You all know by now that Harry Reid, Dick Durbin and Carl Levin proposed their own plan on Iraq, which the GOP Senate leadership has accepted for debate. I think we can all agree that their plan is substantially better than what we're getting from the GOP leadership -- but frankly, I think it falls short by not adequately addressing some key factors in the Iraq conflict. I've posted my analysis below -- if nothing else, for your entertainment. Read on....
If you've been reading
my blog for a while then you've probably come to the correct conclusion that I'm skeptical of this plan, although a year ago I would have thought that it was right on the money. My criticisms of this war can be reduced, with some pain and loss of detail, to five main points:
- The warrant for this war is based on lies. Therefore, it should never have been conducted in the first place, especially when we still need to deal with Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
- The war is being conducted as a death march -- that is, it started off with an unrealistically short timeline, unrealistic goals, and too few staff (soldiers) to accomplish the task. Failure of the Bush administration to address this by setting realistic goals, setting a new timeline, and adding new staff as needed, ensures this war will ultimately end in failure.
- The failure of the Bush administration to conduct a successful reconstruction effort has led to an institutionalized insurgency, which poses a greater long-term threat to our national security than Saddam Hussein ever did.
- The failure of the Bush administration to sufficiently stablize the Iraqi government in a short time created the danger that Iraq will fracture just like Yugoslavia, even if we are successful in creating a stablized government in the future.
- In addition to exacerbating one major security threat (terrorism), the war is at best a counterproductive stopgap for another major security threat (oil dependency)
Now, I don't realistically expect the Democrats to be able to address (1) adequately. The time to address this was before the bombs started falling. Now that they've fallen, we're stuck with this unbelievable mess until our troops leave Iraq. Raimondo and others on the antiwar right, along with Sheehan and those on the antiwar left, are calling for immediate withdrawal; and in principle I concur: we're throwing lives away, and every life lost is an unnecessary death by definition. In practice, our withdrawal now would lead almost immediately to an immense war affecting over 100 million people, and would potentially create a worldwide recession. As for point (5), the Democrats have already addressed this by proposing a Renewable Energy Apollo Project. As such, I can only really judge the Democratic plan by how it addresses, or fails to address, (2) through (4). So how does it do?
(2) The plan calls for reasonable milestones, metrics for success, and a timeline, and sets out some suggestions how success should be measured (in terms of troops, police, etc). It's not a bad start. Note that it calls on the President to do these things because that's ultimately the Presiden't job, and not the job of the Senate. Grade: A
(3) The plan doesn't really address the problem of the permanent insurgency at all. Merely stablizing Iraq won't get rid of the Insurgency. To illustrate, consider that the IRA fought a protracted war inside of one of the most stable first-world nations in Europe (the United Kingdom). Frankly, the Democratic leadership needs to take the initiative on this, and they might want to look at the lessons we learned from the way we dealt with the IRA and the Shining Path. Grade: F
(4) The plan pays lip service to the problem of the ethnic divides. I suppose this is only fair, since the first thing we need to do in order to stop Iraq from Balkanizing is to stablize Iraq, but it shows a lack of real long-term thinking on this problem. Grade: C
Overall, this plan gets a C from me. By way of comparison, the White House gets a plain F on all five points, and so does the GOP in general since they've built their whole party on kowtowing to President Bush. However, the measure of a good plan isn't whether it's better than what the White House has to offer -- it's whether it will create a better Middle East.