Iraq, the unraveling (XIII): a faith-based war policy continues

When the surge was first proposed, my opinion (as a Political Science undergrad, that is to say, with no authority at all) was that it would merely cause the insurgents to hide their Kalashnikovs under their beds and go back to acting like normal citizens. Then when the US forces drew down and left, they would dust them off and get back to work.

The shifting of strategy towards COIN and away from just trying to kill all the insurgents gave me a bit more hope that it might succeed. But now I worry that American forces are pulling out too soon (as painful as that is to say, as someone who has opposed this war from the start) before Iraqi forces (and political and social infrastructure) are ready to handle it. The uptick in violence and the continuing inability of the Shia and Sunni factions to trust each other at all is not giving me much confidence that this can end well.

I had a professor (born in Iraq) who thought the options (in 2006) were civil war, civil war with American-trained and armed troops, or a new version of Saddam. I hope he was wrong.

The surge succeeded tactically and failed strategically -- another way of saying the Americans succeeded in doing what they tried to do while the Iraqis failed in doing what they tried to do.

The second part of that formulation is not entirely true. Prime minister Maliki seems to have enjoyed quite a bit of success lately. But the core of the problem -- the perception shared by former Bush admininistration officials, Bush administration critics like Ricks, and apparently the Obama administration as well -- is that we are looking on every Iraqi failure as an American failure. As long as we do that, we surely will have an army in Iraq forever.

The top priority for American policy makers needs to be to get the army out. It may not be a bad thing to dwell on the worst possible consequences of an American withdrawal. Iraqis have experienced civil war, or something very near to it in the recent past, and have good reasons to want to avoid it in the immediate future. The Maliki government is probably not strong enough to defeat all of its enemies, but no one of its enemies is strong enough to confront the government alone without risking disaster. There is great risk for Iraqi factions, and for Iraqis individually, in looking on American withdrawal as an opportunity to win what they can through force of arms. The greater that risk seems to be, the more eager Iraqis may be to avoid it.

I have every good wish that they may avoid it, but whether they do or not the American commitment in Iraq is an expense we cannot afford. I will not dwell on the absolute and resolute indifference to the costs of that commitment both by the last administration and by many of its harshest critics, other than to say that a choice needs to be made between Iraq and the other demands on the financial resources of the United States. It's clear which choice Bush administration officials like Peter Feaver and their current allies among former Bush administration critics like Tom Ricks would make if things were left to them, but they aren't going to be. The Obama admininstration will be watched closely to see if the imminent redeployment is the first step forward toward a liquidation of the Iraq commitment or merely a step sideways toward more of the same.

"To be honest, I don't know, and no one else does."

This is a bizarre statement. Since when have journalist/analysts decided that one can't predict the future?

And then to excuse your failure by saying nobody else can do better?

Here are some hints about how the Iraqi(Shiite)army will do in the coming years:

1 - The 500,000 strong South Vietnamese Army after 1971.

2 - The Afghan army after the Soviet withdrawal.

What makes you think this time will be any different? If anything, Odierno's optimism should just be another nail in the coffin.

"as of today only 30 more Iraqis have been killed in mass casualty bombings in June 2009 compared to May 2009, which had the lowest Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion."

Congratulations! You win the "Most Cherry-Picked and Meaningless Statistic of the Day" award.

We used to have to sing that song at the Naval Academy as plebes when we tried to use "belief" for an answer to a question that asked for a definitive response. "I'll find out, sir." was the proper response.

Maybe they didn't require that at the Point when General "O" braced up.

We will find out in this case though. But will it matter to us or for the Iranians?

Tom,
My opinion on this subject, after more than three years studying US military actions in Iraq and their interactions with the endogenous dynamics of conflicts since 2003 (my PhD dissertation), is that one has to make the distinction between military successes (retaking control of many parts of the country from AQI) and political semi-failures (this is more or less the same as your distinction between Tactical successes and Strategic failures).
Indeed, the problem is twofold:
First, the main reason of conflict in Iraq is the difficulty of national integration, i.e. the task of Nation-building.
Second, the causes of violence are not only limited to subversive action by the insurgency, but is also linked to revendicatives actions and predatory ones. In this view, COIN doctrine is flawed in its philosophy because it is tied too much with another historical context: people's war in the 1950s-1970s.
Best
Stéphane
PS: to be sure, Iraqi armed forces are important to take into account in order to predict the future of Iraq. My feeling are mixed, with a lot of "faith" in their capabilities, and the weight of historical memory. In this country, armed forces were never configured to fight external foes, but internal ones. In other words, the Iraqi Army was a tool in enforcing the central power against opposition and marginalized groups.
PPS: in a long view, the process of Nation Building was stopped at the beginning of the 1970s, when the Baas ideology -namely nationalism and socialism- was instrumentated by Saddam's Clan. The problem with the Iraqi society is its extreme fragmentation. The US intervention and the toppling of Saddam's regime produced a reactivation of ethnic and confessional cleavages which were deepened by the endogenous dynamics of conflicts in which US troops were a part of (mainly unconsciously at the beginning). Indeed, these cleavages were instrumentated by political entrepreneurs in order to promote their agenda or to increase their predatory actions at the expense of the new state (see for instance the role played by the exiles from 2005 onward).

Tom,

We've been in Iraq for over 6 years. Can you recall a single instance of any upper level officer ever predicting poor results in any endeavor?

The real question isn't how fast the unraveling will occur. The real question is how long anybody (including Obama) is going to believe this surge/COIN BS in regards to Afghanistan.

Andrew Bacevich seems to be the only one in the country with his head screwed on straight.

How many more decades, dollars, lives, and National Guards and reserves on perpetual rotation is it going to take?

How many more Pakistans is it going to take before we realize this foreign policy (or "strategy") is unsustainable?

Because it is going to end sooner or later ... but far before the stated goals are ever met.

Obama, Gates, Petreaus, and Odierno don't really care. They all know they can blame everything on Bush and will never be around by the time anything wraps up.

Is Iraq Mission Accomplished?

http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=5641

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Mr. Ricks-

The headline linking to your post is subtitled "Tom Ricks on Obama's Faith-Based Pullout." The U.S. is not 'pulling out' of Iraqi cities. Rather, they are being forced out, based on the terms of the Status of Forces agreement signed between the Bush Administration and the Iraqi Government. Bottom line: the story of the pullback by the U.S. military away from large urban areas is an Iraqi story with an Iraqi author, not an American one.

The real question is, why do the Iraqis think that they are ready to shed their protection? The al-Maliki government knows that it owes its existence to the U.S. But it also knows that a continued visible U.S. presence will eventually undermine its legitamacy. The al-Maliki government surely knows it's taking a too-big bite right now, but they've done it before (remember al-Maliki's ill-advised solo attempt at taking back Basra?). And now, they're doing it again, knowing that the U.S. can easily project power without U.S. soldiers patrolling cities. The U.S. will provide uninterrupted training, communications, logistics, intelligence, and air support to the Iraqis. It is al-Maliki's job to make it appear that it is he who provides the resulting (relative) security, and not the U.S.

What is the definition of a State, if not a monopoly on violence? Despite sporadic bombings and gunfights, the U.S. will provide the tools to maintain that monopoly for as long as necessary. There is no evidence that President Obama, SecState Clinton, SecDef Gates, or any of the Joint Chiefs or Generals in the field see this any differently. This apparent U.S. 'pullout' from Iraq also sends a strong message to the Afghan government and citizens about their responsibilities, and erodes a Taliban and al-Qaeda recruiting mantra that 'the U.S. is here to stay.' This is hardly a 'mission accomplished' moment, but it could prove to be momentous in a quiet and lasting sense.

-Frederick

Let Iraq (and Pakistan) fail.

We must euthanize the agreed-to fantasy of the countries named Iraq and Pakistan. The longer the world indulges these fantasies, the longer we delude ourselves.

Instability is the norm where boundaries have as much permanence as Tony Soprano's capos' territories. There is NO SUCH PLACE AS IRAQ OR PAKISTAN, except for fanciful, farcical lines maps that are locally irrelevant. Their inability to control and administer territory makes them failed states in fact, if not in the CIA Wolrd Handbook. (Afghanistan is much the same.)

Iraq was Saddam's fiefdom before the invasion and is a failed state after it, something that we (the UN, NATO and America) can do little to change. Since Baghdad's professional class (lawyers, doctors, engineers) were the Sadrists' first targets, the only non-sectarians left are either refugees or those wealthy enough to have private armies. I suggest either targeted assassinations (starting with Sadr and the death-squad cronies in the Interior Ministry) or walking away entirely.

The current American withdrawal from Baghdad will allow the Sadrists to continue their bloodletting, just as Islamabad's incompetence allows Taliban-style reigns of terror in the nomially Pakistani areas of Swat and the tribal areas. Will the Al-Quaeda psychos come back? Probably. But at least the sectarian war for control will be separate from the salafists.

At least this will now be muslim-on-muslim conflict without the canard of an outside oppressor, but even that won't stop the Saudis from funding the psychos with RPGs.

PS I noticed a funny thing in the photo of the "celebratory crowd" in Baghdad: no women. Is this due to the current Talibanization of Iraq? Or were there just not enough burquas to go around?

(I know, different country, different repressive "islamic" garments. How ethnocentric of me not to think that Arab women should have basic human rights!)