Declaring Victory in Iraq Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I almost jumped out of my subway seat yesterday morning while reading Mike O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack's NY Times op-ed entitled:  A War We Just Might Win.  The pair just returned from a trip to Iraq and declare:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

The two report that troop morale is high, that American servicemember have confidence in General David Petraeus and in the surge strategy.  They say that efforts at reconstruction and stabilization are appropriately tailored to the needs of local communities, that local politicos are cultivating the support of American commanders, that commercial districts of Baghdad are coming to life, that Iraqi troops are showing their mettle, that militia-ridden areas are being not just cleared but also held, that the US-led provincial reconstruction teams are working and that Iraqis are rebelling against the likes of al Qaeda and Sadr.  The only major caveats noted are in relation to the police and the stalled process of political reconciliation.  The piece ends by calling for the extra troops to stay in place at least through 2008.

This is the best news to be reported out of Iraq in months if not years, and has special credibility coming from two longstanding critics of the war.  When John McCain made some similar observations several months back, he was ridiculed in the media.  But is it really cause to rethink the grim outlook on Iraq shared throughout so much of official Washington and Middle America?

The conservative bloggers and pundits are, not surprisingly, having a field day.  For better or worse, its hard not to see how the piece doesn't aid the cause of prolonging the war, strengthening the case of those who argue that the consequences of US withdrawal will be devastating, and that Washington may just pull this off after all.  That may seem a lot of weight to accord a single op-ed, but the debate is teetering for a long time and this might just push it over the edge.

Here's my reaction to the piece:

If there were really this much good news, its hard to understand why the Bush Administration has not trumpeted it.  A few weeks ago, faced with a possible acceleration of the September date planned for hearings on the success or failure of the surge, the Administration came up with a lukewarm-at-best portrayal of conditions on the ground.  Bush said only that it was soon to judge, not that the emerging evaluation was positive. 

Is the Administration quietly hoping that the Congress will push for a pull-out, allowing the President to wash his hands of the policy and argue after-the-fact that staying the course would somehow have been better?  The more plausible expectation may be that O'Hanlon and Pollack's observations are of a preliminary, potentially fleeting phenomena - calm streets, optimistic people, upbeat troops. By arriving during relative lulls in violence, they may have seen a picture that the Administration is not confident can last.  Of note, their piece focuses on anecdotes and personal observations, not statistics or an analysis of systemic trends.

All this points to the profound difficulty of making military choices from afar and from the outside.  Making sensible judgments on the basis of politically-spun government and military accounts, spotty media coverage done under treacherous conditions, and precious little by way of first-hand accounts is tough.

O'Hanlon and Pollack deserve to be taken seriously, though not to be taken at their word.  Pollack was wrong on Iraq's WMD, which goes to show that even the smartest guys can make big mistakes.  O'Hanlon was more skeptical about Saddam's weapons, but also came out in favor of war. 

But on their latest trip to Iraq, the two found something they did not expect and, if they're right on Iraq now, that could and should have major policy implications. Policymakers have to be flexible enough to react to changes on the ground, even if they up-end entrenched political positions.  The US has invested enormously in Iraq, and the likelihood of chaos and increased bloodshed after America's departure has seemed almost certain.  While the American public badly wants out, its only because withdrawal seems the best of a series of grim options.

Rigorous efforts should be made to test the evidence behind O'Hanlon and Pollack's observations:  how well is the Iraqi army really doing?  to what degree have sectarian attacks been brought under control?  how clear are the signs of an Iraqi population turning against the terrorist militias? 

The thinking also needs to go beyond O'Hanlon and Pollack's bland observation that the political process is getting nowhere.  Analyzing what should happen assuming the military situation were to come under relative control while the Iraqi government remained weak and wholly dependent on the US is tough.  Only if troop and violence levels dropped precipitously could there conceivably be the political will to sustain an American presence once it became clear that the Iraqi government would be unable to stand up for itself.

About the only thing that O'Hanlon and Pollack guarantee is that the Iraq debate will wear on for months if not years to come.

Comments

[Don Bacon]

O'Hanlon and Pollack do not deserve to be taken seriously. Thet were in favor of the surge. O'Hanlon is a twenty-year friend of Petraeus, has recently promoted Biden's 'soft partition' of Iraq and is now backing off his observations that the war might be won. He's really O'Waffle.

[Zathras]

My thinking at the beginning of the surge was that exhaustion had to set in eventually in Iraq. The insurgency, which has always taken a much higher toll of Iraqis than of coalition forces, has been going on for a long time. Additionally, the different political objectives of insurgent factions on the Sunni Arab side have opened tactical opportunities for local American commanders, while rivalries among Shiite factions have kept several militias busy with one another. Finally, ethnic cleansing must inevitably stop somewhere; there is a limit to how many mixed Sunni Arab/Shiite neighborhoods can be purged of one or the other, and Iraq is much closer to that limit than it was earlier in the year.

Tactical successes are good things, and the current American command surely deserves credit for dousing violence in Anbar and even parts of Baghdad. Whether tactical successes and improvements in local conditions are the result of American tactics or exhaustion among Iraqis, though, the larger strategic question is whether American foreign policy will continue to be dominated by the struggle to guide the future of one, mid-sized Arab country into the indefinite future.

If this question is to be answered in the affirmative America will have suffered a major strategic defeat no matter how well Iraq turns out. I don't wish to single out Pollack and O'Hanlon; they are very far from the only foreign policy commentators for whom Iraq has assumed an importance out of all proportion, and of course for the administration that insisted on this war in the first place Iraq has been the dominant foreign policy consideration from the first. I doubt some aspects of the story Pollack and O'Hanlon tell now even as I recognize that they may well be right. Even if they are, nothing fundamental has changed. The American commitment in Iraq still represents a massive diversion of American resources and the attention of our government to a country of secondary importance to our interests in the world. Its costs cannot be reconciled over time with higher priorities our government will have to meet. It is a commitment that must be liquidated.

Pollack and O'Hanlon, like so many others, write about this subject as if what mattered was what became of Iraq. This isn't true now, never was and never will be.

[Gordon Adams]

O'Hanlon and Pollock may never have had the perspective needed to understand what happened and is happening in Iraq and the surrounding region. O'Hanlon has been at the most a "soft critic," who would support the enterprise if it worked; at the least, a "soft supporter," always prepared to give Don Rumsfeld, one of the worst leaders in Pentagon history, some kind of due. Pollock supported the war outright at the time.

Perspective, which some had at the time, required recognizing that a) Saddam Hussein's WMD program was largely toast, thanks to the UN inspectorate's hard work; b) A U.S. invasion and occupation would unlease the whirlwind in Iraq and the region; c) it was a fool's errand to invade that country with inaequate cultural, economic and political wisdom and understanding, and virtually no planning for the aftermath.

I doubt the accuracy of their recent trip report - it is precious hard to step outside the careful parameters of what the military briefs a visitor and what security can allow. Arguing the specific data, at the moment they were there, is fruitless. Sources of information on the "reality" in Iraq depend on courageous journalists, honest military reporters, a few leaks, the SIGIR reports. Sources are scattered, anecdotal, and hard to collate into a meaningful picture. One persons's snapshot of "success" is usually succeeded by another person's mortar attack, suicide bombing or IED explosion. The "tic-toc," including the brief visit they made, is no way to assess progress or failure.

The long-term perspective demands a recognition that we broke the china in Iraq, but are increasingly badly positioned to repair it. We probably had a year to make something out of a bad decision - the one to invade Iraq in the first place. From then on, our leverage has eroded. Whatever comes of the ugly mess we stirred up, it is now up to the Iraq people to achieve. Swiftly, smoothly, and as gracefully as possible, we should be leaving it in their hands.

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Iraq has been stabilizing and will probably erupt into an efficient, democratic government. This much remains to be true. It is a "technical" victory, however, stating so would be a political suicide on the part of Obama. Nonetheless, do not downsize the endeavors in Iraq to convenience your political ideologies. You'd be insulting noone, but the soldiers who fought for it. I can claim "victory" without giving credit to the administration.

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