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August 10, 2006
Break Point in Iraq
Not be all gloom and doom today, but lots of downbeat stuff crossing my e-desk this morning. The latest John Mauldin mailing is another one of those things, with a particularly downbeat Stratfor look at the remaining options -- all lousy -- in Iraq.The break point has come and gone. The United States now must make an enormously difficult decision. If it simply withdraws forces from Iraq, it leaves the Arabian Peninsula open to Iran and loses all psychological advantage it gained with the invasion of Iraq. If American forces stay in Iraq, it will be as a purely symbolic gesture, without any hope for imposing a solution. If this were 2004, the United States might have the stomach for a massive infusion of forces -- an attempt to force a favorable resolution. But this is 2006, and the moment for that has passed. The United States now has no good choices; its best bet was blown up by Iran. Going to war with Iran is not an option. In Lebanon, we have just seen the value of air campaigns pursued in isolation, and the United States does not have a force capable of occupying and pacifying Iran.
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Can you give me a cite for Keegan's comment? I hadn't heard that one before from him. Mind you, I'm not sure how bombing Afghanistan back to the stone age solves things in Iraq, so I'm already missing a connection here.
More broadly, you make a point I've heard from a few military strategists lately. They argue that the unwillingness to use nuclear weapons is creating a geopolitically unstable position. On the one hand it means that other countries want such weaponry badly; on the other hand you get mired ever more often with said countries in damaging and lengthy traditional/guerilla wars to prevent that from happening.
i can't recall the source of the Keegan quote - it may have been in Imperial Hubris. and while you correctly note that this is only tangentially related to Iraq, the point is that even directly after 9/11, people who knew a lot about the history of the region were warning against deep engagement on the ground, particularly the arrogance of nation building somewhere we weren't welcome.
then again, i think its clear now that the entire Iraq debacle cannot be seen as predicated at all on security issues...but the American public will never accept the obvious - that American soldiers are dying for economic interests. i balked at the "no blood for oil" rhetoric from protest folks in college during gulf war 1, but i see now that they were right. and what is the defense for this conflict now? we made a mess and now we have to clean it up? is this our foreign policy?? we have no yet seen the true mideast explosion.
Sorry to bring up a less intellectual quote...
"Never get involved in a land war in Asia"
- from The Princess Bride
I'll make the deeply cynical suggestion that we have succeeded in Iraq, just not in the way the doe-eyed optimists believed. The US and Britain have upset the power structure in the middle east. There is no going back. People and countries will now have to choose which side they are on--Islamic fanaticism or something, anything, else.
This has also fully exposed Iran for what it is; the single biggest exporter and funder of terrorism in the world. The west must confront Iran militarily, preferably before they get nukes. If we don't do it now, we will do it down the line, but IT WILL HAPPEN.
Dude, if this is seriously your definition of success, they should let you rewrite the encyclopedia britannica entry for 'pyrhhic victory.'
I mostly agree with Franklin. While it might be nice to imagine we have turned things upside-down and everything will sort out according to a new orthodoxy, the reality is that actions by outsiders in the region have created a common enemy. That is more than enough distraction for some time to prevent would-be Jihadists from coherent thought about what they want their country to after all the suicide bombers are done blowing themselves up.
Paul, contra your comment on "the reality", right now it seems that by casualty figures there's far more factional violence in Iraq than violence against a putative common enemy.
Further, it seems to me that the piece you quoted does argue that everything (in Iraq) will sort out according to a new orthodoxy, and makes the case that the over-all region is headed that way. Not to say that the new orthodoxy would be to the liking of U.S. policymakers (amongst others).
but wait! there's more! you also get WW3 at no extra cost! the saudis and jordanians will never submit to a persian (as opposed to arab) hegemony in the region...the filling of the power vaccum will not be predicated solely on islam vs the west. its looks more like a flavor of 1914 in the region every day. and that the US even talks about the possibility of iraqi civil war means that this civil war has already begun. really, dozens of people per day (sometimes more than a hundred) are dying by sectarian strife. if this is not civil war, what is? but the US cannot disengage. first and foremost US interests are still obsessed with the region's oil and military prospects. secondly there is the very real threat of new regimes even more inimical to US interests taking hold. we have made fantastic miscalculations in the mideast and the US will spend a generation trying to disentangle and recover. military historian john keegan was correct after 9/11: bomb afghanistan back to the stone age, make and keep a promise to do so again should the taliban ever reform, and then get the hell out. instead we put our hands into the hornet's nest.