The U.S.-led war in Iraq is over, and the United States has failed to achieve its goals. How I wish it wasn't so, but it is.
Andrew Sullivan called today for Democrats to help lead with providing alternate strategies for victory, and I wish that there were some to be had. But that time has sadly past.
Should we increase troop strength in Iraq? Well, we should have a long time ago, but now I fear we would only be providing the insurgency with more targets. There was a time when we could have captured hearts and minds in Iraq by imposing real order and substantive justice. However, now we have both handed over too much authority to the Iraqi government to reclaim it, not to mention alienated too great a segment of the Iraqi population for us to be seen as an honest arbiter of justice. And all of this disregards the fact that there simply are no more troops to be had. What infantry units or military police does the United States hold in reserve to secure Iraq? If we had them, who among our leaders has the will to call for several thousand more troops to be committed to Iraq?
Should we increase security on the Syrian border? That window is closed now as well. There was a time when foreign fighters were essential to the insurgency, and their contributions early on helped give the insurgency its momentum. But that momentum is self-sustaining now; the bombings in Jordan show that the insurgency is now so strong that it can envision the overthrow of the Kingdom of Jordan. The insurgency is now moving outward from Iraq into the greater Middle East. If we wish to guard the borders more closely, it will now be to attempt to contain the terrorists and their arms inside of Iraq.
Should we be trying to train the Iraqi forces more successfully? Well, I for one have no confidence in our ability to do so. We spent a decade training the SVA, and the lesson from that experience is that you cannot give commitment to war to those who do not have it. This is not a war the Iraqi people sought. Whatever it is that they have not received from us, they have shown that they do not have the commitment to the cause needed for them to spearhead this war. Already we have seen that even the committed soldiers who are not Sunnis have not sought out the Iraqi Army; those who are truly committed can be found in the militias of Kurdistan or the Sh'ia militias such as the Mahdi army.
Can ending torture save the war effort? Doubtful. The damage has been done. Inevitably, the truth of what has happened will come out; such is the nature of such loathsome secrets. Already, what is known saps us of desperately needed credibility. With the truth known about the lack of weapons of mass destruction, and the lie of collaboration between Saddam's Ba'athists and al'Qaeda laid before the world, the best case that we have to make for this war is the human rights case. And that is the case we have squandered. Are our torture chambers more humane than Saddam's? Is that a question that anyone anywhere in the world can ask and not hold the United States in contempt? Whatever action we take to ensure no further torture occurs under American auspices, the merit of that action will be forgotten in the infamy the actions we have already taken will achieve.
The truth, as I perceive it, is that Iraq is now simply beyond our control. There is no stopping the insurgents with American forces. There is no means left for us to seize control of the political process and create a government that will cement Iraq's ethnic groups and clans into a nation. These things will or will not occur based on the actions of Iraqis. We have made two disasterous mistakes in the waging of this war (well, more than two, but two that I will ennumerate): one, we made the assumption that the only thing wrong with Iraqi society was Saddam. Clearly, the administration believed that if only Saddamn and his leadership was removed, an Iraq would emerge that was eager for democracy and wished to remain a united nation. That has been proven to be false. The second mistake is part and parcel of the first, which is that as a nation, we really don't understand these people at all. We do not understand their ethnic and tribal divisions, we do not understand their religion and the various sects that exist within it. We are rapidly receiving a remedial lesson in this; most Americans now know the difference between the Sunnis and the Sh'ia now. But it is about three years too late for us to be gaining this knowledge in a manner that we might make use of it.
I wish there was a strategy that the United States could employ that would bring what we could conceive as a sort of victory. If someone has one, I am more than eager to hear it and to embrace it if I can. But for now, I believe that Mr. Sullivan is asking the wrong question. It isn't what can we do to enable us to win this war anymore; it is what can we do to prevent ourselves from being the reason the Iraqis lose it.