Wes Clark op-ed on Iraq
On December 6, 2005, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Wes Clark ehtitled "The Next Iraq Offensive." Clark, as usual, addresses the situation in a comprehensive way. Moreover, as he did during his Presidential campaign, he offers a plan of action. The entire piece is worth reading, but I will provide somew excerpts.
Clark also explains how our troops should be utilized in Iraq--which is different from how they are being utilized now. I would add here that, in my opinion, that change has to be dictated by Bush and the civilian leadership in the Pentagon. Bush and the Pentagon determine the strategic objectives and the military commanders then figure out how to meet those objectives. (See Official campaign planning doctrine and the post-war period and More on the principles in JP 5.00-1).
Clark finishes by acknowledging some of the problems faced by our military and then saying
WHILE the Bush administration and its critics escalated the debate last week over how long our troops should stay in Iraq, I was able to see the issue through the eyes of America's friends in the Persian Gulf region. The Arab states agree on one thing: Iran is emerging as the big winner of the American invasion, and both President Bush's new strategy and the Democratic responses to it dangerously miss the point. It's a devastating critique. And, unfortunately, it is correct.Clark stresses that the overall strategy and action has to include political and diplomatic elements in addition to military action. He has been saying this since before the war started.
*******Iraq's neighbors, then, see it evolving into a Shiite-dominated, Iranian buffer state that will strengthen Tehran's power in the Persian Gulf just as it is seeks nuclear weapons and intensifies its rhetoric against Israel.
The American approach shows little sense of Middle Eastern history and politics. As one prominent Kuwaiti academic explained to me, in the Muslim world the best way to deal with your enemies has always been to assimilate them - you never succeed in killing them all, and by trying to do so you just make more enemies. Instead, you must woo them to rejoin society and the government. Military pressure should be used in a calibrated way, to help in the wooing.
If this critique is correct - and it is difficult to argue against it - then we must face its implications. "Staying the course" risks a slow and costly departure of American forces with Iraq increasingly factionalized and aligned with Iran. Yet a more rapid departure of American troops along a timeline, as some Democrats are calling for, simply reduces our ability to affect the outcome and risks broader regional conflict.
We need to keep our troops in Iraq, but we need to modify the strategy far more drastically than anything President Bush called for last week.
Clark also explains how our troops should be utilized in Iraq--which is different from how they are being utilized now. I would add here that, in my opinion, that change has to be dictated by Bush and the civilian leadership in the Pentagon. Bush and the Pentagon determine the strategic objectives and the military commanders then figure out how to meet those objectives. (See Official campaign planning doctrine and the post-war period and More on the principles in JP 5.00-1).
Clark finishes by acknowledging some of the problems faced by our military and then saying
Still, none of this necessitates a pullout until the job is done. After the elections, we should be able to draw down by 30,000 troops from the 160,000 now there. Don't bet against our troops.
What a disaster it would be if the real winner in Iraq turned out to be Iran, a country that supports terrorism and opposes most of what we stand for. Surely, we can summon the wisdom, resources and bipartisan leadership to change the American course before it is too late.
posted by WCharles @ 12/08/2005 12:10:00 PM
10 Comments:
And now an opposing point of view from the liberal side. Sen. Joe Lieberman said, "We are fighting on the side of the 27 million." Progress is "visible and practical" with the vast majority of Iraquis not wanting US forces to abondon them against th 10,000 insurgents.
Careful--you just might catch Joe-mentum.
I respect Lieberman in part because I think he is a good man, but during the 2004 campaign, many of us on this side of the aisle were wondering why he didn't just go ahead and say he was a Republican. :-)
On another note, this op-ed shows part of the reason why Clark got screwed by the DNC. How dare he claim to be a Democrat and criticize the party's position on anything!
While lying around nursing a 100 degree temperature (so I have an excuse for incoherency) I read an interesting quote from Socrates. "Opinions divorced from knowledge are ugly things."
Your posts, backed by research, do shed some interesting light on what is happening in the mid-East. I have read recently that some of Saddam's former military officers have stated that there were WMD and they were secreted out of the country - to Jordan I believe. The problem, can we believe the? I remember the consternation caused when Powell stated emphatically to the UN that Iraq had WMD and that justified our actions. Now, my political allies are backpedalling from that and saying it's all about Democracy.
What if they really don't want our brand of Democracy? But, we can't just walk away, that would leave a much worse mess than under Saddam. OK, we screwed up. Now what?
To add to Socrates, I also say that stating an opinion without acknowledging its limitations and biases can also be dangerous.
If there were any WMD moved out of Iraq, I doubt they went to Jordan due to our very close relationship to King Abdullah (something which was part of the discussion in my very first post). Syria would be a more likely destination.
As for who to believe about WMD, I tend to go with Kay and Duelfer and the various intelligence agencies whose reports indicated there were no WMD.
I need to do some more research, but here is a January 17, 2005,article that says no WMD were smuggled out of Iraq:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/16/iraq/main643989.shtml
The ironic thing about the story going from WMD to fighting terrorists to democracy is that I thought all along the best, safest way to "sell" the war was the democracy angle. There was conclusive, irrefutable evidence that Saddam was a tyrant who oppressed and abused the people of Iraq. On the other hand, there was plenty of evidence to counter the WMD and terrorism arguments. Any arguments to the democracy rationale could have brought very strong retort of "What, you're against freedom?" From a PR standpoint, the democracy angle always seemed like the better argument. [Read more in the August 29, 2004 post, "Paul Wolfowitz: prime example of everything wrong with the Bush administration."]
There is now and always has been a strong possibility that Iraqis don't want our brand of democracy. That's just another reason why war was a bad idea. Even though I always strongly opposed war, I felt that things could work out if the post-war was done well. And we all know that has not happened (I've written so much on that topic I'm not even going to list those posts here--and there is still so much more to write).
What concerns me most about leaving now is not that we would be leaving a much worse mess. Here are my concerns: 1) Iraq does stabilize in some way, but that new Iraq would be something definitely not in our best interests; and 2) our reputation in the world will be damaged even more than it has been--possibly to the point where we will never be accepted as any kind of serious world leader.
So now what? Well, how about Bush, the Pentagon, and Congress start looking seriously at what Clark suggests and check all the self-serving political partisanship at the door?
And did you hear that Rumsfeld is rumored to be out in 2006 AND his possible replacement is Lieberman?
On the news last night I heard Rumsfeld emphatically deny during a news conference that he was leaving the administration.
I don't think Rummy is going anywhere. I just found it humorous that shortly after I basically called Lieberman a Republican, I heard he might become Bush's Sec. of Defense. :-)
"I thought all along the best, safest way to "sell" the war was the democracy angle."
Sounds good on the surface, but would that argument have flown? No, for a very simple reason, consistency. What about all the other countries across the globe that could use a good dose of democracy, and maybe even more so than Iraq? North Korea, which has been on Bush's list, are we going to invade them? What about some of the African nations where there is much civil strife and persecution, especially of Christians by Muslims? I just read in the lastest issue of World Magazine, www.worldmag.com, that Somalia has intense persecution - the government is encouraging the Muslims to persecute and kill Christians. At least under Sadaam the Christians had some protection since he was more secular and kept the Muslim religious extremists under tight control.
Upon reflection, I agree with your analysis and conclusions. The democracy angle is a flawed argument (for the reasons you state), but I still think it was the easiest one to make AND the evidence supporting it was so much more solid than WMD. However, the "inconsistency" you describe was probably the reason why it was not stressed at first. When you get right down to it, there was no valid argument for going to war when we did.
Given how I tore apart the "Burning Bush" doctrine from George's last State of the Union Address, I should have realized the problems in my "democracy angle" analysis.
If you want, start with January 24's "America's new calling," skip the January 25 post, and read the rest of January's posts. And then there's February 4's "State of the Union Address and the Burning Bush doctrine" and February 16's "The inspiration for the Burning Bush doctrine shows one of its shortcomings."
And I'll check out the World Magazine article.
Actually, it was about Ethiopia. Here's the link:
http://www.worldmag.com/subscriber/displayarticle.cfm?id=11341
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