Why We Can't Leave Posted by Michael Cohen

Today in the New York Times Paul Krugman takes a stab at trying to explain the President's almost incomprehensible stubbornness about changing course in Iraq.

At this point, Mr. Bush is looking forward to replaying the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with this argument, namely that Bush would prefer to kick the can down the road and leave the Iraq mess for the Democrats, all the while blaming the left for losing the war.

This week, I saw a presentation from one of the nation's foremost experts on Al Qaeda expert that really made me question this notion. In an otherwise fascinating and brilliant overview of Al Qaeda's current status, this individual sounded one note that struck me as off-key, namely that we can't leave Iraq because it will play directly into the terrorist organization's narrative about American retreat - a narrative that was initially constructed in the aftermath of Vietnam and reinforced after American withdrawals from Lebanon and Somalia.

At the time, I found the notion troubling, akin to the "credibility" notion that infused the thinking of so many Cold Warriors during the Vietnam War.

But it got me thinking and I went back to look at the President's August 22nd speech to the VFW in August and I was struck by the fact that he made an almost identical argument.

There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle -- those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that "the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today."

His number two man, Zawahiri, has also invoked Vietnam. In a letter to al Qaeda's chief of operations in Iraq, Zawahiri pointed to "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents."

Zawahiri later returned to this theme, declaring that the Americans "know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet." Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility -- but the terrorists see it differently.

. . . Iraq is one of several fronts in the war on terror -- but it's the central front -- it's the central front for the enemy that attacked us and wants to attack us again. And it's the central front for the United States and to withdraw without getting the job done would be devastating.

If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits. . .

To be sure, I think this is an absurd notion. The United States should not be fighting any war on its enemy's rhetorical terms, but instead should be focused on what America thinks is best for our national interests. Retreat or no retreat from Iraq, Al Qaeda will seek to attack America and its Allies and that reality should be the focus of our foreign policy.

The more cynical of you might read this "credibility notion" as political posturing on the part of the President. Certainly, he has been saying such words for years. It's the one seeming constant in his rhetoric about Iraq. But, just this one time, I take him at his word.

I think our President really believes that we have to stay in Iraq because to depart would weaken American credibility. Hard to believe forty years after the 'credibility' canard unnecessarily took the lives of tens of thousands of American soldiers and countless Vietnamese this absurd notion would return to our political discourse, but here we are.

Something tells me that this isn't exactly the war the American people signed up for . .  but even more so, maybe some enterprising reporter could ask the Republicans running for President whether they share the President's view. Because if they do and one of them wins in November, this is a recipe for endless war in Iraq.

More so, Democrats might want to keep this in mind - that what the President is advocating is ten, twenty, thirty years of an American presence in Iraq until we've achieved some sort of amorphous victory there. I mean exactly what type of political/security situtation would have to emerge in Iraq that would cause the President to change course and bring the troops home? If there is one, I haven't heard it. Might be another good question for a reporter to ask the POTUS next time he gives a press conference.

A sobering message, I realize for a Friday afternoon, but alas, the reality of our quagmire in Iraq is pretty sobering indeed.

Comments

[stevesh]

Michael, don't you mean our "so called 'credibility'" per Rep. Wexler?

"Retreat or no retreat from Iraq, Al Qaeda will seek to attack America and its Allies and that reality should be the focus of our foreign policy."

What will a discerning young colonel, headed for brigadier, glean from the response an aggressive and creative (this is inarguable, notwithstanding one's politics) 4-star got this week. Are we creating a future officer corps with the elan and distinction of those at the assistant-secretary level at Interior?

[Don Bacon]

One of the problems is that they can't define "victory"--neither could they define "noble cause." What does victory look like? A stable Islamic state under sharia allied with Iran? No. Unacceptable.

They don't want victory at all. Victory, like credibility, is just a fancy word to keep the proles happy. What the US wants, and will probably get, because the Dems wouldn't leave either, is the eternal occupation of Iraq requiring large, profitable expenditures of human and financial capital. Peace, like democracy, is not high on the US list. The US has always refused to force Israel to accept a settlement with the Palestinians and has told South Korea it can't have a peace treaty with North Korea.

The only thing that ended US military participation in the Vietnam War was the breakdown of the military, with mission refusal, mutinies and fragging. That probably won't happen with a high-bonus volunteer force, but let's keep our fingers crossed. It's about the only hope.

[Glenn Condell]

'I think our President really believes that we have to stay in Iraq because to depart would weaken American credibility.'

Hmm, OK as one of his drivers I suppose, leaving aside the fact (obvious to most of the rest of us) that the continued occupation is itself the ultimate killer of American credibility, progressing in lethal stages like cancer. But why must acceptance of the possibility of Bush believing this preclude acceptance of 'the argument that Bush would prefer to kick the can down the road and leave the Iraq mess for the Democrats, all the while blaming the left for losing the war'? Can't both be true? Seems to me there's far more evidence of the latter than the former.

'The United States should not be fighting any war on its enemy's rhetorical terms, but instead should be focused on what America thinks is best for our national interests.'

Indeed, and behaving badly enough to sour the entire planet's view of America, turning even friends into enemies, is surely not in your national interest. It doesn’t matter, I agree, what al-Qaedans think of your ‘credibility’, but I would argue that it matters a helluva a lot what the combined weight of Canadians, Aussies, French, Germans, Chinese, Russians, Indians et al, think of your behaviour.

In the end, any war the US fights has to be as a last resort, undertaken because it HAS to rather than because it CHOOSES to. Any other war, driven by perceptions of self-interest, whether they are naked or clothed in euphemisms and rhetoric, will end up being contrary to the national interest – guaranteed, because no nation can ever be so dominant that the opinions of others don’t matter.

Ironically, one reason for that bad behaviour, and the furious reaction to it, seems to me the arrogantly narrow focus on America's own national interest, and Democrats are as guilty of this as Republicans. You can't on the one hand pretend to be so hand-wringingly concerned about the welfare of people unlucky enough to be born in more blighted countries that you're prepared to go to 'war' (it's hard to give such a one-sided conflict an appellation that denotes a fair fight) to free them, and on the other hand declare that ultimately you act for yourself. Conflict is inbuilt in such a pairing. The rest of us discern that the concern for others is actually a device, a Straussian construct with which to enable service of the ultimate driver - self interest.

All nations and most people in them act in much the same way of course. But if Burkina Faso tries to act unilaterally in it's self interest and this action steps over the line into the interests of another nation, especially the US, it will in most cases have to beat a hasty retreat. The eternal presence of such calculations in the minds of actors everywhere except the US acts as a constraint on the sort of self-obsessed myopia that leads to the punitive imperialism that now characterises the face the US shows to the world.

It would preclude for example Serious People musing aloud after four years of murder and theft that the invasion was 'defensible'. You can only get away with such magical thinking inside a bubble, where the normal calculations of moral cause and effect are suspended, underwritten by a power thought to be unchallengeable. That description applies as much to Democrats as it does Republicans, in fact to most of the American governing 'class' - and while I agree it would be good to see some of your questions posed to GOP Presidential candidates, it would be better to see them asked of all candidates, Hillary and Obama included.

The rest of us have to have manners, observe the forms, watch our step, and behave prudently - which involves a lot of thought and deliberation about the interests of others, not just ourselves. We are all small fishes, but you guys aren't and don't perceive a need for such analysis. The absence of a credible threat with which to keep feet firmly planted on the ground is one reason for the absence of clear thinking about real as opposed to imagined self interest.

This is why such ludicrously short term strategies to satisfy what American elites imagine to be their self-interest, such as the whole current (and despite the play-acting of oppositional two party froth, essentially bipartisan) MidEast approach, are in the medium to long term, utterly disastrous for the US as well as the people who happen to live under the bombs it dispatches from thousands of feet up.

[masaccio]

You may be right that the president believes this inane argument that al-Qaeda cares about US credibility. Of course this would be less of an issue if that incompetent had killed bin Laden.

[Don Bacon]

Now why would anyone think that Bush was ever motivated to kill OSB. Every great empire needs an enemy, someone to focus on, and the US has OSB. Why kill someone you need? Besides, the Bush and bin Laden families did business together for twenty years. So Bush re-oriented US forces away from OSB in 2002/3. Bush didn't care about him.
"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority. I am truly not that concerned about him."- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02

So the credibility thing, that OSB cares about US credibility, is merely amusing, something for the brain-dead.

[IM]

The more one thinks about it, Mr. Bin-Laden really is the Emmanuel Goldstein of the U.S.
Once a friend, now a enemy: Check
A despisable, absurd figure but at the same time a lethal threat: Check
Nobody knows there he is or even if he is still alive: Check
He is supposed the most dangerous enemy of the U.S. but seems to have a charmed life: Check
If you listen to democrats, he hides in Eastasia (Pakistan, Saudi-Arabia), if you listen to republicans, he hides in Eurasia (Iraq, Syria, Iran).
The videos of Bin-Laden like Goldstein are mainly propagated by his nominal enemies: Check

But Mr. Cohen, who probably said back in 2003: "Hey Bush honestly believes in WMDs!", certainly never understood 1984 or Animal Farm.

And so Cohen will remain : The Marlowe of Kurtz, an Alden Pyle believing in a third force, the fellow traveler of liberal hawks, the useful idiot of neocons, the Outer party member practicing double-think and admiring the Inner Party.

[Bob Narus]

"maybe some enterprising reporter could ask the Republicans running for President whether they share the President's view. Because if they do and one of them wins in November, this is a recipe for endless war in Iraq."

Someone should ask the Democrats running for president the same thing. I don't see the frontrunners (and one in particular) taking positions that would preclude an endless war in Iraq, either.

[Bob]

If you think it's a complicated quagmire in Iraq now wait until Bush bombs Iran.

[MIke M.]

You're giving Bush way too much credit. He might or might not honestly believe all of this BS about American credibility and al-Qaeda victories. But at this point, he just doesn't want to leave Iraq at a time that will make him look wrong. He is hoping that if enough time is spent people will look back and ay "President Bush was right." That's what this is all about. He's gone too far to turn back without admitting a mistake, something he is unable and unwilling to do.

[Dan Kervick]

You're giving Bush way too much credit. He might or might not honestly believe all of this BS about American credibility and al-Qaeda victories. But at this point, he just doesn't want to leave Iraq at a time that will make him look wrong. He is hoping that if enough time is spent people will look back and ay "President Bush was right." That's what this is all about. He's gone too far to turn back without admitting a mistake, something he is unable and unwilling to do.

I think this is right, and it goes further than that. When national politicians and pundits talk about US credibility, it is usually their own credibility they are most concerned about. A awful lot of people have invested their reputations in the Iraq War, and they are now battling for their place in history. Their hope is that if they just keep running out the clock, for six months or a year at a time, eventually the situation in Iraq will stabilize in some way or anopther, and the new stable state can be declared a victory, and a vindication for the strategy of transformation.

[dave]

sounds like peter bergen. even if it was CHR you can still mention his name since he has been saying that in public for at least the last 12 months (which is when I heard him say it first)

[Don Bacon]

What credibility? According to the Pew Research Center the world's image of the US is bad and getting worse.

2005
The United States' image is so tattered overseas two years after the Iraq invasion that China, which is ruled by a communist dictatorship, is viewed more favorably than the U.S. in many countries, an international poll found. Eleven of the 16 countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center — Britain, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Jordan and Indonesia — had a more favorable view of China than the U.S.

2006
America's global image has again slipped and support for the war on terrorism has declined even among close U.S. allies like Japan. The war in Iraq is a continuing drag on opinions of the United States, not only in predominantly Muslim countries but in Europe and Asia as well. And despite growing concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions, the U.S. presence in Iraq is cited at least as often as Iran - and in many countries much more often - as a danger to world peace.

I guess that maintaining our creds with OSB isn't credible to everyone else in the world.