Thoughts on the Renewed Violence in Iraq
I’m not quite sure about this:
But whatever the root causes, the Iraqi false peace is falling apart. I expect it to accelerate as we head towards the Iraqi referendum on the SOFA, and for the Very Serious people in the D.C. village to ally with the Petraeus/Odierno military axis to use that violence as an excuse to demand that the U.S. walk back it’s agreements with the Iraqi government.
I definitely imagine the Very Serious People using violence in Iraq as an excuse to call for “re-negotiating” our deal with the Iraqi people.
On the other hand, the referendum may never take place. It’s been postponed and it looks like Maliki is just in stalling mode.
Also, I’m skeptical of the false peace of Iraq falling apart. Steve is a smart guy and he knows that the violence in Iraq is a means to try to achieve political goals. That principle applies whoever is doing the violence–whether it’s Saudis helping to fund the Sunni insurgency, the Iraqi gov’t bought and paid for by the Iranian regime, etc.
Since the US Army is clearly in winding down mode, there will be some vacuum left the wake of its departure. Though it’s worth pointing out that the US has always vastly overestimated its gravitational weight in Iraq. Seems to me from the beginning at most the US has had negative power in Iraq–they may stop for awhile somethings from occurring but have never really positively moved things forward.
Which is exactly why at this point violence is going to come back into the fray because the political fight is back on. It’s hard to imagine though that the violence will return to the apocalyptic horror levels of 2006 for political reasons. Namely the Shia already won the civil war. [Read more →]
August 21, 2009 9 Comments
Iraq June 30th
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 →]
June 29, 2009 12 Comments
