The Hand-Wringing Gap

I've read it twice, and I don't really understand what George Packer's problem with Barack Obama's Iraq policy is:

Obama offers Iraq as the bad war that we have to end if we want to win the good war in Afghanistan and turn around the economy at home. There’s more than a little truth to this, but I can’t help wishing that his speech on Iraq in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Wednesday, had anything close to the level of complexity and depth shown in his historic speech on race the day before, in Philadelphia. There was no deep consideration of the fate of more than four million displaced Iraqis, the specter of growing Iranian influence in Iraq, the likelihood of a return to terrible levels of violence as American combat brigades are withdrawn, the border tensions between Iraq and Turkey, the future of Kirkuk, or a strategy for preserving the very fragile improvements of the past six months. Instead, the speech presented what sounded like a fairly cost-free, win-win plan.

Obama's key contention, as underscored by Packer, is that Iraq is "the bad war that we have to end if we want to win the good war in Afghanistan and turn around the economy at home." Now obviously if you don't buy that analysis, you're not going to like Obama's Iraq policy. But Packer doesn't seem to disagree with it. Instead, he says "there’s more than a little truth to" what Obama is saying. But so if Obama's right, then he right. Packer doesn't see it that way. He seems to think that Obama should have gone in for some more showy hand-wringing. But why should he do that? Packer's upset that Obama doesn't have a viable plan for Kirkuk, but that's just the point; Obama recognizes that nobody has a viable plan to solve Iraq's problems so he wants to put our resources where they can do more good.

A policy that puts over 100,000 American soldiers in Iraq in order to not solve Iraq's problems isn't a close substitute for solving Iraq's problems. On the other hand, maybe Packer just liked Obama's race speech a lot more than I did.

Comments

Yeah, Packer's worth listening to because he's always right. Like when he supported this Iraqi abomination in the first place. Great judgment, that guy.

Posted by David in NY | March 25, 2008 9:25 AM

He seems to think that Obama should have gone in for some more showy hand-wringing. But why should he do that?

Because it has worked for Packer (and more than a few others).

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 25, 2008 9:26 AM

"a strategy for preserving the very fragile improvements of the past six months"?

Yeah, like Bush even has one.

By the time Obama is sworn in, those improvements will be history.

What our occupation of Iraq has demonstrated is that it's impervious to our attempts to 'fix' it, no matter what we do. And since we can't do any good, we should leave.

And that's just considering Iraq in a vacuum, completely aside from the role it plays in the larger strategic picture: as an inspiration and laboratory for jihadis, as a source of tension between us and our allies, as an incredible drain on our military and financial resources at a time when both are needed elsewhere, etcetera.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | March 25, 2008 9:30 AM

"a strategy for preserving the very fragile improvements of the past six months."

Obama would inherit the Iraq mess in 10 months. 10. And he's supposed to explain how we can, right now, preserve "very fragile improvements" when violence has been increasing for the past 2 or 3 months? Let Bush and Cheney come up with such a plan. From what I've seen, it consists of saying "maybe we don't draw down the surge, and pull more troops from our magic 'stop loss' and 'what home rotation?' pocket."j

Bush has 10 months. Let him turn that into a situation where Iraq is clearly where we wanted it to be, say, 4 years ago this month. Then we can talk about preserving those very strong improvements. If he can't do it, with more time than was expended on the Civil War, or WWI, or WWII, maybe--get ready for a shocker--it's time to admit it isn't working.

Obama recognizes that nobody has a viable plan to solve Iraq's problems so he wants to put our resources where they can do more good.

Precisely. Never admitting defeat, no matter how many die, no matter how much worse our situation becomes as a result of those actions, no matter how many decades it takes, is a stupid strategy.

Posted by Deborah | March 25, 2008 9:42 AM

Packer has no clue what to do about Iraq, and he's not satisfied with anyone else who has no clue what to do about Iraq.

"Make my stupid support of this war come out good!" he wails.

Posted by Anderson | March 25, 2008 9:43 AM

The problem is that the American people believe that our chances of succeeding over there are close to even. In reality it's probably closer to 5% given the complexity of the situation and the fact that we only have order 100k troops to use.

Of course, explaining racial problems to Americans might actually be easier than explaining Iraq. Most people have some context for racial problems. Iraq? Not so much, unless you believe 9/11 is sufficient.

Posted by Jake | March 25, 2008 9:50 AM

He seems to think that Obama should have gone in for some more showy hand-wringing. But why should he do that?

As SomeCallMeTim says, because showy hand-wringing is George Packer's preferred position on the war. Any more straightforward opposition only highlights his own complicity.

Posted by Marc | March 25, 2008 9:57 AM

I'm not sure what people don't get about Packer's comments. He understands Obama's strategic assessment, basically agrees with it, but believes that it has some likely serious downsides as well that he wishes that Obama would address more spefically. The idea being that the American people can make a better assessment of what they want when they hear the whole picture and that the resulting policy will be more sustainable.

I actually get that. I think that Obama will have to be more explicit in saying that bad things are likely to happen as we withdraw, but that bad things are going to happen in any event and it is not worth the cost, loss of life, and other drawbacks to hang around on the hope that we can delay some of those bad things. (An example would be to compare the way Al Qaeda will trump our withdrawal as a victory versus how they use our presence as a recruiting pitch. Both are true. The latter, I judge, is the more serious long-term issue.)

My guess is that he will make that case in the general election.

Posted by Chunche | March 25, 2008 9:59 AM

The war apologists have gone all humanitarian and responsible -- we can't leave the Iraqi people in the mess we created! I heard a guy yesterday say "It's like the police come to your house and bash your door in. Even if it ends up they were wrong for doing it they have to get you a new door!" I don't buy their concern, too much. For the most part, it's just the latest rationale to justify the same old occupation.

Posted by sophie brown | March 25, 2008 10:02 AM

Packer's problem is that Obama doesn't seem to care about "...the fate of more than four million displaced Iraqis, the specter of growing Iranian influence in Iraq, the likelihood of a return to terrible levels of violence as American combat brigades are withdrawn, the border tensions between Iraq and Turkey, the future of Kirkuk, or a strategy for preserving the very fragile improvements of the past six months.

He seems to understand why that is - "...the candidates are competing for delegates and superdelegates who want the war to be over tomorrow."

He just wants more.

Posted by Carl | March 25, 2008 10:26 AM

"It's like the police come to your house and bash your door in. Even if it ends up they were wrong for doing it they have to get you a new door!"

So, your friend would be okay with the police staying in his house for 7 years, talking about replacing the door, but never actually doing it?

Posted by rea | March 25, 2008 10:32 AM

It's worth pointing out that people who supported the war have a vested intellectual interest in keeping troops there. As long as we have forces in Iraq, we haven't completely admitted that it was a mistake to go in, and therefore the supporters retain a bit of face. If we leave, however, our departure is a clear rebuke to the Packers, the Bermans, even the Sullivans. Think about it: these are not the sort of people (except for maybe Sullivan) who are comfortable admitting they're wrong. So it's no surprise that Packer would be critical of Obama's views on Iraq.

Posted by alex | March 25, 2008 10:49 AM

I haven't read Obama's speech on Iraq yet, but i think Packer generally gets treated unfairly in the lefty blogosphere, especially among commenters.

I agree that he was wrong before the war and continues to be wrong, and that there is a certain amount of intellectual/emotional vanity in his criticism of people who want to end the war. I had a chance to ask him in person, in about 2005, at what point he would acknowledge that the war was lost and it was time to cut our losses; he didn't really have an answer.

But the guy has done some reporting that everyone agrees -- even war critics -- is among the best out there on the war. His piece on America's treatment of Iraqis who have worked alongside US soldiers is among the most powerful things I've read in the last few years. Despite his own errors in judgment, his work has, on the whole, made it possible for intelligent people to be more informed about what's going on in Iraq. He doesn't deserve to be dismissed like Steven Hayes.

Posted by greg marx | March 25, 2008 10:57 AM

The idea being that the American people can make a better assessment of what they want when they hear the whole picture and that the resulting policy will be more sustainable.

Well, that's bullshit. There is no Magic Pony Plan waiting in the wings. If George Packer has a Magic Pony Plan, he should offer it. Instead, as others have said, the Packer Plan is showy hand-wringing, mixed with a Beckettian splash of Waiting For Pony.

The alternative? Saint John McCain, and his vague-on-the-Sunni/Shia-thing 'Victory Is Our Plan' plan.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | March 25, 2008 11:09 AM

There was no deep consideration of the fate of more than four million displaced Iraqis

What's John McCain's stance on the fate of those 4 million Iraqis? After all, Baghdad is as safe as Baltimore, why don't they just go home?

Posted by Jinchi | March 25, 2008 11:09 AM

There was no deep consideration of the fate of more than four million displaced Iraqis...

Sure would have been nice if people like Packer had put in some "deep consideration" of the plight of the Iraqis back when they were advocating blowing up the country.

Posted by darrelplant | March 25, 2008 11:50 AM

The idea being that the American people can make a better assessment of what they want when they hear the whole picture and that the resulting policy will be more sustainable.
Well, that's bullshit. There is no Magic Pony Plan waiting in the wings.

Yeah, but it would be nice to hear from a leading Presidential Candidate explicitly that there is no magic pony. It's quite likely that withdrawal is going to be ugly, and if we didn't have Afghanistan and other issues, arguably the American People would say we should stay in and get the job done. Discussing the likely ugliness and why that's the route we should go down is part of being honest to the American People. Otherwise it presents withdrawal as its own magical pony.

If we didn't have Afghanistan and other worries, and if I felt that the US was the party that could make things go better there, I would probably be in the we broke it, we bought it crowd and that we need to stay in until it's fixed. (Of course, unlike Yglesias, I was against the war before it started and not just after it turned bad.)

Posted by jerry | March 25, 2008 11:57 AM

The war apologists have gone all humanitarian and responsible -- we can't leave the Iraqi people in the mess we created! I heard a guy yesterday say "It's like the police come to your house and bash your door in. Even if it ends up they were wrong for doing it they have to get you a new door!"

Except that, while the police are putting in your new door, they're also continuing to shoot wildly at you and your family, and are attracting the attention of the neighborhood gangs, who also start shooting into your house to try to hit the police. Really, is a new door worth it?

I prefer the bull in the china shop analogy -- once the bull has wrecked the place, you don't hand it a broom and ask it to sweep up -- you try to get it the hell out of there, and fast.

Posted by Stefan | March 25, 2008 12:10 PM

greg marx wrote, But the guy has done some reporting that everyone agrees -- even war critics -- is among the best out there on the war.

Perhaps, but the claim that it somehow goes even a small fraction towards righting the moral wrong of having supported the war in the first place is laughable.

Posted by liberal | March 25, 2008 12:11 PM

I prefer the bull in the china shop analogy -- once the bull has wrecked the place, you don't hand it a broom and ask it to sweep up -- you try to get it the hell out of there, and fast.

The classic Pottery Barn Rule: If you break something in a Pottery Barn, you have to stay in the store and keep breaking things.

Of course, stores that actually have a "Pottery Barn Rule" don't ask you to try to fix what you broke. (That would be stupid: if you broke it in the first place, you probably won't be very good at fixing it.) Instead, they ask you to pay for the damage you caused then get the hell out.

There's a lesson there.

Posted by ML | March 25, 2008 12:19 PM

Please, let's not forget that it really is all about the oil.

Leaving the moralizing aside for a moment, let's take a quick look at the alleged "bad war" and "good war" from a strategic standpoint:

Iraq--site of the "bad war"--is sitting on a lake of oil, the single commodity most vital to the functioning of Western civilization. It is neighbor to three states that sit on similar lakes. It flanks Iran, a state that clearly wants to gain hegemony over the region, presumably to control the aforementioned oil. Ensuring the security of the region is the single most important strategic priority that the US has.

Afghanistan is, by contrast, a pile of rocks. Our only strategic interest there is ensuring that it is denied as a base of operations for international terrorists. Note that the US has so far succeeded in doing that to the extent that it can without dealing with the gentlemen lurking just over the border. Indeed, if Afghanistan is really the "good war," then the US ought to be invading Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Provinces to accomplish our strategic objectives. Funny, I don't hear anybody advocating that.

Meanwhile, leaving Iraq unstable and at the mercy of Iran seems to be as close to failing to achieve any of your strategic objectives as you can get. Not only will you wind up with an Iranian-dominated Iraq but there will be immediate pressure on the Kuwaitis and the Saudis to remove the US garrisons from their soil. Then the real fun will begin.

I suppose if you really think that we simply can't prevent an inevitable collapse, then we should leave. But it seems to me that we can keep the lid on indefinitely, albeit at great cost. With a little luck, we can make things better. That'd be nice but it's not essential. Keeping the oil flowing is.

Similarly, if you really think that the Iraqis are just being lazy and not working to provide for their own security, then we should leave, because everything will be just ducky once we're gone. But please note that the narrative where the Iraqis are pressured to step up to their own security is as big an article of faith as the one on the other side where the US can impose stability over time. Both are about equal crapshoots.

Let's look at the worst-case scenarios for both courses of action. If we stay, things go to hell and our nightmare continues indefinitely. If we evacuate, things go to hell, we re-invade, and our nightmare continues indefinitely. Don't re-invade, you say? It's simply not possible. We don't have anything approaching a viable economy without access to the oil. Whether we lose access because Iran puts the screws to us or whether the region simply decays to the point where it can't support the infrastructure necessary to get the oil out of the ground and onto the tankers, we'll have to go back in and fix it.

Want a real strategy? Just barely keep the lid on in Afghanistan, do slightly more than keep the lid on in Iraq. Meanwhile, invest $100 billion a year to develop and deploy a broad array of alternative energy technologies and some portable energy mechanism that will make cars and trucks work without gasoline. It'll cost a quarter of a trillion dollars a year for ten years. We'll have to raise taxes and reduce services to stanch the fiscal bleeding.

Yup, we're in big trouble. If we hadn't invaded Iraq five years ago we'd be in slightly less trouble, but we'd still be investing huge military resources in the Middle East to keep the oil flowing. The trick now is to keep the region from going to hell for just long enough so that we don't need the oil as much.

Things might not be quite this bad. Often, when you face up to a problem and commit to solving it, things get better faster than you thought they would. But it seems prudent to me to plan for the worst.

Posted by TheRadicalModerate | March 25, 2008 12:21 PM

jerry wrote, Discussing the likely ugliness and why that's the route we should go down is part of being honest to the American People. Otherwise it presents withdrawal as its own magical pony.

This is an important point. Some supporters of withdrawal claim that it's likely that, because of the US position as an unwanted occupier, withdrawal would lead to things cooling down.

It's possible, but IMHO not likely. It's quite possible that things are going to get quite nasty when we leave. The correct argument in favor of leaving is that we're just delaying the inevitable, and the overall calculus of lives lost, ruined, etc, favors leaving now.

After all, Tito had decades to build a multiethnic state in Yugoslavia, and look what happened there.

Of course, I'd never claim that it's impossible to build nations. I would claim that it's essentially impossible for an occupier to do so, particularly one with especially questionable motives, ignorance of local culture, etc.

Finally, however, there's just no way the right kind of speech is going to be given. IMHO history shows that it's very difficult for a political leader to commit to withdrawal. We'll be lucky if the next president can do so using whatever ruses and tricks it takes, let alone do so in an honest, open fashion.

Posted by liberal | March 25, 2008 12:21 PM

Please, let's not forget that it really is all about the oil.

Leaving the moralizing aside for a moment, let's take a quick look at the alleged "bad war" and "good war" from a strategic standpoint:

Iraq--site of the "bad war"--is sitting on a lake of oil, the single commodity most vital to the functioning of Western civilization. It is neighbor to three states that sit on similar lakes. It flanks Iran, a state that clearly wants to gain hegemony over the region, presumably to control the aforementioned oil. Ensuring the security of the region is the single most important strategic priority that the US has.

Afghanistan is, by contrast, a pile of rocks. Our only strategic interest there is ensuring that it is denied as a base of operations for international terrorists. Note that the US has so far succeeded in doing that to the extent that it can without dealing with the gentlemen lurking just over the border. Indeed, if Afghanistan is really the "good war," then the US ought to be invading Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Provinces to accomplish our strategic objectives. Funny, I don't hear anybody advocating that.

Meanwhile, leaving Iraq unstable and at the mercy of Iran seems to be as close to failing to achieve any of your strategic objectives as you can get. Not only will you wind up with an Iranian-dominated Iraq but there will be immediate pressure on the Kuwaitis and the Saudis to remove the US garrisons from their soil. Then the real fun will begin.

I suppose if you really think that we simply can't prevent an inevitable collapse, then we should leave. But it seems to me that we can keep the lid on indefinitely, albeit at great cost. With a little luck, we can make things better. That'd be nice but it's not essential. Keeping the oil flowing is.

Similarly, if you really think that the Iraqis are just being lazy and not working to provide for their own security, then we should leave, because everything will be just ducky once we're gone. But please note that the narrative where the Iraqis are pressured to step up to their own security is as big an article of faith as the one on the other side where the US can impose stability over time. Both are about equal crapshoots.

Let's look at the worst-case scenarios for both courses of action. If we stay, things go to hell and our nightmare continues indefinitely. If we evacuate, things go to hell, we re-invade, and our nightmare continues indefinitely. Don't re-invade, you say? It's simply not possible. We don't have anything approaching a viable economy without access to the oil. Whether we lose access because Iran puts the screws to us or whether the region simply decays to the point where it can't support the infrastructure necessary to get the oil out of the ground and onto the tankers, we'll have to go back in and fix it.

Want a real strategy? Just barely keep the lid on in Afghanistan, do slightly more than keep the lid on in Iraq. Meanwhile, invest $100 billion a year to develop and deploy a broad array of alternative energy technologies and some portable energy mechanism that will make cars and trucks work without gasoline. It'll cost a quarter of a trillion dollars a year for ten years. We'll have to raise taxes and reduce services to stanch the fiscal bleeding.

Yup, we're in big trouble. If we hadn't invaded Iraq five years ago we'd be in slightly less trouble, but we'd still be investing huge military resources in the Middle East to keep the oil flowing. The trick now is to keep the region from going to hell for just long enough so that we don't need the oil as much.

Things might not be quite this bad. Often, when you face up to a problem and commit to solving it, things get better faster than you thought they would. But it seems prudent to me to plan for the worst.

Posted by TheRadicalModerate | March 25, 2008 12:24 PM

TheRadicalModerate wrote, Meanwhile, leaving Iraq unstable and at the mercy of Iran seems to be as close to failing to achieve any of your strategic objectives as you can get.

Why? You're making the assumption that geopolitics dictates that Iran and the US are natural enemies. Looking at the map, I don't see that.

Not only will you wind up with an Iranian-dominated Iraq but there will be immediate pressure on the Kuwaitis and the Saudis to remove the US garrisons from their soil.

How's that follow? There might be pressure from the likes of bin Laden. But no anti-Westernism is going to exist because of the divisions between local powers (Shi'ite vs Sunni, Arabic vs Persian, etc).

But it seems to me that we can keep the lid on indefinitely, albeit at great cost. With a little luck, we can make things better. That'd be nice but it's not essential. Keeping the oil flowing is.

Yes, except that there's no evidence or argument that shows we need a sizeable military force there to keep the oil flowing.

Similarly, if you really think that the Iraqis are just being lazy and not working to provide for their own security, then we should leave, because everything will be just ducky once we're gone.

The argument isn't that things won't go to hell once we leave. The argument is that staying forever isn't an option, and staying longer won't prevent things from going to hell once we leave.

We don't have anything approaching a viable economy without access to the oil.

True.

Whether we lose access because Iran puts the screws to us...

Why would Iran do that? They like it when we buy their oil. What they don't like are our attempts to encroach on their sovereignty.

...or whether the region simply decays to the point where it can't support the infrastructure necessary to get the oil out of the ground and onto the tankers, we'll have to go back in and fix it.

Not convincing. There might be a need to occasionally use military force to keep the region stable, but your claim we need to occupy or garrison is far from proven. Particularly when e.g. any force that tries to invade Kuwait or Saudi Arabia is going to be extremely vulnerable to air attacks due to the terrain.

If we hadn't invaded Iraq five years ago we'd be in slightly less trouble, but we'd still be investing huge military resources in the Middle East to keep the oil flowing.

Again, not convincing. Some military resources, perhaps. Huge? Nah. Particularly when the rest of the developed world is at least as dependent on middle east oil than we are.

Posted by liberal | March 25, 2008 12:35 PM

But it seems prudent to me to plan for the worst.

Then why do you assume that the outcome of our continued occupation will be the best possible one?

You're worried that Iraq might fall under the hegemony of Iran and then cut of our access to oil. You fail to note that Iran is controlled by Iran, and Iran is not particularly interested in cutting off its supplies of oil (which, in any case, are sold on the world markets, not to us, directly).

Posted by Tyro | March 25, 2008 12:36 PM

Sorry for the double post--I got a server error the first time through. No doubt many of you think that posting it once was bad enough.

Posted by TheRadicalModerate | March 25, 2008 12:38 PM

"But no anti-Westernism is going to exist" should be "no simple, pure anti-Westernism is going to exist..."

Posted by liberal | March 25, 2008 12:39 PM

The idea being that the American people can make a better assessment of what they want when they hear the whole picture

and

Discussing the likely ugliness and why that's the route we should go down is part of being honest to the American People. Otherwise it presents withdrawal as its own magical pony.

although written by different people, represent aspects of the same self-deception going on in discussions about the Iraq war.

Packer doesn't want Obama to engage in hand-wringing in order to give people "the whole picture", and he doesn't want him to engage in it to avoid presenting withdrawal as a magic pony.

He wants Obama to engage in hand-wringing because that would help trap antiwar forces into moral responsibility for the effects of the war.

That is the #1 aim and goal of all pro-war apologists at this point. Not coming up with a real plan. Not being straight with the American people. None of that.

They want to hear antiwar people say that withdrawal won't occur until "humanitarian concerns" are addressed. This has the effect of making withdrawal impossible, precisely because the prowar people have screwed the pooch so badly.

The people whose errors brought us the war want to find a way to universalize moral responsibility for the war. Getting Obama to buy into the notion that a new administration will be morally responsible for any humanitarian crisis following withdrawal accomplishes that. The one thing they definitely don't want to hear is anyone saying that we're going to wash our hands of Bush's errors and leave them as Bush's errors.

Posted by Brian | March 25, 2008 12:39 PM

TheRadicalModerate wrote, No doubt many of you think that posting it once was bad enough.

Yes, but only insofar as that if the wait for the server was as painful for you as it's been for me...

Posted by liberal | March 25, 2008 12:43 PM

TRM seems intent on conforming to the stereotype of the "straw-moderate" who insists on ploughing through a middle ground between two sides of everything.

That's not "radical." If you want to be "radical," tell me how you support single payer health care, the illegalization of abortion, distribution of contraceptives in schools, and a plan to invade Iran and return the Shah's family to power. That would be radical while also qualifying a third way outside of the two prevailing ideological parties in the USA. Give me some Nat Hentoff-style libertarian neoconservative social democracy!

Posted by Tyro | March 25, 2008 12:43 PM

You know what? It wasn't the American anti-war movement that got us out of Vietnam-it was the Vietnamese.

Same deal in Iraq:

Sadr deflates Surge!

Iraq is hell and the surge is one of the seasons of hell– a slight change of scenery, a costume change between acts. The Surge is part of the selling campaign, it’s the 2007-8 model of the long stay in Iraq.

And we stay and stay. Why? The place would revert to chaos of we were to leave. Revert? Chaos is US. We stay because we broke the pottery and now we need to fix it. Fix it? Not in a million years. Asking the US to fix Iraq is like asking Michael Jackson to babysit your children. So we stay, for what? What does the place have of value? Oil. That’s why we stay. Simple question: why don’t we go to Darfur? Simple answer, No oil.

The surge will come and go. Next season there will be a new hope: perhaps Chalabi will return and bring peace. And then the denouement-Chabali summarily killed and revealed as a fraud and on and on, more plots, sub-plots and pipedreams which will last 50 more years when the oil will run out.

The British took over Iraq after the Ottomans were defeated in WWI. They needed oil for their fleet which was switching over to coal. British Pro-Council Gertrude Bell thought the Shias were not to be trusted so she went with the Sunnis. Churchill’s RAF gassed the Kurds and after that everyone kept pretty much in line.

The country was turned over to CIA station chief Kermit Roosevelt (Teddy’s grandson) in the 50’s and the oil became US corporate property. Saddam nationalized the oil and tossed out the Enrons of the time. Bush tossed out Saddam and now we have chaos.

And now Sadr is rising..

A ghastly tale, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Posted by Sid, the white-shoe humanist | March 25, 2008 12:47 PM

The American Rightwing always gets to establish the grounds of discussion by abolishing certain options and even expressions. Rove's "genius" includes his relentless push to establish the simple frames that the media adopt because it simplifies "reporting." (Another part of his genius is his fascism, but the media-approved frame bans that term from discourse, so we aren't allowed to point out that much of Bushism is in fact fascism.) I think the most useful term that has been banned from the Iraq dialogue is "Vietnam." Six more months. Pacification. Turning over local control. Turning the corner. Foreign influence. Communist (Islamist) threat.

It's not like we haven't been through this chicken hawk B.S. before, but Charlie Rose would never be so rude as to give airtime to sober consideration of this reality: the people who gave us Vietnam are having a do-over, with results similar to the original. Just say "Vietnam" and watch your righty acquaintances jump up and down denying any similarity at all. Iraq and Vietnam are SOOOooo completely different that you should never say it! Hmmm. Really?

Posted by Radio Head | March 25, 2008 1:19 PM

FWIW worth I was a 100% against this war from the very beginning and never wavered or believed any of the BS, yet I think that all the points Packer makes are valid and that Democrats who cover their ears and sing loudly because they don't want to hear the bad news or think a about what should be done, but rather go back to playing with their iPhones, are immoral idiots.

Posted by novakant | March 25, 2008 2:28 PM

pseudonymous -- either you misunderstand me, or I you. You label as "b.s." (isn't the internet grand) my notion that owning up to the fact that withdrawal is in many ways the best of broadly speaking two bad options and that stating that up front will help prevent public backlash if and when bad things start to happen when we do withdraw. Then you declare there are no "magic pony" options.

jerry and liberal have already essentially covered this, but the fact that there are no "magic pony" options is my point. In such circumstances, it is better to let the public know that is the case. Otherwise, the Dems set themselves up for taking the blame for anything bad that happens after withdrawal. A public that votes for a candidate that clearly spells out the potential downside of his/her preferred policy is less likely to cry foul when some of those downside risks play out. (Maybe Packer is disingenuous in raising this issue, but I don't think so and I think it is substantively correct in any event.)

I am a die hard Obama fan for many reasons, but I do think that he has to date tended to understate the potential downsides of withdrawal. Again, my guess is that in the general election when the contrast with McCain will be stark already, he will flesh out his thinking on this issue.

Posted by Chunche | March 25, 2008 3:04 PM

liberal--

You are correct that the US and Iran have no geographic reason to be enemies. Nevertheless, there's an awful lot of bad blood. I won't pretend for a moment that some, maybe even most, of that bad blood isn't our fault. That hardly matters. For many years, it will be imprudent for either side to trust the other.

This is going to have two consequences. First, from the US's side, if we decide to give the Iranians free rein over the head of the Gulf, we'd better have assessed about a 99.999% probability that we'll continue to get unrestricted access to the oil. Second, on the Iranian side, they'd have to compute about the same probability that the US was not a mortal threat to them with troops deployed on their borders. In other words, you've got the classic game theory problem that causes arms races to escalate until the facts on the ground change in some fundamental way--or until there's a big honkin' war.

So, the US can't leave the head of the Gulf and Iran can't allow it to stay. If the US pulls the plug on Iraq, Iran still needs to get the plug pulled on Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Otherwise, they're just as insecure as ever.

Note that none of this precludes negotiation with the Iranians. But even with the Soviet Union, we didn't negotiate territory or basing (with one exception). Instead, we negotiated to reduce the probability that one side would wake up one morning and decide that today was a mighty fine day to take the other guy out. Negotiations could do the same for the Gulf.

As for your assertion that staying forever isn't an option, I completely agree. (I assume you meant we couldn't stay forever at the current operational tempo. We could obviously garrison a couple of brigades in a stable Iraq indefinitely--cf. McCain's "hundred years" statement.) However, staying for another ten years is an option--barely--and I suspect that the economic cost of things going sideways in the Gulf drops precipitously after those ten years. In other words, the facts on the ground do change when we get close to the knee in the alt-energy curve.

You also implied that the cost of policing the head of the Gulf from time to time was nowhere near as large as the cost of maintaining forces in Iraq for a while. That might be true if we had bases in the region. Which goes back to the question of whether we can hold on to basing in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. I can't think of a reason why, should we evacuate from Iraq, there won't be car bombs going off every other day in Kuwait City, and then in Dhahran, and so on, until we're pushed out of the head of the Gulf. At that point, you're looking at amphibious operations to do anything. That's a cost, in lives and treasure, that will make Iraq look like a training exercise.

To your last point, yes, the rest of the world has a dog in this fight. But they're perfectly happy to free-ride off of the US because they know we're in no position to call their bluff. Find a way to negotiate to put 20 NATO/Arab League brigades into Kuwait and keep them there peacefully, and you'd be on to something. Until then, we're stuck.

Posted by TheRadicalModerate | March 25, 2008 4:58 PM

Tyro--

Then why do you assume that the outcome of our continued occupation will be the best possible one?

I don't. I merely assume that it will be better than the likeliest outcome if we withdraw. It's quite possible that things will be a lot like they are right now (with some months being better and some being worse). I'm moderately optimistic that things might be a lot better than that, but it would be foolish to count on that.

The heart of our disagreement here is a pretty old one: You're willing to trust that a current adversary, Iran, will act in its rational economic interest and engage in a win-win (i.e. selling oil) with the West no matter what. I'm not. Iran has lots of other interests, many of them nationalistic, some of them religious, some of them simply derived from the fact that we scared the crap out of them and they don't trust us.

When the stakes are somewhat lower, you can be a lot more trusting. But getting it wrong means that our economy simply stops. That's grounds for a certain degree of mistrust.

Posted by TheRadicalModerate | March 25, 2008 5:28 PM

yet I think that all the points Packer makes are valid and that Democrats who cover their ears and sing loudly because they don't want to hear the bad news or think a about what should be done,

Of course the points he makes are valid. They were being made by many of the opponents to the war in the first place (Like Barack Obama for instance, who knew the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite back when it mattered). Liberal hawks like Packer were the ones who dismissed them at the time

Then the last panelist spoke. He was an Iraqi dissident named Kanan Makiya, and he said, ''I'm afraid I'm going to strike a discordant note.'' He pointed out that Iraqis, who will pay the highest price in the event of an invasion, ''overwhelmingly want this war.'' He outlined a vision of postwar Iraq as a secular democracy with equal rights for all of its citizens. This vision would be new to the Arab world. ''It can be encouraged, or it can be crushed just like that. But think about what you're doing if you crush it.'' Makiya's voice rose as he came to an end. ''I rest my moral case on the following: if there's a sliver of a chance of it happening, a 5 to 10 percent chance, you have a moral obligation, I say, to do it.''

The effect was electrifying. The room, which just minutes earlier had settled into a sober and comfortable rejection of war, exploded in applause. The other panelists looked startled, and their reasonable arguments suddenly lay deflated on the table before them.

-George Packer, December 2002

Posted by Jinchi | March 25, 2008 5:30 PM

Don't re-invade, you say? It's simply not possible. We don't have anything approaching a viable economy without access to the oil.

That's ridiculous. While we need oil, we don't specifically need Iraqi oil.

Posted by Stefan | March 25, 2008 5:37 PM

I merely assume that it will be better than the likeliest outcome if we withdraw.

I've been hearing this argument since the war started. I've heard prediction after prediction of what horrors will occur if we withdraw.

Then those things happen anyway and I'm told - if we had left, it would have been even worse.

This is a pointless and unprovable argument. Our soldiers are being used to hold a shattered vessel together. They haven't been given a mission that they can accomplish - success depends on Iraqis taking specific actions and the Iraqis have proven that they have very different goals than we do.

What we have to ask now is, what will our presence accomplish and do we risk harm to our national defense our military and our economy, not to mention potentially losing in Afghanistan as well if we continue to pour hundreds of billions of dollars and decades of effort into Iraq.

Posted by Jinchi | March 25, 2008 5:41 PM

You also implied that the cost of policing the head of the Gulf from time to time was nowhere near as large as the cost of maintaining forces in Iraq for a while. That might be true if we had bases in the region. Which goes back to the question of whether we can hold on to basing in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

You seem to be unaware of the actual strategic situation in the Persian Gulf, a fact which gives your analysis somewhat less credibility. The US does not have bases in Saudi Arabia and has not since 2003. The US does, however, have bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, etc. Moreover, it can maintain carrier groups on patrol in the Gulf while supplying them from bases outside of the Gulf.

I can't think of a reason why, should we evacuate from Iraq, there won't be car bombs going off every other day in Kuwait City, and then in Dhahran, and so on, until we're pushed out of the head of the Gulf.

Er, I can -- unlike Iraq we didn't brutally attack and invade those countries, and hence there isn't an armed rebellion dedicated to driving us out?

And why would there be car bombs going off every day in these other countries if we withdrew from Iraq, but there aren't in fact car bombs every day when we're actually in Iraq? If they wanted to drive us out, wouldn't they be doing it now to put even more pressure on?

Posted by Stefan | March 25, 2008 5:48 PM

You're willing to trust that a current adversary, Iran, will act in its rational economic interest and engage in a win-win (i.e. selling oil) with the West no matter what. I'm not.

Why?

Iran has lots of other interests, many of them nationalistic, some of them religious, some of them simply derived from the fact that we scared the crap out of them and they don't trust us.

And all of those other nationalistic, religious, etc. interests are advanced by them selling oil, since without oil they don't have money, and without money they have less ability to defend themselves.

Posted by Stefan | March 25, 2008 6:19 PM

Of course the points he makes are valid. They were being made by many of the opponents to the war in the first place (Like Barack Obama for instance, who knew the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite back when it mattered). Liberal hawks like Packer were the ones who dismissed them at the time.

Well, if having supported the Iraq war initially and then changed your mind about it disqualifies one from commenting on the current situation, why are you reading this blog?

Posted by novakant | March 25, 2008 7:12 PM

TRM, despite your casual dismissal, you Are assuming the best-case scenario of the occupation while accusing everyone else of assuming the best-case scenario of leaving.

Next, your talk about Iran is simply a procrustian struggle to justify extending the occupation indefinitely.

Posted by Tyro | March 25, 2008 10:11 PM