America’s dismal debate brings little hope of peace in Iraq
America’s dismal debate brings little hope of peace in Iraq
By Philip Stephens
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 19 2007 17:50 | Last updated: April 19 2007 17:50
The Washington debate about Iraq is as dismal as it is synthetic. The military, George W. Bush insists for the umpteenth thousandth time, must be allowed to “finish the job”. No, retorts a Democratic Congress: America must end the war by fixing a date to bring the troops home. Everyone knows, but the politicians dare not say, that there is no such neat binary choice. A graceful exit from Iraq is just about as likely as the president’s still-promised victory.
Every once in a while shards of candour penetrate the political fray. Retired generals warn that for all the clamour about timetables among Democratic contenders for the presidency, America’s eventual withdrawal will be a protracted and, most probably, ugly affair. Even if the war is deemed lost, sizeable numbers of US troops will have to remain in Iraq for some years yet.
That is not the message you hear from leading Democrats in their struggle with the White House over funding for the war. Resolutions passed by the Senate and the House have set deadlines of March 2008 and September 2008 respectively for the departure from Iraq of all combat troops. Mr Bush, trapped in his inexplicable belief that the war can still be won, has promised to veto any bills that link funding to withdrawal.
One side, or perhaps both, will have to make concessions in coming weeks if the troops are to be kept fed and supplied. But the stand-off speaks to the political point-scoring that takes the place of cold strategic analysis in almost all discussions of Iraq.
The Democrats can claim, of course, to have the country on their side. The backlash against the war that saw voters turn out the Republicans in last November’s mid-term congressional elections has strengthened further in the intervening months. Mr Bush’s so-called military “surge” has convinced no one that the US can reclaim control of events. Middle America has had enough of this war.
Nor is it possible to detect much confidence within the administration that the change in military tactics in Baghdad will bring more than short-lived relief. David Petraeus, the general in charge of the surge, is lauded as the most brilliant soldier of his generation. Yet the problem remains as it has been since the invasion: military force can work only as an adjunct to a political strategy.
The administration has set benchmarks for political progress. But the government of Nouri al-Maliki has made little effort to reach out to the Sunnis. The US is propping up an essentially Shia administration that is unwilling to make the concessions to the Sunni population that might nurture political dialogue. Violent factionalism within both communities adds fuel to the civil war.
The White House, of course, still declines to use that description, preferring to talk of insurgents and terrorists. Elsewhere in Washington there is no such compunction. In his recent evidence to Congress, Michael McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, volunteered that the term civil war accurately describes crucial elements of the conflict.
Mr Bush is in denial. He sees the conflict as a fight between good and evil. Since the US has right, as well as might, on its side, it is destined to prevail. Resolve is what matters. This is not a stance that allows for careful strategic deliberation.
The point was made this week by John Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps general. Explaining why he had declined an offer from the president to oversee from the White House the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, General Sheehan lamented the absence of coherent purpose. “What I found in discussions with current and former members of this administration,” he wrote in The Washington Post, “is that there is no agreed-upon strategic view of the Iraq problem or the region.” Above all, there was no consensus on how Iraq fitted into the larger regional context, where US interests would continue to demand a significant presence. It is hard to think of a harsher indictment of Mr Bush’s faith-based war from an expert without any axes to grind.
For Democrats, such critiques harden the case for an early exit.
The mantra of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and the rest is that for as long as he can rely on the US military, Mr al-Maliki has few incentives to make concessions to the Sunni political leadership. To withdraw is thus to end the war by forcing the hands of both sides.
No one really believes that. Yet if Mr Bush has no strategy to win, the Democrats lack a credible plan to disengage. A precipitous exit would most likely be followed by a rapid escalation of violence. Not an easy message to sell.
Read the small print of the proposals tabled by leading Democrats and they suggest that some troops would have to be left behind, whether to secure the country’s borders or to continue to train Iraqi forces. Missing is an honest recognition of America’s enduring interests in Iraq.
The Center for a New American Security, a new Washington think-tank, describes these succinctly as the “The Three Nos”: no regional war, no al-Qaeda safe havens and no genocide. Preventing neighbouring states being drawn into a wider conflagration, denying al-Qaeda a base and forestalling genocidal killing, the think-tank concludes, will require a significant military presence for the foreseeable future.
Anthony Zinni, a retired US general with extensive experience in the Middle East, makes much the same point. General Zinni has been a trenchant critic of the invasion and of the conduct of the war. His credentials, in other words, are impeccable. This week he addressed himself to those calling for speedy withdrawal.
Iraq was not Somalia, he said. Nor was it Vietnam. America’s interests in the Middle East were too great to allow Iraq to plunge into an unrestrained civil war. Instead of talking about timetables, the general told NBC’s Meet the Press, Democrats should be discussing how to pursue a diplomacy that could create new security arrangements for the region. As for the troops coming home, General Zinni doubted that anything more than a modest drawdown would be possible before the US had a new president in the White House.
That judgment meets a broader, if unspoken, consensus within the foreign policy establishment that it will be for the next occupant of the White House to extricate the US from the sectarian fighting. For now, just as the president refuses to admit that the war is lost, so his political opponents decline to contemplate the consequences of admitting defeat.
By Philip Stephens
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: April 19 2007 17:50 | Last updated: April 19 2007 17:50
The Washington debate about Iraq is as dismal as it is synthetic. The military, George W. Bush insists for the umpteenth thousandth time, must be allowed to “finish the job”. No, retorts a Democratic Congress: America must end the war by fixing a date to bring the troops home. Everyone knows, but the politicians dare not say, that there is no such neat binary choice. A graceful exit from Iraq is just about as likely as the president’s still-promised victory.
Every once in a while shards of candour penetrate the political fray. Retired generals warn that for all the clamour about timetables among Democratic contenders for the presidency, America’s eventual withdrawal will be a protracted and, most probably, ugly affair. Even if the war is deemed lost, sizeable numbers of US troops will have to remain in Iraq for some years yet.
That is not the message you hear from leading Democrats in their struggle with the White House over funding for the war. Resolutions passed by the Senate and the House have set deadlines of March 2008 and September 2008 respectively for the departure from Iraq of all combat troops. Mr Bush, trapped in his inexplicable belief that the war can still be won, has promised to veto any bills that link funding to withdrawal.
One side, or perhaps both, will have to make concessions in coming weeks if the troops are to be kept fed and supplied. But the stand-off speaks to the political point-scoring that takes the place of cold strategic analysis in almost all discussions of Iraq.
The Democrats can claim, of course, to have the country on their side. The backlash against the war that saw voters turn out the Republicans in last November’s mid-term congressional elections has strengthened further in the intervening months. Mr Bush’s so-called military “surge” has convinced no one that the US can reclaim control of events. Middle America has had enough of this war.
Nor is it possible to detect much confidence within the administration that the change in military tactics in Baghdad will bring more than short-lived relief. David Petraeus, the general in charge of the surge, is lauded as the most brilliant soldier of his generation. Yet the problem remains as it has been since the invasion: military force can work only as an adjunct to a political strategy.
The administration has set benchmarks for political progress. But the government of Nouri al-Maliki has made little effort to reach out to the Sunnis. The US is propping up an essentially Shia administration that is unwilling to make the concessions to the Sunni population that might nurture political dialogue. Violent factionalism within both communities adds fuel to the civil war.
The White House, of course, still declines to use that description, preferring to talk of insurgents and terrorists. Elsewhere in Washington there is no such compunction. In his recent evidence to Congress, Michael McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, volunteered that the term civil war accurately describes crucial elements of the conflict.
Mr Bush is in denial. He sees the conflict as a fight between good and evil. Since the US has right, as well as might, on its side, it is destined to prevail. Resolve is what matters. This is not a stance that allows for careful strategic deliberation.
The point was made this week by John Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps general. Explaining why he had declined an offer from the president to oversee from the White House the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, General Sheehan lamented the absence of coherent purpose. “What I found in discussions with current and former members of this administration,” he wrote in The Washington Post, “is that there is no agreed-upon strategic view of the Iraq problem or the region.” Above all, there was no consensus on how Iraq fitted into the larger regional context, where US interests would continue to demand a significant presence. It is hard to think of a harsher indictment of Mr Bush’s faith-based war from an expert without any axes to grind.
For Democrats, such critiques harden the case for an early exit.
The mantra of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and the rest is that for as long as he can rely on the US military, Mr al-Maliki has few incentives to make concessions to the Sunni political leadership. To withdraw is thus to end the war by forcing the hands of both sides.
No one really believes that. Yet if Mr Bush has no strategy to win, the Democrats lack a credible plan to disengage. A precipitous exit would most likely be followed by a rapid escalation of violence. Not an easy message to sell.
Read the small print of the proposals tabled by leading Democrats and they suggest that some troops would have to be left behind, whether to secure the country’s borders or to continue to train Iraqi forces. Missing is an honest recognition of America’s enduring interests in Iraq.
The Center for a New American Security, a new Washington think-tank, describes these succinctly as the “The Three Nos”: no regional war, no al-Qaeda safe havens and no genocide. Preventing neighbouring states being drawn into a wider conflagration, denying al-Qaeda a base and forestalling genocidal killing, the think-tank concludes, will require a significant military presence for the foreseeable future.
Anthony Zinni, a retired US general with extensive experience in the Middle East, makes much the same point. General Zinni has been a trenchant critic of the invasion and of the conduct of the war. His credentials, in other words, are impeccable. This week he addressed himself to those calling for speedy withdrawal.
Iraq was not Somalia, he said. Nor was it Vietnam. America’s interests in the Middle East were too great to allow Iraq to plunge into an unrestrained civil war. Instead of talking about timetables, the general told NBC’s Meet the Press, Democrats should be discussing how to pursue a diplomacy that could create new security arrangements for the region. As for the troops coming home, General Zinni doubted that anything more than a modest drawdown would be possible before the US had a new president in the White House.
That judgment meets a broader, if unspoken, consensus within the foreign policy establishment that it will be for the next occupant of the White House to extricate the US from the sectarian fighting. For now, just as the president refuses to admit that the war is lost, so his political opponents decline to contemplate the consequences of admitting defeat.
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