A Sane Re-Start for the Iraq Debate
After all the wishful thinking and political posturing on all sides, a basis for serious discussion makes the “tenuous case†for staying in Iraq while scaling down our presence.
The report urging “strategic patience†is by Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank chaired by former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, with a bipartisan board including Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and William S. Cohen, a former Republican Senator who was Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton.
Some recent advances in Iraq, Cordesman writes, are the result of “sheer luck,†such as Sunni tribesmen turning against Al Qaeda insurgents. He quotes an unnamed U.S. official as describing our situation as “three dimensional chess in the dark while someone is shooting at you.”
Rejecting the extremes of staying the course or immediate withdrawal, Cordesman makes a case for phasing down troop levels starting early next year.
His analysis and recommendations will draw fire for being too qualified, too middle-of-the-road and politically unsatisfying. But they have the ring of reality, something so rare in the furor over Iraq that has made Americans unhappy with both the Bush Administration and the Democratic Congress elected to oppose him.
Here, at least, is a starting point for facing the true options and thinking seriously about them.
As Cordesman writes, “The U.S. will ultimately be judged far more by how it leaves Iraq, and what it leaves behind, than how it entered Iraq.â€
We’ve lost the war. Can we win the withdrawal?
Cross posted from my blog
6 Responses to “A Sane Re-Start for the Iraq Debate”
Cordesman and others at CSIS were right at the forefront of describing the need to “win the peace” (make Iraq safe and stable after the war). FYI.
Cordesman has been right on just about everything since May 2003. He backed the invasion itself – erroneously in my opinion – but realized we were in trouble when Rumsfeld mocked the anarchy of post-Saddam Iraq. From that point on, Cordesman knew better than to take Administration happy talk at face value. People like Cordesman and the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus and Anthony Shadid did more to shed light in a dark tunnel of misinformation than anybody else in 2003.
“After all the wishful thinking and political posturing on all sides, a basis for serious discussion makes the “tenuous case†for staying in Iraq while scaling down our presence.”
While this would be a good outcome for the US, of course it depends on whether Iraq allows the US to stay – after all, this is a (somwhat) sovereign nation. And when the US doesn’t provide security for the capital anymore, what incentives are there for the Iraq government (most likely NOT Maliki) to let foreign forces have a presence in the country? I guess the US will have to pay heavily for their bases…
“As Cordesman writes, “The U.S. will ultimately be judged far more by how it leaves Iraq, and what it leaves behind, than how it entered Iraq.—
?
Hmm, “far more”? How does he come to this conclusion? I guess part of it is exactly the kind of wishful thinking Robert rightly criticised here. Of course, the initial supporters of the war don’t like to admit that their misguided support for Bush’s fantasy will have consequences for the US image and influence in the region for many decades to come. Sure, even this negative memory may be overshadowed by a more recent one if the US s*** up even more when leaving Iraq, but let’s not hope it plays out this way.
:-/
In the interests of full disclosure, Rick Moran riffs on the Cordsman report in the post at his blog to which I refer above in which he tries to fashion a way to “win the withdrawal,” as Robert so neatly puts it.
No.