But over the weekend, I heard something that I think requires some push back and rebuttal. And in providing that push back, I am hopeful that we can resist the impulse to descend into the kind of ugliness that often attends these discussions.

On the November 13 Week in the News segment of On Point, host Tom Ashbrook and guests Ellen Goodman, David Gergen, and Jack Beatty continued to discuss, among other things, Nidal Malik Hasan and the shootings at Fort Hood. During the course of that conversation, David Gergen said roughly the following (I paraphrase only slightly),

While it might true that right wing radio has been quick to jump on calling Hasan’s actions terrorism, I don’t understand why the left is so hesitant to call them acts of terrorism.

Now, off the top, I think we need to jettison the suggested dichotomy that the “right” is universally for calling Hasan’s acts terrorism and the “left” is universally opposed to the proposed labeling. Things just don’t break down that cleanly anymore, if they ever did. The fact of the matter is that a clear majority of Americans believe that Hasan’s acts constitute terrorism and want them investigated as such.

That being said, I think there are good reasons for remaining hesitant about calling Hasan’s actions terrorism, which lie outside of the general throw away explanation of “political correctness” that we’ve heard so much about. It may well be that Hasan’s actions were acts of terrorism and if so they should be labeled as such, but the reality is that at this point we remain in a state of conjecture about the matter. But I think we would do well to look at the context around the use of terms like “terrorism”, “Islamofascist/ism”, and “jihad” to understand why a certain subset of the political class is wary about their use. [Read more →]

But the surge failed in its core task: to create an environment in which the three major sects in Iraq could form a national government, a national army, and a stable balance between the three major centrifugal forces in the country and in Baghdad. Maliki’s bid for a post-sectarian polity rests fundamentally on his claim to have restored some semblance of security. But how easy it will be for that semblance to be wiped out by violence of the kind demonstrated today.

And how tempting it will be, after the Americans leave, for the largely Shiite Baghdad government to resort to force against largely Sunni insurgents. From there … a short road back to 2006. Maybe the population is exhausted by civil war and will restrain these forces; maybe these blasts are the exceptions that prove the rule of growing normalcy. Or maybe they are warnings that violent forces of sectarianism remain at large, that they are close to impossible to stop, and that the lull is just that: a lull until the invading army leaves and the civil war can resume unimpeded.

There’s a lot to digest here; let me take it point by point.

That first sentence is undoubtedly right.  Though I think it is fair to say that the blame lies not at the feet of the surge but at our strategic design.  What chance was there of the three major sects forming a national government?  It was at the very least a political vision-strategy that had no historical precedent in the context of Iraqi history.  In short, I think the surge had no chance of ever succeeding at that strategic level.

On to the second sentence:  I’m not really sure how much of a post-sectarian polity Maliki has ever really represented.  He plays a nationalist card when the situation calls for it–e.g. Maliki can claim he is the man who signed the deal that will get the US out.  He plays the Shia card when he needs to, and most importantly when he apportions roles of influence.  He is, after all, a member of the Dawa Party.  And he can play the Arab card (for Sunni-Shia unity) against the Kurds when the moment calls for it, though his government is seen as a Shia-run operation.

Still, Andrew is right to say that Maliki has portrayed himself as a guarantor of security and attacks like these certainly hurt that image.  Given the nature of the attacks, it is also very likely that they were perpetrated by members of what has usually been called the Sunni insurgency.

But I have some questions about this line, specifically the last part:

And how tempting it will be, after the Americans leave, for the largely Shiite Baghdad government to resort to force against largely Sunni insurgents. From there … a short road back to 2006.

The road to 2006 means of course a renewed, all-out civil war.  While this is not totally impossible (nothing ever is, particularly in such a fragile place), I think it’s highly unlikely.  The civil war phase from the initial post-invasion to 2006 represented a concerted effort by the insurgency to prevent the Shia from taking over the Iraqi state in the wake of de-Baathification, the disbanding of the army/police, etc.  In other words, the civil war was fought over the de-Sunnization and the Shia-ization of the Iraqi state.

That battle is already over.  The Shia won.  They won it by late 2006, early 2007.  Groups like the Mahdi Army and The Badr Corps ethnically cleansed Baghdad.  The Army and Police are dominated by the Shia (with the Kurds preserving their own paramilitary force). If anything, all the surge did was cement a Shia victory:  e.g. accelerated army and police training largely benefited the Shia.

The fact that the Shia won the Civil War is also why there wasn’t an opportunity — surge or no surge — for political reconciliation.

The space the surge created was not taken up for political reconciliation but rather to fight the political battles that needed fighting (instead of US pipe dreams of reconciliation).  Maliki, you may recall, used the period since the surge to attack the Mahdi Army and also the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council at points.

So given what has happened since 2006 with the splintering of the Shia coalition–if there were to be a renewed civil war (and I don’t think that’s the real danger) it would probably not be a Sunni v. Shia one as we say in 2006.  It would very likely go the way of a Lebanese Civil War with various cross-ethnic factions aligning with each other in temporary truces.  i.e. A descent into total anarchy.

But I don’t find that Lebanonization of Iraq very likely.  In fact, I think it is a pretty remote possibility at this point.  The political game that drives insurgency is really over for the Sunni.  There are enough remnants left to launch brutal attacks, and I think such a situation of lower level violence, quasi-controllable, shaky, but nonetheless awful, will likely continue in Iraq for an indefinite period.  [Read more →]

It was a bit surprising to me just how emotionally invested I became in the contents of that post and how charged my own actions became around the ensuing discussion. I’m generally pretty sincere in my writing, but also try to consciously maintain a certain distance from anything I write. I want to be open to as much as possible, unattached to being “right”, and swayed by the best arguments that happen to come along. My thought process on that post might lend some insight into why that wasn’t the case with that particular post and leads well into where my head is at now vis-a-vis its contents. [Read more →]

Three hours, two cups of coffee, and a nice helping of sense later, I think I can safely say that my original assessment was a little…off.  First, here’s Douthat in his own words:

America has had its share of disastrous chief executives. But few have gone as far as Bush did in trying to repair their worst mistakes. Those mistakes were the Iraq war — both the decision to invade and the conduct of the occupation — and the irrational exuberance that stoked the housing bubble. The repairs were the surge, undertaken at a time when the political class was ready to abandon Iraq to the furies, and last fall’s unprecedented economic bailout.

Both fixes remain controversial. But for the moment, both look like the sort of disaster-averting interventions for which presidents get canonized. It’s just that in Bush’s case, the disasters he averted were created on his watch. [...]

And perhaps his best decisions, on the surge and the bailout, were made from the bunker of a seemingly-ruined presidency — when his approval ratings had bottomed out, his credibility was exhausted and his allies had abandoned him.

This is not a blueprint that future presidents will want to follow. But the next time an Oval Office occupant sees his popularity dissolve and his ambitions turn to dust, he can take comfort from Bush’s example. It suggests that it’s possible to become a good president even — or especially — when you can no longer hope to be a great one.

I’m not sure how much of this is the fault of the medium rather than the messenger, but I don’t think Douthat quite grasps the gravity of President Bush’s mistakes.  The Iraq War wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill piece of unfortunate, but easily corrected, policy.  It was – and is – a strategic and humanitarian disaster of the highest order.  Over the course of six years, the United States has squandered trillions of dollars, destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives and done almost irreparable damage to Iraq’s social fabric.  In retrospect, the surge was a welcome breath of pragmatism from the Bush administration, but even with that (limited) success in mind, it’s incredibly difficult to say that President Bush “fixed” anything.

The same goes for the financial crisis.  While there’s plenty of blame to go around for the collapse of the housing market and subsequent collapse of the financial system, it’s fair to say that the Bush administration deserves a fair amount of blame for stoking the “irrational exuberance” that in turn stoked the housing bubble.  What’s more, the twin collapses have yielded a tremendous amount of suffering, especially among the poor and working-class.  Since the recession officially began in December 2007, the country has had a net loss of about 5 percent of its non-farm payroll, the brunt of that borne by the most economically insecure members of our society.  The bailouts and TARP were certainly good moves by the administration, and should be recognized as such despite their flaws, but again, to say that those make up for the initial failures is a bit of a stretch.

And I guess that’s my main complaint with Douthat’s column.  To borrow a phrase from President Bush, what Douthat has written is a classic example of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”  Saying that we should applaud President Bush for taking steps to salvage his disastrous presidency is like praising a roommate for cleaning up a bit after trashing the apartment.  Not only should the place never have been trashed to begin with, but cleaning up after oneself is a matter of course and not particularly praiseworthy.

Update: I left out a pretty critical part of the Douthat column.

Peter Feaver, writing in the Shadow Cabinet at Foreign Policy (h/t Andrew Sullivan), opines:

Starting this week, the parade of critical junctures in Iraq will accelerate. If the Iraqis go ahead with plans to put the SoFA to a national referendum, the parade could become a stampede. When even skeptical war critics like Fareed Zakaria are penning articles about “Victory in Iraq” that read almost like a Bush valedictory speech on the topic, the opportunity for a decent outcome in Iraq seems tantalizingly close. I hope we are not jeopardizing that outcome with a premature withdrawal.

I hate to sound like a broken record on this one, but here goes.  There is no “tantalizing close”-ness to victory (“decent outcome”)  because what victory would be in this situation is not properly understood.  In contemporary warfare, there are (at least) two phases:  war and peace.  They are not perfectly separable in any specific moment but over the long term they clearly are recognizable.

The War phase is what the US wins.  It goes into Afghanistan in late 2001 and expels the Taliban/Al-Qaeda.  It goes into Iraq in 2003 and very quickly defeats the Iraq Army and overthrows the Baath regime.

The Peace (or Reconstruction/Stabilization) phase is much harder.  It is built primarily around the ability to create 1. economic opportunity and 2. legitimate political deals.

This second phase at minimum takes about 10 years.  Thomas Ricks, Feaver’s ForeignPolicy.com colleague, has said repeatedly that he thinks Iraq will be a 15-20 year commitment.  In Ricks’ analogy we are only entering Act IV of this V act tragedy.  Act I: The Invasion  Act II: The Rise of the Insurgency and the failure of the US to win the peace phase  3.  The Counterinsurgency (“Surge”)   4. What is about to happen now that the US pulls down and 5. Presumably some new state going forward

The (second) Iraq War started in 2003.  So 10 years (the minimum) is already 2013, four years away.  So no we are not tantalizingly close to four years from now.  And the decisions to pull out of the cities is part of a long term drawdown/exit from the country.  To think that victory (cough cough, decent outcome) is tantalizingly close or whatever linguistic expression one prefers (“victory is within reach”, is “around the corner”, etc) is to still think in terms of War. [Read more →]

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• It’s not a war just about spreading democracy.
• It’s not a war just about oil.
• It’s not a war just about stopping a brutal dictator who supposedly had weapons of mass destruction.
• It’s not a war of humanitarian intervention.
• It’s not a plot cooked up by some secret cabal of Israeli Zionists and American neocons.

***

• It is a war partially about oil, partially about spreading democracy, and partially about ousting a brutal dictator.
• It is a war that reflects poorly on the cultural shift toward perpetual growth and expansion of American economic and military interests.
• It is a war fueled by skewed notions of national security and humanitarian intervention.
• It is a war about American military dominance in a region that has American economic interests – in oil, trade and so forth, at its heart.
• It is a war pushed very strongly by the brand of politics known as neoconservatism, which most blatantly embraces such military and economic expansion, but which is certainly not unique in this – only, perhaps, more unabashed.

Look, I opposed the Iraq War in the beginning.  I thought it was ludicrous, and the government’s case seemed paper thin.  Later, I opposed artificial time tables for withdrawal of American troops, because it struck me as cruel and imprudent and even cowardly to leave a nation in a state of civil war that we essentially instigated.  I still oppose withdrawing too quickly, lest the country be sucked into an ever more brutal cycle of civil war and chaos.

But I become more and more dubious that our continued presence is anything more than prolonging the inevitable; that no matter how long we stay, in the end we’ll have to exit, and when we do, the Iraqis will simply have to figure things out on their own.  And it will be bloody, and awful, and the violence will last a long, long time.  Likely enough, the “democratic government of Iraq” will become ever more despotic, and the country will become even more divided along sectarian lines.  No length of stay on the part of the American military can avoid that.  Even if we do achieve stability that lasts beyond our own occupation, the only way that stability will be achieved for long will be through the suppression of the Sunnis by the Shiite majority.

[Read more →]