The War as They See it

Seven veterans with the 82nd Airborne Division just published an op-ed in the New York Times in which they expressed their deep skepticism about the ability of the U.S. military to accomplish anything of significance in Iraq. Having served in Iraq, they are more entitled to their opinion than I am to mine, and I genuinely appreciate their noble efforts to defend my right to safely opine about everything under sun sitting in my comfortable home half a world away from the action. I honor them, but I take issue with them despite the fact that I have never served in Iraq.

If you are a veteran of my blog (so to speak), you already know the first test that I apply to every analysis of Iraq that I encounter. The test is to search for the words "al Qaeda" and see what is said about that. Ordinarily, an analysis provided by liberal thinkers either omits those words altogether (as if al Qaeda is such a trivially insignificant force that it need not even be mentioned) or it briefly mentions al Qaeda in passing (as if it is just one minor part of an incredibly complex insurgency). Never, ever do such analyses mention the qualitative difference between the state of Iraq prior to al Qaeda's suicide-bombing/mosque-destroying campaign and after it, nor do they even hint at the incredibly destructive killing machine that al Qaeda is today (with 500 Iraqi civilians killed in the month of August alone). When liberal analyses take this approach, it is easy for me to see that the article will conclude with the recommendation that we withdraw. As has been true of our Democratic leaders for a long time (and as I have relentlessly noted on my blog), advocating withdrawal is a lot easier to do if you ignore the decisive role played by al Qaeda in Iraq and if you conveniently suppress the fact that our departure will be widely perceived as jihadist victory over America (one that will play out again in Afghanistan, which is where al Qaeda will send its suicide bombers next).

In their op-ed, our brave soldiers used the latter, quite standard, approach in that they briefly mentioned al Qaeda twice (good for them!), but only in passing reference to a complex insurgency. It is as if they regard al Qaeda as one small detail in a complex story. Or perhaps they think the suicide bombers who are killing people by the hundreds every month are part of some other force, not al Qaeda. They don't say, so I don't know.

Their op-ed is mostly an expression of pessimism about the Bush Doctrine, as if that is relevant to our current war against al Qaeda in Iraq. The Bush Doctrine was unfolding in a messy but partially successful way until al Qaeda entered the picture and changed the nature of the war. As such, you can't really weigh in effectively on the Bush Doctrine until we remove al Qaeda's relentless efforts to incite sectarian violence (which the Sunnis are now helping us to do). Maybe the Iraqis will get back to where they were before (a low-level but hopeless Sunni insurgency continuing for years, but the democratically elected government progressing anyway) or maybe they'll choose to have an all-out civil war even without the al Qaeda accelerant. I tend to be on the pessimistic side, but there is really no way to know until we remove al Qaeda fro the picture.

Anyway, on to the op-ed itself. Blackfive has a detailed response to the military aspects, and I will concentrate mainly on the op ed's failure to identify the elephant in the room:

The War as We Saw It

By Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray And Jeremy A. Murphy

To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched.

I completely agree, and I'd love to know who they think is under the impression that the most important thing to do now is to win over the Iraqis. The goal is to bring them democracy (which may never really happen) and have them fight against terrorism (which has already happened and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future if we defeat al Qaeda before we leave). I'd like to also "win over" the local population, and we should never stop trying to do that, but it is largely a secondary goal. They will support attacks against American troops until we leave (and they have supported such attacks from the beginning). The majority of Iraqis are simply not worth the price being paid by our soldiers, and were it not for the fact that this has changed into a war against al Qaeda, I'd advocate withdrawal myself.

Next, they discuss the so-called manageable nature of the conflict:

...we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day....The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework.

I wish they would cite the person who says that the big news out of Iraq today is our ability to control the battlefields. That is such a vague phrase. Less vaguely, we have turned the Anbar province against al Qaeda, attacks there are way down, and al Qaeda is on the run despite their continuing ability to slaughter unarmed, unsuspecting and non-threatening civilians. This is a much more specific accomplishment than "controlling the battlefield," but not one word is said about it.

As part of our war against al Qaeda, we are arming Sunni insurgent groups. Here is what they say about that:

Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

Yes, that's the enduring question if you think the enduring issue is the success of the Bush Doctrine (consisting of everyone getting along in a successful democracy without our help). But it's not the enduring question if you instead think that primary concern is to defeat al Qaeda in Iraq. These soldiers are expressing pessimism about the Bush Doctrine, which is fine by me. But do they care that al Qaeda will be perceived as (and will, in fact, be) the victor if we leave now? They do not say, and that seems very odd to me. It's odd, but it is typical of analyses offered by the liberal side of this debate. Whether these soldiers are liberal or not I do not know, but I do know that they are acting like liberals in this op-ed (except for the fact that they are very respectful and accuse no one of misleading this nation into war to serve corporate interests).

They finish up this way:

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

This would have made sense back in, say, 2005, before al Qaeda declared war on America in Iraq. Before civilian casualties jumped from 500 per month to 1600 per month. The suggestion by these soldiers is not meant to be defeatist, but it actually is defeatist because turning things over to the Iraqis now (which everyone wants to do -- are they unaware of that?) is tantamount to surrendering to al Qaeda. Or do they envision the Shiites and Sunnis coming together to fight off al Qaeda when we leave? Even though al Qaeda will become much more deadly than they already are and will fan the flames of sectarian violence like nothing we have seen before? Even though the Shiite militias have already proven that they will respond to such provocations by eradicating Sunnis (just as Zarqawi knew they would)?

Again, I have a debt to these noble soldiers that I can never repay. But that doesn't mean that I consider their analysis of Iraq to be very insightful. It is, unfortunately, myopically focused on the Bush Doctrine, which allows them to ignore the elephant in the room. That elephant has killed 500 civilians so far this month, and their earlier actions (which included destroying the holiest Shiite mosque) provoked the Shiite militias into killing Sunnis in Baghdad, a phenomenon that continues to this day. You can't ignore all of that and have a sensible analysis of Iraq.