The War of the Maybes

As Richard Cohen says "the truth is that no one knows what will happen to Iraq if U.S. troops pull out" -- everyone's just guesstimating: "Maybe the Kurdish region will go its own way, taking its oil with it. Maybe the Shiites in the south will embrace Iranian hegemony -- or maybe they will remember they're not Persians who speak Farsi but Arabs who speak Arabic, and resume the old enmity. Maybe Osama bin Laden will buy a condo in Baghdad. Maybe, maybe, maybe." And then the thud -- "Maybes are not sufficient reason for Americans to continue to die."

As with Vietnam, the ending is inevitable. We will get out, and the only question that remains is whether we get out with 3,000 dead or 4,000 or 5,000. At some point the American people will not countenance, and Congress will not support, a war that cannot be won. Just how many lives will be wasted in what we all know is a wasted effort is about the only question still left on the table. Realism dictates as few as possible.

Seems right to me. But of course as our soldiers stay in theater for years and keep on killing and dying, wounded and being wounded, they won't really be dying for maybes. They'll be dying for honor and dignity. Not the honor and dignity of the US Army and Marine Corps, or of the United States of America and its citizens, but for that of the not-especially honorable or dignified men and women whose poor judgment and crass immorality put the troops there in the first place.

A quotation: "Do you think we could go on forever / When the architects of the war / Are handing out the swords?"

Comments

Mama don't allow no poetry quotin' 'round here.

Posted by Jeffrery Davis | December 13, 2006 9:45 AM

I like Shakespeare: "And if these men do not die well/ Then it will be a black matter for the king who led them to it."

Posted by Brian Ulrich | December 13, 2006 9:47 AM

"the not-especially honorable or dignified men and women whose poor judgment and crass immorality put the troops there in the first place."

You're crassly immoral?

Posted by Petey | December 13, 2006 9:53 AM

If any question why we died
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Rudyard Kipling

Posted by Brian | December 13, 2006 11:04 AM

This is moral evasion and it substitutes questionable certainties for maybes that do need to be faced and decided between:

As for the rest of this nightmare scenario, who knows? It's likely that Sunnis and Shiites would battle it out, but that's what they are already doing. A U.S. withdrawal will make things worse, of course, but America has to withdraw sooner or later, and then the civil war that our guys have (barely) managed to contain will break out with a vengeance. We cannot stop it; we can only delay it -- at the cost of more American lives.

The question is: will the mass slaughter of innocents that is likely to follow a (sooner) American withdrawal be significantly worse than if we draw down and Salvadorize the civil war, try to manage it, gambling that the training of Iraqi forces and embedding of advisors with them will mean that the moral restraints we inculcate and try to enforce will outweigh the increased efficiency in killing we also will have inculcated?

I don't think the answer is obvious. And Cohen allows himself to paper over it with certainties that things will be the same once we leave, whenever that happens.

Posted by Jeff | December 13, 2006 11:07 AM

It should not be supposed that honor and dignity are better served by persisting in a wrong measure once entered into than by rectifying an error as soon as it is discovered.
– Benjamin Franklin, during the Stamp Act crisis

By and large, I seem to have made more mistakes than any others of whom I know, but have learned thereby to make ever swifter acknowledgment of the errors and thereafter immediately set about to deal more effectively with the truths disclosed by the acknowledgment of erroneous assumptions.
– Buckminster Fuller

Posted by Adrock | December 13, 2006 11:10 AM

I don't think the answer is obvious.
Posted by: Jeff on December 13, 2006 11:07 AM

You're right - it's not obvious. In fact, it's so non-obvious, it's actually UNKNOWABLE. Which means it can't really be used as a factor in the decision.

Posted by brooksfoe | December 13, 2006 11:25 AM

In fact, it's so non-obvious, it's actually UNKNOWABLE. Which means it can't really be used as a factor in the decision.

For this to be true, it would have to be so unknowable that nothing could be known about it, at least nothing that would enable you to differentiate the two courses of action. And you are certain of this how?

Put differently, I'm skeptical that we've confidently determined that it is unknowable in this sense because nobody is talking about it, focusing on this question, instead taking the answer as given or assuming it is unknowable in your sense. But that's mostly just a function on the left of the fact that people have just written this whole thing off, and on the right that, well, they're not interested in thinking about the situation at all.

Posted by Jeff | December 13, 2006 12:11 PM

For this to be true, it would have to be so unknowable that nothing could be known about it, at least nothing that would enable you to differentiate the two courses of action. And you are certain of this how?

I'm not CERTAIN that it's unknowable. I just think very strongly that it's unknowable, because none of the evidence that's presented arguing for either case has seemed overwhelmingly convincing to me, and I can't actually even imagine what type of evidence I would find convincing, of either case.

On the one hand, it's possible that even though dozens to hundreds of people are being slaughtered right now in sectarian massacres every day, and US troops do not seem to be doing anything that identifiably restrains violence against civilians or convinces them that their neighborhoods are safe enough not to move, nevertheless, violence and ethnic cleansing would intensify if US troops left.

On the other hand, it's possible that the presence of US troops is restraining the respective militias, which are the only real politically grounded military forces in the country, from establishing control and security in their respective areas, as the peshmerga have in Kurdistan; so that US forces are actually preventing the situation from stabilizing.

On the third hand, it's possible that the US presence is acting as a crutch for the Iraqi government, which would be forced to at least try to establish genuine control over the country if we left.

On the fourth hand, it's possible that if we left, Iran and Syria and Saudi Arabia would try to assert their respective influences, leading to a wider war.

On the fifth hand, it's possible that such an attempt to assert influence by neighboring states would play a stabilizing role, along the lines of the Syrian presence which ended Lebanon's civil war.

On the sixth hand...

What kind of evidence would you accept for or against any of these scenarios? What level of certainty would you have that your assessment of the probabilities was even vaguely correct? I say: nothing you could know about this situation enables you to predict with any reasonable level of confidence whether things would be demonstrably worse if the US bugged out now rather than 2 or 5 years from now. Cohen is right; human beings lack the ability to figure this situation out. And when you have no idea whether or not you're accomplishing anything, it's time to stop killing people.

Posted by brooksfoe | December 13, 2006 12:32 PM

Here's another angle on it. Is there anyone who still would argue that the U.S. presence is a cause of instability in Iraq? I take it the answer is no, which is to say that there is a very high probability that if we were to leave very soon, there would be a huge increase in the mass slaughter of complete innocents in Iraq - and we would bear a great part of the responsibility for that (not for having left per se, but for having caused the whole mess in the first place). That is a responsibility we have to face and not euphemize about. And to say, as Cohen does, that Shiites and Sunnis are already battling it out in Iraq is to ignore how much worse it is likely to get if we leave now; and to say further as blithely as he does that this is what is going to happen anyway whenever we leave shows a total lack of moral seriousness on his part. Who knows? Who knows? How about, the U.S. responsible for a situation that is likely to produce near-genocidal if not outright genocidal killing.

Oh but maybe we shouldn't use that as a factor in the decision.

Posted by jeff | December 13, 2006 12:33 PM

Petey, why so nasty? It's like having another Al around...on the center-left.

Posted by julian julian | December 13, 2006 12:38 PM

Is there anyone who still would argue that the U.S. presence is a cause of instability in Iraq? I take it the answer is no,

Huh? Why do you take it the answer is no? I'll make the argument - I don't know if it's true, but it's a tenable argument. Just as the Soviet presence in Afghanistan in the late '80s was a cause of instability: as long as they were there, propping up Najibullah, the country was prevented from making the transition to a government with an authentic constituency and widespread legitimacy.

Unfortunately that government turned out to be the Taliban. But the bloodshed and slaughter was curtailed; it was more "stable". The US is propping up the Iraqi regime, but if you think it's a weak, doomed regime, then the US presence is not a source of "stability".

Posted by brooksfoe | December 13, 2006 12:42 PM

brooksfoe

It seems to me that part of the answer is that a lot of your hands are just euphemistic description and wishful thinking, and in fact you appear to be embracing the real possibility that if we leave things will actually improve, which seems obviously wrong to me. You really think US forces are doing nothing to restrain the violence, as bad as it is? You really think the militias might provide stability in their areas without ethnic cleansing and major killing? You really think the government exerting real country once we take our hands off the bicycle as things stand now wouldn't mean massively more killing? You really think any kind of stability imposed by outside actors wouldn't include mass killing?

Posted by jeff | December 13, 2006 12:46 PM

brooksfoe

Ok, I see, you and Cohen actually part ways. Cohen believes things will indeed get worse when we leave, but it's just a question of whether that's sooner or later.

You actually think it's possible that things will get better if we just leave. For me that's totally delusional. But I see where you're coming from now.

And by the way, I'm not saying the U.S. is a force for stability in any sense other than that I don't think the U.S. leaving will somehow lead to more stability, and I in fact think it will lead to more innocent people being killed.

Posted by Jeff | December 13, 2006 12:50 PM

I think Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" is the definitively appropriate set of lyrics:

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

...

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud.

Read the whole thing!

Posted by Christopher M | December 13, 2006 12:56 PM

You really think US forces are doing nothing to restrain the violence, as bad as it is?

Many ways to answer this question. First: is anything US forces are doing actually restraining violence? That remains to be proved. Second: there's a difference between "restraining violence" and "stability". US forces may be currently trying to restrain violence, yet still be a source of instability. The British were restraining violence in India in 1947, but there was no way for the country to become stable until they left - even though their departure resulted in a huge short-term spike in violence.

Posted by brooksfoe | December 13, 2006 1:13 PM

is anything US forces are doing actually restraining violence? That remains to be proved.

I take it it is accepted that when U.S. troops go intensively into an area in Baghdad, violence goes down there, and when they leave again it goes up. I take that to be both strong evidence that U.S. forces are doing things that actually restrain violence, and a strong indication that when we leave altogether, there will be more and more widespread violence.

The British were restraining violence in India in 1947, but there was no way for the country to become stable until they left - even though their departure resulted in a huge short-term spike in violence.

This is at least getting closer to an actual discussion. You think this is likely what will happen when we leave - or is that just another unknowable, thrown in to say we can't know anything, so let's not think about it? And if you think it likely, it's acceptable, the best, or the only course? Because you think that spike will be how high, or what?

Posted by Jeff | December 13, 2006 1:39 PM

Maybe Richard Cohen and his Beltway buddies will someday make the transition from "Maybes are not sufficient reason for Americans to continue to die" to "Maybes are not sufficient reason to start gratuitous words." Baby steps.

Posted by Matt Weiner | December 13, 2006 3:40 PM

Gah. "Maybes are not sufficient reason to start gratuituous WARS."

Posted by Matt Weiner | December 13, 2006 3:43 PM

At the end of the day, all the handwringing from the hawks about the bloodbath they are sure will happen if we pull out now is just a dishonest rhetorical tactic. These folks really couldn't care less about the level of Iraqi blood spilled, as is obvious from their lack of concern over the issue in calling for the war in the first place. Had the Iraqi army and populace stood and fought and the US Armed Forces had killed hundreds of thousands of them during the invasion, it would have mattered not a whit to the hawks.

What is important to them is keeping the US military in Iraq, for reasons of pride (we can't have been wrong!), hope (just another six months and we'll turn a corner!), and fear (OMG, the Iranians / al-Qaeda will control the Middle East!). They're willing to sacrifice a few good men for this (as long as it's not them or anyone they love).

Posted by moonbiter | December 13, 2006 6:27 PM

At the end of the day, all the handwringing from the hawks about the bloodbath they are sure will happen if we pull out now is just a dishonest rhetorical tactic.

That certainly seems to be the case. However, you shouldn't use that as a convenient excuse not to consider whether, in fact, there will be a bloodbath if we pull out now from a situation for whose creation we are largely responsible. Take me, for instance. I'm all handwringing these days. But I'm not now nor have I ever been a hawk, in general and emphatically in relation to this war, which I opposed from well before it happened. I'm all handwringing because I fear that a lot a lot of perfectly innocent people are going to be killed if we pull out now, and because I'm not convinced that it won't be worse if we stay for a while, train Shiite-dominated ISF and then leave, unleashing them. And because we're responsible for bringing things to this pass.

Posted by Jeff | December 13, 2006 11:44 PM

"I'm all handwringing because I fear that a lot a lot of perfectly innocent people are going to be killed if we pull out now, and because I'm not convinced that it won't be worse if we stay for a while, train Shiite-dominated ISF and then leave, unleashing them."

A lot of perfectly innocent people are getting killed right now. What makes you think that the Americans are having any real effect on the dynamics? I mean, one might argue that the presence of the American military is preventing the various groups from marching entire armies around, but that just means that the various factions are having to knife each other in the dark.

You mentioned above that "I take it it is accepted that when U.S. troops go intensively into an area in Baghdad, violence goes down there, and when they leave again it goes up." But this is only the case when there are troops actively standing there on the corner shooting everything threatening. Even then, this is only suppression -- the fact that violence goes back up when troops leave shows that it has done nothing to actually solve the problem, and in the process it gets our folks wounded and killed (because the will to violence doesn't actually go away, it is just made harder to commit).

Thus, even if we plan on staying there with troops on every block into perpetuity, the situation isn't going to get any better -- at best, it is just going to maintain the status quo of the country's slow death by a thousand cuts. It isn't obvious what will happen if we leave, but it is obvious what is happening right now.

With that in mind, as a selfish American, I think the best choice is the one that results in American troops taking the smallest amount of casualties and costs American taxpayers paying the least amount of money. We certainly bear responsibility for this situation, and we should never have invaded in the first place, it being both strategically and morally boneheaded. But our being there is not actually helping to solve the mess, and our responsibility in the matter does not change that.

Posted by moonbiter | December 14, 2006 6:33 AM