David Brooks (The New York Times): Winning in Iraq

[Jack Rabbit]

From The New York Times
Dated Sunday August 28

Winning in Iraq
By David Brooks

Andrew Krepinevich is a careful, scholarly man. A graduate of West Point and a retired lieutenant colonel, his book, "The Army and Vietnam," is a classic on how to fight counterinsurgency warfare.

Over the past year or so he's been asking his friends and former colleagues in the military a few simple questions: Which of the several known strategies for fighting insurgents are you guys employing in Iraq? What metrics are you using to measure your progress?

The answers have been disturbing. There is no clear strategy. There are no clear metrics.

Krepinevich has now published an essay in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, "How to Win in Iraq," in which he proposes a strategy. The article is already a phenomenon among the people running this war, generating discussion in the Pentagon, the C.I.A., the American Embassy in Baghdad and the office of the vice president.

Read more.

I post this not because it makes sense, but to show how the situation in Iraq has spun out of control and how foolish Mr. Bush's supporters now look. Mr. Brooks' argument might have looked more attractive a year ago, but even then it might have been doomed.

It assumes that the Iraq insurgency is anti-American and anti-democratic, which is at least partially true. However, this is no longer a mere insurgency against foreign occupation. It has become civil war. By cutting Sunni negotiators out of the constitutional process, the Shia and Kurds have unwisely thrown the Sunnis into the camp of those willing to take up arms to resist the new Iraq because it offers them nothing.

If the insurgency were made up simply of anti-western fanatics and terrorists like Zarqawi, the ideas of Krepinevich promoted here by Mr. Brooks would make some sense. However, the situation is rapidly spinning beyond that into one where Iraq is being divided on sectarian and ethnic lines. The insurgency represents no small fanatic minority of Islamic ideologues, but Sunni Arabs desiring a stake in the new order.

The fighting in Bosnia was also broken on sectarian and ethnic lines. Where did a Bosnian Muslim go to find a safe haven from a Bosnian Serb militia? Where did the residents of Sarajevo go to escape Serb snipers and rocket launchers in the high ground above their city? After snipers killed one victim, they would then target the funeral. The enemy was anybody whose ancestors worshiped God the wrong way, without distinction between military and civilian. Where did the residents of Srebrenica go to escape General Mladic and his thugs?

Iraq is being Balkanized before our eyes. In that kind of environment, there will be no safe havens where civilians can be protected. It may be now too late to create one.

[bemildred]

1. At this point the comparison with the place formerly known as Yugoslavia

seems well made. But this time we have 130K troops on the
ground, and every one of the neighboring states has a stake
in the outcome.

[Jack Rabbit]

4. For for the purposes of this piece, the analogy is good enough

You're right about it not being perfect.

However, the policy that put 130K troops there was so bad that they were unable to prevent a civil war. Since neighboring states have a stake in the outcome (e.g., Turkey does not want to see an independent Kurdish state, even one carved wholly out of Iraq), the possibility of foreign troops invading to protect their own interests, which they will call "security", is far from remote.

[bemildred]

6. Turkey, Iran, and Syria all have a stake in the Kurdish issue.

And the waxing of Iranian/Shiia influence similarly affects
various neighbors, in particular the effect on Pakistan
and Saudi Arabia worries me. Both have restive Shiia
sub-populations.

[soupkitchen]

2. David "Butterknife" Brooks

Kissing establishment ass with panache.

[TahitiNut]

3. 100% foreseen. Not a single word is new.

We all knew this when we protested in the streets of San Francisco in October 2002. There can be no doubt that the Bushoilini Regime didn't act with 'reckless disregard' - instead they acted with deliberate disregard and have intentionally fomented a generational destabilization and destruction of the Middle East.

[Jade Fox]

10. Exactly.

[Emendator]

5. Chaostan

The political-economist Richard Mayberry describes the world as divided into three types of societies. Societies of either liberty, tyranny, or chaos. Liberty is confined to the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Australia. These areas have developed property rights and contract law, the two most important ideas that determine whether a society grows or not.

Where these ideas have not taken root, the choice is only between tyranny and chaos. If you destroy a tyranny, only chaos can result. He calls this area of the world chaostan. While a tyranny can gradually develop into liberty, chaos cannot. Iraq, welcome to chaostan.

[KoKo]

7. This must be the David Brook's article Joe Biden mentioned as a

good solution as to what to do in Iraq, in his interview with Stephanopolis this morning.

Biden thought it sounded better than Feingold or Hart's ideas on Iraq.

[Jack Rabbit]

8. Biden for President?

Biden is wondering why the prospect of his running for President bearly rates two cheers from most people.

[bpilgrim]

9. "not because people have given up on the goal of advancing freedom"

"Today, public opinion is turning against the war not because people have given up on the goal of advancing freedom, but because they are not sure this war is winnable. Why should we sacrifice more American lives to a lost cause?"

what BS. people are turning against it because they KNOW we have accomplished our main goals, NO WMD & NO Saddam... and now they got a constitution to boot.... people recognize there is nothing else we can do there.

peace

[edhopper]

11. This is Thomas Friedman type

Bullshit.
"Yeah the war is going badly and looks like a mass of mistakes. But if they did it right from now on it could be won. Or at least the goals I GIVE for the war, not the WH's, could be achieved."
Utter bullshit from another war supporter trying to back peddle.

[Jack Rabbit]

12. Interesting that you should mention Tom Friedman

During the run up to the war and for a short time afterward, I used to post point-by-point critiques of his pieces from The New York Times. I still excoriate Friedman for supporting a war that even he could see would go badly simply because the wrong people were leading it. Whatever their merits and demerits, Friedman deserves credit for giving better reasons for going to war in Iraq than Bush and the neocons did. I wasn't persuaded by Friedman any more than I was persuaded by Dick Cheney, but it doesn't matter. What Friedman never quite realized is that invading Iraq was going to be Mr. Bush's war, not his.

In that respect, it might be hard to say that Friedman is back peddling. He foresaw from the start what some of the problems might be if Bush and his people simply tried to impose their will on Iraq as they have; the difference between Friedman and those of us who demonstrated against the war in the Winter/Spring of 2003 is that he thought there were other good reasons to go to war and that it could turn out well in the end, thus making it worthwhile. The rest of knew that whatever the merits of ousting Saddam, Bush would screw it up and that Bush was less interested in helping the Iraqi people than in helping his corporate cronies help themselves to Iraq's natural resources and assets.

I don't think Friedman ever said who he voted for last year, but my guess is it was Kerry and for very different reasons than I had for voting for Kerry.

Brooks, on the other hand, is a shameless Bush booster desperately trying to make his man look like one of history's great leaders. He believes what he's written here, but I don't think he understands or cares about the Iraqi people any more than Bush or Cheney.

As a plan for what to do, this is another non-starter.