Quo Vadis, Iraq, Middle-East, and America?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

As he explained the troop build-up in and around Baghdad as the centerpiece of his “way forward” initiative for Iraq, President Bush stuck by his claim that Iraq is the crucial front in the war against terrorism. "The war on terror cannot be won if we fail in Iraq" he said. “Our enemies throughout the Middle East are trying to defeat us in Iraq. If we step back now, the problems in Iraq
will become more lethal, and make our troops fight an uglier battle than we are seeing today.” We all know, of course, that pre-invasion Iraq was not at all a terrorist haven and that it was a costly blunder to focus on Iraq at the expense of our efforts in Afghanistan and the Afghan-Pakistani border region in order to hunt down Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. The post-speech mass-mediated Iraq debate has focused increasingly on the meaning of a failed Iraq invasion and defeat there regardless of whether participants subscribe to or oppose President Bush’s unchanged Iraq
strategy and objectives. According to the White House’s latest “Iraq Strategy Review, “Our strategic goal in Iraq remains the same: A unified democratic federal Iraq that can govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself, and is an ally in the War on Terror.” Except for the President’s closest advisers and staunchest supporters this goal is more like an impossible dream. Robert G. Kaiser writes in today’s Washington Post,

Bush's latest initiatives -- like all his earlier ones -- will not produce the desired political result, because Americans cannot accomplish political objectives in Iraq. Americans are outsiders, occupiers, foreigners in every sense of the word. Only Iraqis have a chance of finding a political resolution for their divisions. So now we await the fate of this latest gamble like a high roller in Las Vegas watching a roulette ball in a spinning wheel. We have about as much control over the situation as the gambler has of that ball. The outcome is out of our hands, and it would be foolish to bet that we will like the way the conflict ends.

As for the latest Iraq announcement, George Will likens it to a hail-Mary pass.

In the New York Times, Helene Cooper cites Stephen Biddle, author of “Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle,” who said, “In the best-case scenario, we’ll be in Iraq for 15 or 20 years.” According to Cooper, Biddle “offers the example of the Balkans, where everyone seems to have forgotten about the United States troops who have been there for years, helping keep a peace brokered in Dayton,Ohio, in 1995.”

But a comparison with the American experience in Vietnam seems more persuasive these days although the consequences of America’s failure there pale in comparison to those looming in Iraq According to Kaiser, “For the United States, Iraq has become another Vietnam…But tragically, the most important difference between the two conflicts may be that defeat in Iraq is likely to produce catastrophic consequences for that nation, its neighbors and the United States, too.”

The President has led us into a no-win situation based on a strategy that continues to be supported and indeed shaped by a group of neo-conservatives, such as William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, Frederick Kagan of the Enterprise Institute, and retired General Jack Kean. As Frank Rich writes today,

Mr. Kagan, a military historian, was sent by the White House to sell his policy to Senate Republicans. It was he, Mr. Kristol and the retired Gen. Jack Keane who have most prominently pushed for this escalation and who published studies and editorials credited with defining it. Given that these unelected hawks are some of the same great thinkers who promoted the fiasco in the first place, it is hard to imagine why this White House continues to listen to them. Or maybe not that hard. In a typical op-ed article, headlined “Stay the Course, Mr. President!,” Mr. Kagan wrote in The Los Angeles Times in 2005: "Despite what you may have read, the military situation in Iraq today is  positive."

The neo-conservatives, in the meantime, criticize congressional critics of the war and celebrate the President’s strength to follow his convictions. After citing Winston Churchill, William Kristol writes in the Weekly Standard,

So the Boneless Wonders will push a nonbinding resolution to, as Joe Biden put it, "demonstrate to the president he's on his own." Sure, the resolution will weaken the president's hand abroad--but that's not their problem. It will lessen the chances of success in  Iraq--but that's above their pay grade."

But as much as Kristol finds congressional dissent “a demoralizing and revolting spectacle,” he will regain his peace of mind by reading and rereading his colleague Fred Barnes’ Weekly Standard article “Bush Stands Alone” and especially the concluding paragraph:

With Bush's decision to intensify the war in Iraq, a striking feature of his presidency emerges once again. He is willing to reject the conventional wisdom and endure sharp attacks for a policy he believes in. His foes regard him as stubborn to a fault and in denial about the poor prospects in Iraq. Something like that was said of Lincoln during the Civil War. Okay, Bush isn't Lincoln. But he is  a president with courage and remarkable stamina, a president who, after six years, Washington still doesn't quite get.

Barnes is wrong. Washington finally does get it.