Issues2004: Iraq

This post is my response to Jeff Jarvis’s Issues2004: Iraq post. I probably need to start with some background.

I opposed the Gulf War. My reasoning was quite simple: I didn’t believe that either the U. S. government or the American people would have the stomach for our military to do what needed to be done to remove Saddam Hussein and I believed that freeing Kuwait without removing Saddam Hussein was not worth going to war over. Whether merely freeing Kuwait was worth going to war remains debateable. But I was clearly right about not having the stomach to remove Saddam Hussein.

I opposed the war in Afghanistan and I have to admit that our efforts there have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. My concern was that we would meet with the same level of resistance as had the British and Russians before us with similar results. But we adopted a completely different and, in my opinion, brilliant strategy. We went in with a small force and, essentially, put it at the disposal of the warlords opposed to the Taliban. The Taliban was removed from power and has been successfully kept from power. The force that we have left in Afghanistan is just large enough to keep the Taliban from returning to power without provoking a defensive response from the Afghan people.

Anyone who believes we erred in not going into Afghanistan with massive force needs to come to terms with four questions:

1. Why did the British and the Russians fail?
2. Why did we succeed?
3. How do you believe we could apprehended Osama bin Laden without going in hot pursuit into Pakistan (which would have provoked a response from the Pakistanis)?
4. How many American lives and American treasure would it have been worth to fail to apprehend Osama bin Laden? Because we certainly would have failed.

The sad reality for the Afghan people is that Afghanistan has almost no strategic significance to the United States so long as the Taliban is not in power there.

Unlike Jeff Jarvis, Michael Totten, and other “liberal hawks”, I don’t have a Wilsonian bone in my body. While I think it would be good for the Arab people, the United States, and the world for the Arab people to embrace real liberal democracy, I don’t honestly care what kind of governments they have so long as they keep their problems at home.

I think it would be lovely if we could install liberal democracy in Iraq but we just don’t have the time or the political will to do it. Why don’t we have the time? It’s quite simple. Basic U. S. defense doctrine for the last 50 years has been that if the United States is attacked using nuclear weapons it will provoke an overwhelming nuclear response. If a nuclear device is detonated in an American city, it will provoke such a response. Against whom, you might ask? Against any convenient unfriendly target. High on the list would be Tehran, Pyong-Yang, and Damascus. Such a response would be necessary or it would cast the entire doctrine into question. It wouldn’t make any difference whether a Democrat or a Republican were president. We would respond with a nuclear response.

And the revelations of the A. Q. Khan affair have shown that containment is no longer possible. If we’re absolutely going to prevent a nuclear device from coming into the hands of terrorists who would use it against us we need to deter the deterrable and remove the undeterrable.

Now I think that terrorism in Arab societies is not unlike alcoholism. Not all Arabs are terrorists. But there are quite a few Arabs that are enabling the ones who are. They must be discouraged from being enablers. You can’t make someone stop being an alcoholic—they have to want to change. And typically to take that step they have to hit rock bottom. If we had all the time in the world, the best strategy for eliminating the threat of terrorism to the world would be to isolate the Arab nations. Bottle ’em up and wait until they hit rock bottom (try and muster the will in the international community to do that).

But we don’t have all the time in the world. Sooner or later radical Islamicist terrorists will acquire an atomic bomb, they’ll detonate it in an American city, and millions and millions of Arabs will die in our counter-attack. I believe that it’s worth taking pretty significant steps to prevent that from happening both to save lives here and to save lives there.

And the terrorists are undeterrable.

So what did I believe about Iraq and what do I believe about Iraq? Before the invasion of Iraq I was opposed to it for the following reasons:

1. I oppose the U. S. going into any war anywhere unless the president musters the will in the American people necessary to achieve victory. That is the lesson of Viet Nam. And Mr. Bush did not do that as should be clear to anyone.
2. I had no concerns about removing Saddam Hussein. We had all the grounds in the world. He’d been violating the terms of the Gulf War truce every day for ten years for goodness sake. But I did not see the American people having the stomach to do what was necessary to subdue the Iraqi people. And I didn’t see how any reasonable objectives could be achieved without doing that.
3. I saw the only real reason to invade Iraq as being strategic. Bases in Iraq would enable us to remove troops from Saudi Arabia—one of the reasons that provoked the attack on us on September 11, 2001. And it would be a good position from which to mount operations against the real superpower in the area: Iran. But no groundwork had been laid in this country for such operations and I didn’t see the American people as having the stomach for it.

But we’re there now and the only way out is through. I expect to be there for fifty years just as we’ve been in Germany, Japan, and Korea for fifty years. There are multiple reasons for doing whatever is necessary to achieve a stable, more or less liberal more or less democrat government in Iraq:

1. Having removed the established government in Iraq we now have a legal and moral responsibility to the people of Iraq to establish a stable government there now. Another Saddam is not acceptable. Another Taliban is not acceptable. Another Iranian-style Mullahocracy is not acceptable.
2. Cutting and running now would do enormous damage to our national prestiage and our ability to function in the world. It would prove that Osama bin Laden was right: we’re unable to take casualties. It would provoke more attacks.
3. We’ve already made a sizeable investment in Iraq. The investment is worth defending.

And others. And it may be harsh to put it this way but the level of military and civilian casualties sustained in Iraq have no tactical or strategic significance. They may have political significance here.

So here’s what I think should be done:

1. The president should tell the world in clear, unambiguous terms that we will be in Iraq until Iraq has a stable, liberal, democratic government and is under no threat from its neighbors (the numbers of “foreign” fighters that continue to be reported in Iraq is sufficient proof that Iraq faces threats from its neighbors).
2. The president should tell the American people that the commitment of substantial numbers of troops to Iraq will be for no less than 10, or, 20 or more years. There will be no speedy withdrawal.
3. We should increase the total U. S. force levels so that we can maintain levels in Iraq and respond to such needs as arise elsewhere.
4. We should pay for this increase in a fiscally responsible manner.

If Mr. Bush can’t do these things he shouldn’t be president. If Mr. Kerry can’t or won’t do these things he mustn’t be president. Too many lives depend on it.