Tomorrow the Baker Commission is scheduled to release its long-awaited report on Iraq. Will it have much effect on U.S. policy towards Iraq? Only if it contains no illusions about a U.S. "victory" in that benighted country but insteads positions us for a quick withdrawal. Both morally and strategically, withdrawal is the only viable option at this point, and any policy debate should be centered around this cold hard fact.
Maybe the Baker Commission will give President Bush the brush he needs to begin to get himself out of the geostrategic corner he's painted us into in our occupation of Iraq. In ordinary times, the Comission probably would, but as daily headlines attest, these times are far from ordinary. A typical president would look for any lifeline out of the quicksand that Iraq has become, but Bush is the type of president who would cut the lifeline in half, just to show who's really in charge around here. James Baker, as smart and as cynical as they come, seems to sense this. There was a period when he was surfacing in the media and floating trial balloons through leaks, signaling he was ready to ride to the rescue and provide Bush with political coverage for a major change in strategy. When Bush responded by digging his heels in harder than ever, Baker began to backtrack and play the game of lowering expectations, now, instead of spinning the Commission as the foundation for future policy towards Iraq, the Commission is being pushed as one voice among many. James Baker has a reputation to protect, and he doesn't want it to take a hit by having Bush dismissing it like a letter from the Iranian president. Nothing and nobody is changing George Bush's mind.
Meanwhile the reports and studies keep coming. Every other day the New York Times is printing another leaked Administration memo demonstrating how our government is in shambles when it comes to Iraq. The opinion journals and op-ed pages are full of essays and commentary on what is to be done, while the government calls for more hearings, more studies, more hearings. It is almost pathetic. Iraq is a coutnry we've been at war with, essentially, since the early 1990s and which we've been occupying nearly four years, and still nobody in a position or authority or influence seems to have the slightest clue on what that country is all about. Consequently, nobody has a real clue on where we should go from here. Send in more troops. Prop up Maliki and the Shi'ites. Team up with the Sunnis to defeat the Shi'ites. Crush the Sunni insurgency. Have U.S. forces get out into the streets and secure Baghdad and other major cities. Have U.S. forces withdraw into secure bases. Embed Iraqi commanders with U.S. forces. Embed U.S. trainers with Iraqi forces. There's the "Blazing Saddles" tactic of holding a gun to our own heads, and threaten to shoot ourselves and totally withdraw if the Iraqis do not do what we want. iberal voices, such as Thomas Friedman, advocate a regional diplomatic conference, such as the one in Dayton, Ohio, that ended the Bosnia war a decade ago. Conservatives such as Steve Forbes argue that we should divide Iraq into cantons, like in Switzerland, and give each Iraqi a stake in the system by mailing them oil royalty checks each month, like they do in Alaska. See, treat the
But of course, the Iraqis are not Swiss, or Alaskan, or anybody else, they are Iraqis, a fact that seems to have been lost on us for years now. Still, we continue to treat them like Americans. The Baker Commission report will continue this sorry trend. The Commission will undoubtedly offer a little so emthing for eveyone in the Iraq debate. A recommendation for a temporary increase in troops, especially in Baghdad, and an escalation in the training program, that old policy warhorse. Those recommendations will be for the President and supporters of the Iraqi occupation. For opponents, there will be recommendations to hold talks with Syria and Iran and begin troop reductions sometime down the road. This exercise in splitting-the-difference, compromise, and behind close doors horse trading is the way governments are really suppose to work, will be the implicit message Washington will be sending to Baghdad. Of course, Baghdad may not be able to hear it, above all the gunfire and explosions.
Is there any voice, then, that speaks to us on what to do? Yes. One of the pre-eminent civilan strategists of the post-World War II era was Bernad Brodie, who, in 1973, published one of the the seminal works on military affairs and statecraft, "War and Politics." Brodie wrote two chapters on Vietnam, entitled "How We Became Involved," and "Why We Failed." The parallels between every mistake we made 40 years ago and today are staggering (Yes, back then the Adminsitration even stated "We will stay the course).
At one point Brodie writes: "... the main reason we failed in Vietnma was also the reason why it was impossible from the beginning to succeed. We were supporting a government that not only did not deserve that support but could not benefit from it."
As it was in Saigon in 1968 so it is in Baghdad in 2006. Every policy forwarded towards Iraq must deal with this central fact. Is there a government that both deserves our support and can benefit from it? Brodie argued that in Vietnam the governments we backed suffered from endemic corruption, military incompetence, and lack of widespread support amoung
the people. Does this sound familiar from all the news we've been getitng out of Iraq the past three years? Even the Adminisiration,in the leaked National Security Council memo of a week ago, directly called into question the competency and viabilty of the Maliki government.
What, then, is to be done? Continue to expend American blood and treasure, hoping against experience that a competent and honest government that enjoys broad support from Iraq's fractured population? When we invaded Iraq three years ago, we opened a Pandora's Box of ethnic and religious hatred and conflict, with complicated roots going back hundreds of years. To expect us to be able to resolve everything in the next six months with just a little more training, troops, and adroit diplomacy is American naivety at its most cynical.
The facts are clear. America must withdraw, for its own sake as well as for the Iraqis. The Iraqis did not ask us to invade them, they did not even do anything to provoke us. All we can do for them now is to give them their country back, and let them sort things out. Brodie is brutal on American policymakers who kept the war going in Vietnam years after it became clear the war was a lost cause. Writing of war in general, Brodie, who was not a dove, observed that "war is characterized by men killing on a grand scale that usually foolish and often wicked..."
When it comes to Iraq, the time has come for the foolishness, and the wickedness, to stop.