Iraq Update 10/20/06
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
Plan B
(Elliot Cohen, WSJ, 10/20/06) It will be important in future years to
settle whether the Iraq war was the right idea badly executed, an
enterprise doomed to disappoint, or simply folly. There will be
individuals to be held accountable (not all of whom have been in the
crosshairs of journalists and partisans), and institutions whose
shortcomings require not only soul-searching but reform. That's for
later. The question now is, what should we do?
The current course -- Plan A -- involves an open-ended commitment of
some 130,000 or 140,000 soldiers, with temporary surges during periods
of crisis. Its theory of victory seems to be that American support,
nagging and cajoling can eventually bring the Iraqi security forces to
maturity and gradually hand over responsibility to a democratically
constituted, unitary Iraqi government. It is difficult to believe that
the U.S. Army and Marine Corps -- filled with soldiers now doing their
second or third tour in Iraq , including soldiers whose participation is
enforced by "stop-loss" orders that keep them beyond their enlistments
-- can sustain this indefinitely. The hairline cracks in the armed
forces are there, and growing for those willing to see them. Public
support for the war is dwindling, and most importantly, we are not only
making no progress: Things are actively getting worse. So what are the
alternatives?
* Getting by with help from your enemies. It is bruited about in
Washington that the Iraq Study Group, a collection of worthies
commissioned by Congress that has spent several days in Iraq , chiefly in
the Green Zone, will recommend turning to Iran and Syria to, in effect,
bail out the U.S. To think that either state, with remarkable records of
violence, duplicity and hostility to the U.S. , will rescue us bespeaks a
certain willful blindness. And to think that the Sunni states of the
Arab world, much less Iraq 's Sunni population, would welcome such a deal
is more incredible yet. Syria is, as the Lebanon war and its earlier
defense treaty with Iran demonstrated, now a client state of Iran . This
option would in effect mean conceding dominance in the northern Gulf to
that country; it would pave the way for more wars, and in no way
guarantee us a clean exit
* Wash your hands. Simple withdrawal, with or without a timetable
and surely under fire -- although American forces could probably cope
with that -- would have the disadvantages of the first option, without
the putative benefits. Iraq would almost surely become even more
violent, with massacres of scores or even hundreds being replaced by
massacres of thousands, and various regional powers straining to secure
their own buffers and clients.
* Double your bets. Conversely, the U.S. could react by
reasserting its strength in Iraq -- sending an additional 30,000 or
40,000 troops to secure Baghdad and its environs, and making a far more
strenuous effort than it has thus far to take control of the civilian
ministries that are now merely fronts for political parties and their
militias. But could American public opinion sustain this? More
importantly, where would the soldiers come from? And has the strain on
Iraqis' sense of national identity become so great that those
institutions could be built?
* Hunker down and let the fires burn. The U.S. military, at its
current strength or something less, could, conceivably, simply retreat
to its forward operating bases, do its best to train a neutral and
effective military and police force, and allow communal violence to take
its course. Over time, new demographic realities would emerge, as Sunnis
and Shiites separate into different neighborhoods, while some minorities
-- Christians, most notably -- simply flee the country. But would there
be anything left once the massacres had stopped? And would they stop?
* Back to counterinsurgency. One school has it that the U.S.
should never have engaged directly in combat with Iraqi insurgents.
Instead, it should have focused overwhelmingly on the training mission,
retaining only enough combat units to rescue Iraqi forces (and their
U.S. advisers) if they get in over their heads. To some extent this is
already going on; but some have suggested much more radical reductions
in the U.S. presence, down to 40,000 or 50,000 soldiers. The question is
whether the levels of violence are so high, and the competence of the
Iraqi forces so limited, that this has a chance of success. And what
would be Plan C if it were to fail?
* Let the generals have it. The Iraqi government is incompetent.
Its ministries are viewed not as national institutions but as the
playthings of competing parties and their bands of thugs. Yet Iraqi
nationalism is real, and it is found where nationalism often is -- in
the armed forces. A junta of military modernizers might be the only hope
of a country whose democratic culture is weak, whose politicians are
either corrupt or incapable. But what would then become of the American
goal of democratization? And could the generals suppress the militias
that have backing from abroad, and support in local communities?
* Break it up. This option would have us concede the end of Iraq
as a nation state. The precedents in the Middle East -- with the
exceptions of Egypt and Iran , a collection of artificial entities
produced by the highly fallible imaginations of British and French
diplomats at the end of World War I -- are chilling. Presumably,
population transfers on a large scale would be needed, although the
problem of multiconfessional Baghdad would be particularly difficult.
But it is hard to imagine that a formally independent Kurdistan would
last long in the face of the hostility of all of its neighbors, or that
the oil-deprived and landlocked Sunni state of western Iraq would be
tranquil, or that the southern Shiastan would be able to resist Iranian
penetration.
All of the options for Plan B are either wretched to contemplate or
based on fantasy; the most plausible (the sixth option, a coup which we
quietly endorse) would involve a substantial repast of crow that this
administration will be deeply unwilling to eat. But it is not only the
administration that can, and should, feel uncomfortable about the
choices that lie ahead.
An honest debate about Iraq policy will require of all who participate
in it to acknowledge some unpleasant facts. We must all admit, for
example, that the enemy (or rather, enemies, of us and of one another)
exercises a vote. We have not yet had a Tet offensive, but the
experience of Hezbollah in the Lebanon war may well encourage the Shiite
militias, particularly those influenced by Iran , to try something like
it. Iran 's influence is great, and will become greater. There will be
considerable bloodshed ahead, but our choices, though they may not make
it better, could make it a lot worse.
It is folly to think we can win in Iraq the way some of us thought
possible in 2003. It would be even greater folly to think that by
getting out, learning our lessons, and licking our wounds we can save
ourselves from considerable danger, expense, effort and loss in what
remains a protracted and global conflict with mortal enemies.
Mr. Cohen is Robert E. Osgood professor of strategic studies at Johns
Hopkins University 's School of Advanced International Studies .
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