Jenda at Pros and Cons desperately wants to declare victory in Iraq and be done with it (and frequently taunts me for not dong likewise). His latest post makes fun of my concern over local elections. I started to leave a comment, but decided to go full-blown post.

One of the major mistakes I made in the early goings of my support of the Iraq policy,¹ was looking too much at the short term and being all too hopeful about (if not ignoring) the medium-to-long term. Yes, things are better in Iraq now than they were a few years back, but they are hardly peaceful and the process is far from finished and hence it seems foolish to look at the now and declare much of anything. To me, declaring victory at this point is like a football team deciding that they have won early in third quarter because they fought back from a serious first-half deficit and are a touchdown shy of tying the game.² Nirvana has hardly come to Iraq–if it had, then calls for a serious draw-down of troops wouldn’t be considered controversial whatsoever. Indeed, it seems to me that one of the true hallmarks of “victory” is that combat troops can be removed without the threat of a serious spike in violence and that the number of troops on the ground can be reduced with relative ease and speed. The very fact that Obama’s 16-month timetable is considered problematic at all makes the whole “victory” argument a bit strained, it seems to me.³

Even if one’s view is that the US should have a military base in Iraq, and therefore troops will be there indefinitely, it seems to me that one cannot declare “victory” until the only focus of US military policy is the negotiation for said base while the Iraqis take care of Iraq. If they Iraqis can’t sort out the local election issue (not to mention a host of other issues) we are hardly at that point.

In terms of declaring “victory” (an amorphous concept, I will allow), it seems to me that one has to take into account the goals set forth prior to the beginning of the invasion. One of them was the establishment of a stable, at least semi-democratic, state in Iraq. If one doesn’t have functional elected local government, then it hard to say that that goal was anywhere near reached. Beyond that, inherent in the policy was the continued territorial integrity of Iraq, and the issue of the Kurds vis-à-vis the rest of Iraq is not yet settled and it very much linked to questions of local governance (especially as it pertains to Kirkuk). The issue of oil-revenue sharing is also not settled. As such, the local governance issue is hardly some small afterthought (indeed, I thought it was something that should have been addressed early on under Bremer, and am fairly certain I blogged such more than once).

Also, as I have noted before, the fact that a lot of the violence reduction has been the result of ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods makes the whole “victory” argument problematic as it demonstrated clear internal divisions within Iraq that have clearly not be solved for the long-term. Forced segregation hardly is a recipe for long-term peace.

Back to the matter of elections and governance: if at the end of the day Iraq is nothing more than a new flavor of authoritarian government, I hardly see how that qualifies as “victory.” Quite frankly, I think a lot of those who wish to declare victory are simply focusing on the post-Golden Dome attack through to the Surge and are simply looking at the violence, rather than looking at the overall policy or to the future.

We have been in Iraq for over five years, and the notion that at this point “victory” means a reduction in violence after a near civil war and a highly incomplete Iraqi state brings to mind the phrase “defining deviancy down.”⁴ Indeed, one suspects that if one went back to the writings of the diehard supporters of the Iraq policy now, we would not have found them predicting that we would have over 100,000 troops in Iraq and only a quasi-state in place after half a decade.

1. Which I now consider wholly ill-advised and a personal and professional mistake. [↩]
2. Yes, violence is down, but aside from the ousting of Saddam, it is hard to say that the policy has played out anywhere near as promised. And if at the end of the day we have to keep large numbers of troops in Iraq in an security position, then I don’t see how that is “victory”. [↩]
3. I honestly don’t know Jenda’s position on that one, perhaps he support s radical draw down, but I am guessing not. [↩]
4. Or, perhaps, “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” [↩]

7 Comments

1. Me vs. Fred Barnes on the 05 elections in IRaq

   Comment by Hume\’s Ghost — Saturday, August 9, 2024 @ 12:31 pm

2. You can say victory is an amorphous, abstract concept, but in fact it has nearly always been the overwhelming view after any conflict that at least one of the participants can claim victory, while at least one of the participants must admit defeat.

   In the case of Iraq, we knocked over Saddam’s pitifully weak defenses easily. This, in my view, was a blatant exposure of the pretense that was mounted for the run-up to our completely needless invasion of that extremely weak dictator’s country.

   At that point, we could have claimed victory were it not for the profiteer’s extreme greed and desire to prolong the conflict.

   Having destroyed Iraqi infrastructure to a degree that can be understated as vast overkill, it fell upon us to help rebuild the country. Instead of doing that, the profiteers moved in and secured most of the lucrative positions, often delivering nothing, or extremely poor service in return.

   This phase of the “conflict” was nothing more than an occupation of a country with a very active violent resistance and ethnic extremism. But the many casualties in blood, minds and treasure can be attributed to our insistence on occupying the country, our greed in (unsuccessfully) vying for a large cut of its resources and our over-reliance on payments of protection money.

   So one can say we were definitely victorious at one point, but we then blew the handling of the aftermath big-time. We failed to secure the arms stores and national treasures, and we provoked resistance by our continued occupation.

   Let’s call a spade a spade, and stop with mincing words that have a very clear meaning. Of course, I understand that you can look at victory in different dimensions (loss of life, loss of territory, loss of moral ground, etc), but there are traditional measures that can are usually applied, and by these, we won this totally unprovoked war long ago.

   If you deny these blatant truths, then you are subscribing to the myths being peddled by the profiteers.

   Comment by Mark Stein — Saturday, August 9, 2024 @ 1:09 pm

3. ps- Your post is quite good, and I basically agree with your view of the situation in Iraq. I especially like your narrative of the realities such as ethnic cleansing, which seem to be out of fashion in the traditional media these days (the “success” of the Surge being the popular theme).

   To be honest, I consider any situation in which war erupts to be a defeat suffered on all sides, a defeat of humanity (hopefully just one battle lost in the eternal struggle for humanity).

   Comment by Mark Stein — Saturday, August 9, 2024 @ 1:19 pm

4. I’m not sure that the “die-hard supporters of the early Iraq policy” are all cut from the same mold. Back in those days I was still in the Army special forces community. I believed then (and still believe) that Iraq - according to the information we had at the time - was a danger that would have to be dealt with sooner or later. I supported the early policy because it was doing SOMETHING about the problem, rather than passing it off for another ten years and allowing it to grow into a bigger threat.

   However, I’ve always had issues with the execution, and a lot of us, though we supported the action at the time, saw it as the lesser of two evils. If people like me had what we wanted we would have invaded with a force twice the size of what we used, and the post-invasion insurgency would have had a much harder time of it. And really, when it comes to it, fear of the insurgents is what is behind the failure of the state to morph into something solid and functional. Separating security from politics in Iraq is impossible; for political processes to work there must be security. Otherwise there is fear of reprisal from minority groups who didn’t get their way, and will those groups boycott the whole thing and turn to the insurgents for help making their voices heard.

   The problem is that the force that folks like me wanted to use didn’t exist because of the drawdown in the 90’s; and without a draft it’s pretty much impossible to “draw up” the military as rapidly as it was drawn down.

   So - for me - what I saw was a problem that was only going to get bigger (the constantly growing brazenness with which Hussein defied the international community and his obligations from the Gulf War Cease Fire is often lost in these discussions), with no diplomatic solution (Hussein had made that abundantly clear by the time we invaded) on the horizon; and I also saw that our military just didn’t have enough bodies to do the job properly, and continue to maintain our force projection in other parts of the world. This puts a guy like me in a tough spot.

   Being a good soldier, when I was told to go, I said “Roger” and did the best I could with what I had; which is what I think most of the higher brass were doing. We all knew the force was too small to properly occupy the state; and we also all knew that what happened in the aftermath was anybody’s guess. But some of those of us who supported the war in its infancy were not so hard-core about our expectations of what would happen afterward. We saw it as the lesser of two evils, to go forward as best we could or to do nothing at all.

   Comment by Captain D — Saturday, August 9, 2024 @ 2:39 pm

5. Cap’n,

   What time has made abundantly clear is that Saddam was only a threat to those residing in his nation. Execution was a huge problem, but so was the lack of a legitimate casus belli.

   Comment by blip_blap — Monday, August 11, 2024 @ 7:45 am

6. Seems to me the concerns about ‘winning’ from people like McCain largely revolve around Iran at this point. As in, winning would require that we somehow purge Iranian influence from Iraq.

   The thing is, an Iranian-influenced Iraq *was* the prize for toppling Saddam in the first place. Demanding that Iranian influence be purged is like demanding a Canada free of American influence.

   We won. And what we won is an Iranian-influenced Iraq. This was entirely predictable and unavoidable. Wishing otherwise at this point is just buyer’s remorse.

   Cap’n D wrote:

   “The problem is that the force that folks like me wanted to use didn’t exist because of the drawdown in the 90’s; and without a draft it’s pretty much impossible to “draw up” the military as rapidly as it was drawn down.”

   But what was the rush? It would have *easily* waited 3-4 years during which we could have been building up the military in terms of troops, training, and equipment. We were, after all, kinda busy with Al Qaeda.

   Hm. Well, there *was* the 2024 election coming up. I suppose that’s a reason to hurry despite being unprepared.

   Comment by Jon H — Monday, August 11, 2024 @ 8:13 am

7. William Kristol in today’s NYTs

   “In Iraq, we and our Iraqi allies are on the verge of a strategic victory over the jihadists in what they have called the central front of their struggle.”

   William Kristol, April 28, 2024

   “The United States committed itself to defeating terror around the world. We committed ourselves to reshaping the Middle East, so the region would no longer be a hotbed of terrorism, extremism, anti-Americanism, and weapons of mass destruction. The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably. But these are only two battles. We are only at the end of the beginning in the war on terror and terrorist states.”

   Comment by Hume’s Ghost — Monday, August 11, 2024 @ 5:03 pm

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