There is a certain kind of wisdom, we can call it “conventional” or “insider” or “beltway” wisdom, that places a tremendous amount of emphasis on America’s “prestige”. I spent a few hours last night reading about our nation’s policy toward Chile in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. It was interesting. Our intelligence agencies and wise men agreed that we had no vital interests in Chile. But they still saw it a grave threat to our prestige to have the Chilean people elect a socialist leader. So we spent millions to destabilize and ultimately topple Salvadore Allende’s government and replace it with a savage military junta. That didn’t do a whole lot for our image in the world. I don’t think it added to our overall level of prestige. Unless, that is, you base our prestige on how much other nations fear us.
Our adventure in Iraq is hurting our prestige in both senses of the word. It has been crippling to our moral standing in the world. But it has also exposed us, once again, as a paper tiger. If the Bush administration hoped to prove that we could sustain casualties without cutting and running, they have not proven that we can mobilize the nation (through a draft, increased taxes, full deployment, and industrial efforts) to accomplish a military task. We can take casualties…for a while…but only if the casualties are all volunteer and the war is paid for by our children.
David Ignatius doesn’t really understand this. To David, our problems can be solved by firing Donald Rumsfeld. He sees the revolt of the generals as merely a matter of Rumsfeld’s leadership.
Rumsfeld should resign because the Bush administration is losing the war on the home front. As bad as things are in Baghdad, America won’t be defeated there militarily. But it may be forced into a hasty and chaotic retreat by mounting domestic opposition to its policy. Much of the American public has simply stopped believing the administration’s arguments about Iraq, and Rumsfeld is a symbol of that credibility gap. He is a spent force…
On the surface, I can agree with this assessment. Our soldiers will never be defeated in Iraq. The war is not lost because our soldiers have done a poor job. The war is lost because we do not have the national will to impose the resources, not to mention the level of violence necessary, to turn the different Iraqi factions into quiescent actors subservient to a central government. We can’t get it done. Ignatius wants to soldier on. I think he knows the truth…but it all about the prestige.
If the Iraqis can form a unity government — and that’s certainly a big “if” — they will need America’s help in pulling the country back from civil war. America now has a better military strategy for Iraq, one that puts more responsibility on Iraqi forces and emphasizes counterinsurgency tactics. And it has a political strategy that is at last reaching out to all the different Iraqi communities — Sunni, Shiite and Kurd — rather than to a handful of former exile leaders. This political-military strategy may fail, but it’s too soon to make that call. To buy some time, the administration needs a new political base. If it continues with the same team, it will get the same result.
He’s says it is too soon to make the call over whether our strategy may fail. But, the strategy has clearly failed. It’s over. Replacing Rumsfeld is a good idea…but not because his replacement will buy the Pentagon more time in Iraq. The war is lost. And the blame lies in the people that brought you mushroom clouds, and mobile bio labs, and links to al-qaeda, and Abu Ghraib. They lied us into war, and they made life worse for the people they liberated. Why would America support that?
