The senior Senator of Virginia, John Warner, dropped a
proverbial turd in the Bush Administration’s punch bowl with his
announcement today that we are on the wrong course in Iraq.
Warner, who is fresh off a plane from Iraq, has tried valiantly to
stand with Bush. No more.
The
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said the U.S. should
consider a “change of course” in Iraq if the government there can’t
stabilize the country in the next two to three months.
Senator John Warner’s comments, after returning from a one- day
visit to Iraq, were the most critical assessments yet from a top
congressional Republican about the government of Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki, who President George W. Bush has championed as a strong
leader. They also may serve notice to the president that even his
strongest allies in Congress may be running out of patience.
Warner, a former Navy secretary and longtime Republican leader on
defense issues, didn’t outline what changes to U.S. strategy should be
made and whether that includes withdrawing or redeploying U.S.
troops. I wouldn’t take any option off the table,” he said
during a news conference today at the Capitol.
Pat
Lang weighs in and the news is not cheery (see below). Put
simply, Iraq will be partitioned. At this juncture U.S.
politicians and policymakers need to put on their thinking caps and
come up with a longterm strategy to ensure that our interests in the
Middle East can be salvaged.
FROM PAT LANG:————————————————————————
John Warner is my senator and I have always respected him greatly.
I continue to do so. In my view he has labored mightily to keep the
ship of state afloat in spite of the Utopian nonsense that has
dominated the Bush Administration. He has done so in spite of the
disrespectful way that Rumsfeld and company have treated his opinions
and nominations of people for important jobs, for example, Secretary of
the Army.
For
him to say that the Maliki government has 90 days to get control of the
situation or the United States should reconsider it options is a major
step. The bomb throwers may not think it is a big deal, but it is. He
says that “no option should be off the table.”
I was taught at the War College (Carlisle) that military strategy
should be made in an orderly fashion based on perceived national
interests. The way this is supposed to happen is that based on such
interests, a national strategy is imagined which combines ALL the civil
and military tools available to the government in a plan intended to
achieve the national interest under consideration. Once that is done,
then military means contributory to that goal are brought into the plan
in a coherent design that always keeps the end state desired in mind.
In other words, military strategy can not be made in a policy
vacuum. In my opinion, no change of deployments or new military
courses of action will have a real meaning unless they are grounded in
a new US foreign policy in the Middle East, and specifically a new
policy intended to deal with Iraq in the context of its own
geo-strategic position in the midst of the Islamic World.
So far, we have been following a policy that envisions revolutionary
change in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East leading to a Utopian and
Earthly Paradise of the sort fantasized by Frum and Perle in their
egregious book, “The End of Evil.” The military strategy we have been
following was inflicted on the armed forces by the Bush Administration
in pursuit of that goal. Large forces were not thought necessary
because Iraq, like the rest of the Middle East, was thought by the Bush
Administration to be a “pile of tinder” awaiting only a match in order
to burst into revolutionary flames. That did not happen. Instead the
various “centrifugal” forces of tribal, and sectarian Iraq are tearing
the country apart while at the same time protesting the authenticity of
their “Iraqiness.”
The game is actually over in Iraq. It has been decided in the
streets and its outcome is symbolized by the piles of tortured corpses
“discovered” each day by the same police who may well have been
complicit in the “drillings” and shootings of the previous night.
Iraq is going to be partitioned. This may be either de facto or de jure but
it will be partitioned. The process of disintegration launched by the
United States in eliminating the mechanisms of state integrity has
progressed so far that effective dissolution of the old Iraq is
inevitable. The recent frustrated desperation evident in the
statements of the US command in Baghdad, and the ridiculous futility of
Dr. Rice’s latest trip are unmistakable signs of disintegration.
Indeed, the partition is now underway.
US forces have been pulled back into the capital for a so far
unsuccessful attempt to quell the violence. Not only has this
concentration been unsuccessful but it has stripped Anbar Province of
troops that were need to deal with growing Sunni insurgent and Islamist
power.
What will the partitioned Iraq look like?
A Kurdish region either completely or nearly independent with
massive oil assets and the city of Kirkuk. Will Turkey accept that?
Ah. That should be the subject of creative diplomacy on all sides.
A “rump” state of Iraq extending from (but not necessarily
including) Baghdad to the Kuwait border. Wealthy in oil, dominated by
the Shia Arabs and friendly to Iran, it may be impossible for this
state to maintain its capital in Baghdad. So far, its security forces
show no sign of being able to control the situation there.
An insurgent “redoubt area” dominated by Sunni Arabs and
international jihadis will cover all of what is now called the “Sunni
Triangle” and perhaps much of Baghdad as well. This “land of
insolence” will be poverty stricken but supported by many states and
individuals in the Sunni Islamic world as a bulwark against further
expansion of the area of Shia triumphalism. The idea has been
“floated” of an economic compact between these three successor entities
which would provide the Sunni Arabs with considerable oil revenue.
This idea underestimates the actual hatred among these groups, but,
nevertheless, such an accord should also be the subject of creative
diplomacy.
A recognition that this partition of Iraq has now become inevitable
and beyond the ability of the United States to prevent is a
pre-condition for the adoption of a “reality based” policy which can
deal with the vital issue of American relations with the pieces of
Iraq. Equally important are the issues of relations among the states
which surround, and influence the tri-partite Mesopotamia of the future.
James Webb, now a candidate for the US Senate, has indicated that an
international conference is needed for the purpose of “launching”
diplomatic efforts to stabilize the region. That is true, but a
pre-requisite for that conference would have to be an American
acknowledgment that its present policy has failed and that a policy of
reconciliation with and among the disputants, including Iran, must take
place before anything fruitful can occur.
A sensible American military strategy would emerge from the adoption of such a policy.
