The catastrophe that is Iraq is so complicated that it simply can’t be fairly addressed in the blog format. If there is an area where bloggers can rightfully be blamed for non-seriousness, it is in discussion of the consequences of America’s monumental failure in Iraq. A small part of this has to do with a lack of foreign policy expertise or access to unbiased intelligence reports. But a bigger part just has to do with the format. To truly address what I consider to be our options, I think I’d have to write a book. At minimum, I’d have to write a long-form piece more suited to Vanity Fair than a blog. So, it’s not really a lack of seriousness. It’s a lack of space and a lack of time.
There are two long-form pieces available today. One is from the New York Times and the other (indispensable) one is in The New Yorker. I encourage you to read all the way through these two pieces.
The New Yorker piece, in particular, makes a compelling case that the options currently being put forward by Edwards, Clinton, and Obama are the worst of both worlds. They’re worse than a total withdrawal and they are worse that the status quo.
Again, I encourage you to read those two pieces in their entirety. I can’t do justice to them by cutting and pasting, particularly because they challenge some common wisdom on the left.
Since this is a blog and we like discussion, I will excerpt one part here. It relates to ‘David Kilcullen, an Australian counter-insurgency adviser who served on Petraeus’s staff in the first half of the year’ and who ‘also served on the strategic-assessment team, which was led by Colonel H. R. McMaster, of the U.S. Army; David Pearce, of the State Department; and Colonel James Richardson, of the British Army.’ He lays out a priority list of American interests in the region.
While serving on the assessment team, Kilcullen drew up a list of core American interests in Iraq, which he later gave to senior officials at the White House and the State Department. In order of priority, the list contained the following items: maintain the flow of oil and gas in the region; prevent the establishment of an Al Qaeda safe haven in Iraq; contain Iranian influence; prevent a regional war; prevent a humanitarian catastrophe on the scale of Rwanda; and restore American credibility in the region and in the world (which Kilcullen called “the master interest,” and which doing all the others would go a long way toward achieving).
Notice that ‘preventing a regional war’ fell far below ‘maintain the flow of oil and gas in the region.’ So did preventing ‘a humanitarian catastrophe on the scale of Rwanda.’ I actually do not disagree with that. The interruption of oil and gas from the region could create a humanitarian crisis in the developed world that would surely ripple across the international markets and cause widespread hardship everywhere.
But this prioritization, cynical as it is, gives just an inkling of how bad our situation has become. In the end, we will have to accept that our policies have caused a humanitarian crisis and regional war…and our lack of resources will force us to save our own skins while we simply try to contain the fallout.
But, again, you really have to read the two pieces to put yourself in the right kind of state of mind to understand how truly screwed we are.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the Ambassador to the United Nations, who spent almost two years as the U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad, trying in vain to bring about a political compact, sketched the possible fallout in stark terms. Without Americans present, he asked, “could it intensify into a terrible situation in which you get massacres, and that not only leads to escalation in Iraq but affects others? The losing side may ask for help from its brethren next door. We cannot stand aside and let these terrible things go on.”
Actually, we’ll have no choice.
