New Kagan . . . Same as the Old Kagan
Fred Kagan has a new piece in the Weekly Standard mocking all those who don't know what success means in Iraq. Fred lays it out:
Virtually everyone who wants to win this war agrees: Success will have been achieved when Iraq is a stable, representative state that controls its own territory, is oriented toward the West, and is an ally in the struggle against militant Islamism, whether Sunni or Shia.Dr. iRack may be crazy, but this standard for "success" or "victory" or whatever is probably too high. We should shoot for sustainable stability in Iraq: a modicum of stability that is self-sustaining as U.S. forces come home. Certainly, we might all agree that, all-else-being-equal, it would be better to have a representative Iraq that is a close ally against Iran and combats extremism of all kinds. But what are the threshold points here? How representative? How close an ally? How little Iranian influence? How little extremism?
Dr. iRack is not satified with Dr. Kagan's answers here, and if we set the bar too high, it is a recipe for quagmire and staying in Iraq for 100 years. Not that anybody serious would advocate us sticking around that long. Who's Fred advising in the campaign anyway?
Update: Abu Muqawama caught the same passage Dr. iRack did and noticed how in Kagan World, all the people who want to "win" happen to share his definition of success. Presumably, those with a different definition of success don't want to "win." And are cowards. Who hate America. And the god-fearing people of Iraq.
24 comments:
Dr., your posts echo the cynical and selfish cant of the "decent interval" crowd who eventually sold out RVN. A defeat of the South Viets may have been inevitable, or not, but our 1974-75 evisceration of their politicomilitary was presented as a "responsible withdrawal" right up to April 31, 1975, while really just underwriting the North's victory. Your criteria for the conditions of a "responsible withdrawal" look like "decent interval" redux. You don't have to agree with Kagan, but how about suggesting an end state something more than a fig leaf for a bugout?
Is Dr. iRack Spencer Ackerman?
Kagan is probably trying to give advice to the guy whose saying the war will follow us back home if we leave before we've stabilized Iraq.
Which it will, at which point we (here in the US) will be walking into a dark room.
The goal of going to war used to be victory, not an exit strategy.
That was a ploy by Powell to ensure that a 500$ billion a year standing military (that's without war) will either never be used, or used only for a few weeks.
Well then we don't need it. We the people are quite capable of defending ourselves on our own soil if our government won't, the Red Stick war* comes to mind. And you can close down the rest of the Beltway while you're at it. Frankly you people live in your own world, your main contact with us is through taxes and regulation. So turn out the lights and go earn a honest living.
*remember the dark room I mentioned?
No he (dr Iraq) is not Spencer Ackerman, I don’t think (although I did an interview with Spence on the phone a few months ago, but lets ask; doc Iraq, are you Spence?)
Anyway, to comment on Doc's second paragraph.
Nor am I satisfied with Kagan's answers but whether or not we are satisfied with it is irrelevant, in my opinion, to Kagan and what he is really after. Doc, your first paragraph makes sense; let’s use this opportunity of the lowering of violence to figure out a way to get, using your words, "a modicum of stability" for the US troops in Iraq to come home. But that is not at all what Kagan and others want; in fact it is my interpretation that they are not so much interested in how Iraq turns out--partitioned, democratic, totalitarian, whatever-- but instead a long term American military presence in Iraq. The endstate for American forces in Iraq, if I interpret Kagan correctly, is really no endstate at all but instead existential presence of American combat forces in Iraq. Why do I worry about existential presence of American combat troops in Iraq? Because I believe that we are breaking the American Army over it and I, humbly stated, would at least like to have a national debate over this matter.
Doc, you are right to state that setting the bar too high keeps us there for 100 years; but again, 100 years is exactly the point here. Oh, and I forgot what a Sunni national police brigade commander once told me in 2006 when I asked him how long it would take for Iraq to resolve its problems and stop fighting. His answer, 400 years! He was serious.
Do you see folks of certain political bent arguing for immediate withdrawal from Germany, Japan and Korea? Hardly, though it's an easier case to make than Iraq.
What's different here is there is political capital to be gained by a withdrawal from Iraq, particularly of one side of politics can force or administer the withdrawal.
Success? Success? Kaplan is a cretin. Doesn't he know that there are some 200+ billion barrels of sweet light crude in Iraq? At some of the lowest on-the-ground production costs anywhere? In an oil market that is spinning out of control, tight as a drum?
Controlling Iraqi oil and gas is a big deal. It means that Iraqi gas can be pumped to Europe, breaking Russia's Gazprom majority position, and possibly keeping Iran out of that market (tho Iran will sell to India via Pakistan, anyway). Fact is, it is all looking more and more like a pipe dream. The Kurdish oil contracts were cancelled as soon as they were signed, and the Russians have not been locked out of Iraq, despite the best efforts - see this from Reuters:
"KUWAIT CITY (AFP) — Iraq's government spokesman, in comments published on Saturday, called on Gulf states to forgive billions of dollars owed from loans and upgrade their diplomatic representation in Baghdad.
"Russia forgave 12 billion dollars of Iraqi debt. We have not seen similar moves from our neighbours," Ali al-Dabbagh told Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas ahead of a gathering in Kuwait.
"We must abandon the past and part of it is cancelling Iraqi debt," said Dabbagh, adding that most of the debt stemmed from the former regime of Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war."
Ever get the feeling that Putin is smarter than anyone in the U.S. leadership team? You know what the snarky Ruskies are calling Iraq these days?
"America's Afghanistan"
Yes... the Middle East... where dreams of empire come to die.
I believe that the "end state" Bush/Cheney have conceived for American involvement in Iraq, especially in light of the Petraeus/Crocker testimonies of 9/07 and 4/08, is for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to act as a colonial police force for the foreseeable future. We will have achieved "partition" without admitting it, and that partition will not be political but rather military -- literally the Army and Marine Corps.
(Of course, the unspoken domestic political byproduct of the surge is the all-out attempt to enshrine "the stab in the back" narrative as official history, i.e. Bush handed "victory" to his Democratic successor who then opted for defeat. AEI and Heritage fellows will be spewing books and articles on this subject for the next four decades.)
Cost/benefit analysis
What are the costs? What is the US trying to achieve?
For the record, I am NOT Spencer Ackerman, although Spencer would think that it was very funny that you thought so.
As far as the rest of the commentary is concerned, if someone is able to answer the threshold questions I asked regarding Kagan's maximalist definition of "success" I'm all ears.
And, once again for the record, I'm not rooting for defeat, but we have a range of national interests (in Afghanistan and the wider war on terrorism) that are put at risk by strategically overcommitting to Iraq for decades to come. So we have to come up with a more pragmatic definition of success that aims to prevent Iraq from becoming a failed state while not tying down 100K forces for 100 years.
In 2003, Petraeus famously told a WaPo reporter "Tell me, how does this end?" I'm still waiting for the answer to that question.
Love,
Spencer
For the record, I am not Dr. iRack, though I am drunk enough at the moment to say that I am.
Kagan and his fellow sofa-samurai contingent want a long and peaceful military presence in Iraq. The reasons are to secure the oil fields and to form an American buffer between Iran and Israel ... and to bring liberal democracy to the ME. The ink stained purple fingers of muslims will spread from Morocco to Indonesia and the Iraqis themselves will pay for the occupation.
Scratch that about democracy and Iraqi funding, that was window dressing.
We can't secure oil fields and act as a buffer from the deck of a ship in the Persian Gulf. Therefore, we must be on the ground. So kick back and relax, the garrison duty in Iraq will be just like a stretch in Korea, Okinawa, or Germany, peaceful and long term. John McCain said so.
One problem though, the Brits, French, Soviets, could tell us that a "peaceful and long term" presence in a muslim country is a pipe dream.
Nice try Spencer iRackerman
1. You guy admit knowing each other (or oneself)
2. Don't post in sequence. That was lazy.
3. You both are obsessed with Kagan and both tried to spin that Maliki's Basra operation was a failure based on what you guys read in the NYT.
Londonstani +
Dr. iRackerman -
^ For the blog
I can go to "attackerman" for his stuff (or just avoid it altogether).
Anonymous (or should I call you Sherlock Holmes),
Spencer and I know each other b/c we both live in DC and work on similar issues -- although we are very different people in body and mind. Upon reading your hilarious guess, I sent him a link via email for a laugh. Given that email takes less than a second to send and I sent him the email prior to posting, your timing analysis of 2 comments more than 40 minutes apart strikes me as the kind of "smoking gun" anaylsis that got us into this whole Iraq mess to begin with.
In any case, riddle me this: Spencer writes IN HIS OWN NAME on half a dozen blogs. He says some REALLY outlandish stuff about EVERYTHING (including Kagan) and is not shy about doing so under his real name. Why would he turn from Bruce Wayne to Batman on Abu Muqawama to write pretty straight forward stuff on Iraq?
Looks like The Committee To Re Invade Viet Nam has a position here: "Dr., your posts echo the cynical and selfish cant of the "decent interval" crowd who eventually sold out RVN. A defeat of the South Viets may have been inevitable, or not, but our 1974-75 evisceration of their politicomilitary was presented as a "responsible withdrawal" right up to April 31, 1975, while really just underwriting the North's victory."
And here I thought Saigon's cannonfodder wouldnt fight for that corrupt bunch of thieves and incompetants we left the country to.
Actually, there IS a lesson here: "Gvts" imposed by occupying armies dont stand a snowballs chance. Because collaborators have zero moral suasion. And dont start huffin about the show election that put Thieu & Ky in power, either.....
Kagan's "goals" remind me of the time my wife and I visited a "Christian" elementary school and read the first grade goals on the classroom wall, something to the effect of: 1. Learn to read 2. Learn to spell 3. Have a close relationship with Jesus...
On topic: "Success will have been achieved when Iraq is a stable, representative state that controls its own territory, is oriented toward the West, and is an ally in the struggle against militant Islamism, whether Sunni or Shia." is an interesting statement.
The second sentence is more interesting: "This has been said over and over. Why won't war critics hear it? Is it because they reject the notion that such success is achievable and therefore see the definition as dishonest or delusional? Is it because George Bush has used versions of it and thus discredited it in the eyes of those who hate him? Or is it because it does not offer easily verifiable benchmarks to tell us whether or not we are succeeding?"
Its the first, mr. Kagan, its the first. And the third. And when Im drunk, also the second sometimes, though more Rummy than Bush. But basically the first, because its just not achievable with the level of troops, money and political will that is available. Kagan is argumenting against reality, so that he can ensure a position in the meta-tale that involves the Dolchstoss etc wich we see already taking hold in the debate.
Basically he wants to stay in Iraq for 30 years+ at least, to bridge the two-generation gap of hatred wich is normally regarded minimum for even benign occupation to function. Mr Kagan propably knows full well what mr. Gentile is worried about, that 30 years of deployment in Iraq is going to break the army and the economy. His intelectual dishonesty lies in how he refuses to examine the possible problems a full-out longterm statebuilding will encounter, both politically and practicaly. How will the US face off Iran for the next 30 years? How will the US find the economical and technical resources to patrol there for the next 30? How will this effect recruitment to the army? Oil prices? International economy? And first and foremost, for all the money and resources spent on this, what could have been done instead? And how will it affect the real fight with AQ in Pakistan/Afghanistan, how many contigency forces will it leave for rapid reaction elsewhere? Where is the cost/benefit analysis?
P.S.:He writes "While it is true that Iran "supports" both ISCI and Dawa, the two leading Shia parties in the government, with money, and it provides the Sadrist militia not only with money, but with lethal weapons, training, trainers, and advisers inside Iraq to support the militia's fight against the United States and the Iraqi government--nevertheless, Iran does not provide such support to the government of Iraq or to the Iraqi Security Forces."
Uhm. So basically Iran is only supporting those folks when they are in civilian clothing, but when they put on uniforms they all join the tribe of Amriki? Clan, tribe and mosque stops to have any effect in the big green machine? snli, any comments?
Kagan translated seems to mean, we will stay in Iraq until we get better Iraqis. Good luck on that.
This goal is particularly humorous: "is oriented toward the West." Now, let's say that was actually an achievable goal, whatever it means. The first thing you should do, then, is NOT drive out the middle and professional class in Iraq that is, indeed, oriented in its lifestyle to the West. But of course, that is just what the Bushies did, which is why the Iraq of Kagan's dreams now sits in Amman, Damascus and Teheran. To use the ever misleading analogy with Germany - it is as if American occupying forces, in 1945, decided to use the most anti-Nazi groups they could find to run the country, and thus imported and supported the cadre of German communists that was setting up the government in East Germany. It is just a laugh to think that setting up an Iraqi government headed by Da'wa, who proved how "pro-Western" it is by helping blow up the American embassy and marine base in Beirut in 1983, is some kind of progress to Kagan's goal. How insane these people are. They simply make up things in their head in D.C. that have no relation whatsoever to reality in the Middle East.
Roger said: "They simply make up things in their head in D.C. that have no relation whatsoever to reality in the Middle East."
Roger/All,
D.C makes no decisions that have anything at all to do with reality anywhere, to include D.C. It's a brothel trying to run a honest business, it's Constantinople on the Potomac.
Having said that, Constantinople did hold out for a thousand years. I have often thought the answer to the question "Is America Rome or Greece?" is that it's Byzantium; that is both.
On a adminstrative note, I am so glad that so many others can be open tonite and admit they post drunk. Here's Arak in your eye ;)
Thanks Dr. iRackerman (I like that one).
Regardless, I learned a little more today from your comments.
Cheers.
That hundred years crack about McCain was sorta, uh, I dunno. Whatever. I guess you thought it was funny. Maybe it was.
I tend to agree with the main point of your post, though. Better to keep it simple and the goals as something that's relatively achievable. As for the rest, well, we'll just have to see.
Sigh. I used to like this place. I thought it was different, but it's just the same old-same old blog comment world, huh? Too bad.
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