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Fri. Nov 03, 2006

Failure Has Many Fathers

In recent weeks, there’s been a lot of people who’ve decided that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated so much that it’s [1] too late to do anything but find some way out, [2] time for one last ditch effort even with the knowledge it may not work, or [3] possible we need to not “stay the course” quite so much as we have been.

To rational people and those whose reason isn’t entirely overwhelmed by partisanship, the truth has been stark for some time. But some seem to be just coming around to it recently. Notable sorts, like Ralph Peters. And poor Ralph seems to have a real hard time completely letting go. It’s a little Jekyll and Hyde-ish.

In a column titled “Last gasps in Iraq,” Peters writes:

President Bush insists that we have no conflicts with the al-Maliki government. The president isn’t telling the truth — or he himself doesn’t support our military’s efforts. He can’t have it both ways. Bush appears increasingly desperate just to get through the upcoming elections.

I still believe that our removal of Hussein was a noble act. I only wish the administration had done it competently.

OK, so far so good. He sees the transparency of many “actions” and statements from the Bush administration, and points out their incompetence in post-war Iraq. Yet…

Yet, for all our errors, we did give the Iraqis a unique chance to build a rule-of-law democracy. They preferred to indulge in old hatreds, confessional violence, ethnic bigotry and a culture of corruption. It appears that the cynics were right: Arab societies can’t support democracy as we know it. And people get the government they deserve.

Yes, we certainly did get the government we deserve, didn’t we? But exactly how did we “give the Iraqis a unique chance to build a rule-of-law democracy”??? We denied them the primary ingredient for that … the rule of law!

We never disarmed the first militia. When looting broke out within hours after Saddam’s statue was toppled in Firdas Square, we never tried to stop it in any way. Rumsfeld explained, “freedom is messy.”

It certainly is, when you allow it to evolve directly towards chaos from Day One, and make a conscious decision to allow that to happen. Messy enough that 1800+ more Americans might be killed after that statement due to said messiness. Pity it simply could not be stopped by the greatest power on the planet Earth. Oh, that’s right, we chose not to stop it.

And while people will argue forever about whether the Geneva Convention applies to enemy combatants blah-blah yadda-yadda, no one mentions the Geneva Convention obligations spelled out for an occupying power.

Oh, sure, in those early days, we didn’t want to be called “occupiers,” we were “liberators.” Pure semantic BS; we had toppled the existing government, in fact, were pretty damn pleased that we had … and it then became our obligation to provide “security and stability” for that country.

Three and a half years later, we have never met that basic Geneva Convention obligation, which would have been the first step towards proving that “rule of law” that Peters mentions.

And he knows it. Because he even points out the most glaring example of it:

On Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki obeyed Muqtada al-Sadr’s command to withdraw U.S. troops from Baghdad’s Sadr City. He halted a vital U.S. military operation. It was the third time in less than a month that al-Maliki had sided with the anti-American cleric against our forces.

Ah, yes, young al-Sadr. Remember the crisis he begat in April of 2004? I quoted Peters then (“The refusal to use our power in the face of defiance only makes defiance more attractive”), talking about how US forces must disarm and jail him. If not worse. We left al-Maliki saddled with al-Sadr as a power within Iraq. In the spring of 2004, we demanded his surrender to authorities on the murder charges he faced, as well as the disbanding of his militia. We said he would be “brought to justice.”

We did nothing to him. And today Peters is complaining because Maliki bends to al-Sadr’s will, saying that it’s the Iraqis fault. But back in April of 2004, I quoted Peters on dealing al-Sadr: “Each day of delay makes our power seem more hollow. You have to do the dirty work at the start. The price for postponing it comes due with compound interest.”

The price has come due, Ralph, two and a half years of compound interest later. Stop blaming it on the Iraqis. You were right the first time.

We set the Iraqis up for failure at democracy, from Day One, by not providing that security and stability. All else flowed from that, from Iranian influence in the south, to Al Qaeda’s arrival in the west. There is no one else to blame. Even the Geneva Convention says so.

Peters also seems to have a problem understanding the impact this failure will have on the US:

For us, Iraq’s impending failure is an embarrassment. For the Iraqis — and other Arabs — it’s a disaster the dimensions of which they do not yet comprehend. They’re gleeful at the prospect of America’s humiliation. But it’s their tragedy, not ours.

And contrary to the prophets of doom, the United States wouldn’t be weakened by our withdrawal, should it come to that. Iraq was never our Vietnam. It’s al-Qaeda’s Vietnam. They’re the ones who can’t leave and who can’t win.

It’s more than an embarrassment when you have over 2000 war dead, over 90% of them coming after the declaration of “Mission Accomplished.” That is indeed our tragedy. As for being weakened, Peters is a vet, a retired colonel. Can he honestly look at the state of the US Army and Reserves as a result of Iraq and not call us weakened? The equipment depletions and replacement costs are surreal, never mind the human stress of multiple deployments (the 3rd ID, who “liberated” Baghdad, are about to head back for their third tour).

And it’s a lot more than any assessment of the state of our military. It’s far greater than that, as the American Conservative Magazine points out:

Meanwhile, America’s image in the world, its capacity to persuade others that its interests are common interests, is lower than it has been in memory. All over the world people look at Bush and yearn for this country — which once symbolized hope and justice — to be humbled. The professionals in the Bush administration (and there are some) realize the damage his presidency has done to American prestige and diplomacy. But there is not much they can do.

Never mind the glaringly obvious “history repeating itself” issue of Iranian WMD, the solidity of our intelligence about their WMD, the threat of a military solution, and our credibility in those areas (One, is our intel flawed as ever, and two, can the military initiate yet another pre-emptive war, given the weight of Iraq?).

Never mind all that. On the night of Sept. 11, there were candlelight vigils for those lost … in Tehran. Do you think there would be today? And why is that? We “once symbolized hope and justice” around the world. What do you think we symbolize today?

What caused that?

That is the embarrassment, the weakness, the tragedy caused by Iraq that seems to elude Peters and others. They can recall how Vietnam scarred the psyche of this country and affected our military, diplomatic, and political decisions for a decade or more thereafter ... yet can’t see how Iraq will cast the same long and ugly shadow … for a decade or more thereafter.

“Thereafter” being an as yet undefinable point still some distance in the future.

And though Ralph is just telling us about it now, he’s known it was effectively over for a long time. Got it from the horse’s mouth:

My disillusionment with our Iraq endeavor began last summer, when I was invited to a high-level discussion with administration officials. I went into the meeting with one firm goal, to convince my hosts that they’d better have Plan B in case Iraq continued to disintegrate. I left the session convinced that the administration still didn’t have Plan A, only a blur of meandering policies and blind hopes. After more than three years, it was still “An Evening at the Improv.”

Personally, my disillusionment began a month after the taking of Baghdad, when I first asked “Where Was The Plan?” in May of 2003. The incompetence was obvious that quickly after combat operations transitioned to “security and stability” operations.

By September of 2004, I’d moved on to “It’s too late:” “Too late to undo the massive mistakes we made early on (like disbanding the Iraqi Army we’re now trying to reconstitute, and putting 400,000 armed and unemployed men on the streets), and too late to change the weak willed impressions we’ve left since then (like the nine lives of the man we vowed to kill or put in jail, Moqtada Al Sadr, who is neither dead nor in jail, and the vaunted ‘Fallujah Brigade,’ who’ve since donated their AK-47’s, trucks and radios to the ‘insurgents’) It’s too late for the grandiose future many envisioned for post-war Iraq, and approaching too late to have a realistic influence on Iraq’s real future.”

Over two years after writing that, some seem to just be arriving at that same station. Like Peters, who does comes back around by the end to make an important point:

Iraq could have turned out differently. It didn’t. And we must be honest about it. We owe that much to our troops. They don’t face the mere forfeiture of a few congressional seats but the loss of their lives. Our military is now being employed for political purposes. It’s unworthy of our nation.

Here’s another important point. We owe it to the people of Iraq. They don’t face the mere forfeiture of a few congressional seats, either, but the loss of their lives. The loss of their neighbor’s lives. The loss of the simple ability of a child to play in their own front yard.

History is going to hold some folks accountable for all of that. And the names will be American, not Iraqi.