Ladies And Gentleman: An Iraq Timetable?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Bad Decisions, Foreign Policy, The War On Terrorism, WarFrom the Wash Post:
President Bush vowed for the first time yesterday to turn over most of Iraq to newly trained Iraqi troops by the end of this year, setting a specific benchmark as he kicked off a fresh drive to reassure Americans alarmed by the recent burst of sectarian violence.Bush, who until now has resisted concrete timelines as the Iraq war dragged on longer than he expected, outlined the target in the first of a series of speeches intended to lay out his strategy for victory. While acknowledging grim developments on the ground, Bush declared “real progress” in standing up Iraqi forces capable of defending their nation.
Frankly, this is a minor shift, but I still think it’s significant. And weren’t we the ones who kept saying that we had to stay there as long as it takes until the job was done? It seems particularly disingenious to have that objective shifted to simply having Iraqi troops able to meet the minimum requirements to patrol the streets. That is not fixing the country and the administration knows it.
Me, I’ve never been one to say, “Get out quick!” I don’t think that serves any point. Back before the war I was against it for many reasons, but one big concern of mine is what is happening now. We’d go in there, find no WMDs, Bush would look like an oil-hungry liar, our credibility to fight subsequent wars would fall under serious question in every corner of the globe, we would end up pulling out of Iraq before the country was TRULY ready and the three factions in Iraq would start fighting…ultimately leading to a civil war. THAT is why I opposed The Bush Doctrine. Not because I don’t think people should have the right to be free. I just didn’t believe in the shaky logic of the neo-cons “dream” scenario of being thrown candy and flowers, which completely threw blinders on to the history of that region.
Here’s more on the Iraqi troops’ readiness:
Bush said Iraqi units today have “primary responsibility” over 30,000 square miles of Iraqi territory, an increase of 20,000 square miles since the beginning of the year. As a country of nearly 169,000 square miles, Iraqi forces would need to control about 85,000 square miles to fulfill Bush’s target.[...]
What constitutes control, however, depends on the definition, since no Iraqi unit is currently rated capable of operating without U.S. assistance. And vast swaths of Iraq have never been contested by insurgents, meaning they could ultimately be turned over to local forces without directly affecting the conflict.
Let’s hope they’re ready. And I do mean “hope” because after I read about 87 bodies found in 24 hours, my confidence is pretty damn low. Imagine that.
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March 14th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Thank God none of the bad things you predicted ever . . . oh, wait, never mind.
What’s so dishonest about this is that the forces he’s turning the country over to are effectively sectarian militia. Peshmerga in the Kurdish area and Shia militia wearing Iraqi government uniforms. This is not likely to reassure the Sunnis.
In fact I think consensus is growing among the more rational Sunni leaders that they need us to stay. They’re starting to do the math and realize that they’re outnumbered by Shia, with a bunch more of the same just over the border in Iran.
March 14th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
The Iraqi military has done pretty well in containing the violence after the Al Askari mosque was bombed. No civil war, no mass executions of protestors. They’ve shown surprising professionalism in this latest test.
March 14th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
The big fear for me (as a vet) is a repeat of the ending in SE Asia. The mood is swinging, which is the reason for the minor shift on the part of Bush. Looking at the mess we have made and the breeding ground we formed for insurgency it is difficult to say what is the right thing to do.
A strong argument could be made on escalation if clear ,etrics were in place to determine control. As it stands, if we leave without establishment of a reasonable agreement between all three factions, it is like saying “OOPS, sorry about that …ya’all have a good day now and remember …Democracy is good!”
And as for our brave troops, I wouldn’t want to be on …the last plane out under those circumstances. Sadly though, it smells familiar.
I think between the dead and injured we have changed the lives of 27,000+ soldiers so far.
Lastly, I have this question for any who would wish to tackle it.
What is better - doing things right -or doing the right things?
March 14th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
In this case I think they’re one in the same, but because of a gross lack of planning on Bush’s part pre-war, perhaps many see the “right” thing as simply pulling out as quickly as possible and letting the Iraqis hash it out for themselves. However, I don’t buy that scenario and I never will either. We broke this country and now we need to fix it. And contrary to what the President proposes as a good enough scenario to pull out, I think that’s doing the absolute bare minimum.
Frankly, I wish he would just fire Rumsfeld and clean house in general so he can get some new ideas for this war and this country. We deserve at least that much.
March 14th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Justin .. I think you are partly right, but they are never the same thing … going there to begin with was NOT the right thing, so no matter how well we executed the landing. or did things right it was doomed. However, now that we have totally and tactically screwed it up … what is the right thing now? Of course, it is to stay until stabilization, but the KEY is doing it right … and alas, this is where the incompetence described so effectively by Michael Reynolds comes into play.
It is my eternal hope that someone convivnces Bush to turn this entire operation over to Miltary Minds until it is stable, and then send in the diplomats. We are way beyond any talking points with factions at this time. We must establish unquestioned control. There is NO other solution.
March 14th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Bush is quoted as saying “As more capable Iraqi police and soldiers come on line, they will assume responsibility for more territory with the goal of having the Iraqis control more territory than the coalition by the end of 2006.”
How does this translate to “President Bush vowed for the first time yesterday to turn over most of Iraq to newly trained Iraqi troops by the end of this year”? The President didn’t vow anything. He stated a goal.
March 14th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Is this super-accurate prediction of yours on record anywhere? Like, with a timestamp date before Match 2003?
Which is better, ranked in descending order:
1. Doing the right things right for the right reason
2. Doing the right things right for the wrong reason
3. Doing the right things poorly for the right reason
4. Doing the right things poorly for the wrong reason
5. Not doing the right things at all because you hate Bushie
6. Doing the wrong things
March 15th, 2006 at 9:44 am
Cal,
I was thinking along the lines of Voltaire’s definition of madnee: “To have erroneous perceptions(beliefs). and to think correctly from them.”
This is where Mr. Bush has taken us.
March 15th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Haha, well…maybe you were too distracted by the anti-Bush venom your coworkers were throwing around, but the things I’ve mentioned were THE counterpoints shared by many anti-Iraq War/pro-WOT Democrats during the buildup to March 2003.
WMDS
After Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN (illustrations?) and when weapons inspectors weren’t finding anything, we Dems started getting extremely nervous…especially because it appeared as if war was inevitable and Bush simply didn’t care about proving that WMDs existed. And regardless of what Bush said a few times in a couple speeches, the war was sold time and time again as a way to stop a madman from giving WMDs to terrorists. So Dems were worried that if no WMDs are found, our credibility would get knocked down quite a few notches. The most disappointing thing for me is that so many of the neo-cons and war hawks were too in love with the ideal of “spreading democracy and freedom through war” that they couldn’t step back to realize that if you gamble with our credibility and then screw it up, it’s going to hurt our long term chances to do it elsewhere in places where it’s really needed, like Sudan, et al. In other words, it hurts our credibility to actually fight the WOT effectively.
POST INVASION MESS
Again, Dems were concerned with our leader’s core philosophies and sugar-coating. Given the neo-cons talk about not needing many troops to keep the peace and the candy and the roses, many thought the pre-war planning underestimated the situation and that it would ultimately not go well. And what happens when wars don’t go well? America ulitmately pulls out because the truly important thing to American politicians is making sure they get relected, not doing the right thing. Forgive me Cal, but if Bush is anything, he’s a politician. This seemed like a no-brainer to me and many of my Dem friends.
CIVIL WAR
All you have to do is look at history to see how volatile Iraq is to know that there’d be infighting. The country has been in pretty consistent turmoil since 1932, both in their own country and in scuffles with neighboring countries. Also, to imagine a reality where the religious majority of Shiites would want to stomp on the Sunnis after Saddam’s bloody rule of the country since the late 70s is not a stretch. And to put the cherry on top of the civil war sundae, nobody seems to like the Kurds at all, so you’ve got a perfect setting for a three-way battle royale.
WHAT WE SAID BEFORE THE WAR
One last thing, remember these Democratic cautionary pre-war hits?
“Finish the job in Afghanistan.”
“Focus on the broader War on Terror and don’t get bogged down in one country.”
“Right war, wrong time.”
“Is Colin Powell trying to convince us with illustrations?”
“Let the weapons inspectors do their job.”
“Greeted as liberators? That’s not what your dad said.”
Those points were all ignored and dismissed as being anti-American, terrorist loving, moonbatish nonsense that hurt our troops and our resolve as a nation. Those who shouted us down were being intellectually dishonest and they knew it. But hey, anything to win the argument, election, et al…
So as far as a timestamp goes, well Cal, that I don’t have. But I think this rather lengthy explanation with information that was ALL available pre-war is more than enough to afford me the courtesy of trust.
March 15th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
GN, That’s a good framework to look at the matter through. I’d say Bush had wrong perceptions, thought correctly from them, and acted correctly on them — if you only consider the point of the whole exercise in Iraq was to eliminate Saddam’s WMD. And we could have a 70-comment thread worthy of an abortion post about whether that was, in fact, the whole point. Suffic it to say, I don’t think it was.
But even if you allow that it was so, perfect perception into a willfully secretive and historically mendacious regime is impossible. Drawing conclusions from questionable perceptions is the plain fact of the matter, not a sign of madness.
March 15th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Justin,
Very articulate comment on anti-Iraq war predictions. What is happening now is almost exactly what I was worried about as well. And no, Cal, I can’t prove it either, unless I can get some of my Repub friends to vouch for my complaints at that time. To add to it, I was still a Repub myself at the time, and I still thought it was a tremendously bad idea.
March 15th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
I don’t think it was either. I know Bush and company talked about liberating the Iraq people. But if you were to look at how many times the administration talked about WMDs and compare it to the times they talked about spreading peace, they would not be balanced. Not by a long shot. Listen, both you and I know that Bush couldn’t have sold a war on the basis of spreading freedom. In a post 9/11 world, wars are about getting rid of terrorism and Bush raised the spectre of WMDs being given to terrorists by Saddam to sell the war. Even former aides have said they leaned too much on the WMD argument. So can we agree that the war was sold largely (not solely) on the basis of WMDs?
In theory, I realize why he did this, but in doing so he played a risky game and lost. The cost? Our credibility.
Cal, you know I don’t think Bush acted out of any nefarious reasons. I think he earnestly believed what he was doing was right, is right and will continue to be right. But that’s the problem. Because if you continue to have wrong perceptions and act earnestly within the framework of those wrong percetions, you’re still doing the wrong thing. At some point you have to be honest with yourself and readjust. He hasn’t done that yet, and I’m getting tired of waiting.
Agreed. But it is a risk, and one we need to be more cautious about taking next time.
One last thing…I’d like to hear your thoughts about what I said here:
Any merit to this?
March 15th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
Sorry folks, unless you’ve got proof, it’s just 20-20 hindsight.
With Iraq, everyone knew what failure would look like when we went in there to try to set up a democracy: either the country would revert to strong-arm rule (via a caudillo or a theocracy) or break apart into religious and ethnic enclaves.
That was understood on both sides. And the anti-war voices widely predicted both, but the ones I read leaned toward “another Saddam, backed by the U.S.,” since they assumed that would suit Bush best. So, no points for you unless you said, “break-up of the country” and never said “strong-man rule.”
Come on, it can’t be that hard to show me at least one anti-war post from pre-April 2003 that said this. I haven’t seen one. But it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
At rhe same time, show me what planning was in place to occupy Germany and Japan after WWII. That was improvised, on the fly, with constant shifts of purpose and goals, and never was a pre-planned coordinated effort. It worked, for reasons no one anticipated in 1944.
Now the key issue, the one we’re talking about here, the WMDs.
Again, if you can’t show me where you said that, and you say you can’t, can you at least show me where someone you admire said it. It can’t be that hard to find if it’s true. If not, it’s just rewriting history.
I went looking. Here’s what I found.
Josh Marshall on March 18, 2003, described the looming
war in these terms:
Duncan Black (Atrios), on March 27, 2003, quoted this Josh
Marshall passage from Washington Monthly predicting
the situation six months after the war:
Later (April 4, 2003) Atrios went on the record about Saddam’s weaponry:
Same thing at Daily Kos. Skeptical of specific administration claims and evidences, but not of the existence of Iraqi WMD. And willing to invoke them, if they could be used to make the White House look bad.
On Jan. 17, 2003, he quotes approvingly a “Christian Science Monitor” piece that claims “Iraqi forces defending the cities could try to halt invading troops by shelling them with chemical weapons,” and predicts, “Americans will die — lots of them.”
On Feb. 12, 2003, Kos, who is a military man, laid out his own set of possible Iraq war scenarios. WMD figured in them: “And if Saddam is going to use chemical weapons, this would be a good time — with US
troop concentrations exposed in the open desert. … There’s no doubt that Kuwait is sufficient for staging purposes, but having a single supply line is problematic. Not only is it exposed to dehabilitating guerilla attacks, but Saddam could hamper the entire resupply operation by either detonating a nuke (if he has one) or contaminating wide swaths of the logistical lines with chemical and/or biological weapons.”
Here’s Daily Kos from 09/02:
Emphasis added throughout. And so on and so on.
So you all had insights into Iraq that people like Juan Cole (I could do a whole other post with his wrong predictions), Kos, Atrios, Marshall lacked? Didn’t you alert your fearless Web-leaders that they were wrong, wrong, wrong about Saddam’s WMD?
Some people doubted whether he had nuclear weapons or not. That always was the most deadly case and the most dubious. But I have yet to meet an anti-war person who said positively, before the invasion, Saddam has no nukes — only a prophet or a lunatic could have said that before we overthrew him and found out.
So far, the strongest statements I have seen to the effect that Saddam has no WMD, before the war, were made by Ralph Nader. And I don’t think you regard him as your political paragon.
Other than that, it was a guessing game. Maybe he has them. Maybe he doesn’t. We don’t have the proof. Are you willing to take the chance? And what baffles me is that so many people who thought there was a good chance he had such weapons were willing, in the post 9-11 world, to let a man with his track record keep them. That’s not “anti-American, terrorist loving, moonbatish nonsense,” and I never said it was. It is, however, a pretty damned stupid game of russian roulette.
Oh, and it’s inaccurate to say he had “no” chemical weapons. They’ve turned up here and there in the country since his overthrow.
March 15th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
So you think our credibility in the world would be better if Saddam were still on his tyrant’s throne and Qusai and Uday in their rape palaces and the U.S. invaded impoverished Sudan instead?
March 15th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Cal, I could be persuaded that the Intel may have driven Bush down the wrong pat. I could even be persuaded that he had a strong reason to divert our resources from Bin Laden for some reason that has never gone public.
I get lost with the moat that was dug around the WH and the continuation of the path in Iraq as opposed to recognition of the failures and a new direction.
don’t mis-understand my process … I am not a let’s get out now supporter because I believe we have a moral responsibilty to “right our wrong”. That strategy would require MORE resources and I believe we should consider that path. I DON”T believe we can “do the right things” by operating like Enron. Rumsfeld has to go. Let the military take care of the stablization task and then work the political angle.
Fess up … be honest with the American people … show some humility … he would regain support by doing that .. as it is, he is in a spiral that will continue as long as there is no change in the strategy.
So, I am saying that HE needs to recognize the errors and correct them … that is what he gets paid to do. The resources of our great country are not there to be squandered in egotistical rationalization.
March 15th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
GN, I agree that he ought to just lay out the mistakes and say it was still the right thing. Hell, I’d even write the speech for him. But I don’t think he’d get an ounce of support for it.
March 16th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
[...] Fast foward to a couple days ago. I posted about Bush possibly setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, and at the same time I vented about my pre-war concerns which have proven to be incredibly accurate. And yes, I was able to think my way through a scenario where Iraq wouldn’t go so good and end up pretty damn close to where it is today given what I had read, had researched, etc. Those were my actual fears. And now they’re reality. However, I find little comfort in that fact because it ultimately means that a country I love is not in a good position. [...]