by Eric Martin
Peter Beinart is worried that if U.S. troops leave Iraq, the civil war will reignite and and all the hard work on the part of our selfless liberators will be for naught. His piece is all over the map (both literally and figuratively) and is as muddled a crie d coeur for the soon-to-be-abandoned Iraq as you'll come across. Abandon. There's that word again. But I digress.
Beinart begins his piece by reaching back into the history of benevolent democracy promotion to resurrect familiar Kiplingesque admonitions:
Sure, America has midwifed a democracy in Iraq. Yet when British troops left their African, Middle Eastern, and Asian dominions, they left behind many embryonic democracies, too. Most soon collapsed.
I'm not sure of the moral from these stories that Beinart wishes to impart on the reader. Is he suggesting that, as with his counsel for U.S. forces in Iraq, British troops should have stayed in those locales indefinitely? Didn't the inhabitants have a say? Would longer dalliances have led to stronger democratic institutions not dependent on, and warped by, foreign interference? Beinart doesn't expand.
One obvious and fundamental lesson would be that colonial rule, aggressive war and alien governance templates imposed from abroad are not conducive to the formation of durable democracies. For Beinart, however, acknowledging this truth would undermine the liberal hawk case for "war for democracy's sake" that he so famously championed in the run-up to the Iraq war. So instead we get this vague and uninspired defense of colonialism and unprovoked war, and the inability of the natives to make good on the gifts bestowed at the barrel of a gun.
After praising the successof "the surge" - a policy whose primary objective was to foster lasting political reconciliation by giving Iraqi groups the room to negotiate outside of the paradigm of intense violence - Beinart provides a detailed, point by point recitation of the surge's glaring failures:
Although security has dramatically improved, Iraq’s leaders have resolved barely any of the conflicts that nearly tore the country apart a few years back. There’s been no agreement on how to distribute oil revenue, on the distribution of power between the federal government and Iraq’s regions, or on the city of Kirkuk, which Arabs and Kurds both claim as their own. Stephen Biddle, a Council of Foreign Relations defense analyst with close ties to General David Petraeus, thinks the potential for civil war remains high, as does former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. As the International Crisis Group’s Peter Harling recently put it, “Nothing” has “been solved in Iraq, fundamentally.”
Beinart cites these fears to support the contention that the U.S. military should remain in Iraq in large numbers past the withdrawal dates outlined in the SOFA. But his warnings belie his recommendations. The problem with the theory of the surge as fostering political reconciliation was that it had the dynamic exactly inverted. Iraqi politicians were not failing to reach a broad political reconciliation because of the fighting, they were fighting because they couldn't reach that political reconciliation. Put a lid on the conflict and those divisions remain, as do the disparate objectives, historical grievances and competition for power that was what was driving the conflict.
But here's the good news: Iraqis appear tired of large scale fighting. Much of the surge's limited success in reducing violence stemmed from Iraqi decisions and other macabre trends not dependent on a temporary spike in troop numbers that came and went already. The various competing groups may just be able to cobble together a patchwork modus vivendi capable of forestalling a descent into chaos. But, as always, another year or two of large scale U.S. troop presence is not going to make or break the outcome, or affect the long term calculus involved for the various groups. They will either choose to compromise, or not, but the choice will be theirs, not ours.
After all, while our troops are supposed to be a force capable of interdicting violence, we should remember that the many tens of thousands of Iraqis that died in the civil wars/insurgencies, as well as the 4 million or so displaced, all suffered their respective fates with over 100,000 troops in country. Not only will Iraqis engage om their civil conflicts with or without us in country, but our presence past the SOFA deadline could ignite insurgent violence provoked directly and solely by our presence.
Regardless, the biggest risks for Iraq are structural, long term divisions and disparities that we can't rectify within the confines of any limited timeline (if at all, and I have serious doubts), and yet we lack the resources to attempt a long term blocking pattern (a fact that Beinart himself acknowledges).
Nevertheless, Beinart marches on:
As a result, it’s a good bet that powerful people in the U.S. military will whisper in Obama’s ear that U.S. troops withdrawals must be slowed down, and that the SOFA must be reupholstered. Ricks, who like Biddle has close ties to the officer corps, says the U.S. will need 30,000 to 50,000 troops in Iraq for a long time if it wants to avoid a civil war that drags in the entire region.
My guess is that Ricks’ view will prevail. The military has invested epic quantities of money and blood in Iraq, and U.S. commanders don’t want it to be in vain.
What's amazing about this analysis is that Beinart completely ignores and demeans the sovereignty of Iraq - despite his ostensible concern for the endurance of Iraq's democracy. While praising one election, and expressing fears about the prospect for subsequent elections, Beinart completely strips the Iraqi people of agency - an opinion even - about such an essential decision as the presence of tens of thousands of foreign troops on Iraqi soil for years to come.
But it's easier to ignore the Iraqis as their position is likely very problematic. As Gregg Carlstrom observes:
And if Ricks really thinks the Iraqi government will revise the status-of-forces agreement to extend the U.S. occupation -- well, he's wrong. Some Iraqi politicians might support that in private, but none will say so in public.
Right. Maliki's rise to popularity was very much buttressed by his claim to having charted the course for American withdrawal. A major reversal now (or in the near future) would undermine his popularity - or the popularity of any successor faction (to the extent his competitors would be so inclined, certainly not the Sadrists).
Marc Lynch makes an excellent point:
The other main headline of the Iraqi election campaign has to be the overwhelmingly nationalist tone of all major politicians and the marginal American role in the process. The election campaign (as opposed to the results, which we still don't know) showed clearly that Iraqis are determined to seize control of their own future and make their own decisions. The U.S. ability to intervene productively has dramatically receded, as the Obama administration wisely recognizes. The election produced nothing to change the U.S. drawdown schedule, and offered little sign that Iraqis are eager to revise the SOFA or ask the U.S. to keep troops longer. Iraq is in Iraqi hands, and the Obama administration is right both to pay close attention and to resist the incessant calls to "do more." This doesn't mean ignoring Iraq -- the truth is, the Obama administration has been paying a lot more attention to Iraq than the media has over the last year. It means moving to develop a normal, constructive strategic relationship with the new Iraqi government, with the main point of contact the Embassy and the private sector rather than the military, and adhering in every way possible to the SOFA and to the drawdown timeline.
It is quite possible that the Iraqi government will request that between 5,000-10,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq passed the SOFA deadline in a training/advisory role. In fact, I'd say the odds are better than even. But a large scale presence is unlikely. And, most importantly, any such limited or large scale presence will be as dependent on Iraqi decisions as U.S. willingness - not based solely on the reluctance of U.S. military personnel to give up their position, and their whisperings in the U.S. President's ear.
After all, you can't raze a democracy to save it.
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