Tom Friedman gets regular bashing by both left and right for being a bit of a light-weight twit who is great at pushing memes but not at digging into whether they actually mean anything on close inspection. Maybe so, but he sometimes he gets it spot on. And he's spot on today on the question of whether to hold elections in Iraq at their appointed time. I couldn't agree more that a postponement, unless initiated by the Shiites, would be worse than a disaster. Trying to temporize by accommodating the Sunnis is a mug's game.
[Aside -- I haven't written anything on the election issue -- or any of the other recently "hot" Iraq topics -- how should we be fighting the insurgents, is it time to start planning to exit, the brouhaha over the "Salvadoran option." That's because I don't see them as distinct issues but rather all of one piece. Since April I have agreed with Friedman's starting premise -- Iraq is already in the midst of a nasty civil war. Since lots of folks are writing about all of these topics, I'm not going to reference other pieces, except to point to The Glittering Eye as a good place for a roundup of some of the "exit" discussions in the past few days.]
Why should we ignore the Sunni delay demands? Well first, the Sunni politicians calling for a postponement aren't really serious (in the sense of hoping to achieve a serious outcome as distinct from seriously wanting the elections postponed). And why do I concluded they aren't really serious?
- There is absolutely no indication that things would be any more calm or secure, or the Sunni population better prepared to participate if elections were postponed. And in the meantime, a great many more Iraqi National Guard, Shiite clergy and leaders, election officials, government officials and, BTW, US troops, would be dead.
- A delay would continue to erode Shiite and Kurdish "patience," see the ongoing decimation of the security forces and government functions, and heighten the growing desparation of the US military who can't figure out what in the world to do with this mess they're in. The only ones who might possibly benefit from the continued deterioration are those who think they'll get more out of some sort of post-civil war bargain than they will out of a post-election bargain. They may be wrong, in which case, no point delaying. They may be right, in which case, they shouldn't be rewarded with a delay.
- The Sunni politicians publicly calling for delays or boycotts are in a no-lose situation -- if they don't get a delay, at least they "stood up for" their constitutents.; if they get a delay, they've demonstrated their personal "power" to get "results." And what happens with a delay? It's clear that a delayed election would still be a security nightmare (and probably worse, not better, after a delay) and the Sunnis won't be able to erase the fact that the Shites are still the majority. But the Sunni politicians won't get the blame, and the chaos and mayhem will all be the fault of the US. (See Friedman's Rule 6)
With that background -- of why Sunni delay calls, whether from old-style "moderate" dignitaries or from the "moderate" (that is, less rabidly extremist) new clerical leaders, fall on my deaf ears -- here's the stuff from Friedman I wish I had the time and, more important, talent to write.
I totally disagree with those who argue that the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections should be postponed. Their main argument is that an Iraqi election that ensconces the Shiite majority in power, without any participation of the Sunni minority, will sow the seeds of civil war.
That is probably true — but we are already in a civil war in Iraq. That civil war was started by the Sunni Baathists, and their Islamist fascist allies from around the region, the minute the United States toppled Saddam Hussein. And they started that war not because they felt the Iraqi elections were going to be rigged, but because they knew they weren't going to be rigged.
They started the war not to get their fair share of Iraqi power, but in hopes of retaining their unfair share. Under Saddam, Iraq's Sunni minority, with only 20 percent of the population, ruled everyone. These fascist insurgents have never given politics a chance to work in Iraq because they don't want it to work. That's why they have never issued a list of demands. They don't want people to see what they are really after, which is continued minority rule, Saddamism without Saddam. If that was my politics, I'd be wearing a ski mask over my head, too.
The notion that delaying the elections for a few months would somehow give time for the "Sunni moderates" to persuade the extremists to come around is dead wrong — literally. Any delay would simply embolden the guys with the guns to kill more Iraqi police officers and to intimidate more Sunnis. It could only convince them that with just a little more violence, they could scuttle the whole project of rebuilding Iraq.
There is only one thing that will enable the Sunni moderates in Iraq to win the debate, and that is when the fascist insurgents are forced to confront the fact that their tactics have not only failed to prevent the elections, but have also dug the Sunnis of Iraq into an even deeper hole.
By boycotting the elections, not only will they lose their unfair share of the old Iraq, they will also have failed to claim even their fair share of the new Iraq. The moderate argument among the Sunnis can prevail only when the tactics of their extremists have proved utterly bankrupt.
For all these reasons, the least-bad option right now for the United States is to forge ahead with the elections — unless the Iraqi Shiites ask for a postponement — and focus all of America's energies not on appeasing the fascist insurgents, but on moderating the Shiites and Kurds, who are sure to dominate the voting.
...[W]e have a much greater chance of producing a decent outcome in Iraq by appealing to the self-interest of the Kurds and the Shiites to be magnanimous in victory, then we do of getting the fascist insurgents to be magnanimous in defeat.
Friedman makes a critical point. It's not a matter of trying to avoid a civil war through elections. The civil war is already underway and intensifying weekly. The issue the US and those Iraqis who might be able to effect an election delay -- primarily Shiite leaders, and Ayatollah Sistani foremost among them -- is how best to conduct the civil war and try to limit its scope, duration and intensity. How to carve out enough space -- literally in security terms, and also in political, social and economic terms -- so a portion of Iraq can get on with the business of trying to build a new nation and a new society.
For the US, the issue is no longer "should be get out." Any Iraqi elected at the end of this month will insist on a US timetable for withdrawal. That is a simple given. The US must demonstrate its willingness to leave on a negotiated timetable that meets the political requirements of the elected Iraqi representatives. Every indication from Donald Rumsfeld is that he understands that reality, and Pres Bush seems increasingly to understand it as well. It's what Robert Novak predicted some months ago. The steady ratcheting downward of expectations since the US elections, accompanied by a continued commitment to those Iraqis who want to participate in building their society, sets the foundation for a post-Jan 30 discussion in the US that can start being framed in more "reality-based" terms.
The question that the US must grapple with, rather than "should we exit," is how to exit, and what the US does along with key Iraqis to get to the point that the US exit won't leave a bloodbath in its wake. The critical issue is how to position and use the US military presence to help the Iraqis limit their civil war and reduce its spillover effects through the rest of the region.
The prospect of a long Lebanaon, with decades of internal disruption sucking in neighboring forces -- both state and non-state -- and in turn spilling outward, has been the gravest of all risks of the US adventure in Iraq from the first moment it appeared as a glimmer in the 2002 State of the Union address. The way we support the new Iraqi government and the manner in which we deploy and withdraw our forces must be fashioned with that larger strategic nightmare clearly in mind.
We see now on one "side" of the civil war not the simple duo of Sunni "moderates" and "fascist extremists" as Friedman describes in his column today. He knows as well as anyone that, like Lebanon, it's a much more complex and highly fluid unholy alliance. In this case, it includes four broad groups of "diehard" opponents who may, at any given time, work together or at least in parallel, but who are certainly capable of turning against each other in a given situation or city, or even neighborhood. They are able to mobilize individual combatants through a variety of means, ranging from religious extremism to cold cash.
- the jihad by Salafis (whether homegrown or imported) against the infidels,
- an inter-sectarian battle within Islam (fitna) - [author of "The War for Muslim Minds," Gilles Kepel:" The crucial issue now is whether Iraq is the new land of jihad or of fitna – a war in the heart of Islam that threatens the faithful with community fragmentation, disintegration and ruin."
- a battle to carve back their power base and personal privileges by the secular Ba'athists from the old regime, and
- the attachment to disorder of the <i>nouveau</i> Sunni quasi-criminal groups and tribes. This last grouping, who were bought off in part by Saddam, thrive in this chaotic environment and are loathe to see their advantages reduced by the emergence of a stable order unless they get something in return for their agreement not to disrupt the new order unduly.
What all of these groups have in common is that not one of them has a political agenda that could be presented to an electorate. For each, a democratic process is fatal to their ambitions. Bizarrely, the generic fatwa against participation in elections by Osama bin Laden is the only honest political position being taken openly. The rest may make noises about elections and democracy eventually, once the US is kicked out, or the rules has been changed to accommodate them. But fundamentally, they have no political program and, with the exception of a few individuals, have no interest in a rebuilt Iraq or in ever seeing the slightest glimmer of democracy emerge.
I certainly do not join Charles Krauthammer in egging on the Shiites and Kurds to take up arms against the Sunnis. But their patience is just about to run its course, and the Sunnis appear not to understand the consequences once the elections have concluded. Any interest the US has in retaining a fig leaf of not "taking sides" will be gone once the elections are held. The US may pressure the Shiites and Kurds to be magmanimous, but when it comes to shooting, it's pretty clear which way the American guns are going to be pointed.
The challenges ahead for the US will be two-fold. To shift the "shot calling" to whatever government in Baghdad emerges after Jan 30. And to reduce the US presence in the cities as much as possible. That means leaving the Sunni triangle to the Sunnis -- other than to harrass their ability to organize the insurgency operations. And reducing the US physical presence in other urban areas as fast as possible.
Complete withdrawal is clearly neither possible nor likely to be demanded by the new government -- they will insist on a timetable for future withdrawal, but they're not suicidal. The US should publicly embrace the notion of a timetable for withdrawal agreed with the new government and engage in publicly visible negotiations over that timetable. BTW, good PR inside Iraq for the Iraqi politicians, good fig-leaf for eventual involvement of other countries who would not be forced to be part of the US-led "multinational coalition", and good for the US, because we could stop playing the denial games for domestic consumption.
At all costs, the US needs to avoid making the mistakes the Israelis made in Lebanon. By continuing their presence, I have been long convinced the Israelis extended the civil conflict. The various sides traded playing off the Israelis against each other, and as Friedman explains in his "Middle East rules" in the same column, each side could always use the Israelis (or the Americans) as the excuse for not compromising and not getting on with managing their own affairs.
It's not a happy conclusion, but although the US may have laid the conditions for this civil war, it belongs to the Iraqis themselves, and the Iraqis are going to have to sort it out themselves. All the US can do is provide some support.
[A further aside. This of course does bring us to the "Salvadoran option," but not in the headline grabbing fashion of some US-funded and run hit squads. Rather, it's a simple fact that if there's a civil war that's waged in the nasty fashion of assassinations, kidnappings, and bombing civilian locations, there will be supporters of the Iraqi government or of parties who participate in that government who will fight fire with fire. And if the US is providing financial and military support to the Iraqi government, there will be some of those supporters who will be close to people in the US government or miltary. It's as fanciful as the more over-the-top suggestions in the Newsweek article for the debunkers of the Newsweek fantasy to think that Rumsfeld and the military commanders aren't quite aware of the dilemma that civil war in Iraq presents to the US military and intelligence services. They are indeed aware of both the Lebanon "model" and the Salvadoran "model." In Iraq, like it or not, the US will probably be faced with a mixture of the two.]
That brings us to US domestic politics and, in our own little sphere, to the various segments of the blogging world that pay attention to the US and Iraq with a bit of seriousness.
As I see it, both US left and right, for the Iraq war or against it at the outset, willing to continue fighting for ten years or advocating total withdrawal last month, should be able to rally around a core set of objectives going forward. We can the fight about how best to achieve those objectives and whether the Bush Admin is taking the right approach. But we've got to stop fighting the last war. The one facing us right now is immensely challenging as it is.
This is tough for me personally to say, because I've opposed what I've viewed as a criminally irresponsible adventure in Iraq since it first appeared even remotely possible. I have bellowed loudly that the Bush Admin's prosecution of the war, occupation and diplomacy was not just incompetent but profoundly wrong-headed and severely damaging to the US' long-term strategic interests.
I still believe it, perhaps even more strongly today than before, if that's possible. But I also know that President Bush, the man who is responsible for this nightmare, also is the man we have in charge to move us and the Iraqis through this disaster. And the approach he has been taking bit by bit since the Nov elections is one that can serve as a basis for those from many sides of this situation to support.
I hate Vietnam analogies, but I think it's time for one. Bush is starting to put together his "peace with honor." And this nation and the Iraqis both need a more successful execution of a "peace with honor" strategy than we managed in Vietnam.
Bush's "peace with honor" is that America didn't cut and run but that America is coming home as the job gets done and as the Iraqis want us to depart. As we depart, we will point to some portion of Iraqis being able to start building a future, to a portion of Iraq that is emerging as an independent society, to America's continued commitment, on the basis of mutual respect between two countries to provide financial and, if requested, military support. These are the objectives of Bush's "peace with honor" as it is taking shape. I can embrace those objectives. If it requires a good deal of fiction and packaging for US domestic consuption to accomplish an American exit that's also in Iraq's interests, I can live with that.
In some ways Bush's "peace with honor" is easier to execute than what Nixon and Kissinger faced. After the Jan 30 elections, the US will have interlocuteurs who owe their positions not to the US but to that portion of the Iraqi electorate that participates in the elections. The "enemies" of those Iraqis and the enemies of the US will not be a group who can be credentialed to bargain about the shape of the negotiating table in Paris. What the US and the Iraqi government agree to with respect to their relations is not for some third party to veto in negotations. They will try to exercise their veto through a successful insurgency. But that insurgency should have no legitimacy in the eyes of most of the rest of the world. The legitimay belongs to the majority of Iraqis who have decided to participate in building an orderly society.
It is oh so tempting, as the credibility gap of the Bush Admin starts to open widely across a number of fronts, to gleefully point out to those who refused to see that the emperor is stark naked. It's a temptation we've got to resist.
Because the other lesson from Vietnam is that we can produce a horribly scarred body politic if Americans perceived they "lost" the Iraq war and start looking for why. It is all too easy for the same fear-mongers who helped Bush win in November to continue their ways in the wake of a "loss" in Iraq. The Vietnam "lessons" will be trotted out. It will be the enemy within -- the blame America firsters, the lack of "will" of the American people when cable brought the war into their living rooms. All the old shiboleths. Once that starts, then the debates over America's role in the world are going to become even more politicized, and the US is going to become an even more unreliable Leviathan-in-decline than it already is. That's not good for the US. That's not good for the world.
Just because the story line and tactics of right versus left from the Vietnam era are oldie and moldie doesn't mean that they aren't incredibly powerful. In fact, they resonate precisely because they've been around for more than a generation, and their wired into the DNA of many people Hey, if the right-wing noise machine can create a brouhaha over Christmas being under attack, just think what they can produce on a subject that cuts as deeply as the Iraq war.
So Iencourage others to "take the pledge" with me. I will try to forego the "I told you sos." I will try to keep my eye on the core objectives and the primary stratetgic dangers. I will hope to heaven that George Bush is successful in navigating this tragedy and putting the US posture in the broader Middle East onto a better footing for the years to come. I will criticize strongly those specific tactics I think are misguided or likely to be counterproductive. I will scream if the Bush Admin seems to be getting off track strategically. But I will support this president in finding a way to mitigate the horrors of the civil war that we helped launched. And I will support him in his efforts to find the "peace with honor" -- regardless of how fabulous or ficticious it may be -- that's acceptable to the American public.
The first afoe European weblog awards