Why Democrats Must Lead on Iraq

(Cross-posted at Booman Tribute and Daily Kos)

Robert Scheer at Liberal Oasis says about the increasing calls for impeachment:

At this point, calls for impeachment do little more than show the difference between Democrats and Republicans.  But to do that without being seen as merely partisan, there must be an authentic difference.  Yes, Bush led us into war on false pretenses.  Yes, the war in Iraq is in the toilet.  Yes, troops know both of these things and want not to go back for another tour.  Yes, parents are keeping their kids from enlisting.  But Bush is seen by many as the only leader we have, the only one with a plan.  That more than anything else will, as Scheer says, prevent calls for impeachment being taken seriously.  Who is the leadership who will replace Bush?  Why should impeachment be the issue of the 2006 campaign if removing Bush brings someone worse (hello, Dick, David)?

If Democrats are going to have a unified view, we are going to have to talk in more than slogans and soundbites – “get out now”, “an exit strategy”, “a timetable for withdrawal”.  And we are going to have to speak the hard, unpleasant truth.

And here it is:

0. The population of Iraq (2005) is 26 million.  Population of Germany (1939) 90 million.  On V-E Day, Eisenhower had sixty-one US divisions (1,622,000 troops) and a total force in Europe of 3 million troops.  Mark Helprin of the Wall Street Journal Online has it right thanks to Yucatan Man:

We aren’t getting World War II results because the Bush administration, for all its talk of World War II, did not make a World War II-level commitment.

1. A military victory in the sense of World War II’s unconditional surrender is not possible and never was in Iraq, regardless of how much ordnance we drop on Iraq and how many Iraqis we kill.  Only governments can surrender, and Saddam Hussein fled rather than surrender.  There is no closure through this route.
2. We have too few troops in Iraq to stay without growing casualties and too few to leave without a short-term intense increase in casualties.
3. There will be no real turnover of security responsibilities  to Iraqis as long as we have troops in Iraq.
4. We are an occupation army that has failed the first responsibility of occupation, bringing order to the streets of every city in Iraq.  We failed because we never saw ourselves as an occupation army.  Early in the war, our soldiers complained in interviews in the media, “I wasn’t trained to do law enforcement.  I was trained to fight the enemy.”
5. If we are serious about staying the course, we need to deploy the same concentration of troops that occupied Germany in World War II.  That would mean about 3 million trained troops.  But we know that Republicans and other supporters of the war are not willing to volunteer themselves, their children, or their grandchildren to be these troops.  As Donald Rumsfeld said, “We fight with the army we have.”
6. If we are serious about staying the course, we need to finance the war honestly.  We now have spent approximately $300 billion in over two years on the war.  We don’t know exactly because it has been off budget, lacking the oversight of the Congress and the people, fudged figures and unreal estimates.  And financing the war honestly means repealing the Bush tax breaks and increasing taxes to actually cover repaying the cost of the war within three years after its end.  We will never have Rumsfeld’s 12 year war because it will bankrupt us.
7. The war is not and never was about the war on terror.  In fact the words “war on terror” are code for war without end.  As long as we frame our actions as a war on terror, we will be in war without end.  There are three distinct activities going on –  a war in Afghanistan, a war in Iraq, and an international secret action that has seemingly lost its way.  We must stop confusing these three.  We must deal with each individually.
8. The consequences of our action in Iraq is civil war.  The only thing policy might do is lessen its intensity, shorten its duration, and contain its effects.  But none of those will happens as long as we have troops in Iraq.
9. The US will not control the oil of Iraq.  Ever.
10. The US will not establish 14 permanent bases in Iraq.  Nor has there been a justification of why the US needs to.
11. The future of Iraq depends on the actions of the states that border Iraq, the “frontline nations”.  Their active consensus about Iraq’s future will determine the length and intensity of the civil war in Iraq.  The more meddling, the more catastrophe.
12. The US will not get the support of the rest of the world in anything it does in Iraq without a specific, detailed, honest, and formal apology to the United Nations for our fraudulent use of the Security Council in going to war.  
13. The US will not regain the trust of the rest of the world regarding our foreign policy until we reaffirm our commitment to strictly enforce the Geneva Accords in our own institutions and until we ratify participation in the International Criminal Court.
14. The US owes the world the prosecution of the people who embezzled the Oil for Food money that was turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority.  The US owes the Iraqi people the restoration of those funds.
15. Leaving abruptly will neither help US troops nor the Iraqi people unless there is a political context that minimizes the danger to US troops and guarantees the good faith intervention of frontline states in reducing the conflicts leading to civil war.
16. An exit strategy is not the same thing as a timetable.  It is possible to develop an exit strategy.  It is not possible to  develop a timetable without considering contingencies.
17. The troops that the US sent to Iraq have been horribly abused by the administration of the US government.  They deserve our honor, our thanks, our apology, and whatever support required to put their lives back together.
18. Osama bin Laden and other al Quaeda leaders are still on the loose.  Being able to capture them requires the good offices of both the Pakistani, Afghani, and Iranian governments.  The diplomacy to get that support is going to be very difficult for a lot of historical reasons.
19. The situation in Afghanistan has suffered the same neglect since the beginning of the Iraq war that it did after the departure of the Soviet army.  The US has abandoned them twice.  And the government in Kabul is losing more and more power to the provincial governors, who have returned to being war lords.
20. Terrorist organizations like al Quaeda and other jihadis are organized crime organizations.  Governments deal best with organized crime organizations through the use of international law enforcement and intelligence.  These activities are often more macho, more hardnosed, and more difficult than the use of the military.  And we have not given the people who do these investigations the respect that they deserve.
21. Diminishing our own civil liberties might be expedient but it will not restore our respect in the world.  The world respects America for its rule of law, its acknowledgement of human rights, and its continued striving to make it lofty words real within its own borders.
22. Anti-muslim bigotry is a threat to US national security.
23. The current administration has lied about or caricatured every one of these realities in an effort not to be held accountable for its policies.

The Strategy

1. De-couple the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and the actions against terrorist organizations and individuals.
2. Let the American people decide our policy for Iraq based on describing the pro’s, con’s of several policy options and the commitment required of them.  Let’s start treating voters as grownups.

Option 1:  Finishing the job in Iraq
Pro’s:

• A stable, democratic Iraq with a government that is sort of like the government of Turkey would be a success story.
• What has become a nest of jihadis and terrorist will be cleaned up.
• Saddam Hussein will be held accountable through the rule of law.

Con’s:

• We really don’t know what “finishing the job means” because no one, not even the Iraqis, not even the insurgents knows what is going on in Iraq.
• We would be hard pressed to do this from our fortification in the Green Zone.
• A substantial increase in the number of troops in Iraq would be required, maybe as many as three million troops.
• Even pro-war conservatives are not willing to go there themselves.
• The financial cost would be enormous, approaching $1 trillion, and would require a massive tax increase in order to just service the debt.

Commitments:

• Sending America’s sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfather to join those already in Iraq.  This includes undergoing intensive training and possibly learning a foreign language.  Roughly 30 people from each and every <u>precinct</u&gt in America.
• Repealing the Bush tax cuts; increasing taxes on individuals and especially on corporations; closing lots and lots of tax loopholes; imposing windfall taxes on defense industry corporations.
• To our children and grandchildren; this debt will be paid off in 10 years.
• To the world; no permanent US bases in Iraq; end to extrajudicial detentions and torture; restoration of funds embezzled from the Iraqi people.
• Recovering funds for fraudulent claims by defense contractors, such as Halliburton.
• Reconstruction of what we have destroyed in Iraq; the counterpart to the Marshall Plan for Europe.

Option 2:  Immediate withdrawal of troops
Pro’s:

• We are no longer the excuse for an insurgency.
• Our troops can rejoin their families.
• We have removed ourselves for an immoral and illegal war.
• Iraqis have their country back.
• The federal budget is no longer bleeding massive deficits.
• We can think of ourselves as a peaceful country again.

Con’s:

• The logistics of withdrawing troops before the end of the insurgency are high.
• Our withdrawal immediately starts the jockeying, conflict, and even civil war among ethnic groups and political factions.
• The disposition of Saddam Hussein himself is unclear.  He might be murdered, but he might also regain power.
• The possibility of a widening war in the region as Iran protects the Shi’ites, Saudi Arabia protect the Wahabi Sunnis, and Turkey attacks the Kurds.

Commitments:

• Sending in sufficient troops to minimize the number of US casualties.
• Understanding in advance that there will be a jump in casualties.
• Constructing the story by which reversing course because of a mistake is not a defeat.
• Convening an honest-to-goodness truth commission to examine responsibility for the decision to go to war.
• Encouraging the European Union, the UN, and the Arab League to use their influence with the frontlines states to prevent meddling in Iraqi politics and to contain the conflict within Iraq.
• Obtaining authorization from the UN to convene a war crimes trial for Saddam Hussein.
• Ensuring that Saddam Hussein is transported to the Hague.
• Repealing the Bush tax cuts; increasing taxes on individuals and especially on corporations; closing lots and lots of tax loopholes; imposing windfall taxes on defense industry corporations.
• To our children and grandchildren; this debt will be paid off in 10 years.
• Recovering funds from fraudulent claims by defense contractors, such as Halliburton.
• Reconstruction of what we have destroyed in Iraq; the counterpart to the Marshall Plan for Europe.

Option 3:  A timetable for withdrawal
Pro’s:

• Some of the insurgents will be interested in a political place in the postwar government.
• There is a date certain when there are no longer US troops in Iraq.
• The families of our troops have something to look forward to–the return of their loved ones.
• There is time to put together some of the more difficult negotiations that might prevent a civil war or a regional war.
• The disposition of Saddam Hussein can be arranged so that he has no possibility of returning to power.  He could be delivered over for trail.
• It doesn’t look like cutting and running.
• It is possible to have neutral troops separate the combatants-the US, the insurgents, the Kurdish peshmurga, the jihadis, the Shi’ite militants (such as Sadr), the Sunni militants, and the ex-Baathists.

Con’s:

• Having a timetable might not encourage the insurgents to move to a political footing but intensify their attacks.
• The approaching date of withdrawal starts the jockeying, conflict, and even civil war among ethnic groups and political factions.
• The possibility of a widening war in the region remains.
• The likelihood of a “Fall of Siagon” photo op is increased.
• What do you tell the last person to die from a mistake.

Commitments

• Sending in sufficient troops to minimize the number of US casualties.
• Understanding in advance that there will be a jump in casualties.
• No permanent bases in Iraq.
• Reconstruction of Iraq
• Obtaining authorization from the UN to convene a war crimes trial for Saddam Hussein.
• Ensuring that Saddam Hussein is transported to the Hague.
• Repealing the Bush tax cuts; increasing taxes on individuals and especially on corporations; closing lots and lots of tax loopholes; imposing windfall taxes on defense industry corporations.
• To our children and grandchildren; this debt will be paid off in 10 years.
• Recovering funds from fraudulent claims by defense contractors, such as Halliburton.
• Reconstruction of what we have destroyed in Iraq; the counterpart to the Marshall Plan for Europe.

There are probably options that mix these three, but what is striking is what has to be done no matter which option is chosen.  The other striking thing is the choice is something like this.  You can come up with another 3 million troops to finish the job or you can come up with an additional 150,000 troops to help get our troops out of there.  The people who support the need to end their delusion that reality is just a matter of saying so.  The people who argue for immediate withdrawal need to think through this carefully; what would you have to do to avoid disaster during withdrawal and still move the troops out; otherwise, you are advocating endangering the troops (and Iraqis) more than they already are.  The people who support a timetable need to understand that a timetable does not make it any easier and in the process you are losing more troops (and Iraqis) by a war of attrition.

So how do we start to build an unified view that is an alternative to the Republican dreamland?