Change the Objectives

Guest post

The following was left as a comment to my post, Facing the Music, by Non Partisan Pundit. I thought it was sufficiently good and, indeed, expressed something pretty close to my own opinion, that with permission I’ve promoted it to the front page. I’ve done a little reformatting and editting but otherwise left the comment as-is. If you’re not familiar with his work, he served as an intelligence analyst with the US Navy and Air force for over 15 years. During that time he had a broad range of experience, mostly concentrated on the Persian-Arabian Gulf and the Mediterranean littoral with a primary expertise in supporting military planning and conventional and unconventional threat analysis.

I’ve been having a similar discussion over at Intel Dump and is paraphrased below:

What I and others have concluded is that the strategic objectives as outlined by the administration are not achievable: “[The] strategic goal of a free Iraq that is democratic, that can govern itself, defend itself and sustain itself, and be a strong ally in this war against radicals and extremists who would do us harm.“

Instead of criticizing the objective itself and offering an alternative, most seem more content to debate minutiae and the perceived political leanings of military officers and others. ISTM that any course of action in Iraq should serve some larger strategic objective. I’m quite frankly increasingly concerned that so few even acknowledge this larger context exists, much less defend their favored antidote in terms of strategic, as opposed to domestic partisan, utility. So instead of any cogent and reasoned analysis of what the US should do at this point, most spin their wheels on largely pointless arguments about whom is more partisan, whom is carrying water for whatever political enemy, etc. This kind of stupid infighting not only allows the current policy to continue unabated (since the arguments against it are inherently weak, being rooted in partisan calculations and not in terms of US strategic interests), but risks compounding mistakes already made by adopting policies that, while well-intentioned, may prove to be worse.

My view is that for the short-medium term our goal should be preventing further regional destabilization by mitigating as best as possible the negative effects of our ill-conceived and executed adventure in Iraq. This will involve, IMO, a COA that is neither the status quo, nor a total withdrawal, but a continuing military presence with a different set of operational objectives. Military forces, after all, are a tool of policy and not a policy in and of itself. It should be noted that some of our “success” in Iraq, particularly Anbar, is actually contrary to the Bush policy objectives. Anbar is relatively peaceful but is no more under central government control than it was six months ago. One might argue that Anbar points to a different path and that such success might better serve a goal of stability, containment and mitigation. As a tribal society, working at the local level by enabling tribal leaders is arguably better than the top-down “national” approached we’ve so far failed at. Building “national” institutions is no easy task when most people’s loyalty lies elsewhere and has for centuries.

Additionally, US military presence in Iraq is not a zero-sum game nor can it be boiled down the simplistic “support the war / against the war” memes that dominate the debate. One can, I think, fairly believe that military force can provide utility in Iraq provided it supports a cogent strategic goal, and at the same time be opposed to the current “war” (which is really quite different at this point than the one we embarked on in the spring of 2003). Such distinctions are lost on the absolutists in this debate.

Over the long term, I am currently leaning toward a managed partition, but think the US cannot, and should not, carry out partition alone. This represents an opportunity for the diplomacy, and UN and regional engagement so many have been screaming for. Another option is to withdrawal from most of Iraq (the populated areas at least) except for Kurdistan and perhaps the west along the lines of Brooking’s analysis of containment (http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/analysis/jan2007iraq_civilwar.htm). The idea here is to let the Iraqi’s figure it out for themselves while keeping the ringside bystanders from joining the fray as well as preventing the fight from spilling out of the ring.

I freely admit that my ideas are neither original nor without fault, but I honestly believe they are superior or, rather, less bad than the current Bush objectives or the withdrawal for withdrawal’s sake that so many on the left advocate. It seems that many prominent Presidential Candidates agree that Iraq isn’t an either-or proposition and are trying to steer a middle course.

Update

James Joyner has a round-up of reactions to the Petraeus report titled “Moving the Goalposts in Iraq?” I certainly hope so.