David Ignatius’ four alarm fire analogy for Iraq provides a good framework for thinking about Iraq.
Maybe we should think like firefighters. They try to save every life they can, but they don’t take crazy risks. When a fire is really roaring, they don’t stand in the middle of the inferno. The potential loss of life is too great, and the likelihood they can stop the fire too small. So they make strategic choices: They try to contain the blaze, letting it burn out in the red-hot center while they hose down nearby buildings and construct firebreaks that can check the fire’s spread.
What’s unimaginable is that a firefighter confronting a dangerous blaze would simply roll up the hoses, jump in the engine and drive away, consequences be damned. He might be furious at the people who caused the fire and frustrated with the first engine company that let it get worse. But those aren’t reasons for abandoning the scene.
Most American politicians are unable to say it out loud, but the ‘people who caused the fire’ are the neoconservatives and a cowardly Congress. In a sense, Ignatius is asking an arsonist to put out the fire he set. But, nonetheless, the analogy is worth considering because it does provide a useful context.
A “firehouse strategy” would make triage decisions. It would deploy U.S. forces so that they aren’t caught in the middle of collapsing walls and blazing timbers. It would emphasize the training of Iraqi forces to fight the blaze. It would build firebreaks so the disaster doesn’t spread to other rooms in the Iraqi house. Most of all, a firehouse strategy would try to keep this sectarian blaze from jumping national boundaries.
The most important thing we can do is to arrest the arsonists. Or at least we should remove them positions of command. Only then will we be able to consider firebreaks and other ways of containing the fire they set. Whether we should have some residual forces in Iraq is debatable. Perhaps they could be useful along the Turkish border. Perhaps they might have other limited uses as firebreaks. But what is not debatable is that we can’t fight this blaze under the leadership of the people that illegally ignited it.
