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"...even the wicked get worse than they deserve." - Willa Cather, One of Ours

Sunday, May 09, 2004

To Win the Peace, We Must 'Lose' the War

Washington Post
Find a Credible Iraqi Leader, and Hand Him Victory By John Brady Kiesling

The deadliest illusion about warfare is that the aim of war is military victory. The true aim of war is to accomplish the political, economic or security goals for which it was fought. In a war competently waged for rational ends, one could rationally expect that America's aims would best be achieved through dominance on the battlefield followed by the dignified establishment of a new and better order. But in a war like the one in Iraq, which is based on assumptions since proven false, we cannot win by being victorious...

...at a minimum American interests require that the new Iraqi state not harbor terrorists or pose a threat to its neighbors; that it renounce nuclear weapons, long-range missiles and nerve gas; and that it exercise an effective monopoly on violence within its own territory...

...If America declares victory and brings its troops home, it leaves behind a government whose orders will not be obeyed. Instead, a disparate group of chieftains will draw legitimacy from a well of violence that may never run dry...Iraq will become like Afghanistan, a perilous mosaic of rival tribal principalities, a permanent refuge and breeding ground for terror...

...As long as heavily armed American soldiers have the ultimate say, Iraqis will never develop the sense of unity and responsibility necessary to a viable state. And without that unity, America is trapped in Iraq by the specter of civil war...

...The struggle against foreign occupation can generate the legitimacy needed to hold Iraq together. A leader who drives the Americans out can claim the loyalty of enough of the Iraqi people to govern Iraq...

...America must abandon its dream of victory and accept the appearance of defeat...the United States must take a cold, analytical look at the forces arrayed against us in Iraq and decide which leader should be allowed the glorious destiny of redeeming his country from foreign occupation. Once the United States has fixed on a credible resistance leader, our goal should be to cede him tactical, positional victories while denying them to his competitors...

...When the time comes, we will pull out completely, and an Iraqi leader will enter Baghdad in triumph...

...the Kurds will not be impressed by any savior from outside Kurdistan, so Turkish threats and U.S. promises will be needed to keep the Kurds within a federal Iraqi state. And no U.S. Congress would willingly appropriate reconstruction money for a country that defeated us...

...we will end up with a reasonably popular despot...

...By acknowledging the obvious -- that we are not absolutely omnipotent -- we actually make ourselves safer. We encourage our partners to increase their share of the burden, and we wean the Middle East and other repressive regions away from the psychopathology of blaming the United States for their own stagnation...
Talk about wishful thinking! Other nations bailing us out in Iraq? Arab countries no longer blaming us for their problems? Talk about a fantasy life. This guy has it in spades.

This strategy, or variation on it, has become the conventional wisdom among journalists and some academics. It has also become fashionable among the mid level leadership in the Army who think the current operational tempo wll 'break' the Army.

In esseccence, select a friendly dictator, and then 'Declare victory and leave', or in this particular version, 'Declare defeat and leave'. I don't know, it sounds a bit Nixonian to me.

Good god this is cynical, cruel and dishonest! A lie isn't the truth, no matter how many times you tell it.

Of one thing I am certain, as long is Bush is President it will never happen. It is Bush's only redeeming quality.

UPDATE: J. mentioned this:
"Some officers say the place to begin restructuring U.S. policy is by ousting Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, whom they see as responsible for a series of strategic and tactical blunders over the past year. Several of those interviewed said a profound anger is building within the Army at Rumsfeld and those around him."
There has always been a majority of Army officers who didn't like Rumsfeld, didn't want to change the structure of the Army, and preferred the Army was never used unless to protect North America. (See my previous comments about an unwillingness to see the Army 'broken'.)

Until 9/11, the anger at Rumsfeld was so severe that there was significant talk among his enemies that they wanted him to resign. But after 9/11, those voices were silenced temporarily, but their opinions about 'transformation' have not changed. This opinion can be most clearly heard among the retired officers who are interviewed on TV.

Officers who were promoted under the principles of the old system are biased by their life experience to oppose fundamental change in that system. Army officers hating Rumsfeld isn't new. They have always hated him, and still hate him. Rumsfeld has always been the most hated Sec. Def. by the military bureaucracy.

The voices quoted in Ricks' Washington Post article are basically reactionary. Basically, they are a bunch of blowhards who don’t want their lives and careers disrupted. I don’t take them seriously. They were saying the same thing back in the summer of 2001. When these people begin to be willing to resign their comfortable jobs, and speak out publicly against the President’s policies, then I will begin to take them seriously, not until then.

Bush and especially Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are completely committed to modernizing the US military. Even if Kerry is elected, many of those changes will still go forward.

More importantly, any policy based on the supposition that Iraqis and Arabs are unsuited to democracy is fundamentally racist. In many ways it is the kind know-nothing political opinion one might expect from career military officers.

Choosing a friendly dictatorship over an unfriendly democracy is exactly the kind of political victory our enemies in the Middle East are hoping for. It is fundamentally a betrayal of our ideals, and will be used to discredit American foreign policy for generations to come.

In any case, it is too late now to make any other policy choice. Once the choice to invade Iraq was made, our policy course was set in stone. As I have said before, from that moment we were commiting ourselves to a 10+ year occupation of Iraq. We have incurred debts and responisbilties and we must pay them. To allow innocent Iraqis to die so that we will not have to make sacrifices will be seen by the world as what it is - pure cowardice. To hesitate now would be exceptionally childish.

Iraq must become a peaceful, free and independent country. Even if that means that the government is anti-American like most of the other Arabs countries (with the exception of small countries such as Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Dubai, Morocco and Tunisia). The US no longer has the freedom to choose fascism over liberty.

Leaving behind an anti-American democracy in Iraq would be a clear victory for the US.

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