I am a big fan of
Andrew Sullivan, and read his thoughtful blog every day. But I am tempted to
give him one of his Von Hoffman-ish awards for his item
criticizing me for advocating
keeping 35,000 or so troops in Iraq for many years to come. Andrew asks:
When will this madness end? Do we
really have to go completely bankrupt and be forced to withdraw from these
anachronistic pretensions? Are seven years not enough?
Tom
responds: Good
questions! I wish you had posed them before you supported the invasion, Andrew.
The decision to attack Iraq may was one of the biggest blunders in American
history, and is going to cost a lot more. This thing is far from over, and I am
surprised that you think you can just walk away from it now. You are an
interesting moral thinker -- how can you justify that?
Don't worry Tom - Sullivan is too preoccupied with the state of Sarah Palin's womb to give much thought to anything else. He may have been an interesting moral thinker once upon a time, but lately he's just gone off the rails.
Good questions! I wish you had posed them before you supported the invasion, Andrew. The decision to attack Iraq may was one of the biggest blunders in American history, and is going to cost a lot more. This thing is far from over, and I am surprised that you think you can just walk away from it now.
BURN!
On a more serious note, Sully does have a point. Exactly how important is Iraq to us in the long-term, and why does it necessarily require a long-term US troop presence? This isn't 2005, where the central Iraqi government and military were too weak to do anything - there's no question in my mind that they ultimately dominate the state in 2010, even if there are issues with security on the lower-levels (and this matches what I've read from Iraqis, comparing things now to that period).
But I still think you've been too blithe about the fact that that troop target is agreed upon by America and Iraq, so changing it isn't something Odierno can get DoD or even the whole admin to do: he has to get the Admin, to decide to pressure the Iraqi Parliament to do it, and the Iraqi Parliament has strong incentives not to.
Being able to change one's opinion is a sign of openness, humility, and maturity. Jumping ship like a rat, and ignoring one's own past statements while beating the drum for the new kid in town (Obama) is myopic, self-aggrandizing, and juvenile.
That said, Mr. Ricks, I was against the war from the get-go, I was even dreading it a year before it happened, and I feel absolutely no obligation to Iraq or the Iraqis. They are the victims of post-911 American blood-thirst, paranoia, and religiously-tinged xenophobia combined with political meglomania and greed on the part of way too many of our leaders. But, as I feel this country is far from being a representative Republic nor can I help the fact that my forbears were sent here curtsy of the Enclosure Movement of 17th Century England, I am as responsible for the misery of those people as a serf in 1066 in Normandy was for the atrocities committed by Duke William on the Anglo-Saxons. Moreover, I tend to resent my taxes being used to line the pockets of corrupt Americans and Iraqis for the forseable future. I also resent the way in which all these foreign adventures continue America's goose-stepping march towards our own type of fascism. Please note I am not calling anyone Nazis, but I do believe the country is controlled by people with fascist tendencies. Call my selfish and petty (I am neither a xenophobe, nor an economic conservative), but if everyone in the US is so concerned with the Iraqis perhaps we can allow for personal donations or offer the change for folks to "serve" over there for free.
.... costs in blood, money and opportunity are left completely out of the equation;
.... it is assumed that the absolute worst case will happen if an American army is not left in Iraq forever and cannot happen if it is;
.... and it is taken for granted that responsibility for Iraq's future rests primarily with Americans rather than Iraqis,
then an interesting moral thinker might indeed have his hands full justifying liquidation of the American commitment in Iraq. I use the conditional because I don't pretend to be a moral thinker myself and am prone to regard people who aspire to that status as being a lot more trouble than they are worth.
I disagree with much that you have to say these days [invading Iraq biggest blunder ever? To paraphrase Stephen Daedalus, great powers don't make mistakes, their errors are portals of discovery: history is literally overflowing with examples of great powers committing what seem to the short view 'blunders' or similarly flawed, but in the long view are full of immanent value] but it's entirely beyond the pale to confess being a 'fan' of Sullivan - the man is a blithering idiot. You are doing no favours to your reputation making declarations like that.
SaintSimon writes: “To paraphrase Stephen Daedalus, great powers don't make mistakes, their errors are portals of discovery”
On a cloudy dreary day I had a good chuckle with that one. Perhaps, I misinterpreted SS logic here but I can't help thinking about Japan’s should we say ‘portal of discovery’ in attacking the United States on Dec. 7, 1941. That proved to be a very interesting discovery. Or how about the idiot Hitler invading the Soviet Union without securing his Atlantic flank first and industrially and logistically planning for a nice and quick campaign against a collection of Soviet untermensch? Germany certainly opened a portal of discovery with that one!
I don’t mean to belittle SS since I don’t know his historical background but gosh, to say that great powers don’t make mistakes? Given time and space and one could spill an ocean of ink refuting James Joyce’s alter ego the fictitious Stephen Daedalus interesting statement. Which reminds me that Joyce was no historian either.
... he remains, despite his oddities, one of the most prolific, well-informed and consistently worth-while bloggers on the net. Disagree where necessary and desired, but it's impossible to make anything other than an unfounded ad hominem case for ignoring him.
A Brit comment in 2003 caught my ear, to the effect that 'great suffering comes to great powers.' Suffering is either instructive, or a complete waste.
I'd propose that a Rome, Britannia, China, Russia or America type of 'great power' evolves, gains institutional durability, grows mighty over generations, survives multiple leadership successions and significant military setbacks. Like what we suffered in Canada, Mexico City, Virginia, Mindanao, Luzon, Korea, Cuba, Viet Nam, Iran and Iraq.
I'm not convinced that Hitler's Germany rises to that 'GP' level, in the 4-5 years between rearmament and the beginnings of military contraction, signalling defeat after only 12 years. Imperial Japan likewise went on a tear, but likewise was unsustainable, once they reached for the oil they needed to be the Britain of the Orient. It's not for us to say for them that the lesson was worth the pain.
Alexander the Macedonian was a flash phenom like Hitler and Napolean; but the result never approached the reach of the Mesopotamean-Persian centuries, the accumulation of taxed and stolen wealth that funded Al's conquests. Under Greek generals, Imperial Persia divided into regional powers, and were soon enough warring each other. By contrast, Ottoman or Czarist poly-ethnic geographic imperatives are still recognizable a century later.
Granted, Japan likely would not fill the great power standard as you describe it. However, from the1870’s to 1942 Germany was militarily and industrially the most powerful country in Europe and Europe other than North America was the center of the world. In the events leading up to the First World War Germany had the second largest Navy in the world and certainly the most powerful army with the second largest economy only after the USA. Indeed, the Army of the United States was smaller than Romania’s. Britain’s globally scattered army was only of about three Corps with a smallish Territorial reserve even though in quality it was probably the best in the world if you don’t include heavy field artillery.
Great Britain was a true great power but it was a different sort of power based upon global trade and finance protected her Navy. She possessed a ‘mercantilist control’ of about 25% of the land surface of the globe and protected the trade routes of the world but industrially lagged behind both Germany and the USA even including the productivity of the Empire. Even after the defeat of Germany in 1918 the German economy remained potentially again the most powerful in Europe and the second largest in the world. The maniac Hitler through a set of unique circumstances reassembled that latent power into a formidable war machine that required five years and a massive alliance of the Soviet Union (doing the heavy lifting), Great Britain and the United states to destroy. Consequently, I would call Germany a great power until she was utterly demolished.
Don't conflate Prusso-Germany w/ Austro-Hungary, whose rump kingdoms contributed a huge fraction of the Russian occupation losses. The little corporal certainly tapped into A-H for collateral, with a lot of industrial and banking help from Sweden, Switzerland, and Henry Ford. In many ways Adolf's decade+ run resembled Macedonian Al's conquest into the harvest and tax base of surrounding lands. The Swiss and Swedes were too smart to take German bonds, but not too proud to launder Hitler's stolen gold.
Like Guderian, Von Clausewitz saw a winning army broken in Russia. Which is why his Question #1 sums to: "Bragging rights at halftime don't pay the bills"
A 20th Century Prusso-Germany that's bled white, goes bankrupt and is dismembered twice in 30 years is looking like a slow learner. A maritime Roman or Brit empire that makes money for centuries and can afford to walk away from a ruinous land campaign seems to be the better model, if we're looking for less painful lessons.
WW, I would thoroughly enjoy a discussion with you on the pre-war relationship between Germany and the ramshackle Austro-Hungarian Empire since you seem to be conversant on the subject. But that really lies outside of ‘Ricks vs. Sullivan’!
However, your note of the underlying similarities between both the Roman and British Empires is in my view corroborated by history. Both empires were constructed as a progression of ‘economic determinism’ rather than the simplistic conventional view of “Veni, vidi, vici”. No, I am not a great fan of Marx but there are some kernels of truth in his great work.
I'm making a proposal to my board of directors next week. I'll be asking them to spend a few million bucks on something I think is a good idea. Seriously it is a good idea. It's an excellent idea. It will save the organisation a lot of money and fit right in with their strategic objectives.
Oh, by the way, my last idea cost 250,000 lives and wrecked the global economy. But don't let's dwell on the past. Don't be a naysayer. Look at my other project. It's going so well.
I used to have a gambling problem. It took me years to kick it. I finally realised that good money never got better following bad money. Just walk away man. Stop picking at that scab.
Have you ever had a problem in your life where you kept banging away year after bloody year and it never got better. Then one morning you woke up and you thought, 'wait a minute' and suddenly saw another way.
Maybe analogies aren't getting through.
Go home, sometimes just giving up is the right thing to do.
Sullivan alternately waves a white flag and a red cape in front of Ricks. I'm hoping that Tom goes for the cape.
"Because I do not believe there will ever be a time when the US can leave without a serious risk of another sectarian implosion followed by a dictatorship. And so the longer we stay the more expensive it gets. &hellip:
But, look, I'm just venting here.
The US is there for our lifetimes. Ditto Afghanistan. Seven years ago, we were told we'd be out in a matter of months. …
We had one chance to really get out and we had the surge which was a way to ensure we never left. … But when Tom Ricks tells us to hang on some more, you kinda know it's useless to hope for any such thing."
hah. i think everyone can agree that was well-deserved. i enjoyed following his iran twitter compilations over the past few months. But his blog is only popular because he succeeds in turning policy disputes --many of which he flip-flopped on--and news events into personal and emotional matters to be hashed out through rivalry with other bloggers/writers and preached on incessantly. his recent spat with the new republic editor was a perfect example of this theater: the tnr editor was the perfect foil because he loves pinning the anti-semite label on anybody who questions likud policy. As the blog mini-controversy ensued, Sullivan accrues more traffic. its really incredible how he could attack people for promoting war policy on the basis of imminent necessity when he approved of the unnecessary policies that initiated the whole cycle--where he ought to have some humility, he instead makes a quick buck by advancing melodramatic, selfinvolved posts. something tells me that if sullivan had been the british pm in 2003 he would've gone through the invasion, then retired to a career of speeches defending the policy. I guess career choice can be a powerful influence when it comes to policy preferences.
Anyway, here are some moral justifications for withdrawal:
1. Cost-benefit [Andrew just focuses on costs - I don't think that is precise enough]
The US _alone_ cannot be put in the place of bearing the cost of perpetually trying for peace, a peace that benefits a wide range of people who are happily still sticking it to the US by not paying (unlike the first war against Saddam, for instance).
Indeed, this is an argument for withdrawal and re-engagement. Perhaps, during a re-engagement, we'd get the monetary support to carry on for a long time. {This is also part of the case for a precipitous withdrawal...} Where one could differ, as I do, from Andrew's assessment is that cost-sharing might be an alternative to withdrawal.
2. Cost of time, the free-rider
The US cannot continually be put in the position of bearing the cost of time for Iraqi factions' *moral failure* to 'come together peacefully'.
True or false: great compromises come from dire circumstances. The more you make it "comfortable" to "throw a fit and walk away", the more likely that the status quo is reinforced, that "muddle through" is "sufficient leadership".
3. Cost of time, plus Limited scope - all violence is not equal
We might have some legitimate interest in blocking external and bad actors from fomenting violence, such as Iran or foreign al-qaeda. That's an ongoing U.N. mission, perhaps, i.e. one that is a shared moral responsibility, not solely ours.
But, to the extent that Iraqis themselves fall into civil war, especially along sectarian lines, that's not obviously our fight. If Spain, say, fell into civil war, we wouldn't obviously and immediately send the Marines...
[Having said that, an x-ray vision reading of putting extra troops in Kurdistan makes it look like someone has wagered that we _ought_ not "abandon" our friends the Kurds to a civil conflict or that they could play a role in eventually peacemaking or proverbial kingmaking, ...]
3. Cost of time, plus Ltd Scope, Plus Three-strikes we're out
It might be a little harsh simply to fault people for not compromising, for stepping away from moral challenges. People need time, space to sweep emotions and build coalitions.
Still, we can impose either brightline or soft "hurdles". One can pick three or so key aspects of delivering justice to the people. To the extent that the status quo, whomever they are and however configured, fail to meet those challenges even when the imperative to do so is reasonably clear and the means are available, then there is no need to support ego, so to speak. Rather, after "three strikes" it's time to pull the rug out, given that ongoing costs are non-trivial.
You don't even have to publicly say what these "hurdles" are, to avoid being manipulated. This is the kind of backroom assessment that a Crocker could make, maybe. Is "progress" too slow? Why or why not? Are participants willing to bear the costs of the time they need?
4. Severely limited scope - tough shit, the world sucks
We made war to remove Saddam.
In "war", we don't have moral obligations, beyond out military objectives.
What we offered were "considerations" or "opportunities" or "good graces" or "we're-Americans-not-ball-crushers", but our immediate and highest moral obligations, especially those we willingly assumed as an "occupying authority" toward the population, are well past, because the remaining moral problems are not ours to solve (aka we cannot "win" peace, militarily).
{Someone might laugh at this, but this is the realpolitik that took us out of Afghanistan, promptly, at the end of the conflict with the Soviets and much else besides...}
The answer to that question is that the President thought that we were in danger of attack AFTER 9/11. He was wrong, of course. Why were we attacked on 9/11? What was bin Laden's rationale? You can find it in the title of his fatwa declaring war on us...
"Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places."
So the reason was troops in a Muslim land which were there indefinitely. Now Mr. Ricks, you think we should keep troops in a Muslim land indefinitely so that civil war doesn't break out? No thanks. We've played that game before.
"The decision to attack Iraq may was one of the biggest blunders in American history, and is going to cost a lot more. This thing is far from over, and I am surprised that you think you can just walk away from it now."
It certainly was and probably will remain one of the biggest blunders in our history (along with Vietnam). So - we should just 'stay the course'? At what cost and for how long. Would another 4,380 casualties (4,698 including our coalition partners) and another 31,000 plus wounded be enough, or should we try to match our Vietnam numbers? Not to mention the enourmous amount of wealth drained from the US treasury to keep the war machinery lubricated.
If we cannot 'walk away' from Iraq soon, when will we? All we can do by staying longer is increase the scope of our blunder. it is inevitable that we will wear out our welcome as an occupying force - and that is what we are. The Iraqi's want us out - they have said as much. It's their dammed country - let them have it back!
Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military for the Washington Post from 2000 through 2008.
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