Deadline Politics Posted by Derek Chollet

So, they missed the first deadline.

Voting for an extension dressed it up to save face, but make no mistake: they missed it, and while there’s a lot of positive words coming out of Baghdad (and Washington and Crawford) about how this is just democracy at work, today’s papers are also filled with some pretty ominous statements – about how 50% of the constitution is left to be finished, that all the tough issues (federalism, role of Islam, share of oil revenues) are still left on the table, and that if things don’t get finished by next Monday, they will dissolve the parliament and call for new elections.  In a situation where it seems that political crisis/stalemate equals discredited government equals refueled insurgency equals our troops need to stay for a long time to keep a lid on things, this is not good news.

That said, I have to say that I am of two minds about this: part of me agrees with Noah Feldman, who today says that the American efforts to push the Iraqis to meet the artificial deadline were “shameful” and “constitutional malpractice,” and that is more important to get things done right than quickly (also, there is something about the image of U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalizad, on the floor of the Iraqi parliament working folks over like Hastert and DeLay that seems a little off to me).

But on the other hand, I also believe that the faster the journey to a credible political outcome – the constitution and the two rounds of elections – the more likely there will be a conducive environment to start reducing our military commitment to Iraq (and on this point, I actually agree with something Henry Kissinger wrote last week—that one way to help support Iraq’s political development is by creating a kind of regional political framework for Iraq’s future, bringing in Iraq’s neighbors and our key allies to help establish the rules of the road and to support the new government).

Here is where I want to put my two cents behind the glum prediction that Heather just outlined below: I think we are going to get out of Iraq, slowly but surely.  That’s why the Administration is pushing so hard for the Iraqis to hit these deadlines (that we created, by the way), so they can say that benchmarks have been met, Iraqi troops are being trained, and now is the time for us to turn things over to the legitimate Iraqi government.  They’ll argue that if things get a little ugly in our wake, so be it.  We gave it our best shot, it’s their country, and it is now for them to handle.  (This scenario, by the way, looks a lot like one that has been floated by outside analysts).

Part of this is politics—the American people are starting to clamor for us to get out.  But a big part of this is military necessity—I don't know of a single military expert who believes that we can sustain the pace of deployments in Iraq much longer without breaking the force.  And if we need troops to deal with another contingency – North Korea, Iran, Taiwan – forget it.  So if in many ways we have to get out, the Administration wants to lower the bar and create a scenario to declare, well, mission accomplished.

Now I don’t think we will get out entirely – in two years time, we might still have 50,000 troops there.  This is still cutting our troops at current levels by about one-third, but leaving there significantly more than we’ve had in South Korea for over fifty years.

And this is where – politically speaking for progressives -- I want to make Heather’s prediction gloomier.  Because if a slow but steady withdrawal is the future, then progressives will be split between the “get-out-of-Iraq-now” faction, who will claim that we’re not getting out fast enough, and the “complete the mission” faction that will agree with leaders like Joe Biden and John McCain that we need to stay in Iraq (and if anything, increase our troop strength) to get the job done right.  Threading this needle will be one the huge challenges for progressives in the months ahead.

Comments

[David Billington]

"Voting for an extension dressed it up to save face, but make no mistake: they missed it, and while there’s a lot of positive words coming out of Baghdad (and Washington and Crawford) about how this is just democracy at work, today’s papers are also filled with some pretty ominous statements..."

As the Camp David negotiations in 1978 aproached their last day, they too looked like they would collapse. Iraqi leaders may be going to the brink to convince their constituents that they (the leaders) are going to bat for their particular interests - before they finally reach a compromise. I don't think agreement is certain but the next few days will give everybody over there a much-needed chance to debate the consequences of failure rather than the consequences of success.

"Now I don’t think we will get out entirely – in two years time, we might still have 50,000 troops there. This is still cutting our troops at current levels by about one-third, but leaving there significantly more than we’ve had in South Korea for over fifty years."

Once we begin to draw down troops, we will get them all out. We have a force in South Korea only as a trip-wire against a North Korean invasion, not to underpin South Korea's internal stability. If the Iraqis are able to assume primary responsibility for their own internal security, they will assume all of it.

[JohnFH]

I don't see how anyone in good conscience can argue that we should cut and run, rather than complete the mission.

The gloomy and war-weary feelings that prevail in popular opinion and on this site say more about the difficulties a democracy built on the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has in prosecuting a dragged out low intensity war than it does about the facts on the ground.

As far as I'm concerned, this is not about lowered expectations. I don't expect to see a stable Jeffersonian democracy develop in Iraq or Afghanistan or Lebanon or Turkey in my lifetime no matter what we do, and never have.

If instead what we've done is remove two despotic and dangerously unpredictable regimes from power, reduce al-Qaeda to a shadow of its former self, frighten away other despots like Gheddafi and Assad from pursuing their dreams, create a little bit of breathing room for democratic developments in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq itself, and force al-Qaeda linked and al-Qaeda inspired terrorist networks to go for broke now rather than later, in Iraq and all around the globe, thus allowing us to respond to them with more focus and passion and military might than we otherwise could or would, that would be enough for me.

17 Spanish soldiers just lost their lives in Afghanistan. Did they die in vain? Maybe they will, if those who are in supposedly in favor of a vigorous democracry promotion policy no longer know for sure whether we should cut and run or complete the mission.

[Nick C]

What about those new military bases I hear are going up in Iraq? Any indication that we'll ever give them up? On that point some people will consider Iraq a solid success.

[Angryman]

"I don't see how anyone in good conscience can argue that we should cut and run, rather than complete the mission."

Maybe because they don't think the mission is completable and don't want to see their loved ones blown up for a lie?

Nah that can't be true. Those anti-war types, they never act in good conscience, do they?

Pathetic.

[lily]

Actually it's the Bush administration that wants to cut and run. They just don't want to call it that. They call it redefining victory.
I don't think progressives should worry too much about what we should do. It doesn't matter what we think for two reasons. One, we're out of power now. This is the Bush administration's war and, win or lose or draw, it's their responibility. Secondly, Bush HAS to cut and run. There aren't enough troops for any other decision and he hasn't got the political bravery to call for a draft. Also, we can't pay for this war, not that that will bother the cut-taxes-and-increase-spending Republicans, of course, but the reality based community is watching the debts pile up. So the decision is already made; we are going to start pull outs next year. The only question is how the Republicans will spin it. Right now it looks like they will try to spin it as a win. Which is good in shortterm political terms for progressives because it will be obvious not only that we lost, but that Bush lead to the defeat.

[Dan Kervick]

There really is an alternative to the extremes of "cut and run" and "stay the course" - namely "change the course". The new course I have in mind is a version of the three-state solution that has been bandied about by people like Leslie Gelb and Peter Galbraith, and put on the table here at Democracy Arsenal by Michael Singer.

Here, at least roughly, is the outline of one version of the new course:

1. Declare the current constitutional process dead; and propose either a loose confederation, or a complete division into three independent states.

2. Disengage US forces from the conflict, by ending their patrols and withdrawing them to secure bases inside Iraq, but away from the main centers of conflict. And draw down those forces. This will diminish US casualties drastically, and also allow for a sizeable cut in the budget allocation for military operations.

3. Quickly phase out funding for the would-be "Iraqi government". this is a project that has simply not panned out. The reality on the ground is that the broad political will for the continued existence of a unified Iraqi state no longer exists. The Iraq chapter in the history of the Mesopotamian region is over.

4. Declare US support for an independent state in the north, undertanding that it would be dominated politically by Kurdish parties, but with that support conditioned on the Kurds' willingness to accept UN observers and commisioners charged with protecting the human, civil and political rights of Arab and Turkemen minorities inside the borders of the new state, during a transitional period of a length yet to be determined. In exchange for full US and international backing, the Kurds must make solemn commitments (i) not to engage in ethnic cleansing or forced population transfers out of the Kurdish state; (ii) to guarantee rights of full political participation and equal citizenship status to all residents of the new state, and (iii) to respect and maintain in perpetuity the existing borders between the new state and neighboring states.

5. Use some of the newly available funds to increase funding and suppilies for the Kurdish peshmerga in the north. The peshmerga are already well-armed, disciplined, dedicated and well-trained. With additional financial assistance and armaments, they should be well capable of stabilizing northern Iraq, and laying the security foundation for an independent state.

5. Offer political and diplomatic support, and a massive influx of funds, for Shiite governmental institutions and Shiite militias as well - the building blocks of a new Shite state in the south - but again with strings attached. The Shiites must be willing to accept UN peacekeepers and border guards, and human rights observers, until such time as they are able to gear up a well-trained military force, and sustain it. The Shiites are not as far along as the Kurds in their ability to secure an new, independent state, and will need help. However they should be able to move much more rapidly in organizing their existing militias into a genuine military once they are freed from their futile current task of securing central Iraq and quelling the Sunni Arab insurgency there. That is a hopeless endeavor, and no amount of training is going to make it happen. The majority of Sunnis in central Iraq apparently have no intention of being part of a political entity dominated by their Shiite neighbors to the south - they have already made this sufficiently clear. Why continue to force the issue?

6. To receive the US and international cash they will need, the Shiites must also make some modest, but real and firm, human rights commitments. An Islamic state of some kind is fine - such an outcome appears to reflect the will of the majority. And the constitution of such a state will be broadly speaking up to them. But the religious and civil rights of minorities must be protected in accordance with universal human rights standards. (No roving death squads exacting vigilante justice for violations of strict Islamic law, for example.)

7. Decalare an official policy of quarantining the violence in Central Iraq. The purpose, for the forseeable future of the international presence on the ground in southern Iraq will be to secure those regions that are already on the way to security, and protect the new borders, as the Shiite military develops to the point that it can take over this job. And Kurdish forces can secure the northern border with the central region. But there is simply no point in introducing peacekeepers in central Iraq if there is no peace to keep. The Sunnis must be kept from spreading violence into the north and south, but left to solve their internal strife for themselves. Diplomatic efforts can of course be kept up, and the situation reevaluated for time to time. And vigorous steps can be taken to limit the influx of arms into that region. But the US and all outside powers must get out, and stay out, as the totally anarchic situation in central Iraq resolves itself. The quarantine will keep US and international forces out of harm's way, and help to make their temporary presence in other parts of the country politically acceptable to their repective populations. Ultimately the Sunnis are going to have to solve their major internal problems on their own, before an international presence can play a constructive role.

The remaining role of the US in all this would be to act as a deterrent to foreign intervention, and the core of a potential rapid response force if really major conflict erupts, or humanitarian disaster looms. But the US can, with some luck, adopt a quiet and unobtrusive presence. Many soldiers can come home, and the ones who are there will not be getting killed.

As the conflict stabilizes, and the risk of violence subsides, the military presence could gradually be UN-ized. At some point the US could very publicly turn over the keys to international peacekeepers, who would then be drawn down gradually as the situation stabilizes further. (Once the major danger passes, the UN would be more than happy, I suspect, to accept this gift of restored prestige, and public respect from the US.) It would surely go a long way to restore US credibility in the world if we were able to disclaim any intention of a permanent presence in Iraq, in a very public way.

Some very prominent Democrat should make a bold proposal along these lines in a high profile speech - "A New Course for Iraq" - although it would be clear initially that he or she does not speak officially for the party. Perhaps Gary Hart, or Sam Nunn could do the job. But a sitting Senator would be better. Other Democrats could hold this figure at arms length for a while as political nature takes its course in Iraq. But given that events are trending in the three-state direction anyway, eventually these other Democrats could jump on the "new course" bandwagon, as the facts on the ground begin to approach the articulated vision. Eventually the executive branch, and other "stay the course" holdouts, will be forced to adopt the new course, one way or another.

And eventually, Democrats will appear to have been the realistic and prescient party, the one that managed to articulate a new vision, lead the way, save lives and salvage something tolerable from a very bad situation, while Bush and the Republicans will be left with the charge that they prolonged the conflict in pusuit of a naive and fruitless strategy in Iraq, one based on equal parts deception, avarice, belligerence and stupidity.

Democrats can begin to take the lead now on a strategy that has a real chance of making a very positive contribution to the peace and security of the region. With the passage of time, the decline in casualties, and the demobilization of the country from its present war footing and heightened patriotic fervor, the Bush administration will be increasingly called to account for having lied the country into an unnecessary and very costly war.

Most importantly, this new course is not a loss. In Vietnam, Democrats were blamed for the fact that in the end the US actually lost the war, and the Viet Cong achieved their war aims. But with this new approach, the Sunni insurgency does not win at all. You get (a) a stable and reasonably prosperous state to the north, dominated politically by the Kurds, but with the human rights of Arab, Turkmen and other minorities protected, and (b) a stable Shiite entity in the south. You also get a frustrated, weak and contained Sunni rump entity of some sort in the center, whose leaders have been decisively thwarted in their ambition to take back political control of Iraq. In no way is this a victory for the insurgency - it would on the contrary amount to the institutionalization and international recognition of the greatly diminished Sunni power in Iraq, and serve as is a bitter example of the wages of violence and oppression.

In a sense, this would be the final defeat of Saddam and his Baathist regime. It recognizes and recollects the brutal suppression of the Shiites and and Kurds under Saddam, and the enduring aspiration of the latter for autonomy. Saddam held Iraq together with the aid of the Baath party and his Sunni power base. By continuing to attempt to hold the country together, we grant a sort of legitimacy to Saddam's earlier efforts, and give more enduring power to the Sunni Arabs than they are entitled to. Isn't it better to give the Shiites and Kurds what they actually want, and leave the Sunni Arabs to stew in chaotic mess they themselves have wrought?

So the new course would not produce a loss; but it would not produce an outright win either. The new course is not an admission that the war was a wise decision, and worth the cost in the end. A few hundred thousand Iraqi lives have been lost, and untold damage done. US prestige has been diminished, and we will pay the price of that for a generation. The human and material cost of getting from there to here was not, in my estimation, justified by the outcome. There were other ways of working more patiently over time to weaken Saddam's control over northern and southern Iraq, and bringing about some sort of positive political change there.

But really separation is not such a bad outcome. Separation is coming, and separation can reasonably be portrayed as the natural outcome of processes set in motion by the Iran-Iraq war and the Gulf war. It will be very bad if the separation leads to a civil war and riot of ethnic cleansing. But if we turn our attention to facilitating and managing the separation, in conjunction with legitimate international oversight, rather than resisting it in the name of our current pet Americanization project of a pan-Iraqi liberal constitutional republic, then we can prevent a human rights catastrophe. If we do not follow the course that history seems to want to take, and pull in the other direction, we will make the separation more anarchic, lawless and bloody.

Some prominent Democrat ought to smarten up and get right out in front on this before the Bush administration wises up and sees the light itself. Fortuanately Bush is a very dull and stubborn man. He wants his bases; he wants his coming face-offs with Iran and Syria, he wants his own people running the oil biz in Iraq ... and he wants his vindication. He will hold out for some time. But Chuck Hagal or John McCain or Richard Lugar may get a clue soon. And then it is Democrats who will be back in their favorite recent supporting rolls of indecisive and petulant whiners, naive me-tooers or angry but visionless dissidents.

[David Billington]

Dan,

We will know in a week whether Iraq has a future as one state. I applaud your willingness to think beyond the moment to what a three-state solution would actually involve. But I wonder if we can expect violence to subside in the aftermath of such a breakup.

If the three groups really can't get along in a single state, I would be very surprised if any one group trusts its future as a minority in any of the three sub-states, given the record of foreign promises and actions to protect Iraqis from violence. I would expect each group to return to its own territory, hopefully with less bloodshed than the partition of India if we can arrange it.

The great danger I see will not be continuing violence between the three groups. It will be Sunni and Shia insurgency in Saudi Arabia that is inspired by (and possibly supported from) the Sunni and Shia rump states in Iraq. Kurdish groups may try to use Kurdistan to support uprisings in Turkey and Iran.

Foreign peacekeeping troops will become targets if they try to interfere with cross-border insurgent activity, and given the condition of Iraq today I wonder whether any foreign powers (including the United States) will volunteer to run such risks. Even if the Shia and Kurdish governments prevent the use of their territory for insurgent activity elsewhere, a Sunni region in Iraq that is chaotic will be a natural base for intensified violence against Saudi Arabia and other pro-American states. And a nuclear Iran is on the horizon.

I do think that the Shias and Kurds will have preserving their own independence as an enormous incentive to maximize stability, and proponents of wider war will probably not be a majority in the Sunni region. But factionalism is also deep and many of the insurgents and militias in the Shia and especially Sunni areas may not be willing to submit to the faction in power. If you are correct in your view that Iraq must break into three parts, I wonder if we shouldn't have a fallback plan in case the scenario you outline does not work out and Iraq becomes two or three failed states instead of just one.

[Dan Kervick]

..."If the three groups really can't get along in a single state, I would be very surprised if any one group trusts its future as a minority in any of the three sub-states, given the record of foreign promises and actions to protect Iraqis from violence. I would expect each group to return to its own territory, hopefully with less bloodshed than the partition of India if we can arrange it"...

I'm not so sure about this David. I agree that many people would choose to move, but most will choose to stay near their families, and their current jobs if they have a good one. Given intermarriage, a lot of people would be staying put. Governments may offer various incentives to move; but we have to make sure that doen't end up as a policy of forced transfer.

[John Penta]

Dan,

Your idea seems decent, bar a few problems:

1. The Turks have stated quite publicly that if Iraq splits, they will immediately move into Northern Iraq. (And present us with the bill, probably.) If a Kurdish state forms in Northern Iraq, Turkey will invade. They are scared to death of the PKK using Iraqi Kurdistan as a base, which they did in the past (including during the 1990s). As Turkey is part of NATO, we couldn't really do much.

2. That Shia state would be dominated by Iran. This will leave Saudi and Kuwait apoplectic, and will likely lead to a war.

3. The Sunni state would have no economy worth mentioning.

[David Billington]

Dan,

"I'm not so sure about this David. I agree that many people would choose to move, but most will choose to stay near their families, and their current jobs if they have a good one. Given intermarriage, a lot of people would be staying put. Governments may offer various incentives to move; but we have to make sure that doesn't end up as a policy of forced transfer."

I went too far in implying wholesale population shifts. Even in India, half of the Muslims did not move after partition. But post-independence India also made a democratic government work. If any of the three sub-states succeed in becoming places where minorities are treated well, then partition has a real chance of bringing peace. My concern is that the prospects for pluralism in the Shia and Sunni areas are not good, to judge from the platforms of the dominant parties in each area, and we ought to be prepared for the possibility that any regional governments in these areas may not be able to control insurgent activity directed against neighboring countries. I don't think Iranian domination of the Shia area automatically leads to war but otherwise I concur with John Penta's points.

I still hope that a unitary Iraq emerges in the next week or so. I think your scenario is worth striving for as a first alternative if it doesn't. But if we are going to allow ourselves to think of an alternative to a unitary Iraq, we do need a second one in case public opinion in America isn't sufficient to support the first.