It is critical to remember, as we are forced to create a new strategy for success in Iraq, that we were given several different reasons for our national choice of taking this country to war in the first place.
We were told our nation, and its allies, were in imminent danger from a nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons attack. This was the famed "weapons of mass destruction" explanation. When it became clear these weapons did not exist, we were then told Saddam Hussein was connected to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Both the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State refuted this claim, and then told us we were compelled to save Iraqi lives in the face of a brutal dictatorship. With similar situations in North Korea, Darfur, and many other places across the globe, this rationale did not hold water.
The Administration did eventually get around to offering up the fourth, and this time, real reason for going to war after American forces were fully committed in Iraq. There are members of this Administration, and their supporters in Congress including my opponent, who believe if we are successful in installing a Jeffersonian democracy in Baghdad - and then expanding this system of government throughout the Middle East - The United States will be a safer and stronger nation. They also explained in order to be successful we would need the cooperation of the Iraqi people and the cooperation of the governments of the surrounding Arab and Persian countries.
This strategy to impose our form of government in Iraq is both flawed and destined to fail , despite any and all attempts we make. The reason we cannot find success in Iraq, is dictated by the simple fact that we should not have engaged in this war in the first place. We are now trying to execute a fundamentally flawed strategy that will not succeed.
This strategy means Dictators, Kings, Princes, Sultans, Emirs and Presidents for life that rule the surrounding countries with an iron fist, will have to decide it's in their best interest to abdicate power and turn over their reins of government to popular elections. So, to believe this strategy of near spontaneous democratic combustion across the Middle East is destined to succeed, tribal loyalties, the absolute use of power, benevolent dictatorships, Royal families which control almost every aspect of economic, military, and social development in all of the nations in the Middle East, with the exception of Israel, are going to evaporate like water in the desert.
Our military strategy for the invasion of Iraq valued speed over securing territory, executed a computer driven, electronically inter-connected "lightning strike" at the expense of boots on the ground, and we never secured the borders of Iraq. This rapidly made Iraq a magnet for outside Islamic extremists to infiltrate and in brutal fashion, wage an urban terrorist war against the Iraqi people and our occupying American forces. We are spending much more defending the borders of Iraq than we are our own wide open borders. This expenditure, when coupled with the Bush tax cuts, removes the ability to invest in homeland security, education, health care, space and science research and the entire menu of pressing national priorities. Our national priorities have been turned upside down.
We do, however, have a model that offers hope for limited success. When the Balkans erupted in a three way, multi-ethnic religious war in the 90s, it was NATO, brought to the table by American leadership, that brought a cessation of fighting in a hostile region and laid the groundwork for peace. Bosnia is now on the cusp of joining the European Union. This is a true success story, whose lessons learned need to be captured and utilized in Iraq. Those of us who were on the ground, learned first hand how to apply this model and must now work to correct the mistakes of this Administration.
We were successful because we recognized a fundamental reality; unless you can separate the warring parties, no peace treaty was worth the paper it was printed on. Instead of a strong multi-ethnic, multi-religious federal government, the decision was made to create three semi autonomous states, whose borders were both economically viable and based largely on historic, traditional lines. The war had relocated many families - many of which never returned to their former homes, but instead chose to rebuild in communities in their newly created states. In the end these new borders created the ability to move forward with real economic development.
In short, we did not try to establish our form of government in Sarajevo and then apply it to former warring neighbors. We let the individual states choose their form of government. Who would have ever thought the Dalmatian coast in Croatia would today be one of the hottest tickets for tourism in Europe less than a decade after artillery fire was destroying towns and cities up and down the Adriatic?
There are no doubt drawbacks to the concept of three semi-autonomous states in Iraq. The Turkish government has repeatedly stated its objections to a Kurdish State - this just might be an opportunity to resolve a long standing friction and eventually pave the way for Turkey to join the European Union. The Iranians would move in a heart beat to absorb any Shia territory that is created. The Sunni minority is deathly afraid, and perhaps for good reason, of being a permanent junior partner in a newly established Iraqi Federation. However, these problems are much more malleable than a civil war, with the United States caught in the middle.
We are now in a position where we cannot issue a unilateral withdrawal of American forces without Iraq becoming a hotbed of terrorist activity akin to Afghanistan. We must reduce the visibility and intrusion of American security forces and measure each success in terms of actions that will accelerate our departure.
A smart teacher once told me, if you keep doing what you're doing, you're just going to get more of what you have. "Staying the course" will not solve this national challenge and in fact, will only make it worse. The quickest way to get American forces out of Iraq is to follow the lessons of success in the Balkans. Although we cannot pullout today, if we simply "stay the course" we will in fact create the very threat we have been focused on destroying.
It's time to admit we got it wrong from the start. It's time to throw away the requirement to establish a strong, integrated central government based on the rule of Jeffersonian constitutional law. We must instead focus on allowing the three major religious and ethnic tribes to form their own form of government, loosely joined at the national level, based largely on the lessons learned from our time on the ground in Bosnia. It's time for new strategic thinking in Iraq and unless we are willing to say we got it wrong from the beginning, we will never get it right.