The diary posted by John Kerry and Russ Feingold earlier this morning was a very encouraging sign that the Dems are finally starting the process to get us out of Iraq. However, I was dismayed to see they had both called for a hard and fast deadline for withdrawal. This is in contrast to earlier calls for developing a
timetable, which is a whole different creature. I'll admit that the diary was well-written, and was persuasive in some ways, but I still don't buy the case for a hard deadline. I'll explain why over the flip.
So let's start with this simple question: what would a good strategy on Iraq look like? It's a discussion the Bush Administration has never had with the American people, but it's one that we as Democrats
should have.
For my money, the outcomes of a good Iraq policy are the following. First, it should respond to the country's recent emergence as a breeding ground for terrorists. Second, it should strive to avoid the outcome of an Afghanistan-style failed state. Third, it should bring home as many American troops as fast as possible.
To its credit, Kerry and Feingold's post outlines a plan for some of these things. They claim that Iraq's movement towards democracy has only worked in the past when the pols have been forced to move towards hard and fast diplomacy. They leave the option of "over the horizon" military action to combat specific terrorist targets on the table (although they don't explain how they're planning to get a democratically elected Iraqi government to go along with that). And of course, the whole point of their plan is to bring our troops home.
But there are a ton of holes in this plan. First of all, the idea that Iraq has any sort of real "movement towards democracy" is debateable. Already, the country's largest minority group is acting like the elected government is an illegitimate puppet, and the reports of rampant abuses among the police force can't be helping that impression. It's unclear how much the various White House-hyped elections mean -- are they a real sign of democratization, or are they just photo ops?
Second, the committment to later "over the horizon" deployment is a pretty huge fucking loophole. Kerry and Feingold never discuss exactly which situations would merit this intervention (although they give the example of taking out specific terrorists like Zarqawi). This ignores a ton of issues. What other sovereign nation -- particularly democratic sovereign nation -- lets a foreign power conduct military actions within its borders? Would we be particularly happy if the Canadians were launching cruise missiles that leveled city blocks in order to take out a single suspected criminal in Oklahoma?
Also, to what degree would further military intervention be an option for non-military outcomes? When are we supposed to re-engage? Are we going to be sending in troops if Iraq slips into Afghan/Somali-style chaos? If so, isn't this kind of hard deadline just a recipe for bigger, longer deployments further down the road? The simple fact is if we advocate a deadline right now, we need to leave the door open for action later. If we do that, we leave ourselves vulnerable to a bigger war later on -- in effect, we've postponed the war but not ended it. But in the short run, we've given the GOP ammunition for their "cut and run" frame. The worst of both worlds.
This whole discussion seems so ass-backwards to me. I'm glad we're starting to talk about withdrawal, but a timetable has to be something that evolves from a set strategy. Start pushing for diplomacy, engage the international community, get some security consultants to think about what would happen if the UN started treating Iraq as a hotspot. I believe our greatest hope lies in internationalizing this conflict -- but if that's not what we do, at least have SOME discussion about the methods we'll use. Deadlines have to be part of a larger strategy -- but calling them a strategy in and of themselves is madness.