Some Reasonable Goals for Iraq Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

Michele Flournoy and Shawn Brimley at the Center for New American Security have some interesting ideas (PDF) on our goals in Iraq.  They call it the “three no’s”.  No regional wars.  No al Qaeda bases.  No genocide.  I think they are onto something important here, but I would amend it to Minimize Al Qaeda bases.  Minimize regional wars.  Minimize genocide.  (Not as catchy as the Three No’s but more realistic.)

The main flaw with the plan is that it doesn’t acknowledge that the United States has little control over the outcome in Iraq.  Ensuring that training camps don’t start springing up is something we can do with limited forces and air power.  But if the country remains a failed state we won’t be able to fully eliminate Al Qaeda bases.  Stopping genocide might require as many troops as we have now, or even more.  Where do you draw the line between genocide and sectarian violence?  Where do you draw the line between proxy wars/skirmishes and a major regional war? 

Most importantly the “three no’s” have an unfortunate characteristic in common with the Bush/McCain argument.  Both start with what we can’t let happen, instead of asking what we realistically can expect to achieve at a reasonable cost. 

I’d suggest doing this in the reverse.  First figure out what is a reasonable number of forces that the U.S. can maintain in the region while minimizing damage to the military, harm to other strategic interests, backlash in the Middle East, and anger from the American people?  My guess is we’re talking somewhere between 10K-40K troops.  Second, develop a military and political strategy based on those troop levels that tries to minimize Al Qaeda bases, minimize regional wars, and minimize sectarian violence. 

Then again, as AJ at AmericaBlog points out, at this point the Administration is going in the other direction and taking on more aggressive military objectives.  Sigh…

Comments

[Bob Gaines]

Whatever happened to a declaration of "No permanent bases"?

Brzezinski's first recommendation in testimony to the Senate Foreign relations Committee last month was "The United States should reaffirm explicitly and unambiguously its determination to leave Iraq in a reasonably short period of time. Ambiguity regarding the duration of the occupation in fact encourages unwillingness to compromise and intensifies the on-going civil strife. Moreover, such a public declaration is needed to allay fears in the Middle East of a new and enduring American imperial hegemony. Right or wrong, many view the establishment of such a hegemony as the primary reason for the American intervention in a region only recently free of colonial domination. That perception should be discredited from the highest U.S. level. Perhaps the U.S. Congress could do so by a joint resolution."

[J Thomas]

If we keep airbases nearby with the intention of bombing anything that looks like a training camp, what result do you expect?

First, we'll tend to bomb non-al-qaeda training camps. That won't win us any friends in iraq, though I suppose looking for friends in iraq isn't in the cards any time soon.

Second, al qaeda will learn how to do their training without making things that look like training camps. And so will everybody else. They will all find out what makes things look like training camps to us by that most certain of methods -- trial and error.

Bombing training camps looks like a fantasy to me, except to the extent that they can't disguise what they're doing. What is it about al qaeda training that needs distinctive-looking camps? Whatever that is, we can hinder.