I am not a professor of Middle Eastern studies. I’m not even a student. All I know about the Middle East I’ve learned through reading articles online and watching shows on TV, most of them in the past 8 months. So I’m not going to claim that I know all the facts. But I think I know enough of them.
What I am, is an engineer. I solve problems. Given a set of parameters and assumptions, I can project what the outcome of a situation will be, and attempt to discern which is the most desirable, or nearest to my goal.
I don’t know how to solve all of the problems in Iraq. But I do know that the arguments given as to why we can’t set a timetable to get our boys (& girls) out are pure horse-poo. To say otherwise spits in the face of logic. Take the jump with me to see why.
::flip::
The 2 reasons that have been given as to why we can’t set a timetable to pull our troops out are a) Our troops need to know that we’re committed to being there until the job is done, and b) if we set a timetable, the enemy will merely wait us out.
First things first: we need to clarify some of the cloudy language. In particular, we need to figure out what ‘the job is done‘ and ‘the enemy‘ mean. Regardless of why we first got into Iraq, I think that there is a clear answer as to why we are there now. We are there to move the country towards stability. You can make other, more US-centric arguments, such as to maintain military bases in the area, for the sake of Israel, or for the sake of oil, but I think those all are served by having a stable Iraq anyway. So, being there until ‘the job is done‘ is approximately equivalent to staying until the government is stable and can take care of itself.
This leaves ‘the enemy‘. Who exactly are we fighting? The President is fond of saying ‘insurgents and terrorists’ and I think he’s exactly right. Where he is wrong, is that he equates the two. I think that there are two very different motivations for fighting us. The insurgents are Iraqi nationalists who are fighting an invading force. The terrorists are generally not Iraqi (though surely there are exceptions) but are fighting in Iraq for a variety of reasons, from giving us a hard time, to terrorizing Iraqis and stirring the pot, to possible religious motivations (to be honest, their motivations are kind of unimportant to my main point).
The potential paradox then with the first given reason is this:
We absolutely need to take this possibility into account, despite the fact that the President refuses to do just that.
To show that this is indeed probably the case, I will illustrate that the second given reason also contains a paradox. Let’s get back to the idea of terrorists and insurgents. If we leave the insurgents will stop fighting us. Will they start a civil war? Maybe, but the country is already in the middle of a war, so the argument there is between a definite war and a possible (or probable) war. So, let me focus on the terrorists.
Remember now, the second given reason? It is that, if we set a timetable, ‘the enemy‘ (now meaning terrorists) can just wait us out. But consider this:
Look at that again. It so obviously makes sense that I can’t believe that nobody (to my knowledge) has brought it up. Of course, if they are able to just stop fighting until we leave on our schedule, they surely can just stop fighting to make us leave when we think ‘the job is done’!
So this leaves the question of : Why? Why don’t the terrorists do just that? Do they want us to stay? Do they like having a practice facility in their backyard? The answer to that is beyond my scope of knowledge, and beyond the scope of this diary. But it is irrelevant to the fact that the reasons that we’ve been given for keeping our troops in harms way do not make sense.
So, Mr. President, with all due respect, please either fess up, or let’s start the plan to bring them home.
Or hit me up with more info. This is just something that struck me on the way home from work tonight, and I wanted to get it posted to get your thoughts.
Your points are excellent in the extreme.
They are maybe not necessarily what needs to be done – they are options up for public debate. They are nuances of possible strategies – but have never EVER been raised as alternatives.
Diplomacy (not something that the Boltonians understand at all) is essentially pragmatic. There are never any clean simple solutions. Diplomacy is the art of choosing the least damaging of ALL options, and attempting to shift marginal positions of others to these less damaging options.
It is quite clear that the Boltonian view is to take a theoretical position and action, regardless of the collateral damage, or indeed any understanding of the ‘game theory’ that the other players might be using. Your options shed an entirely different light on the other players (insurgents or terrorists) and the cultural context in which they operate.
Your options shed an entirely different light on the other players (insurgents or terrorists) and the cultural context in which they operate.
And I think that discouraging this type of discourse is exactly what Cheney’s remarks about liberals wanting to ‘give therapy and understanding” were meant to do. It seems to be in the administration’s interest to keep the issues of troop withdrawal and general war strategy as black & white as possible. And sadly, it is easier to sell that way to both the news media and the general public.
Not much this admin says or does regarding Iraq… or much of anything else, I suppose… makes sense. It’s pretty much impossible to come to the “correct” conclusion as to when the ‘job is done’ because no one really knows what the ‘job’ is, as you stated. They know the various reasons put forth by this admin and others, but who knows what they really are seeking there… (they lie a lot).
I think you are correct with regards to the effect of pulling the troops out. If our goal was a stable, self reliant Iraqi society, we’d have been gone already… because there won’t ever be one there with us there.
Thanks for the diary and the thoughts.
Oh, and yes… I believe the non-Iraqi “terrorists”, whoever they are, do want us to stay… free training against the greatest and best equipped military in the world, free advertising, safe passage from country to country… what’s not to like?
In my opinion, the real question is not whether we should set a timetable, but: how do we prevent conflict in Iraq from destabilizing the region? As Juan Cole points out here, the stakes are very high. (Cole discusses his ideas further here, here, here, and here. One of these references a discussion that appeared at dKos and here at BT.)
The tendency by people both supporting and opposing the war (in the U.S. and elsewhere) is to see this as a U.S. problem. The initiation and prosecution of the war have been pretty much indefensible, and many world leaders have been content to let Bush dangle on the hook for it. Now that the conflict is started though, it needs to be ended responsibly.
A rush to bring U.S. forces home could be very dangerous and, in a sense, lets Bush off too easy. If we pull out, he can go off to lick his wounds and whine that the Democrats ruined everything, and blame them for any disaster that ensues. To deal with this responsibly, he actually has to admit that he’s failed and then ask the world community that he’s spurned for help.
Hmm, my previous statement might sound like I’m more interested in seeing Bush eat crow than in getting our troops out of harm’s way, but that’s not the point at all. The point is that America, as a country, has allowed this to happen, and we need to take responsibility for it; and that fixing it is not about what makes America happy, but what makes the world more stable. We’ve royally screwed up here; we don’t deserve any consideration for our ego or pride at this point.
Similarly, leaders in other countries will need to recognize the situation may require action on their part too.
Our troops do lack legitimacy in Iraq, we are regarded as an oppressive occupation force, but we may also be acting as brake on a real catastrophe. What are we going to do put in place a brake that does have legitimacy?
I think it’s very dangerous that this has become an issue of “Should we leave?” rather than “How do we fix this?” If the debate could be turned in the direction of a search for a solution, for even a definition of what a “solution” would look like, it would probably become clearer when and how the troops could be brought home. The “UN Option” that Cole discusses in the links above is the best contribution to moving the debate in this direction that I’ve seen so far.
Let’s hope that the administration’s taste for simplistic solutions hasn’t infected the public so far, that only simplistic solutions can be considered.
(ejmw: I hope I don’t sound like I’m attacking you here. Writing about this is just making me upset.)
No, not at all. At first I had written this diary as a straight-up “get our troops out NOW” kind of thing. But it didn’t sit well with me, because, as you mention, there are potentially great regional consequences to what we do. A lot of the tone of ‘get our troops out’ probably stuck around in that diary, but it is moreso a plea to the President to be more honest with us.
With that being said…I read the Juan Cole ‘UN Option’ as well, and agree that it is a very reasonable attempt at resolving this powder-keg situation that we’ve created. By (at least partially) supplicating ourselves before the UN and admitting that we need help to get this under control, I think we could go a long way towards solving the bigger issues of regional stability and, as a direct side effect, have it require lesser US involvement.
Thanks for writing. My diary is not suggesting an alternative solution so much as it is asking for a clearer, more reasoned statement of what we are actually trying to do, and how we’re trying to do it.
Like you, I’m an engineer and a novice at this stuff, but I’m also a cynical ba$tard.
I don’t think Bushco EVER intended to leave Iraq. The plan was to solidify our presence in the Gulf and assure our continued access to oil. Most of the rest of the world almost immediately jumped to that conclusion (especially the Middle East). Bushco never intended to tell us that we were there for good. It was just sorta gonna happen. I suspect we could learn more if we could ever get our hands on the Cheney energy plan.
But the wheels have fallen off of his plan, and now most of the debate is not about if we leave, but when we leave. This ranges from leave now and screw the consequences to a vague we’ll leave when the job is done, and then never define done (i.e. the original we’re not leaving plan.)
I expect much of the debate up til the ’06 elections will be about when and how we leave with reality slowly beating Bushco into giving a timetable.
In the mean time I’ll make the arguement that Bushco’s low poll numbers are why the insurgents have stepped up their attacks so It’s really nobodies fault but Bushco’s for the continued violence.
It’s realism.
Planning on keeping a military presence in Iraq long-term is the only way that what they do and say makes sense.
I’m not so sure that the wheels have fallen off the plan. Even after the ’06 elections, I don’t think we will be able to start pulling out of Iraq. BushCo has created a nice little catch-22 to keep us there: we won’t leave until there isn’t any more violence, but there will be violence until we leave (or change the strategy).