
produced rebellion, even anarchy, along with despair. Now we’re told (by members of the Kennedy family, no less) that
Sen. Barack Obama is the reincarnation of the hope that was lost when Jack was murdered in 1963 and Bobby was
killed in 1968. And we watch as another generation of the young, informed by their history books and black-and-white
film of those days, become disciples of another young and handsome politician with a pretty wife and cute children.
Will history repeat? God forbid. But will another generation be disappointed when the one in whom they are placing
so much hope cannot possibly deliver?
This is where mature and experienced adults can steady the enthusiasm of the young and inexperienced. The Washington
Post Magazine recently carried a cover story by Jeffrey Birnbaum titled “How Lobbyists Always Win: Dispatches from
Washington’s Relentless Growth Industry.” It is a reminder of how, no matter who is president and which party controls
government, lobbyists are part of the permanent class and very little can change without their participation and approval.
Numerous “reformers” have come to Washington in the past, promising change. As often happens, they don’t change
Washington; Washington changes them.
One of the Kennedy campaign songs in 1960 was “High Hopes.” The original lyrics of the song include the line
“He had high apple pie, in the sky hopes.” That could describe Barack Obama.
Hope must be grounded in objective truth otherwise it quickly becomes wishful thinking. I might hope my team wins
the championship, but if they lack the talent it isn’t going to happen. I might hope to win the lottery, but I don’t play and
if I did, I’d have better odds of being struck by lightening than taking home the jackpot. Placing hope in politicians
absolves too many of us of our responsibilities. In 1994, when Republicans were on the verge of returning to power
in the House for the first time in four decades, one of the books making the rounds was “The Tragedy of American
Compassion” by Marvin Olasky. The book traced the history of compassionate behavior and found that most of it
came from individuals and religious institutions. The religious institutions offered hope by dedicating themselves to
changing the lives of people whose bad choices had put them in need of help. Changed lives produced changed
behavior and, thus, changed circumstances, leading to a more hopeful future. Olasky wrote that tragedy occurred
when government began to occupy the space once dominated by religious and personal charity, displacing hope
and leading to despair.
The “hope” being sold by Obama and his true believers is misplaced. Obama cannot deliver; he cannot save;
he cannot improve individual circumstances by redistributing wealth and talking to America’s dictatorial enemies.
He is selling snake oil.
The writer of the New Testament Book of Hebrews says that, “faith is being sure of what we hope forŠ” (Hebrews 11:1).
What we see in Barack Obama is a man with great rhetorical skills, who is untested in battle. Many are projecting
their hopes on him because he makes them feel good. What commander would put a low-ranking officer in charge
of all troops during wartime? We are close to making Obama our commander in chief with no hint of how he might
perform, other than to withdraw troops from Iraq.
A President Obama might be worth the risk in peacetime, but with crafty enemies seeking to destroy us, can we
afford to make what might be a fatal mistake by electing someone upon whom too many of us gave projected,
ungrounded hope?