a long e-mail conversation I had in early January with an Inside the Beltway Republican, a columnist who is supportive of Bush’s democratism campaign, but who, unlike most of members of the GOP foreign policy establishment, does not reject criticism of Bush and has always responded in a friendly and thoughtful way to criticisms I’ve sent him from time to time. Nothing here is new, but the exchange may be of interest from the point of view of seeing the difficulties of getting any debate going. The chief interest of the exchange to me is that, early on, I thought I had my correspondent’s agreement that our present policy is not leading to victory and must be changed, but that later in the exchange he seems (at least as I understood him) to switch back to the idea that we must support Bush no matter what, even if Bush’s policy cannot lead to a successful outcome.
LA to Inside the Beltway Republican:
You write that Iraq is the critical test of whether the U.S. is a superpower, that we must win there.
Please give me even a scenario by which we win. Bush certainly hasn’t provided one. The insurgency is stronger than ever, and we do not have the means to destroy it. All of the Bush supporters acted as though the Fallujah campaign was the decisive battle. I wrote at the time that this was false—that the insurgents would simply leave Fallujah to operate from elsewhere. That turned out to be the case. The Bush supporters have fallen silent about imminent victory.
I have been writing at my website for the last year and a half that we have no strategy by which we can win in Iraq, nor do we have even a reasonable pretense of such a strategy. So we have redefined the goal of victory over our enemies as the establishment of a democratically elected government. For many months now, we have kept acting as though the January 30 election is tantamount to “victory.”
But the establishment of democracy, i.e., of a democratically elected government, does not mean victory over our enemies, nor, in the absence of such victory, is such democracy even possible. Since the insurgency is undefeated, any government resulting from the election will be unable to sustain its own existence without our continuing military presence. But since we don’t have the ability—or even any announced strategy—by which to defeat the insurgency, we must either stay there forever to prop up the new government, or we leave and it falls.
Either way, I see no victory in sight.
Please tell me how my analysis is wrong.
Happy New Year.
Inside the Beltway Republican to LA:
If you’re right, that we can’t win in Iraq, that we can’t defeat our enemies there, that our enemies are stronger than we are, then we will lose, then we are no long a superpower, then we are a high-tech muscle-bound giant, waiting to fall, supporting a large military establishment designed to fight enemies who no longer exist rather than the enemies who at war with us today.
In other words, we are like the Roman Empire waiting for the barbarians to defeat us. Concrete barriers and metal detectors will not save us for long.
If that is the reality, we need to face it squarely. And if that is the reality, it is a grim reality.
The other possibility, however, is that we can learn to beat the suicide bombers and the decapitators. And I am optimistic that we can—if we have the will.
I had a long discussion about this last week with ____ ______. His bottom line: It’s a job for Special Forces and Marines, not regular army units. We need to reconfigure our forces to focus on the kind of war we are actually fighting against the kind of enemy actually face. We have made mistakes and will make mistakes but that is to be expected. More important is that we learn from our mistakes.
If we can defeat Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia it should not be beyond our abilities to defeat al Qaeda and the remnants of the Baath army….
But in my view, the first priority is straightforward: to kill our enemies—wherever they are, and right now many of them are in Iraq so that’s the task at hand. If we can do that, other missions will be possible. If we can’t do that, nothing else matters.
Happy New Year to you.
LA to IBR:
You write:
“His bottom line: It’s a job for Special Forces and Marines, not regular army units. We need to reconfigure our forces to focus on the kind of war we are actually fighting against the kind of enemy actually face. We have made mistakes and will make mistakes but that is to be expected. More important is that we learn from our mistakes.”
By urging these kinds of changes, you have tacitly agreed with my principal argument: that at present we do NOT have a strategy aimed at victory. That is what I have been saying for the last 18 months, even as all the Bush supporters have just been saying, “Rah rah, everything is great, just stay the course.” No matter what the criticism has been of Bush’s policy, he and his supporters would just keep repeating the boilerplate slogans that “war is tough, it’s a tough job, mistakes are made in all wars, we succeeded in Germany, we just have to stay the course.” I have found it impossible to get any mainstream conservative supporter of Bush to go beyond these slogans.
But here you are NOT arguing for staying the course, you are arguing for a major change in what we’re doing. You are therefore implicitly conceding that the constant invocations over the last 18 months to “stay the course” have been wrong.
IBR to LA:
We need to differentiate between strategy and tactics.
On strategy, I would argue we do need to stay the course. We can not afford to be defeated by our enemies in Iraq (or elsewhere). Such defeat will only encourage and invite new challenges, new attacks.
To succeed, however, will require tactical flexibility.
It would be wonderful if Pentagon planners could use computers and war games to solve problems before boots are on the battlefield. Clearly, however, that has not been the case.
I can’t speak for others but if I have talked about staying the course, I have intended to mean that we must not lose the will to fight—because that is, by definition, defeat.
The last war we won was WW2. In Korea, we accepted a draw. In Vietnam, we lost the will to fight and suffered a defeat.
And we pulled our punches at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, and that was on the urging of Republican “realist” types as well as liberals. (Be wary of consensus.)
In 2003, we obviously were too eager to end the combat, reluctant to chase the enemy to his hole and drag him out. After Baghdad’s fall, how brilliant would you have to have been to figure out that a few days of combat in the Sunni Triangle was still necessary to ensure that the enemy had been genuinely vanquished?
Then, too, a big part of the problem is that we went to war not with Iraq but only with Saddam’s regime. Our intention was not to defeat Iraq—but to “liberate” Iraq.
It seems to me a liberation should have been followed as quickly as possible with an interim government comprised of Iraqis who celebrated our liberation. Those Iraqis should have marched—ahead of us—into Baghdad as well (as De Gaulle marched into Paris ahead of us after the liberation of France).
It was inconsistent—maybe even incoherent—to follow a liberation with an extended occupation headed by an American.
But debating the past is of little value. The question is what to do now.
Again, I think we have to make it clear that our top priority in Iraq is to defeat our enemies and that our determination to succeed in this mission is unshakable.
LA to IBR:
You wrote:
“I can’t speak for others but if I have talked about staying the course, I have intended to mean that we must not lose the will to fight—because that is, by definition, defeat.”
The whole pro-Bush opinion apparatus over the last year and a half has NOT been saying, “We must stay the course even as we recognize that we DO NOT NOW HAVE A STRATEGY IN IRAQ AIMED AT VICTORY AND THAT WE MUST ADOPT SUCH A STRATEGY.” No, when they’ve said, “We must stay the course,” they meant that everything was GOING GREAT, that the problems were just routine problems that “happen in any war,” that any criticism was unwelcome because it would WEAKEN OUR WILL TO WIN AND HELP OUR ENEMIES, and that the whole key was just to support Bush no matter what. As a result, there was no critical thinking about what we were doing over there. The left was useless and offered no constructive criticism, and the right was simply cheerleading. I have read literally hundreds of columns at TownHall.com, NRO and elsewhere over the last 18 months simply rehashing that we’re going to win, and that all we have to do is remain firm in the belief in victory.
So, even if it is not true that you, personally, were simply cheerleading Bush and squelching critical thought, that statement is true as regards the vast majority of Bush’s supporters.
IBR to LA:
I never thought, said or implied that everything was “going great.” I can dig up columns where I said the opposite—that this is a war, a real war, a serious war, so let’s get serious. That’s the argument I think I’m continuing to make.
I acknowledge that I assumed our intelligence was better than it turned out to be. I thought it might not be great. I had no idea it was third rate.
Also, I assumed that if the military was not proceeding into the Sunni Triangle after the fall of Baghdad, they had reliable intelligence saying that such a mission was not necessary, and sound military reasoning behind them..
I assumed they had done years of study, thinking and planning for the kind of insurgency we face. I am disappointed to find out how little useful preparatory work actually was carried out.
Problems do happen in any war but that doesn’t make those problems small or even routine. Think of D-Day or the Battle of the Bulge.
My goal is not to think for the Pentagon but to task the military with doing the work they’re supposed to do. Fire those who say “we can’t” or “we won’t.” Think Churchill. Think Lincoln.
Yes, obviously, 99% of the debates in which I engaged (certainly on TV and radio) were with the left. The criticisms from Kerry and the Democrats were incoherent. I had zero faith that Kerry, once in power, would do anything but plan for retreat.
I wasn’t debating you. If I had, it would have been a very different debate. There are points I would have willingly conceded.
But where the big picture is concerned, I stick to my guns: The US had to stick to its guns.
LA to IBR:
I didn’t mean to make you the target of this discussion, not at all, as you have frequently expressed to me your worries and doubts about how things were going in Iraq. The very fact that you have always replied thoughtfully to my critical e-mails over the last year or two proves that you are not a mere yes-sayer to Bush. However, I can tell you that virtually no other mainstream Beltway Bush supporters have done so. If they reply, they reply with dismissive slogans.
Now, as I’ve said before, that attitude is somewhat understandable, given the anti-Americanism of the left that the Bush supporters have had to be constantly responding to. The great tragedy is that the irrationality of the left has destroyed useful debate in this country and even made the conservatives irrational, because, given the left’s anti-Americanism, conservative politics has been reduced to being reflexively “pro-America” and pro-Bush. It is this destruction of debate I’ve been protesting, with little success.
IBR to LA:
Those are all valid points.
But do also keep in mind that people such as Jim Woolsey have since early on called this WWIV (WWIII having been the Cold War), a way of saying how serious this conflict is.
Woolsey would also agree, I think, that the Battle of Iraq is proving difficult—but that makes in more imperative that, in the end, we prevail there.
If we cut and run, we’ll be cutting and running from Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s “emir” in Iraq.
I know you don’t favor that. But many on the left do and, as you say, that makes it difficult for rational folks (like you and me) to debate the key question—how best to win.
LA to IBR:
I have to say, in the absence of a policy that at least has a plausible chance of winning, which at present I don’t think we have (and by winning I mean (1) destroying the enemy’s will and ability to destroy the successor government, and (2) leaving in place a reasonable government that can stand on its own), I can’t justify a single American soldier losing life or limb there. In the absence of such a policy, I think all we’re doing is treading water, letting our people be killed and maimed for nothing, and putting off the inevitable time when we will end up withdrawing anyway.
An alternative strategy is to withdraw our forces from the populated areas of Iraq, or perhaps to Kurdistan, let the Sunnis and Shi’ites and whoever else fight a civil war if they want, and tilt to the side we favor from the sidelines, rather than trying to run things directly. I also think we should consider Mark Helprin’s idea of a permanent U.S. base in an isolated yet central location in the region from which we could destroy any regime that threatened us, without getting inside those countries and trying to run them from the inside the way Bush has done in Iraq.
I supported the war on the basis that Bush was serious. If had had known that we would stand by and let looters destroy Baghdad, if I had known that Bush would let the Sunni Triangle fester in rebellion, if I had known that most of our men would be killed not in combat operations but just riding back and forth on highways like sitting ducks in unarmored passenger vehicles, and if I had known that no WMDs would be found, I would not have supported the war. Of course, this is hypothesis, since no one knew those things before hand. But for the record that’s where I stand.
I think the leadership of Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld et al. has been a disgrace. Bush doesn’t lead. He doesn’t explain the situation to the people. He just emits the same boilerplate, month after month, and now year after year, and the whole Republican party and conservative movement have become an echo chamber of his boilerplate.
The proof that I’m right, the proof that we’re not serious about winning a victory, is that the benchmark of victory has become the holding of an election. For example, when we finally attacked Fallujah, it was not said that we were doing this in order to destroy the insurgency, it was said we were doing it in order to quiet down the insurgency in time for the election. This is the way the administration and all its supporters talked. They treated the occurrence of an election as a sign that we shall have succeeded, when, in reality, if the insurgency continues, the election won’t mean a da—ed thing.
This is proof that the U.S. is no longer living in the world of reality as regards Iraq. We are in denial of the disaster that we have on our hands. Not having the means or the ability or the will to win the war, and not being willing to admit the awful truth to ourselves, we have redefined victory as the holding of an election, even as the war rages. So I regard this whole situation now as something of a fraud.
Pro-Bush people will say I’m undermining the cause. But I say that if more people had been talking the way I’ve been talking for the last year and a half, if they had called attention to the gap between Bush’s rhetoric and the reality, and if they had insisted that Bush either form and articulate a policy aimed at success, or admit that success wasn’t possible, that would have forced Bush to have a better policy and to function as a leader. But since everyone just cheered Bush’s endless boilerplate, since everyone just echoed “stay the course, stay the course,” Bush wasn’t required to explain or defend or re-think his policies. So things have just drifted along toward disaster.
Uncritically supporting an incoherent and unviable policy is not helpful to our country. Yet that is what the pro-Bush people have done.
IBR to LA:
Well, this is where we disagree. You keep talking about the past and what should have been done and what should have been said. That’s all very interesting. It’s also very irrelevant to the task at hand.
It’s like saying in 1942, when the war wasn’t going well, “If only France had re-armed, if only more people had listened to Churchill, if only Roosevelt had been smarter about the Japanese we would not have lost our navy.”
The point then and the point now is this: We cannot afford to lose this war. We have to beat al Qaeda where al Qaeda is fighting us. We have to beat the Baathist remnants that we began fighting, inconclusively, back in 1991.
You’re a smart guy. Think through the consequences of an American defeat at the hands of Islamic fascists. It won’t be like Vietnam where we get to go back home and lick our wounds (or, if you’re on the left, pick at our wounds) for a couple of generations.
Our enemies are in Iraq now. They are fighting us now. We have to fight them and defeat them as quickly and completely as possible. That should not be beyond our capabilities.
Everything else is commentary.
LA to IBR:
But I’m not talking about the past. Everything I’m talking about has to do with what we’re doing and not doing now, what we’re saying and not saying now.
This conversation has gone back to the starting point, and we seem to have lost the common understanding I thought we had gained. Your article said we have to win. I wrote to you saying that I can’t see any policy we have that even in theory has the possibility of leading to victory. Bush’s policy is not leading to victory, but with Bush and everyone on the right just saying “stay the course,” we continue in a policy that is not leading and cannot lead to victory. I’ve made this same criticism, at my website and in e-mails, and in a couple of articles at FrontPage, oh, maybe 100 times in the last 12 or 15 months. And yet you are now interpreting me as meaning that I’m only talking about the past and that I don’t think it matters if we lose in Iraq.
I just can’t seem to get through to people on this issue, no matter how hard I try …
IBR to LA:
You really can’t imagine any policy that the US military and intelligence community could come up, under current leadership or new leadership, now or in the months ahead, that would lead to the defeat of Zarqawi and the Baathist remnants?
Such a goal is beyond America’s reach. Our Jihadist and Islamic Fascist enemies are too strong and too smart. We are too weak and too stupid.
Well, this is indeed where we disagree.
LA to IBR:
You misunderstand me. When did I say that victory is inherently impossible? True, I have admitted the possibility that it may be impossible, as have you, when you mentioned the need for a Plan B, but I have not argued definitively that victory is impossible. Rather, I have been speaking, over and over, of the actual policy we are pursuing, and saying that that policy is not leading and cannot lead to victory.
There is some mental wall here that prevents supporters of Bush from taking in a serious criticism of Bush.
I refer back to earlier in this conversation, where you said that in order to win we need to adopt radically different tactics, relying more on Special Op Forces. By your own admission, then, our current strategy, absent a major change, is not leading and cannot lead to victory.
IBR to LA:
The problem appears to be at the Pentagon (and in the CIA).
I suspect Bush knows that. I suspect he believes Rumsfeld is more capable than anyone else of making the transformations necessary.
I tend to think he’s right, because Rumsfeld knows the building well, has no other ambitions, and is a tough guy not overly anxious for the approval of the NYT editorial page.
But I’m open to the possibility that there is someone else who could do the job better. Who might that be?
“Criticizing Bush” does not, in and of itself, constitute a policy.