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3 DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA The way to go in Iraq By Peter Galbraith
houses of Congress. (This
"blame the American people" approach has, through
repetition, almost become the accepted explanation
for the outcome in Vietnam, attributing defeat to
a loss of public support and not to 15 years of
military failure.)
Indeed, Vietnam is the
image many Americans have of defeat in Iraq.
Al-Qaeda would overrun the Green Zone and the last
Americans would evacuate from the rooftop of the
still-unfinished
largest embassy in the world.
Bush feeds on this imagery. In his May 5 radio
address to the nation, he explained:
If radicals and terrorists emerge
from this battle with control of Iraq, they
would have control of a nation with massive oil
reserves, which they could use to fund their
dangerous ambitions and spread their influence.
The al-Qaeda terrorists who behead captives or
order suicide bombings would not be satisfied to
see America defeated and gone from Iraq. They
would be emboldened by their victory, protected
by their new sanctuary, eager to impose their
hateful vision on surrounding countries, and
eager to harm Americans.
But there
will be no Saigon moment in Iraq. Iraq's
Shi'ite-led government is in no danger of losing
the civil war to al-Qaeda, or a more inclusive
Sunni front. Iraq's Shi'ites are three times as
numerous as Iraq's Sunni Arabs; they dominate
Iraq's military and police and have a powerful
ally in neighboring Iran. The Arab states that
might support the Sunnis are small, are far away
(vast deserts separate the inhabited parts of
Jordan and Saudi Arabia from the main Iraqi
population centers), and can only provide money,
something the insurgency has in great amounts
already.
Iraq after a US defeat will look
very much like Iraq today - a land divided along
ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a
civil war being fought within its Arab part.
Defeat is defined by America's failure to
accomplish its objective of a self-sustaining,
democratic and unified Iraq. And that failure has
already taken place, along with the increase of
Iranian power in the region.
Iraq's
Kurdish leaders and Iraq's dwindling band of
secular Arab democrats fear that a complete US
withdrawal will leave all of Iraq under Iranian
influence. US Senator Hillary Clinton, Foreign
Relations Committee chairman Joe Biden, and former
ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke are among
the prominent Democrats who have called for the US
to protect Kurdistan militarily should there be a
US withdrawal from Iraq. The argument for so doing
is straightforward: it secures the one part of
Iraq that has emerged as stable, democratic and
pro-Western; it discharges a moral debt to
America's Kurdish allies; it deters both Turkish
intervention and a potentially destabilizing
Turkish-Kurdish war; it provides US forces a
secure base that can be used to strike at al-Qaeda
in adjacent Sunni territories; and it limits
Iran's gains.
In laying out his dark
vision of a US failure, Bush never discusses
Iran's domination of Iraq, even though this is a
far more likely consequence of US defeat than an
al-Qaeda victory. Bush's reticence is
understandable, since it was his miscalculations
and incompetent management of the postwar
occupation that gave Iran its opportunity. While
opposing talks with Iran, the neo-conservatives
also prefer not to discuss its current powerful
influence over Iraq's central government and
southern region, persisting in the fantasy -
notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary -
that Iran is deeply unpopular among Iraq's
Shi'ites and clerics. (At the same time, US
officials accuse Iran of supplying Iraqi Shi'ite
militias with particularly lethal roadside bombs.)
Focus on the achievable On June
25, without giving the press or White House any
advance notice, Richard Lugar, the most respected
Republican voice on foreign affairs in Congress,
spoke in the Senate about "connecting our Iraq
strategy to our vital interests". On the face of
it, the idea is as sensible and conservative as
the senator delivering the speech.
He
observed that political fragmentation in Iraq, the
stress suffered by the US military, and growing
anti-war sentiment at home "make it almost
impossible for the United States to engineer a
stable, multi-sectarian government in Iraq in a
reasonable time frame". Lugar noted that
agreements reached with Iraqi leaders are most
often not implemented, partly, as Lugar observed,
because the leaders do not control their followers
but also because Iraqi leaders have also
discovered that telling the Bush administration
what it wants to hear is a fully acceptable
substitute for action.
Lugar is blunt in
his description of the situation in Iraq:
Few Iraqis have demonstrated that
they want to be Iraqis ... In this context, the
possibility that the United States can set
meaningful benchmarks that would provide an
indication of impending success or failure is
remote. Perhaps some benchmarks or agreements
will be initially achieved, but most can be
undermined or reversed by a contrary edict of
the Iraqi government, a decision by a faction to
ignore agreements, or the next terrorist attack
or wave of sectarian killings. American manpower
cannot keep the lid on indefinitely. The
anticipation that our training operations could
produce an effective Iraqi army loyal to a
cohesive central government is still just a
hopeful plan for the future.
Lugar
concluded his speech by urging that Americans
"refocus our policy in Iraq on realistic
assessments of what can be achieved, and on a
sober review of our vital interests in the Middle
East". After four years of a war driven more by
wishful thinking than strategy, this is hardly a
radical idea, but it has produced a barrage of
covert criticism of Lugar from the Bush
administration and overt attack from the
neo-conservatives.
Lugar's focus on the
achievable runs against main currents of opinion
in a nation increasingly polarized between the
growing number who want to withdraw from Iraq and
the diehard defenders of a failure. We Americans
need to recognize, as Lugar implicitly does, that
Iraq no longer exists as a unified country. In the
parts where we can accomplish nothing, we should
withdraw. But there are still three missions that
may be achievable - disrupting al-Qaeda,
preserving Kurdistan's democracy, and limiting
Iran's increasing domination. These can all be
served by a modest US presence in Kurdistan.
We need an Iraq policy with sufficient
nuance to protect US interests. Unfortunately, we
probably won't get it.
Peter W
Galbraith, a former US ambassador to Croatia,
is senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms
Control and a principal at the Windham Resources
Group, a firm that negotiates on behalf of its
clients in post-conflict societies, including
Iraq. His The End of Iraq: How American
Incompetence Created a War Without End is now
out in paperback.
(Copyright 2007
Peter Galbraith.)
(This essay appears in
the August 16, 2007, issue of the New York Review of Books
and is posted here with the kind permission of the
editors of that magazine.)
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