Part I: The Military Option
The buzz in Washington is about the Iraq Study Committee Report, i.e., “The Baker Commission.” While the ink isn’t yet dry, the makeup of the committee and long articles by non-member-but-mentor Henry Kissinger make it fair to conclude that in the offing are a hasty withdrawal of American forces, negotiations with Iran and Syria, and the possibility of partitioning Iraq. All bad. Let’s start with the military mission.
The buzz in Washington is about the Iraq Study Committee Report, i.e., “The Baker Commission.” While the ink isn’t yet dry, the makeup of the committee and long articles by non-member-but-mentor Henry Kissinger make it fair to conclude that in the offing are a hasty withdrawal of American forces, negotiations with Iran and Syria, and the possibility of partitioning Iraq. All bad. Let’s start with the military mission.
The headline-grabber was that Kissinger said the U.S. couldn’t win a military victory in Iraq. “If you mean by ‘military victory’ an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible.”
Why not throw in universal heath care and a balanced budget? By defining the mission as a political-social-legal-economic-medical-security melange that requires our soldiers to consider military-aged men with weapons to be non-hostile until they shoot, it is ipso facto not possible. The U.S. military could produce order and stability in Iraq, but military victory would require different application of force. We have no doubt it could be done if the civilian leadership demanded it, which it has not.
Kissinger does not demand, or apparently want, that either. He wants out and so demolishes the military straw man to introduce his preferred option – negotiation with Syria and Iran. More on that next time, but suffice it to say here that his negotiations with the North Vietnamese allowed the U.S. to withdraw from strategically unimportant South Vietnam, leaving the South to the tender mercies of the Communist North. A million or more refugees came out, millions more suffered inside. His preference for negotiations should worry us all – Iraqis because they could become the next Vietnamese, and us because if we leave, we won’t leave the problem behind for the natives.
The future of the West rests on how well we untangle the mess in Iraq. Which begins with how well we define our interests.
Kissinger may be the most articulate straw-man-builder, but he is by no means the only one. Pundits of all stripes are calling for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq because a civil war has started and apparently a) civil wars are unwinnable, and b) the U.S. shouldn’t be taking sides in one.
America entered Bosnia PRECISELY because it was a civil war and civilians were taking the brunt of the casualties. Calls for America’s entry into Darfur are PRECISELY the same. The only difference between them and Iraq is that they have NO strategic value. It is worth remembering here that we negotiated semi-quiet in Bosnia with a 10-year half-deal (our forces are still there) that expires in July 2007. Whoever thinks the sides are not busy arming for that eventuality isn’t paying attention.
The Administration, with the active acquiescence of Congress sent military personnel to do something that was not adequately defined as a military mission related to American strategic interests. Whether we stay now or go, that definition is still essential to winning the larger war – of which Iraq is still only one front.