The Crossed Pond

Andrew Sullivan’s title for a new batch of blog posts. It’s sort of amazing to me that there are still people for whom this case needs to be made, not because I think any decision in Iraq is easy, but because I think the fundamental premises there have already been laid so bare (despite much or our national rhetoric, not because of it). The fact of the matter is we live in a profoundly less safe world BECAUSE of Iraq. Terrorism has increased, our capabilities have decreased (more dramatically than we like to admit), our diplomatic isolation has increased, world polarization (in Islam and outside of it) has increased, and we have essentially done most of the work FOR Islamic fundamentalists (a result that terrorism, as a tactic, is almost designed to create).

All of that is both true but not necessarily something that leads to a “get out now” (or even “get out at all”) conclusion.

But, frankly, it’s worth at least recognizing it as true before we go any further (or possibly true to enough of an extent to take as more than anti-war quacking). If we can’t even agree on those premises, where are we?

The president now insists that Iraq is the front-line in the war on al Qaeda. That’s true – but only because we chose to make it so. The gamble was that a massive military and reconstruction effort could so win over Iraqis that a democratic state in the region could be the antidote to growing radicalism. But the result of the botched war has been the opposite: a failed state with porous borders that has become a magnet for a new generation of Jihadists. Worse: the street battles against excellent U.S. soldiers have honed the Jihadist skills and made them smarter, better terrorists. Moreover, alliance between some terrorists and Iran could exponentially increase their destructive capability. And the war in Iraq has limited our ability to tackle Iran in profoundly dangerous ways.

If a war has ended up creating the problem it was designed to solve, only a fool would continue in it without serious and swift signs of new progress. I’m prepared to wait till September to give Petraeus and Maliki one last chance for some light at the end of the tunnel. But the longer the greatest superpower is essentially forced into a draw with Jihadists on territory the Jihadists know best, the more terrorism we are spawning, and the less security we have.

What, I think, these premises DO lead to is a recognition that at this point it’s not a matter of will, I don’t think. Four years into the war, it’s not going to turn around just because we want it to badly enough, or if the entire nation, Republicans and Democrats, sit back in America and clap their hands loudly enough. And painting the war as a question of patriotism, and dissent therefore as something akin to treason (at worst), or crippling to our ability to fight (at best), has done us not a single bit of good, nor will it. It’s a cheap way of trying to punt off responsibility or trying to buy time to run out the clock. And, frankly, it’s exactly the opposite tact from what we should have taken all along. Dissent is necessary. In large measure, we set ourselves up for failure precisely because we were so disinclined to listen to those opinions that disagreed with ours. A continued fingers-in-our-ears approach will certainly not somehow cause us to come out the other end into the light.

Nor will a continued blank check written by Americans to Bush, and by Bush to Iraq, serve our purpose either. There are simply too many elements that will ALWAYS have too much to lose by the world’s largest military no longer setting up base in their capital city for it to ever be demonstrably advantageous for all parties in Iraq to demand we leave. Waiting for some kind of “all clear” to sound or some kind of porn standard for secular liberal democracy (“we’ll know it when we see it”) is folly, wishful thinking tied in with bad policy. At this point, it’s not a condition of if we get out, it’s a question of how quickly and under what conditions. As well, I might add, it probably should be (and probably will have to be to get the appropriate elements in Iraq moving). Perhaps if we had the luxury of staying in Iraq indefinitely and throwing as much money and troops at it as we want, the metrics could be different. But they aren’t. And wishing them so doesn’t change either the mood of America (our own political limitations), our military capability (for the last three years being charged with nation-building, law enforcement, peacekeeping, democratizing, and all manner of responsibility for which they are unsuited and under-able, and for which they are already stretched perilously thin in a way that simply can NOT be sustained for much longer), or the realities on the ground (most of Iraq ALREADY wants the United States to leave, and our very presence there fundamentally reshapes the way Iraqis approach the question of governing themselves).

The war is unsustainable on many levels. And, even if we were capable of continuing it indefinitely, I’m not sure that it would be wise to (but you have to ask BOTH questions). There IS a War on Terror context for Iraq. Unfortunately, I think at this point the cut of the blade isn’t favorable for us.

It now looks like the Bush administration has been given the summer to begin producing results from the “new strategy” of General Petraeus and The Surge (the name of my future Stevie Ray Vaughn cover band, by the way). Although, even then, it appears that, spurred by Republicans, conditions will be attached to some of the money flowing into Baghdad to keep the government propped up. And, come September, Republicans have telegraphed that their blank checkbooks might start closing in the absence of discernible, significant progress, or, failing that, a strong Plan B (it’s worth noting, of course, that there is no Plan B, and generally speaking there never has been). I think Senate Democrats have ultimately played the standoff with the President pretty well, sidestepping most of the pitfalls and, come September, potentially (finally) flaking off Republican support. Or even, best case scenario, forcing some pressure and leverage on both the President and the Iraqis, during which time the surge begins to have a positive effect. But, we shall see.

Waiting through the summer and crossing our fingers, however, doesn’t begin to solve the problem, and even if significant progress DOES occur, it doesn’t allow us to sidestep the tough questions that will have to be asked and, at some point, asked seriously with regards to Iraq. Andrew Sullivan is asking them. Others have been too, for quite some time (and I’m speaking here of conservative voices). And the final, do-or-die tough question may well be “how unacceptable would leaving Iraq be?” That question is meaningless, or at least divorced from any practical significance, when it’s imbued with moral absolutes one way or the other (The Democratic anti-war base is just as guilty of that, by the way, as the hardcore 101st Fighting Keyboardist Republican base, but they are both guilty of it in my opinion). The sad truth is this is not a question on which we will probably have the luxury of moral absolutes.

A conversation has already begun on this point, but thus far, it’s not being taken very seriously. But that doesn’t render it impotent, because I suspect, in not too long, it’ll be the dominant political conversation, less an issue of “if” and more an issue of “how” and “to what effect”.

We have to ask ourselves: at what point does staying in Iraq without measurable progress hurt us in the war on Islamist terror? And: what benefits to the West could accrue from a brutal Sunni-Shi’a war in the Middle East? Yes, I know a withdrawal from Iraq will lead to statements of victory from al Qaeda. That would hurt. But ask yourself: what does bin Laden fear more in private? A continuing stalemate in Iraq that brings new recruits to his cause, exhausts the U.S. military, divides the American people, and keeps the narrative as one in which the “crusaders” are slaughtering Muslims in their own lands? Or a chaotic regional war in which the Muslim world is rent apart by sectarian warfare and in which the US and Israel are mere bystanders?

Again, we shall see, but I’m going to keep bringing to attention the conversation as it crops up.