The Iraq Blind Spot

Why is it that after years of accusing President Bush of ignoring the realities of Iraq in favor of political expediency and ideology, most Democrats are now doing the same thing? Iraq has improved. Why support the radical and reckless notion of withdrawal when the current strategy has achieved progress? How is it intellectually honest to argue that leaving the Iraqis now would spur them into making important political decisions when our absence would be much more likely to foment renewed chaos rather than improved stability?

Even if you take it as fact that the invasion was wrong and our management of the first few years of the conflict was extremely poor, those mistakes will not suddenly go away if we leave now, as if we can just close our eyes, stick out fingers in our ears and shout “nah, nah, nah, you don’t exist, you don’t exist!” We have to address the current situation within the context of the current realities and understand that even if we disagree with what has happened before we have a responsibility to ensure that what happens next will result in the best possible outcome for our nation and, just as importantly, the people of Iraq.

Quick withdrawal was never a particularly defensible position (militaristically or morally) but it at least had a place at the table when the situation seemed nearly hopeless. Now, however, it’s just empty rhetoric delivered by politicians who refuse to change their opinions because being anti-war was so successful in the 2006 elections (just as Republicans ridiculously refused to change their hollow stay-the-course rhetoric because being pro-war had worked so well in 2004).

I know the intransigent anti-war crowd would go ballistic if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton (or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reed) admitted, hey, you know what, things are looking up and there are now inarguable reasons to stay in Iraq for awhile longer. But honest and right-minded foreign policy should trump the less-than-reasonable positions of party activists. I mean, Obama and Clinton can’t REALLY believe that immediate or near-immediate withdrawal is the wisest course of action, right? I’d much prefer that they were pandering than that they were that clueless.

I will be very curious to see if, after this prolonged nomination process is over, Obama and/or Clinton will adjust their Iraq stance for the national campaign. If not, the same kind of ideological and political blind spot that doomed the Republicans in 2006 could take down the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008.

Clinton's Iraq Strategy: First Lie and Then Deflect Responsibility

Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Debra Saunders takes a look at Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s record on Iraq. The two have sniped at each other over who is the most intensely against the war. But forget the details for a moment (I’ll get to those) and just read Saunders line of attack against Clinton:

Hold it against Obama if his rhetoric flagged, [Clinton] suggested, but don't hold it against her if she voted for a war resolution thinking it was something else.

I thought Clinton did the right thing voting for the war resolution, but then I was foolish enough to think that, having done so, she would do right by the troops who were tasked with carrying out the will of Washington.

Instead, she turned her back on the mission when the polls showed Americans had soured on the war. Cold to the plight of those who put their lives on the line, she proclaimed in February, "This is George W. Bush's war" -- as if she could toss it like a hot potato. She opposed the surge, which reduced U.S. casualties. She was too busy trying to win the White House to work to win the war.

You see, Clinton voted for the war resolution but now claims she believed the vote would merely lead to further inspections rather than all-out war. That’s clear bullshit. But it gets worse. Not only is she blatantly dissembling she’s abdicating responsibility for one of the most important decisions of her short political career.

John Edwards has apologized ad nauseam for his pro-war vote. Obama wasn’t in the Senate at the time of the vote but clearly opposed the war, even if his oppositional intensity has fluctuated over the years. And Clinton? She has taken a very Clintonian track – first lie and then deflect responsibility.

Does it really matter how competent Clinton is or how many good ideas she has when, at the end of the day, we know she’s going to dodge, weave and refuse responsibility whenever it’s politically expedient? Haven’t we had enough with presidents who treat us like we’re too stupid to know fact from fiction? Haven’t we had enough of presidents who view responsibility as nothing more than a minor annoyance? Haven’t we had enough of the politics of obfuscation and personal destruction?

The Democrats would do the nation a favor by picking Obama or Edwards and ensuring there will be no more continuation of the Bush/Clinton years.

UPDATE: The Clinton “lie then deflect responsibility” storyline must be in the zeitgeist today. Amba writes about it in the context of Hillary’s phony claim she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. And Donklephant identifies the same pattern in one of Clinton’s closest supporters.

Too Much Symbolism, Not Enough Statesmanship

The Democrats have passed their Iraq withdrawal bill. Next step: a presidential veto.

Symbolically, the bill achieves the important goal of proving the Democrats are serious about ending our military involvement in Iraq. But symbolism is just a political tool. Real change requires statesmanship and there’s far too little of that quality in either Congress or the White House.

Neither side seems willing to admit the other side has truth to speak. The White House seems incapable of advancing anything other than militaristic solutions and the Democrats seem incapable of recognizing that quick withdrawal is a reckless gambit that would very likely end in horrible Iraqi bloodshed and the need for a future intervention.

Just once I would love to hear a leading Democrat say “Bush is right that Iraq’s stability is essential to our national security. But his solutions are misguided and have served to exacerbate the problems we face. We must demand a change of course.” Someone eloquent like Barack Obama could even point out that we have a moral responsibility to not abandon the Iraqis to the blood-thirst of terrorist outsiders and vengeful sectarians.

Yet the Democrats choose the easy path of “withdrawal, withdrawal, withdrawal.” That may play well amongst the rabid base and vapid press, but it makes for poor statesmanship.

Reckless

That's the word used by John McCain today to describe the Democrat's Iraq plans. That's the perfect word. It is reckless to plan for withdrawal without also planning for the consequences of that withdrawal.

Saddly, "reckless" is also the perfect word for the original invasion. First we go in with too little forethought and now we want to leave with too little forethought. In ten years time, if we've grown as a nation, we will bemoan the narrow vision and reckless attitudes of those on both sides of the Iraq issue.

We're All Responsible for Failures in Iraq

So, it’s been four years. And things haven’t exactly gone well.

God knows there have been plenty of failures. The military was not remotely ready for post-invasion peace keeping. The Bush administration did an astoundingly poor job of preparing the American public for the long-term commitments of war. The pro-war forces created unforgivable divisiveness, going out of their way to demean and alienate those citizens who were not so gung-ho. The anti-war forces too-often confused their hatred of Bush with a desire to see the nation fail. The media – well, those failures are too numerous to document.

Yet, in moments like this, we are prone to place the vast majority of the blame on our elected leadership. So this war is, in many people’s minds, Bush’s great blunder. But such analysis is misleading. For all their power, Bush and our others leaders are just representatives of the people. They are us. Yes, blame should fall in heavy heaps around Bush and his administration, but if we fail in Iraq, we are all to blame – those who supported this war and those who didn’t.

Why? Because we forgot one of the most important lessons of American history: divided we fall. Our greatest failures as a nation have come when we let ourselves believe we are two peoples with irreconcilable differences. When we treat our fellow countrymen as enemies, what hope do we have of combating the real threats of the world?

I firmly believe that, regardless of the decisions made by our elected leaders, we’d be in a much better situation right now if, once we went to war, we committed ourselves as a nation to winning that war. That means allowing vociferous dissent and not labeling such disagreements as unpatriotic. That means supporting not just the wellbeing of the troops but actually supporting the mission we’ve sent the troops to do. That means unity of purpose even as we welcome differences on strategy.

If I sound like a scold, I don’t mean to be. I’m just tired of the blame being focused completely on the government or, conversely, the leftwing. We can’t shrug of our own culpability in our nation’s failures.

We stop living in a democracy the exact moment we stop believing in our own civic responsibilities.

We have not lost in Iraq yet. There is still a chance to secure some form of victory, even if that victory is not the robust democracy of neo-con dreams. Instead of trying to guarantee failure with an arbitrary timeline for withdrawal, can’t we at least attempt to save the Iraqis from the chaos we unleashed? Can’t those who think the war was a disaster of an idea and those who think the war was a noble and essential undertaking come together and agree that, whatever our other differences, we Americans don’t just start a fire and leave it to burn uncontrollably?

I probably hope for too much. But I have to hope for something.

Democrat's Plan Won't Bring Stability to Iraq

Senate Democrats are looking for citizens to sign a petition in support of their Iraq plan. The petition says this:

Become a Citizen Copsonsor of the Joint Resolution introduced by Senators Reid, Durbin, Schumer, Murray, Levin, Bayh and Feingold calling for the President to bring stability to Iraq by beginning a phased redeployment of U.S. forces in 120 days with the goal of redeploying most combat forces by the end of March 2008.

I can understand those who believe our presence will never stabilize Iraq so it is better to remove our armed forces from harm’s way. I can even understand the morally vacant argument that the Iraqis are not worth any more of our time, money or blood. But I simply cannot understand how anyone of intelligence can believe the rationale put forth in this Democratic petition.

We are going to withdrawal to bring stability to Iraq? As if the only thing causing the bloodshed is our presence? Democrats, who embrace the notion that Iraq is in a civil war, know damn well that the sectarian conflicts engulfing that nation will not stop the moment American troops leave. In fact, those conflicts will most likely escalate into a true civil war.

Stability might occur after our withdrawal – but only when one side has brutalized the other sides into submission. By positioning support for redeployment as an attempt to stabilize Iraq, Senate Democrats are being patently dishonest. If these Democrats are truly interested in Iraq’s stability, they should propose a plan that might have a chance of achieving such a goal.

Murtha the Wrong Man to Lead Iraq Strategy

Today, both The New York Times and The Washington Post are criticizing Rep. John Murtha’s approach to stopping the Iraq surge. Marc Schulman at Donklephant has the synopses. Both newspapers conclude that Murtha, who has Speaker Pelosi’s support, is playing a cynical political game to achieve an end to the surge when he should be addressing the issue head-on.

I agree. And I am distraught by the power given the increasingly demagogic Murtha. I naively thought that when Steny Hoyer beat out Murtha for Majority Leader that the Democrats would minimize the Pennsylvania representative’s voice. Instead, Murtha is being permitted to develop the Democratic Iraq strategy.

I shouldn’t say strategy. It’s more of a game plan – as in he’s treating the situation like a game with trick maneuvers and purposeful obfuscation. As the Post notes:

[Murtha’s] aim . . . is not to improve readiness but to “stop the surge.” So why not straightforwardly strip the money out of the appropriations bill — an action Congress is clearly empowered to take — rather than try to micromanage the Army in a way that may be unconstitutional? Because, Mr. Murtha said, it will deflect accusations that he is trying to do what he is trying to do. “What we are saying will be very hard to find fault with,” he said.

Simply put: Murtha doesn’t want to be accused on not supporting the troops … even though he thinks the mission is wrong and that the troops are doomed to failure.

This is no way to handle Iraq. We’ve just gone through years of the Republicans disguising intentions through complicated political maneuvers and misleading rhetoric. And now Pelosi is going to stand by and let Murtha feed us more of the same, albeit focused on different aims?

I’m tired of congressional disingenuousness. Very tired.

Support the Troops, Oppose the Mission? Democrats Need New Tactic.

The Wall Street Journal blasts Congress for the non-binding resolution opposing the Iraq troop surge. The Journal’s opinion is pretty straight-forward:

1) The resolution emboldens the enemy by signaling that the U.S. Congress expects defeat.

2) It’s a cowardly move to rhetorically oppose the mission but effectively do nothing to stop the surge.

The most convincing argument:

[I]f Congress feels so strongly about the troops, it arguably has the power to start removing them from harm's way by voting to cut off the funds they need to operate in Iraq. But that would make Congress responsible for what followed--whether those consequences are Americans killed in retreat, or ethnic cleansing in Baghdad, or the toppling of the elected Maliki government by radical Shiite or military forces. The one result Congress fears above all is being accountable.

We aren't prone to quoting the young John Kerry, but this week's vote reminds us of the comment the antiwar veteran told another cut-and-run Congress in the early 1970s: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" The difference this time is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha expect men and women to keep dying for something they say is a mistake but also don't have the political courage to help end.

This is where the Democrat’s “support the troops, not the war” position reveals its true emptiness. It’s always been impossible to support the troops without also supporting their mission. You may fervently pray for the troops’ safety and wish for their speedy return but that is not support. That is compassion. Support requires a commitment to the mission and an expectation of success.

It’s ok to be compassionate but not offer support, but Democrats won’t say as much because they’re afraid of being labeled weak on defense. So now, when the moment has come to make a real impact on this war, the Dems are paralyzed. Withdrawing funds certainly indicates a lack of support for the troops. But saying nothing about the surge indicates a lack of opposition to the mission.

The result is the impotent non-binding resolution … an official scolding that does nothing to deter Bush. Does it also embolden the enemy? That sounds to me like political posturing, a tired accusation pro-war sides always fling at the anti-war side. In reality, our failure to effectively combat the insurgents/terrorists/sectarian evildoers has done far more to embolden the enemy than will this resolution.

But that doesn’t make the resolution any less of a bad idea. If Democrats believe we are destined for failure, they need to pull the plug and take responsibility for the fallout. If they think we can still secure some form of victory, they need to allow the military and the Commander-in-Chief to do what they think is necessary to win – or, at the very least, if Democrats “support the troops,” they need to propose alternatives that don’t involve a total retreat and abandonment of all facets of the mission.

Personally, I think the surge is the wrong tactic. But I’m not resigned to defeat so I support this last attempt to secure some form of victory. I wish the President had chosen a different path but I am not yet prepared to move into the anti-war camp.

The question now is, when will the Democrats be ready to be anti-war? Their support the troops, oppose the mission philosophy is just an excuse for refusing to take responsibility. They’re trying to split the middle on an issue that has no middle. Now’s the time to either cut off funds or stop declaring American defeat.

Clinton's Iraq Problem

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton said yesterday her 2002 vote for a resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq was "not a vote for a pre-emptive war," but instead a show of support for further United Nations weapons inspections.

-- as reported on UnionLeader.com

And so continues Senator Clinton’s slow tiptoe away from her vote authorizing the Iraq War. Rather than taking a page from John Edwards and just flat out admitting she was wrong to vote yea, Clinton has spent the early part of the 2008 campaign rationalizing why her vote was right. I guess it all depends on what the meaning of “was” is.

Part of me appreciates the fact that Clinton admits that the Iraq situation was and continues to be incredibly complicated. She has shown political maturity in her willingness to talk both about the grave mistakes made and the serious responsibilities that still remain. But, at the same time, she seems to be ever so slowly giving in to the Democrats’ left flank – only a few rhetorical steps away from denouncing any previous or continued involvement in Iraq.

How Clinton navigates these difficult waters will very likely determine whether she can sail cleanly to the nomination or whether she’ll be sunk by the less-equivocal voices to her left. It’s easy to be steadfastly pro-war or unwaveringly anti-war. It’s much harder to be pro-reality and acknowledge that a solution to Iraq rests neither in blind optimism or wholesale retreat.

Iraq Surge Focused on Wrong Goal

So, President Bush wants to send more troops into Iraq. The American people don’t agree. Of course, unless the Democrats cut off funding, Bush’s title of Commander in Chief gives him authority to do pretty much as he pleases. Public opinion is a sideshow. The surge is happening.

But it won’t work. The wound of war has festered and Iraq’s gone septic. 20,000 more troops is just a topical treatment and will do little to cure the disease. I hope I am wrong. I hope I’m just a naïve observer who lacks the military experience or political understanding to see the genius of this plan. It’s certainly possible.

I do actually agree with the President on one point: leaving now almost certainly sets us up for a bigger disaster later. Those who think we can get out and suffer nothing more than bruised pride are deluding themselves. If we don’t stay militarily involved, Iraq likely becomes the new Afghanistan – with huge oil reserves.

Where I differ with Bush is in the definition of victory. The President is still seeking a Democracy in Iraq when the real goal should simply be keeping Iraq from becoming an immediate threat to our security. Our presence in Baghdad is only slowing the inevitable collapse into civil war (those who consider the current level of violence a civil war have left themselves with no words to define the real civil war if and when it erupts).

The President may now recognize that mistakes have been made, but he’s yet to wrench himself free of the overly optimistic theories that convinced him of the need for war in the first place. It’s time to stop working towards a Democracy we can’t create. We must focus on our own, more immediate interests. It’s not the outcome we wanted. It’s not an outcome that's particularly noble. But it’s what we have left.

The New Mission in Iraq

Reports indicate that the Iraq Study Group will recommend a troop pullback but no timetable. Without any specifics at this point, the recommendation seems cautious yet pragmatic. The time for grand ambitions has passed. We’ve entered a whole new mission in Iraq.

Our goal can no longer be turning Iraq into a stable, fully functioning democracy. Like so many bold ideas, that one was engaging on paper but impossible in reality. We’ve failed the original mission and now we need a new objective.

Yes, we deposed Saddam and ended the threat he posed to regional stability. We neutralized Iraq’s ability to make or even pursue weapons of mass destruction (even though the lack of stockpiles delegitimized one of the main reasons to invade). We even helped establish an elected government. We’ve had grand successes. But, ultimately, we’ve failed. Iraq is not a model of democracy that will inspire the entire Mid-East. In fact, the nation is as much a threat to regional stability now as it was before we went in.

But our failures are no longer important except as learning experiences. What is important is how we handle the future. We need a new mission—one focused on minimizing the greatest threats posed by the new Iraq. We must:

• Keep the conflicts in Iraq from spreading into a wider regional conflict
• Keep portions of Iraq from becoming terrorist havens
• Stop radical Islamists from seizing power out of chaos as they did in Afghanistan and are doing in Somalia

I personally believe we also have a moral responsibility to minimize the bloodshed of Iraqis as much as possible. We also have a responsibility to do everything we can to keep the country from once again falling under the thrall of tyranny. But I understand that we may be past such moral considerations. This may be a time for cold, amoral commitment to our interests and our interests only.

How do we achieve our new mission? I don’t know. I’m open to redeploying most of our troops to safer areas where they can make strategic strikes as necessary. I’m also open to concentrating all our forces on Baghdad in the belief that if we pacify the capital the rest of the nation will follow. I’m open to any ideas based on achievable objectives and honest assessments of what is and isn’t possible.

But I’m no longer open to the idea that we can create a robust democracy in Iraq. If it was ever possible, we missed the opportunity. Our nation's will is long gone and Iraq’s internal rifts are too large for us to think a democracy is possible in anything but the distant future. I deeply wish this was not so. But reality is reality.

So, enter the realists and their Iraq Study Group recommendations. Let’s see if they can lay out the new mission. This isn’t about giving up. Nor is it about saving face. It’s about addressing the new problems with new objectives.

The BFM in Iraq

In an act of media chutzpah, NBC has declared that the conflict in Iraq is a civil war. I’m not sure why the network feels it has the authority to define reality, but apparently the top dogs at NBC believe they’re clarifying the situation for us poor confused viewers.

Please. Calling the violence in Iraq a “civil war” is not a bold move. It’s another example of a major media outlet trying to simplify a complex situation. They just want to better package it with simplistic narratives and flashy graphics. Sure you can call the conflict in Iraq a civil war. You can call it an insurgency. You can call it a terrorist-fueled proxy-battle. You can call it sectarian violence. You can call it anarchy. It’s all accurate to some degree. But picking a label doesn’t clarify the situation.

Calling it a “civil war” makes the violence seem to have precedent. Civil wars are defined conflicts with eventual ends. More importantly, they are internal conflicts where resolution rarely requires outside intervention There may be moral and even strategic reasons to intervene in someone else’s civil war, but there is almost never a national security reason to do so.

That’s the trouble with labels. Yes, we need them but they more often constrict than illuminate. NBC’s labeling does nothing to help and, in fact, confuses the matter by choosing language that minimizes the regional and global threats posed by the violence in Iraq.

Personally, I’d like to see the conflict referred to as the BFM in Iraq. That’s short for the Big F***ing Mess in Iraq. That’s the most accurate label I can come up with. At least it avoids the kind of simplification of the problem that leads to the useless, simplistic solutions so adored by recent Congresses and their media enablers.

For many reasons, the conversations about Iraq have rarely risen above basic ideology and finger pointing. Now, at what is probably a critical moment, the conversation does not seem to be improving. That’s a shame. What we need are more analyses like The New Republic and their current issue exploring a myriad of Iraq solutions. Unfortunately, NBC and their ilk will be heard much more loudly.