The Belgravia Dispatch: Department of Cascading Blunders

January 13, 2007

Department of Cascading Blunders

The FT editorializes (more wisely than any American paper appears capable):

Mr Bush’s body language in the speech bespoke a chastened man. Yet, caught in a wilfully spun web of delusion and denial, he seems still unable to comprehend the depths of the debacle he has caused in Iraq.
Iraq has reached advanced societal breakdown, with ethnic cleansing on a regional, neighbourhood and even street-by-street basis. There has been a mass exodus of its professionals and managers, civil servants and entrepreneurs, a haemorrhage of its future. The time for the occupying authorities to have surged was 2003, after the fall of Baghdad; like everything they have tried since, this is far too little, much too late. The US deployed a similar number of troops last summer to “lock down” Baghdad, since when the number of killed in the capital alone has rocketed to more than 100 a day, while on average an attack occurs against Anglo-American forces every 10 minutes, and this in a fight now mainly between the minority Sunni deposed from power and the hitherto dispossessed Shia majority drunk with it.

It is hard, even for ardent democrats, to see this Iraq as a young democracy fighting for its life, as Mr Bush’s discourse of good guys against bad guys would have it. The invasion has solidified a system divided into sects and operating on the basis of patronage and intimidation. The composition of parliament is nearly two thirds Islamist. There are no institutions. Ministries are sectarian booty and factional bastions. The one institution that did more or less survive Saddam Hussein, the national army, was disbanded by the occupation and current attempts to reconstitute it have failed to move beyond rebadged militia. The three brigades the Shia-dominated government of Nuri al-Maliki has promised to add to the five extra US brigades are mostly Peshmerga – Kurdish militiamen – adding another account to be settled once the Americans withdraw.

What is still, in spite of Mr Bush’s attempts to dress it up, an essentially military strategy is just not credible. The US army is not designed to deal with insurgency and, in any case, does not have the troops to master one on this scale – especially if its own masters are planning to open a new front.

It has failed to control the insurgency in the Sunni triangle – a rebellion by a minority of the minority. Now it aims to confront Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shia radical, and his 60,000-strong Mahdi army, in a fight that could set fire to east Baghdad and south Iraq, where British troops could easily be enveloped in the flames.

The contradiction at the heart of the US approach, however, is this: after casually overturning the Sunni order in Iraq and empowering the Shia in an Arab heartland country for the first time in nearly a millennium, Washington took fright at the way this had enlarged the power of the Shia Islamist regime in Iran. Now, while dependent on Tehran-aligned forces in Baghdad, and unable to dismantle the Sunni Jihadistan it has created in western Iraq, the US is trying to put together an Arab Sunni alliance against Iran. This is a fiasco with the fuel to combust into a region-wide conflagration.

The only feasible way forward is the approach of the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton commission – which the new US Congress should embrace and insist on.

This would make support for the Iraqi government and army conditional on their real effort to promote national reconciliation, which would in turn, as it progressed, be rewarded with billions of dollars in long-term aid from the US and Iraq’s neighbours. This external support – from Turkey to Saudi Arabia and Iran to Syria – would be built up within a wide-ranging diplomatic offensive in the region that would include Tehran and Damascus. Mr Bush is instead threatening to expand the war.

“Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops” he said on Wednesday. “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria.” The Iraq surge is beginning to look like the Vietnam escalation, spilling over into Iran and Syria the way that one did into Cambodia and Laos. [my emphasis]

How did the world's leading nation, 300 million strong, end up with a national security team this myopically mediocre, one that risks compounding blunder upon blunder? And what now can be done, with the ISG's attempted intervention having (mostly) failed?

Posted by Gregory at January 13, 2007 03:11 PM

Comments

How did we end up here? Stupid people voted for sizzle instead of steak. We've gotten the exact government we asked for.

Posted by: CharleyCarp at January 13, 2007 04:01 PM | Permalink to this comment

Hearings, hearings, more hearings, and possibly impeachment. For a long time I've pooh poohed those who called for impeachment as unserious, and that the process would be politically untenable. But now I believe it may be necessary.

Posted by: RWB at January 13, 2007 04:05 PM | Permalink to this comment

We had to get that guy...Saddam ...you know the one who got us on 911!!!!!

Posted by: centrist at January 13, 2007 04:17 PM | Permalink to this comment

How did the world's leading nation, 300 million strong, end up with a national security team this myopically mediocre, one that risks compounding blunder upon blunder?

I really don't get any joy out of rubbing your nose in it over and over, so instead of the obvious retort, how about I offer you a deal?

In return for my promising not rubbing your nose in it over and over, you promise never to say, nor to listen to, nor agree with, people who do say, "Democrats have no credibility on national security/military issues," and/or "No matter how bad Republican Candidate X is, Democratic Candidate Y would be even worse."

Deal?

Posted by: CaseyL at January 13, 2007 05:17 PM | Permalink to this comment

caseyl-yes to the first prong (won't ever automatically dismiss Dem's cred on national security matters writ large again), but can't sign on to the second in full (as that's more case by case, meaning i'd have to judge each time on the specific merits). at least as of today, however, and i'm obviously surprised to write this: i'm currently leaning hillary over mccain in '08. all this said, despite the mega-clustereff in Iraq, i think if kerry had precipitously pulled out we might (at least arguably) be even worse off than the terrible straits we're in today, as frustrating as i know it is for you (and other readers) to hear this from me. anyway, a muddled response likely not satisfactory to you, i know, but that's where i'm at. and, for avoidance of doubt, do note i'd certainly never ever casually make the argument that "No matter how bad Republican Candidate X is, Democratic Candidate Y would be even worse". such an argument would have to be, at very least, specific and detailed. deal, or?

Posted by: greg djerejian at January 13, 2007 05:38 PM | Permalink to this comment

I'm not sure how a "precipitous" pull-out (which I don't actually remember Kerry advocating) could have been worse than what is, unless you mean the number of people fleeing Iraq would be double what they are now, many of them clamoring to get into the US. However, that's a might-have-been/never-was, with no hard data to argue either way.

For the rest: yes, we have a deal :)

Posted by: CaseyL at January 13, 2007 05:58 PM | Permalink to this comment

The reason you guys are left with these types of people is because of tribalism: a.k.a. Group Think. There is no margin in telling Truth to Power - thus only the untruthful get promoted.

Posted by: pen Name at January 13, 2007 08:03 PM | Permalink to this comment

It was a fine editorial, but pitiful that only the FT is stating the obvious.

With a discernable sense of desperation I may add. Indeed if one takes into account Luce's and Stephen's comments/opinion pieces, I'd say the FT is positively banging on pots.

Posted by: The Lounsbury at January 13, 2007 08:55 PM | Permalink to this comment

Greg,
What are the differences between John Kerry's position in 2004 and the Baker-Hamilton Group's proposals?
Indeed, Howard Dean rejected the notion of a unconditional pull-out during his campaign. I believe it was only Kucinich among the Democrats who advocated that position. When the helicopters take off from the Green Zone as a coalition of Shia militias and Iranian paramilitary units overrun Bagdhad, it will be tempting to say that the Cleveland congressman was at least, prescient.

Posted by: Tom at January 13, 2007 09:59 PM | Permalink to this comment

Iraq has been overblown as a war to settle everything.

When it is only one of the first battles in the war that will not end anytime in the near future.

The same with the Afghan. It is just one of the opening battles.

Now, if you think winning any kind of long term war, can be won by just up and quitting the first battles, just think about that for awhile.

The U.S. was ill prepared for these battles as they have developed.
But we have been learning. Not only militaryly but in the political, civil and practical sense.

We will do much better in the coming years. It won't be easy, or fast or pretty, but we will make fewer mistakes.

That's the way wars always go. The ones that learn the most and use that knowledge against their enemy usually win.

Usually...

Papa Ray
West Texas
UsA

Posted by: Papa Ray at January 14, 2007 05:50 AM | Permalink to this comment

Papa Ray

I think that there is persuasive evidence that the Bush administration actually did up and quit the first battle .... in Afghanistan ...... to concentrate on Iraq.

Posted by: dan at January 14, 2007 03:48 PM | Permalink to this comment

Not to forget the corporate class and their (mostly) wholly owned mass media, who only want one of their own in power. They hated Clinton, a moderate who compromised willingly, because . . . I guess because he wasn't a wholly owned subsidiary. And they got Bush and Cheney, who should have been wholly owned subsidiaries, but turned out to be dangerous fanatics. Will they learn?

Posted by: Invigilator at January 15, 2007 12:16 AM | Permalink to this comment

Papa Ray -

I understand your perspective on the ultimately larger scope of the war. But I'm not sure that it will play out that way. The American Public is not interested in a larger war on terrorism. At least not in the literal sense. They will not support our invading another country. So, though you see more battles to be fought, I don't think that will actually happen. Nor should it, in my view. The cost would be much higher than the benefit.

But regardless, Americans are not willing to make the sacrifices that would be required (i.e., higher taxes, a possible draft, etc.). And I don't think the current administration has the credibility to scare them into it again.

Posted by: kilfarsnar at January 19, 2007 08:32 PM | Permalink to this comment

Consider First Manassas in our own civil war. The yankees lost hands down. They worked hard to build up their forces after that. The confederates won and a lot of them felt like they'd won the war. The victory disorganised them maybe more than a defeat would have.

If Pap Ray is right about this being one of the first battles, we might be better off to lose it than if we could somehow win.

Posted by: J Thomas at January 20, 2007 06:46 PM | Permalink to this comment