Partly Pregnant

Like Brian Beutler, I've long been fascinated by the war the Iraq War appears to have spawned a whole new category of organized violence -- whatever it is that's happening in Iraq that somehow isn't a "full-scale" civil war. Call it the half-scale civil war. It sounds like BS to me.

No, Iraq's civil war doesn't look like the American Civil War, but if that's what we mean by "full-scale civil war" then it's almost certainly not the case that "the surge is keeping Iraq from descending into" one. That the groups who deny the legitimacy of the de jure government and the US occupation authority and deploy violence or the threat of violence in service of their political goals don't necessarily wear uniforms and fight in formation is rather typical of these kind of situations and not something the surge is preventing. Looked at a different way, Iraq's civil war is notable for the fact that the contending parties' don't have much in the way of heavy military equipment. That's all to the good, and we have good reasons for continuing to support efforts to keep things that way post-withdrawal, but efforts in that regard don't require the presence of over 150,000 American soldiers on the ground.

Public domain photo of the Gettysburg dead by Alexander Gardner

Comments

Suppose our motivation for staying is not decency or a desire to knit a democratic Iraq, but rather to have a seat at the table when the various deals between ethnic (and, I assume, otherwise) groups get made. Maybe the benefits would be few, maybe it could be accomplished with our forces out of the country. But it doesn't seem like a crazy reason to keep a smaller force (50K?) in Iraq, with instructions that minimize exposure to violence.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 1, 2007 6:39 PM

James Fearon skillfully dispatched with that canard earlier this year in Foreign Affairs:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070301faessay86201/james-d-fearon/iraq-s-civil-war.html

Posted by David | July 1, 2007 6:46 PM

"Seat at the table"? Oh please! Since when has the Bush administration been able to think that far ahead? What makes anybody think they even thought there would be a table? Or that there is a table? Or that there are seats at it?

The purpose of the war was to have a war. The reason the Bush administration needed a war was because they felt they needed a war. The reason they felt they needed a war was that it could give them something to "win," and winning is important. Reagan did it in Grenada, didn't he? This was the same thing, only a little more ambitious.

Why is "winning" important? Or for that matter, what does "winning" mean?

Oh, nevermind.

Yours crankily,
The New York Crank

Posted by The New York Crank | July 1, 2007 6:53 PM

Let's stipulate the fact that the fighting in Iraq that's now occurring is of an equal magnitude, and equally horrifying, as that of many civil wars and regional conflicts.

However, don't you think that in the absence of American occupation the violence would change shape and come to resemble a more classical intranational conflict?

It seem to me that it would. And, as it happens, I think that (at this point) this would be better for the Iraqis than the status quo.

That an American withdrawal might allow a "full scale civil war" is perhaps more an argument in favor of withdrawal than against it.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | July 1, 2007 7:31 PM

The US Civil War is such a misleading model for civil wars, in part because it's on the cusp of two models of warfare: it was a 'modern war' in some technological aspects, but still reflected an older model of skirmishes and pitched battles.

But because it's one of the few guaranteed elements on a high school history curriculum, and both well-documented and documentaried, there's room for the unscrupulous to say, in essence, that if you can't imagine re-enactions on holiday weekends, you can't call it a full-scale civil war.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 1, 2007 7:37 PM

i think it is pretty widely accepted by serious students of civil wars (i.e. people who study military history or comparative political systems) that the U.S. civil war is not usefully classified as a civil war. It really was a state-state conflict, so far as its scale and development went. (To say this is not to pretend that the CSA was a *sovereign* state, much less a legitimate one. Just that it had the size and resources of one, and fought a war like one.)

For genuine civil wars, the model might be e.g. the post-war conflicts in Greece, or the Tamil separatist movement. If you look at 100 civil wars, 95 of them look a lot more like what's going on in Iraq, a lot less like what happened here between 1860 and 1865.

Posted by thag | July 1, 2007 7:46 PM

It strikes me that there is a presumption that Withdrawal = Isolationism. That the U.S. can't be involved in the region without actively contributing 100k+ troops to a particular side.

I'm not sure I agree with that.

Posted by space | July 1, 2007 7:56 PM

“I'm not sure I agree with that.”

I certainly don't. I'm very anti-isolationist. And I do worry that the fallout of this disastrous folly will be isolationism in the US, as happened after Vietnam. But it's clear that withdrawal is now the right thing to do.

For a good while early in the occupation, I felt that withdrawal would have been a bad thing, unleashing a huge civil war. But it's now clear that we aren't helping. At best, we're just slowing things down. And even if slowing things down might be considered a good thing (for example, giving everyone more time to change direction), the big problem is that now we're actually adding fuel to the fire with our occupation, metaphorically pumping into it anger and resentment that will have consequences whether or not we're still there to see them.

The best thing that could happen would be a very strong international peacekeeping force led and greatly manned by forces that Iraqis and the Muslim world would accept. I don't see that happening. This administration would never do encourage or work toward such a thing and, more tragically, they've poisoned the well.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | July 1, 2007 8:35 PM

I'm pretty sure "low-intensity" is the preferred term.

Posted by Michael Vanderwheel, B.A. | July 1, 2007 8:46 PM

Since withdrawal is not going to come for at least a year and a half, presuming Bush opposes it and the Democrats actually grow a spine and use the September battle to direct troops funding exclusively for withdrawal, now is of course the time to think about how that withdrawal can be done in a way that maximizes a possible peacemaking process. The advantage to the Americans loosening their grip is that it gives Iraqi politicians like Sadr and Sunni politicians like Allawi a chance to deal without worrying about contouring some conclusion that the Americans have to stamp. What the Americans could do is stop opposing unconditional talks - and those talks could even, presumably, include al qaeda, if there is an Iraqi political front for al qaeda. What Americans could press for that would be popular with the Iraqis is that these talks first deal with purging the purely criminal element from every paramilitary group at the moment. As important is the role of the Kurds, who definitely are going to be unhappy as their American sponsors leave. The Kurds might have to settle for free zones in Kirkuk, and the question of their stealthy attempt to go from a minority to a majority in Ninevah province probably will have to be on the table. Another important point for the Iraqis is to create a training force for themselves, by themselves. They've been able to field an army for 80 years, and they really don't need the Americans to train them in how to do that. If they need outside help, they could do what the Americans do when they want security or intelligence - contract with a mercenary group.

Those are a few ideas targetting what does need to get debated in the shaping of the withdrawal. Unfortunately, there aren't any American politicians, at the moment, talking about the shape of the withdrawal, and the desireability of revamping the goals in Iraq to simply diminishing the level of violence. None are talking about negotiations. It is an unexpected result of a flawed election that it stands as a quasi-legitimate block to serious negotiation. The need for new elections at the end of some negotiating process is probably another item in any real conciliation process.

Posted by roger | July 1, 2007 10:25 PM

ps - the flawed election, of course, refers to the Iraqi election of 2005, not the coup that happened in the U.S. in 2000.

Posted by roger | July 1, 2007 10:27 PM

Iraq's civil war is notable for the fact that the contending parties' don't have much in the way of heavy military equipment

Why doesn't one party, the allegedly sovereign government of Iraq that's our ally in the War on Terror, have heavy military equipment? How can they secure their country without tanks, planes, etc.?

It seems obvious that the reason they don't is because we can't trust them, and if we can't, we're going to be there for a long time.

Posted by croatoan | July 2, 2007 10:02 AM

Croatoan, the iraqis do have a brigade of heavy equipment. We're ready to trust them with that much.

The trouble is, that stuff just isn't very useful under the circumstances. When the tanks have to stay on roads they're easy to kill. Maybe they'd be more use in a total war, where it's fine for armor to roll over the crops in rural areas, and roll over the houses in towns. If they can go *anywhere* then it isn't so clear where to put the IEDs. But with the current rules where we want the houses to mostly stay standing, tanks are targets.

Note the recent reports of US commanders sending out patrols on foot so they won't lose too many of them to one IED.

The way you secure a country these days is you get the large majority of the country behind you. (Or maybe you could disarm them. Or maybe you could awe them with overwhelming force.)

Posted by J Thomas | July 2, 2007 10:20 AM