We know now that America’s adventure in Iraq will end badly. Our new goal must be to get out with the least possible damage to Iraq itself, to American political stability and to America’s role in the world.
Some damage — perhaps a lot of damage — is inevitable. American policy in Iraq has created a disaster. There is no good solution to a mess like this, only bad solutions and less bad solutions.
The search for the exit has begun, in Washington and among foreign policy analysts if not yet in the Bush administration. Thomas L. Friedman, a New York Times columnist and early supporter of the war, wrote recently that President Bush must “eat crow,” tell the world he’s sorry, accept UN guidance, expand the U.S. force under a UN mandate — “and then leave when appropriate.”
Dream on. This scenario makes some sense, but it’s not going to happen.
A president who had to be pushed to apologize for the Iraqi prisoner abuses is not going to admit that the defining act of his presidency was a horrible mistake, based on bad intelligence, the fanaticism of aides and his own ignorance of the world. Nor is the rest of the world likely to bail out a president who is so universally despised and distrusted.
Friedman himself says: “I have never known a time in my life when America and its president were more hated around the world than today.”
Even America’s allies despair of any solution before the November election. Most of the world, which usually roots for an incumbent U.S. president to win re-election, craves a Bush defeat this year. NATO allies who were scheduled to announce a major NATO role in Iraq at their summit next month now say any action will take place after the elections, if then.
Vote a liability
This means any realistic exit plan depends on a John Kerry presidency–a 50-50 shot at best. But candidate Kerry has already crippled President Kerry with his Senate vote supporting the war, his reluctance to make the war an issue and his insistence that the United States must stay the course, with increased troop levels if necessary.
Kerry does say that he would work hard to involve other nations, especially the Europeans, in pacifying Iraq. But this raises the question of why any other nation would want to get involved in such an open-ended project with no exit in sight.
If anything, this makes the bad situation worse. It also means that the many voters who hotly oppose the war have only one anti-war candidate to vote for, and that’s Ralph Nader.
Clearly, it’s time for the war itself–whether we should be there at all–to become an election issue, and it’s time for some thinking on how to end it.
First, Kerry should admit, now, that his vote for the war was a mistake. He can blame it on the misleading intelligence reports, or an assumption that the administration had a postwar plan. Whatever, he should own up to his mistake and apologize for it.
This would have two results. It would astonish and delight Americans disgusted with leaders who never, ever, admit they’ve been wrong. (It also would anger pro-war Democrats, but the betting here is that this admission would give Kerry’s campaign the boost it badly needs.)
It would also remove the Iraq albatross from around Kerry’s neck, leave him free to run wholeheartedly against the Bush policy in Iraq and talk about the next necessary steps. So long as he accepts joint blame for the war, he has painted himself into a political corner that should be reserved for Bush himself.
Thus freed, a President Kerry could announce that America’s goal is a phased but definite withdrawal from Iraq, and that America needs the help of allies, potential allies and the United Nations to do it. There is no hope of subduing Iraq by force, even with more troops, as we learned in Vietnam. The only hope is to replace U.S. troops with troops from other nations, who themselves will be phased out on a timetable that will return full sovereignty to the Iraqis, under a UN-appointed government.
Persuading other nations to help America extricate itself from Iraq will be difficult. But both the allies and the UN desperately want a strong, confident, farsighted America leading the world. Our relations with the rest of the world have been badly damaged in the past three-plus years, and this damage will take time to repair. But an administration that truly respected and listened to other nations would find most of them willing to help, if only to encourage wise leadership from the United States.
Similarly, Iraqis who now oppose the U.S. occupation could be encouraged to help a UN-led occupying force with a firm departure date, especially if all the parties in Iraq see advantage in this.
Central government: Bad idea
This raises the issue of the shape of a postwar Iraq. The administration’s preferred solution–a democratic Iraq with a strong central government–is not going to happen. This is a recipe for domination by the majority Shiites, which guarantees civil war.
Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador and Iraq expert, has laid out a feasible plan. This is a federal Iraq, with a relatively weak central government in Baghdad but most real power resting with the three major communities–the Kurds in the north, the Shiites in the south and the Sunnis in between.
“The best hope for holding Iraq together–and thereby avoiding civil war–is to let each of its major constituent communities have, to the extent possible, the system each wants,” Galbraith wrote in The New York Review of Books.
This would give the Kurds control over Kurdistan while denying them the independence that Iraq’s neighbors oppose. It would allow the Shiites to elect an Islamic regime. Both could support themselves through oil wealth.
It also leaves the Sunni Triangle as the poorest part of the federation, probably dependent on foreign forces and U.S. aid. Having ousted Saddam Hussein, we would probably be supporting his local power base for years.
With luck, Iraq will be left weakened but still intact, able to move beyond the threat of civil war to some sort of stable future. With more luck, its weakness can be contained, without contaminating its neighbors. With even more luck, Al Qaeda terrorists who have been drawn into Iraq by the war will not be able to continue to damage the country after the war ends.
This is a long way from the democratic Iraq that neo-conservatives dreamed would be a beacon for the Middle East. Yet it seems the best way to turn over Iraq back to the Iraqis. The alternative is a decade of American occupation, at a human, economic and moral cost beyond paying.
But the political and moral cost at home will be high anyway. This country already is divided, politically and socially. The Iraq war is one division among many. Any decision by a Democratic president to repudiate his Republican predecessor’s war will only deepen these divides. Political warriors of the Rush Limbaugh/Rep. Tom DeLay stripe will rub these wounds until they bleed.
Leadership needed
It will take extraordinary leadership, from Congress as well as the White House, to keep the divisions over Iraq from igniting the kind of political flames that nearly consumed this country over Vietnam, and to enable the next administration to refocus on the serious job of fighting terrorism.
Again, a disengagement policy seems most likely to keep this from happening. The alternative, a never-ending quagmire, guarantees strife.
Finally, if the exit from Iraq is handled badly, it could undermine this nation’s willingness and ability to play its irreplaceable role in the world.
The legacy of Vietnam burdened American foreign policy for 30 years. The legacy of Iraq could be worse, if it convinces Americans and their leaders that any American leadership is bound to end in tears and global recrimination.
“The American involvement in Iraq will be a defining event for the U.S. role in the world for the coming decades,” Galbraith wrote.
Philip Stephens, a columnist for the Financial Times of London, took this thought one step further: “The circumstances in which the U.S. eventually leaves Iraq will determine its power and its role in the world for decades to come.”
The stability of the international system rests on American strength, including military strength, and this nation’s willingness to use that strength to form alliances, balance conflicting forces and mobilize international organizations. No nation has ever been so strong, or so needed, as the United States.
If the legacy of Iraq is an American retreat from leadership, then the terrorists indeed will have won, and on a global scale.
