Stay No More

They're already preparing the exits in Iraq

Writing about the press' efforts to comment on the death of Stalin—an event about which no journalist had any actual information—A.J. Liebling described three types of journalists: the reporter, "who writes about what he sees"; the interpretive reporter who "writes what he sees and what he construes to be its meaning"; and, in Liebling's most venomous description, the "expert, who writes what he construes to be the meaning of what he hasn't seen."

A denizen of the latter category, I can yet sympathize with Liebling as a growing number of experts, journalists and others grapple with the latest theme emerging from Iraq—namely how the United States should withdraw from what has become an "unwinnable" conflict. In the New York Times earlier this week, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt caught the ambient mood by observing: "Three weeks before the Iraqi election, conversation has started bubbling up on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon and some days even in the White House about when and how U.S. forces might begin to disengage in Iraq."

What is remarkable in the affair is not that such a debate is taking place—the U.S. presidential election was no less extraordinary in its failure to address the subtleties of America's Iraqi involvement—but rather the suddenness of its onset: Iraq has abruptly become a losing proposition, when it wasn't necessarily one among the public and in policy circles (at least openly) prior to the November presidential election. There seems to be a pervasive mood, shared by many with no direct experience of Iraq, that it's very obviously time to get out.

One useful side effect is that pundits, policymakers and analysts have had to look at the flip-side of an American pullout, namely how to hand power over to the Iraqis, and the implications of this. It has been a perennial feature of the U.S. occupation that Iraqis have played a secondary role in their own post-Saddam narrative, at least as written by the United States. That was especially obvious early on in the saga of Pvt. Jessica Lynch. And since then, almost every day Iraqis have been killed, including senior officials, without Americans being familiar with any of them. The Abu Ghraib scandal was, laudably, driven by American outrage, but it was, and remains, an American story in which the Iraqi victims were mostly anonymous bit players.

Now, the notion of "Iraqization" has come back with a vengeance (even though it was, paradoxically, an early ambition of those neoconservatives supporting Ahmad Chalabi—but the neocons, and others in the Bush administration, could never quite read from the same page on how to run Iraq). Of late, many of those who once supported, or at least could live with, the Iraq war, but who now consider the venture a washout, have taken the lead in counseling retreat. Two texts have been particularly forceful in this regard.

One is a recent report by the intelligence analysts at Stratfor (by subscription only, but a copy was kindly forwarded by Andrew Sullivan, who posted an adjoining commentary on his blog). The authors recalled that they had defended the Iraqi war as having a clear strategic purpose, namely to "[reshape] the behavior of surrounding regimes, particularly of the Saudis." This, they continued, disrupted "the al Qaeda network sufficiently that it has been unable to mount follow-on attacks in the United States and has shifted its attention to the Islamic world…" However, they also reaffirmed the conclusions of a May 17, 2004 Stratfor report where they argued that the U.S. "was unlikely to be able to suppress the insurgency."

They went on to note: "As frequently happens in warfare, the primary strategic purpose of the war has been forgotten by the Bush administration. Mission creep, the nightmare of all military planners, has taken place. The United States has shifted its focus from coercing neighboring countries into collaborating with the United States against al Qaeda, to building democracy in Iraq."

Stratfor went on to argue that democratization was all but impossible, since Iraqis themselves, under constant threat of death, were unable to breathe life into democratic institutions. Worse, most postwar institutions were so infiltrated by the insurgency that it was unrealistic to rely on an Iraqi military force to defend the new order. With democratization improbable and "Iraqization" of the military burden of the war whimsical, the authors recommended that the Bush administration recognize that "this phase of the Iraq campaign must be halted as soon as possible. This does not mean strategic defeat—unless the strategic goal is the current inflated one of creating a democratic Iraq."

The authors then asserted two things: that "[t]he internal governance—or non-governance—of Iraq is neither a fundamental American national interest nor is it something that can be shaped by the United States even if it were a national interest"; and "[t]he United States does require a major presence in Iraq because of that country's strategic position in the region." That's why Stratfor advocated a "withdrawal of U.S. forces west and south of the Euphrates and in an arc north to the Turkish border and into Kurdistan [which] would provide the United States with the same leverage in the region, without the unsustainable cost of the guerrilla war. The Saudis, Syrians and Iranians would still have U.S. forces on their borders, this time not diluted by a hopeless pacification program."

One can seriously challenge Stratfor's assessment that Iraqi democratization was a case of "mission creep." In the minds of senior strategists of the war, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, democracy in Iraq was always essential to regional democratization, which in turn was supposed to make the U.S. more secure by overthrowing regional dictators and opening up Middle Eastern societies, therefore making less likely the emergence of anti-American Islamist militants.

However, in the overall debate on withdrawal, Stratfor has staked out an interesting position: one that advocates taking advantage of the support the U.S. still enjoys in Iraq, and working from there. The withdrawal scheme is hardnosed in emphasizing that what happens to the Iraqis should not really concern American decision-makers. But in a paradoxical way, such cynicism also affirms that it's time for the Iraqis themselves to take matters into their own hands. If civil war is the outcome, fine, but that will be for Iraqis to decide.

James Dobbins, a former U.S. envoy to Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia and Afghanistan (and lately Santa Monica, where he is a senior executive at the Rand Corporation), also thinks the war in Iraq is unwinnable—for the Americans. He made the case in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, but qualified this by adding: "The war can still be won—but only by moderate Iraqis and only if they concentrate their efforts on gaining the cooperation of neighboring states, securing the support of the broader international community, and quickly reducing their dependence on the United States." This consensus, he went on, would "require turning the U.S.-led occupation into an Iraqi-led, regionally backed, and internationally supported endeavor to attain peace and stability based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity."

A key step in this process, Dobbins argued, was for the U.S. to essentially declare that it intends to leave Iraq. But the proposal came with a key caveat (albeit one that would surely invalidate, in Iraqi minds at least, the initial promise of withdrawal), namely that the U.S. express "an equally clear willingness to stay until the Iraqi government, with the support of its neighbors and the international community, proves capable of securing its territory and protecting its citizens."

When sovereignty and territorial integrity are mentioned in the Iraqi context, that's code for less American zeal on democratization. Dobbins, like Stratfor, sees Iraqi democracy as impractical today. Worse, he implicitly knows it might alienate the Arab autocrats whose cooperation is needed to stabilize Iraq: "The United States should continue counterterrorism cooperation with regional governments and support for democratic forces in the region. But if Washington hopes to build regional support for the regime in Baghdad, these goals will have to recede from the fore of its public diplomacy and its rhetoric at home."

While there are parallels between Dobbins' assessment and that of Stratfor, there is a fundamental difference: where the analysts advocate an "after me, the deluge" approach to a U.S. pullout, the former envoy to several civil wars wants at all cost to avoid that same outcome in Iraq. That is what makes so ironic his tendency to downplay the nervous relations between Iraqi communities when considering the range of U.S. options. The fact is that most of America's adversaries (though not Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) live a contradiction when demanding an American withdrawal: Sunni Arabs, in particular, must know that if coalition soldiers depart, they would have to face on their own angry Shiites as well as Kurds hankering for independence.

There is probably no magical solution in Iraq; only a long hard slog. Opponents of the war who demand a quick pullout must maneuver their arguments over the piles of prospective victims this option would surely produce. However, it is among the supporters of the war, conditional and unconditional, that the transformation has been truly dramatic, and where acceptance of defeat is suddenly so widespread. But are they right, or are they just victims of the latest Washington fad—the pull of irrevocable doom? After watching the Iraqis written out of their own narrative for so long, are the doomsayers now prematurely writing America out of the Iraqi narrative?