Fear of Failure is Not a Strategy for Victory Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

Over the past few months the common refrain by President Bush and a slew of supporters of the war is that despite the dire situation in Iraq the consequences of failure are so unthinkable that we must keep trying.  This is the only argument that supporters of the war have left and we are going to keep hearing it again and again.  Unfortunately, it fails to actually answer the central question: How do we win? 

40 years ago this same logic drove Johnson, Rusk, McNamara, Bundy and others in charge of our country to pour thousands of troops into Vietnam despite privately acknowledging that the chances of success were slim.  In that case as in this one the consequences of failure had been so inflated that defeat was unthinkable.  Victory was also unattainable unless you threw in a couple of million troops, which was too high a cost and politically impossible (Who knows if it would have even worked).  Unable to achieve victory, unable to accept defeat Johnson and his advisors trudged on doing what was necessary not to lose and hoping that somehow a solution would present itself.  Eventually the public got sick of it and the pressure to leave became too great.  (The Irony of Vietnam:  The System Worked is the best book on this topic).

Are we there today on Iraq?  I think so.  And to a great extent we are there for the same reason.  A rigid doctrine that over inflates the consequences of failure and presents American security as indivisible. 

In the 1960s the Domino Theory dictated that the fall of Vietnam would turn all of Southeast Asia Communist and that soon enough we’d be fighting in Berlin and involved in nuclear exchanges with the Soviets.  The consequences of failure were supposedly so bad that we had to keep going. The resulting logic is pretty clear.

We seek an independent non-Communist South Vietnam.  Unless we can achieve this objective… almost all of Southeast Asia will probably fall under Communist dominance.”  -  National Security Action Memoranda 288, outlining the Johnson Administration position on Vietnam published in March, 1964.

The integrity of the U.S. commitment is the principal pillar of peace throughout the world.  If that commitment becomes unreliable, the communist world would draw conclusions that would lead to our ruin and almost certainly catastrophic war. – Secretary of State Dean Rusk 1965

From all the evidence available to me it seemed likely that all of Southeast Asia would pass under Communist control, slowly or quickly, but inevitably, at least down to Singapore but almost certainly to Jakarta. – Lyndon Johnson in his memoir

Today the same argument is being made by the President except it is the Global War on Terror that has made security indivisible.  The President argues that if we leave Iraq all of the Middle East will go up in flames.  We must defeat them abroad so that we don’t have to fight them at home.

The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.  – President Bush in his speech to the nation announcing the escalation policy

Incidentally McCain’s campaign website goes so far as to title his Iraq policy “The Consequences of failure in Iraq.” 

Ultimately in the case of Vietnam the belief that America could not afford to lose was flat out wrong.  When American troops drew down the United States was able to look at broader regional strategies that achieved the same basic ends of containing Communism.  Nixon’s opening to China discredited the domino theory and the concept of a broad communist alliance.  Also, regional rivalries not monolithic communist expansionism drove Southeast Asian politics throughout the 1970s with the largest war in the region occurring between three communist states:  Vietnam Kampuchea and China.

I suspect the same is true of Iraq.  Reducing our commitment in Iraq and aggressive diplomatic activity with Iran and on the Israeli-Palestinian front will significantly increase our flexibility and mitigate some of the negative consequences of an unstable Iraq.  Moreover, the dominate dynamic will be between regional players stepping in to balance each other as opposed to the broad expansion of a monolithic Islamic fundamentalist unity bent on destroying America. 

Basically, the consequences of failure and withdrawal have been vastly over inflated.  And anyway, even if I am wrong and they are disastrous, at this point it’s the only option we have left. Whether we leave next year or ten years from now I doubt we will leave anything short of a total mess in our wake.  The sooner we accept that fact the better.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

One thing has given the Bush administration prophesies of doom more of a rhetorical foothold than they would otherwise have is the remarkable failure of the administration's chief domestic opponents to articulate a convincing alternative approach to Middle East politics - one that gives priority to efforts at the restoration of stability that should accompany a withdrawal. There are significant risks of increasing violence following a US withdrawal. But there are obvious remedies to pursue that can help to minimize those risks. Unfortuantely, Democrats have so far found themselves hemmed in by the idiocies of US domestic politics and commitments, and can't find the courage or party coherence to articulate the obvious.

What is obvious is this: Stabilizing Iraq will require a cooperative effort by Iraq's neighbors in the region, who, despite various rivalries and conflicts of interest have an overriding common interest in establishing functioning government in Iraq, and in preventing Salafist jihadist radicals from establishing a firm foothold in the western and central parts of that country. These jihadists, who tend to be intensely hostile to both Shia Muslims in Iran and the Saudi and other royal families who control the Gulf - and to other more traditional Sunni elements inside Iraq, including more moderate Islamist groups like those descended from the Muslim Brotherhood - are the bane of almost everyone's existence. And yet the Bush administration has decided instead that Iran - a relatively stable constitutional state - is the major problem, and has helped to work against stabilizing tendencies in Iraq, including those centered in Iraq's own Shia-dominated government, due to exaggerated fears of Iranian power.

Amazingly, where only a few weeks ago we were hearing frenzied sounds about Saudi and broader Sunni Arab nightmares of expanding Iranian influence - including a sort of Shia conversion conspiracy theory - we now see the Saudis and the Iranians taking some tentative steps toward solving regional problems on their own. I suspect the Baghdad security conference, followed up with weeks of meaningless and ineffectual Condoleeza Rice diplomacy, has only served to convince the regional players just how obtuse, confused and blinkered are US policy-makers. These regional actors can also have hardly failed to notice the fact that every slight gesture Rice makes in a positive direction is almost immediately repudiated and undermined by the players in Washington who apparently control Bush.

Not too long ago, former Iranian president Khatami visited the US and seemed to convey the position of the more pragmatic elements of the Iranian leadership that the US should stay in Iraq. But that preference seems to have vanished. And just this past week, Saudi King Abdullah himslef called the US occupation illegitimate. And yet only a few months ago, the Saudis were not-so-subtly threatening the US in newspaper editorials that they would export their own young jihadists to Iraq if the US withdrew. So something has clearly changed. It appears that the main regional actors have concluded that the US leadership in the White House has their heads much more thoroughly up their asses than they had dared imagine previously, and thus must be removed from the scene in Iraq.

Yet Democrats find themselves unable to articulate the obvious alternatives, given that they too are captives of Washington's whipped-up anti-Iran fanaticism and obessions. They have endorsed a hesitant policy of withdrawal from Iraq, but damaged the party's credibility by failing to couple that call with any serious and credible stabilization proposals whatsoever. US security would be greatly enhanced by a bold opening to Iran, aiming ultimately at a regional balance of power arrangement anchored in Riyadh and Tehran, with an evenhanded US engagement in both capitals. But official Washington finds itself cornered by its own hysterical rhetoric, and unable to come to grips with the movement of history and this emerging geoploitical reality.

[Don Bacon]

The administration's chief domestic opponents have not articulated alternative approaches because continuation of the war suits them as much as it does the administration. The Dems would be crazy to give Bush a way out of these wars--they benefitted in 2006 and they will benefit in 2008, under our political system, if the wars are ongoing (and the money is still flowing). The new Dem Congress has just passed a $124 billion funding bill for eighteen more months of war. (That's $413 for every man, woman and child in America.) Eight Dems voted No. Eight.

All the rhetoric about 'fear of failure' is just that--words to keep the war machine going. As Randolph Bourne wrote: War Is The Health Of The State.

The pols, as in Vietnam, will never end these wars. The wars will either end by 1) military defeat or 2) soldier revolt, as in Vietnam. "In Vietnam itself, there were ten large mutinies, hundreds of individual combat refusals, and numerous incidents of the murder or threat assault on gung-ho officers (dubbed "fragging" by the GI movement). In recounting these acts of revolt, both large and small, Cortright reveals the full impact of tens of thousands of soldiers who questioned the legitimacy and purpose of the war. Cortright estimates that as many as one-quarter of Army enlisted personnel participated in some form of rebellion against military authority during the later years of the Vietnam War."--reference DAVID CORTRIGHT'S Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War, a classic 1975 account of the incredible scale of antiwar organizing among active-duty soldiers, recently republished by Haymarket Books.

[William]

Your commentary is intriguing. When it comes to Iraq, there is much to consider, indeed. I thought you'd be interested in some of our findings. While the war is definitely a driving force, the public's uneasiness spills over into the entire range of challenges facing the United States. Overwhelmingly, the public embraces diplomatic measures, with 44% of those surveyed favoring diplomacy with Iran and an addition 28% backing economic sanctions. Favor for military action is in the single digits. Our anxiety indicator is currently at 137 on a 200-point scale, edging toward the 150 point mark that we would consider a crisis of confidence in government policy. Go to http://www.publicagenda.org/foreignpolicy/index.cfm to check out the fourth edition of our “Foreign Policy Index.”

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