More on Iraq, To Stay or Not To Stay

By Mimikatz

Continuing the disscussion from last night/this morning,  Frontline had a very good documentary on Iraq last night called "Endgame,"  and it adds to the discussion.  Because it is so easy to lose the big picture in the rush of day-to-day events, the chronology on the website is invaluable, and well worth a visit. 

Based on interviews with a variety of military people, analysts and journalists who have covered the war extensively, it confirms what is evident to a reader of "Fiasco," "Hubris" and the many other books and articles that have come out:  Rumsfeld was fundamentally uninterested in what happened after the invasion.  He and the military fully expected to be largely out by the end of 2003, and thus had no plan for what to do once Saddam's government fell.  (Other than installing Chalabi, which Bush vetoed.)  They completely failed to forsee the insurgency, which was largely provoked by the US's attacks on Fallujah in April and November, 2004, or the sectarian violence, which intensified after the February, 2006 bombing of the important Shi'a mosque in Samarra. 

Rumsfeld and General Casey, whom he installed as commander once it was apparent the occupation would not be over quickly and General David Sanchez was in over his head, never had a strategy for "winning" the war--what they had was an endgame, which is why Casey kept talking about drawing down troops.  He and Rumsfeld believed in the "light footprint."  Incredibly, Casey did not begin seriously devising a strategy for Iraq until the Fall of 2004, and that was still an "endgame" strategy.

Meanwhile, Bush, in his dreamworld, egged on by Cheney, kept talking about victory and establishing democracy, never explaining the strategy to achieve those results, since there was none.  Moreover, and here I am editorializing, the talk of "victory" made any lesser outcome seem like "surrender", thus fatally complicating the public debate.  In 2005, after the success of Colonel McMasters in Tal Afar, Condoleeza Rice and her deputy, Philip Zelikow, tried to develop and push a strategy, the "clear, hold and build" strategy, that appeared to have worked in Tal Afar.  The problem was, there were not enough troops to implement it and Rumsfeld and Casey would not countenance sending more troops.

Various factions within the Adminsitration pushed for a strategy review throughout 2006.  In what may be the most amazing segment, a group of top people, both cabinet people and experts from within the military, gather at Camp David to brief the President and hold the strategy review, but Bush jets off to Baghdad for a meet and greet with Prime Minister Maliki and a photo op.  The strategy review never happens.  Instead, Fred Kagan's "surge" plan gains favor.  But a surge means more troops, and Rumsfeld opposed this.

Ironically, according to Frontline, the real reason Rumsfeld (and Casey) had to go was to pave the way for escalation.   Rumsfeld and Casey, they say, actually wanted to draw troops down.  But Bush was seduced by dreams of victory, and so a commitment was made to escalate as the only way to rectify a situation that had clearly been allowed to spiral out of control, just when the Democrats, backed by an increasingly anti-war public, take over Congress.

The program basically confirms my post of yesterday--the disasterous decisions made in 2003, 2004 and 2005 make it impossible to achieve "victory" (over whom?) and restoring order is infinitely more difficult, if not impossible, because of those blunders.  (Note:  I said yesterday I have always believed that the war was doomed from the outset.  However, with a better understanding of the situation, better polcies and better execution, we could have made a graceful exit by the end of 2005.  Of course, with a much better understanding of the situation, we would never have gone in in the first place.)

So we are left with no good, or even not-so-bad, way out.  We can stay only at a very high price for us and the Iraqis, given how our very presence is a cause of much of the violence--200,000 troops for 5-10 years.  Given that, one idea might be to invite the Iraqis to vote on whether we should stay, and then have the international conference and attempt a political solution as we withdraw at their invitation.  But as so many colonial wars have shown (can you believe General Petraeus wrote his PhD thesis on the French in Indochina?),  democracies can defeat foreign insurgencies only at a price in lives, treasure and betrayal of their principles that is far beyond what the public will ultimately be willing to pay.

Comments

[Mimikatz]

By leave I mean leave, completely, with a reduced embassy guarded by a few marines, if this can be done safely. Yesterday I explained why I think that the idea of leaving a "residual force" is the worst of both worlds. We should get out, all the way, in an orderly fashion, as soon as we can, and if we need to leave forces in the region, put them outside Iraq in a more hospitable environment.

[nolo]

this is O/T, to this post,
but very on-topic for EW!:

B R E A K I N G!

ya' gotta' LOVE this!

scooter libby's actual application for
release pending appeal includes,
IN THE PDF, a linked-video snippet,
hosted at lawrence s. robbins' lawfirm
website(!) -- of andrea mitchell
dissembling on valerie plame wilson's
"widely-known" covert status!

[it is about 20 seconds long. . .]

let's help mr. robbins out, and
play his video over and over and
over, giving his servers a good
"running-in", yeah?

i've set an embedded video link
right here -- see above. . . it
should autostart if you have windows
media player -- it is a 388.wmv
file at his website, in the sub-
directory called /pdf/388.wmv. . .

he he!

oh -- i also have some early reaction
to the way he has framed the issues. . .

[ab initio]

As I said in my post on the last thread - American military forces will inevitably have to leave Iraq - unless all the Iraqi faction agree to have us there - which will never happen due to how they have been treated by the US military. There is too much hatred and need for retribution.

So the bottom line is leave now or leave later? The outcome in Iraq will be the same. Iraqi factions will initially fight to dominate the others until they realize the futility of that strategy and then will come to a political reconciliation. Of course this political process can be aided by the neighbors in the region - Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey. And they will if the US, Israel, Europeans and everyone else butt out.

Leaving later means more folks dead and maimed for the hubris of Bush & Cheney. Of course and for the lack of courage of the gutless Repubs and many Dems in Congress. Post-colonial imperialist adventures don't have happy outcomes when the natives resist. For that its better to bribe than brow beat!

[N=1]

Thank you for writing this! Exactly right on all counts. Should be memorized and quoted by everyone, everywhere.

[-ck-]

There will be no graceful exit from Iraq -- any possibility of that was lost Viceroy Bremer used his self-annointed plenopotentiary powers to dissolve the Iraqi Army.

According to the Frontline Special, "The Lost Year in Iraq", General Gardiner's team was negotiating with Iraqi officers, who were prepared to put 10,000 military police on the streets with a days notice. Instead, the army was dissolved, 400,000 armed and pissed off Iraqis were put out of work -- and the insurgency began within 72 hours.

From that point forward, the inevitable quagmire and disaster has unfolded.

http://www.pbs.org/frontline/yeariniraq

[Tracy]

David Broder is talking nonsense re Libby in a live chat. Somebody smarter than me needs to take him on:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/06/19/DI2007061901259.html

[jackalope]

I saw the program, too. It looked to me like Frontline gave the insiders (including reporters who still sounded pretty deeply embedded) a chance to explain themselves. It was fascinating, but not really illuminating, because the view from the inside remains fatally limited.

Outside viewpoints were represented by the trophy videos of "insurgents." Combined with the images of U.S. troops crashing through civilian landscapes, the overall effect was of pointless, endless, futile brutality. Maybe that was the point.

About this, though: "Rumsfeld was fundamentally uninterested in what happened after the invasion. He and the military fully expected to be largely out by the end of 2003, and thus had no plan for what to do once Saddam's government fell." How can that be? Weren't the permanent U.S. bases part of the "plan" from the beginning? Wouldn't it be more accurate, given what we have learned outside this episode of Frontline, to say that Rumsfeld planned to be in total control of the country after the invasion and to maintain that control indefinitely though a network of permanent bases? The difference is that he and those who were too timid to contradict him had come up with a bad plan, not an incomplete one.

[Mimikatz]

There is a diary on Daily Kos with quotes from the Frontline Documentary. I had forgotten Thomas Ricks' depiction of the Rumsfeld/Casey strategy as "war tourism" (that is, cruising out from forward bases in Humvees and then coming home at night).

The decision to disband the Iraqi Army (and the also but less important decision to expand deBaathification) has never been satisfactorily explained, but I believe it was Rumsfeld's. Bremer could never have taken such a step on his own. He fudges it himself, but it seems that someone gave him that direction just before he left DC and now won't own up to it. This is the MO of Rumsfeld, who never knew nothin' about nothin', it would seem. But it could have been Cheney. The only way it could have been Bush is for one of them to have persuaded Bush of the idea. I suppose Wolfowitz is another possible culprit, given that he was also spectacularly wrong about just about everything.

[marksb]

The LA Times critic Tony Perry didn't like the Frontline presentation, and published a review on Tuesday that called it a "clip-job", or a collection of previously published news, referred to it as a primer for people who haven't been following the news, and claims it ignores recent developments that show the war in a better light. The title of the review, BTW, is "Endgame has it's own agenda".

As if the critic doesn't.

And, BTW, in a country where a huge number of people are so uninformed/misinformed about Iraq and our efforts that they think Saddam had a hand in 9/11, it seems to me that a critical primer about Iraq would be a Good Thing, even a good agenda---you know, like using the electronic media to inform the citizens?

[Mimikatz]

Jackalope--Good point. Rumsfeld evidently thought we'd withdraw most of the combat troops but leave a "residual force" on those bases that they could build because the country was enjoying its peace, prosperity and democracy.
Maybe that's another reason I'm suspicious of that strategy.

Rumsfeld/Cheney seem to have had a blind faith in things going their way, so that we would install this friendly government (I don't believe they ever wanted a democracy project, just another strongman) that would give the oil over to US companies and establish ties with Israel. Those two were only interested in securing the oil and the forward bases in the region to replace the ones we'd promised the Saudis we'd abandon.

I have read that Bush personally vetoed the idea of an exile like Chalabi running the post-invasion government. He seems to have been entranced with the idea of spreading "freedom", by which they mean exploitable free markets and pro-US governments.

I think a fascinating study could be done on how Bush's speechwriters' lofty goals have poisoned the debate and precluded any sensible discussion of Iraq, let alone finding a way out. So much for Karl's "making our reality." Reality is a bitch after all, just not their bitch.

Of course the documentary was "previously published news" in large part, because it was a review of how we got where we are. But there was some good analysis and even self-criticism from the insiders. It is hard to follow the news and believe things are getting better. The country can be pacified, as surely Petraeus knows because he wrote the book, only with double the troops and at more than double the cost, and he haven't really got either. So any strategy by which we stay is just kick the can down the road and then blame the Dems for losing.

[marksb]

Hmm...kick the can down the road and blame the Dems for losing. That sounds about right, Mimikatz. I've been wondering for over a year why the fuck Bush doesn't just declare victory and start withdrawal. Our media would eat it up. We're already blaming the Iraqi government (and Iran) for everything that goes wrong, just make that policy and bring most of the troops home.

But this makes a sort of weird sense. Sacrifice another thousand troops and use the GOP PR machine to blame the mismanagement of the war, while calling the withdrawal a "loss", on whichever Dem wins. Also, blame the resultant economic recession on the winner, letting the Dems sputter on about how it's Bush's fault and the Democratic administration is just trying to pull the impossible together.

But while it makes weird sense, in a horrible dark way, it's really really stupid. An effective and clear-thinking Party and administration would have declared victory and kicked off the withdrawal, with ceremonies and parades and the whole nine yards, all with the heir to the throne presiding with GW, the media a very willing partner in yet another giant lie. THAT would be great marketing, and it could reverse the GOP's fortunes.

Geez, it's enough to make a fella want to snuggle into a warm bathtub and open an artery. Just kidding.

[dalloway]

It wasn't just that Rummy "wasn't interested" in the aftermath of the invasion -- he actively discouraged any discussion of it and basically told the State Department (who did have a post-invasion plan or at least the expertise to come up with one) to go f**k themselves!

[Mimikatz]

A horrible, dark way, but one with a long pedigree. It's called the Dolchstoss, or Stab in the Back. One person who writes about it is The Cunning Realist.

[William Ockham]

I'm going to keep saying this. Everybody needs to go back and read what Bush has said since he before he became President. He's been remarkably consistent. He wanted to be a "War President". He doesn't care where, who or why, he just needs his war and he intends to keep it going until he leaves office. I suspect Bush would have been satisfied with Afghanistan, but he had already created a team committed to war with Iraq. The neocons had many differing reasons for wanting to attack Iraq, but there really is no coherent reason, strategic or otherwise, that we started this war beyond war for war's sake.