A few weeks after the House and Senate passed strongly-worded statements that the US will not abandon Iraq, The Washington Post finds that many Republican lawmakers are starting to go wobbly, including Minnesota’s own Gil Gutknecht.
In some ways, this isn’t all that surprising. The situation in Iraq is bad. Very bad. It isn’t civil war (yet), but in fact something worse: anarchy. The al-Maliki government can’t secure Baghdad. They can’t reign in the Shi’ite militias, and they can’t seem to stop the violence. All the progress that has been made in Iraq is threatened by the absolutely intolerable security situation. The plan in Iraq for us to step down as the Iraqis step up is being made exceptionally difficult as the violence unravels Iraq’s already-fragile civil society.
Real, demonstrable progress must be made. Soon.
We cannot pull out, but sooner or later something will have to be done to ensure that the Iraqi people are safe from this constant attack. Changing stategies may work – instead of securing all of Baghdad, secure the city neighborhood by neighborhood. Find the criminals and deal with them – and if that means cracking down even brutally against militias, then now is the time to be brutal. That means anyone who is using terrorism for their ends – even members of the government – should be stopped through whatever means are necessary. The political progress is being undermined from within. Iraq has made progress in many areas, but now we’re seeing a backslide into anarchy that threatens to undo all of the advancements made in recent months.
Ultimately, it is up to the Iraqi people to stop the violence and combat the militias. We can train and equip them, but we can’t fight for them now. Sooner or later the political will to stay in Iraq will run out – that is the way of feckless politicians. If the Iraqis can’t defend themselves by then, Iraq could shatter with disastrous consequences. The Iraqis must stand up united against the militias, or Iraq will face ruin.
Iraq can do this. We can help them to do so. But we can’t do it if we’re speaking the language of defeat. The people of Iraq are counting on us to finish what we started and ensure that Iraq is not left in chaos. Now is a time of trial, but those who go wobbly during such times threaten everything – the anarchy in Iraq is not intractable unless we allow it to become so.
Glad I found your blog. We’ll be succesful in Iraq when we stop handcuffing our military, questioning everything they do, and trying to dig up as much dirt on them as possible. The military is scared out of their minds that some lib with a camera is going to get a picture of them shooting the wrong person that they’re afraid to cut a loud fart let alone do their job.
Don’t be a stranger.
You got it Tim. Everything that’s wrong with Iraq boils down to American soldiers worried they’re gonna be caught on camera. The Shi’ites and Sunnis would forgive and forget centuries of grievances if only American soldiers had the freedom to shoot more Iraqi kids in cold blood without them pesky media pinkos snapping pictures of it. If only we had people like you running things over there and showing ’em how its done!
Tim: That’s the least of our problems, and you know it. Our men in the field don’t give a shit about what people back here are saying about them; they’re too busy trying not to get caught in the crossfire. (And they’re hardly handcuffed; we’ve taken out an estimated 60,000+ Saddamists and insurgents since the beginning of the war. They seem to be doing their job just fine, all things considered; too bad that’s not enough to win this conflict.)
We’ve spent at least $400 billion (lowball) on this occupation, and we’ll spend at least twice that getting out of this mess… and for what? We turned Iraq into Somalia. What a waste of money and international goodwill.
But hey, don’t anyone ever say that Democrats don’t support the troops or anything…
Iraq isn’t Somalia yet, and won’t be if we can get al-Maliki to start cracking down now. I’ve said all along that this process would be marked by dramatic backslides – and this is one hell of a dramatic backslide.
“But hey, don’t anyone ever say that Democrats don’t support the troops or anything…”
It’s not my personal position. It’s a paraphrase of Tim’s cartoonish suggestion that the only thing preventing U.S. military success in Iraq is that “the military is scared out of their minds that some lib with a camera is going to get a picture of them shooting the wrong person….”.
“Iraq isn’t Somalia yet, and won’t be if we can get al-Maliki to start cracking down now.”
Why would he? American political leaders have made it perfectly clear that our military presence will remain in Iraq “until we finish the job”. If the guys with all the resources and the deep pockets will indefinitely have al-Maliki’s back, what’s his motivation to “start cracking down now” when he can simply outsource the work to our military “in it for the long haul”?
Jay:
I hope you’re right, but I’m not optimistic at this point.
al-Maliki knows that the political will isn’t there for an extended deployment. Furthermore, we don’t have enough troops to provide total security. We’re not likely to add troops, and we’re mainly focused on protecting infrastructure and training Iraqis right now. Either the Iraqis stand on their own by the end of the year, or they’ll start having to sink or swim. As far as the Army is concerned, they’re doing OK, and Muthanna Province is now under Iraqi control. Baghdad is another matter entirely.
al-Maliki must secure Baghdad, or he’ll be out of power. We can help the Iraqis, but ultimately it is their country to defend. I have a feeling that the average Iraq is sick and tired of the violence, and sooner or later al-Maliki will move against the Sadrites and the Badr Brigades in a decisive fashion. With al-Sistani calling for calm now he can count on the backing of the chief Shi’ite religious authority in that if necessary.
As I’ve said, democratization is a messy, bloody process. What we’re seeing in Iraq now is what happens when decades worth of bad blood comes out in the absence of a strong central government. Al-Maliki has a chance to reestablish control, but it will take time. We can and should provide as much training and support as we can, but even I don’t argue we’ll have 130,000 troops in Iraq by this time next year. The political will is just not there. Sooner or later we’ll have to make sure the Iraqis stand on their own, and hopefully they will carry that burden well.
We have always been ultimately dependent on the Iraqis for this to work – and how long can someone live in constant fear before deciding enough is enough? The criminal element ultimately will be defeated, it’s just a question of how bad things may get before that happens. If civil war breaks out, at least that will very quickly establish a winner and a loser – in some ways that may be preferable to the anarchy Iraq faces today.
We most certainly are handcuffed. We have been from the beginning. We don’t even give our military proper helmuts for crying out loud.
“It’s a paraphrase of Tim’s cartoonish suggestion that the only thing preventing U.S. military success in Iraq is that “the military is scared out of their minds that some lib with a camera is going to get a picture of them shooting the wrong person….â€.
An idiotic paraphrase, and blatant misrepresentation of my statement, considering that I didn’t say “the ONLY thing preventing military success in Iraq was military fear.
“We most certainly are handcuffed. We have been from the beginning. We don’t even give our military proper helmuts for crying out loud.”
That I’ll agree with; we’ve been slow over the past decade to adapt our forces to fighting the “New War”; we went in with a definite shortage of body armor, up-armored Humvees, and many of the other vital tools for fighting an asymmetrical guerilla conflict. Part of this, I’d gather, was a misunderstanding of the war we were fighting; we didn’t expect the resistance to our war of “liberation” to be so strong, or that building an effective allied Iraqi fighting force would take as long as it has.
However, you made it sound in your initial statement as if the “handcuffing” was done by the media or some sort of American “fifth column”, when it was actually poor planning by the pentagon and our policy elite that was responsible for this state of affairs. Maybe our sometimes overzealous press hasn’t helped matters, but I’d estimate that their overall impact on the war on the ground is negligible at best, and I’d rather have an overzealous press than a lock-step palace court press any day of the week and Sunday. The first amendment was written for a reason.