War Without End

I still know plenty of people on the left hand side of things who think that we should stay in Iraq more-or-less indefinitely for humanitarian reasons. I would recommend to such readers Charles Krauthammer's enthusiastic write-up of the surge and the war. He's dead wrong, but at least relatively clear-eyed:

That's why so many Sunnis have accepted Petraeus's bargain -- they join our fight against al-Qaeda, and we give them weaponry and military support. With that, they can rid themselves of the al-Qaeda cancer now. And later, when the Americans inevitably leave, they'll be better positioned to defend themselves against the 80 percent Shiite-Kurd majority they are beginning to realize they may have unwisely taken on.

And that right there is your training. If your concern about Iraq is humanitarian, the solution is political reconciliation. Unfortunately, we've spent the past two years showing that the US government has no way of bringing this about. The training, by contrast, does sometimes "work" and create somewhat disciplined armed groups of people trained and ready to do some killing. This, though, is the civil war. The policy is to make training and equipment available to multiple factions so as to encourage different groups to try to curry favor with us. The consequence is that we're arming multiple sides of a hugely complicated civil conflict -- fueling the violence and distrust that have torn Iraq apart in order to better maintain the viability of a large US military presence in the country.

There's a demented Krauthammerian logic to this, but it's the logic of a war without end. There's no guarantee that our friends tomorrow will be the same as our friends today. The Sunnis we're arming were fighting us twelve months ago. It's folly and it's hubris. At best, it's cold-eyed cynicism. Nothing about it is humanitarian.

Defense Department photo by by Cherie A. Thurlby

Comments

The policy is to make training and equipment available to multiple factions so as to encourage different groups to try to curry favor with us.

Divide et Impera. Welcome to imperial politics.

Posted by emmanuelgoldstein | July 20, 2007 8:39 AM

Posted by emmanuelgoldstein | July 20, 2007 8:39 AM:"Welcome to imperial politics."

Except the politics are not imperial, they are failed. America has failed to get the sort of peaceful, tolerant, democratic politics it wanted. This is the alternative (or probably the alternative to the alternative). Any analysis has to start from two basic positions: the US has failed and America's enemies are vile people. Which means that arming slightly less vile people against them is not the worst thing in the world to do.

Posted by HeiGou | July 20, 2007 8:58 AM

The important thing is that the Sunni kill and get killed by the right sort of people.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 20, 2007 9:20 AM

So, having invaded, do we just leave one side of the currently-simmering, likely-to-boil-when-we-leave civil war unarmed?

What would the humanitarian policy in Iraq be right about now?

Posted by TW Andrews | July 20, 2007 9:45 AM

Matt nailed this one. He even managed to be reasonably civil, which is not a feat I'm capable of accomplishing where Charles Krauthammer is concerned.

"At best, it's cold-eyed cynicism." True. But more accurately, it is on the exact same moral plain as al-Qaeda itself, and Krauthammer deserves exactly the same level of respect.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | July 20, 2007 10:14 AM

I just had this idea in the shower, so it's probably stupid, but I don't specifically know why. What if, after we get the hell out, we take roughly the amount of money we're now spending on the war and dedicate it to development aid to Iraq, but make it conditional on some sort of power-sharing political compromise among the major factions, or perhaps just conditional on the absence of mass slaughter? (They can still fight "Al-Qaeda Iraq"...and we're not overly zealous about preventing a little small-scale corruption here and there, so individual leaders actually have an incentive to bite the bullet and take our money.) Not a panacea, sure, but wouldn't it be sort of a helpful carrot hanging out there and have some chance of preventing some death? I don't know, maybe it's a stupid plan.

Posted by Christopher M | July 20, 2007 10:44 AM

The argument is that arming the Sunnis may prevent the Shiites from massacreing them after the US leaves. A massacre Matt seems indifferent about and one I am sure he will blame on people "getting us in there in the first place" when it happens.

Posted by Dave | July 20, 2007 10:47 AM

It makes me shudder to have to say this, but I think that Krauthammer is actually on to something here. The most important thing to understand is that Iraq is already in a state of civil war, and the institutions of the Iraqi state are non-functional. Power is divided up between a myriad of factions, none of whom trust each other, all of whom have no qualms about using violence to achieve their aims. The balance of power is unstable and continually shifting between the various parties.

Given all of this, any sort of ‘political reconciliation’ deal negotiated in the Green Zone will be irrelevant and useless in stopping the violence. It won’t be any more successful any of than the previous ‘political deals’ (the interim government, the handover of sovereignty, elections, the passage of the Iraqi constitution, etc.).

The counterinsurgency strategy promoted by Petraeus is pretty useless at this point as well. We don’t have the troops or the time, we don’t have the ability to train an Iraqi military force that isn’t infiltrated by militias, and our presence inflames the existing tensions in Iraqi society, and attracts more bad actors. Morever, the whole effort of applying counterinsurgency theory to Iraq is fundamentally misguided, because what is happening today in Iraq isn’t an insurgency. It’s a civil war.

Until a stable balance of power emerges and the civil war grinds to a stalemate recognized by all parties, reconciliation is impossible.

So what should we do? It seems to me that before leaving we should arm the ‘moderate’ Sunnis so they can defend themselves against the Shiites and the radical jihadists, just like we’re doing in Anbar. Yes, that means things will get pretty ugly in Iraq, but if we leave the Sunnis to fend for themselves they will inevitably be driven into the arms of the jihadists, and things will be even worse.

Posted by RC | July 20, 2007 10:59 AM

"Except the politics are not imperial, they are failed. America has failed to get the sort of peaceful, tolerant, democratic politics it wanted."

What makes you think that peaceful, tolerant, democratic politics was ever on the agenda? An Iraq with that kind of politics would actually have a legitimate government with the standing to tell the Cheney administration that the US military presence should end. Since a permanent military presence in Iraq is in fact the actual objective, the current situation of divide and rule, with the associated chaos and violence, is the desired state. All policies and actions of the administration should be evaluated in terms of how they further a permanent US military presence in Iraq. The surge? check. Saber rattling against Iran? check. etc.

Posted by ramster | July 20, 2007 11:52 AM

Arming Sunni and Shiite militias has the added benefit of making the bloodbath when we actually do leave more and more inevitable.

As Bush said recently to a group of visiting friends from Texas, "we're going to make it impossible for any future President to abandon America's destiny [in Iraq]."

Step 1: cause things to be so screwed up in Iraq that we can't leave without causing a Rwanda style bloodbath. Neo-cons can then say "See! We told you this would happen! It's all the dirty hipppies' fault for abandoning our troops and the Iraqi people!"

Step 2: Iran. Get in deep and fast BEFORE the elections so that things are so screwed up that no-one can withdraw.

The short-term benefit from arming both sides of an ethnic civil war with the latest weapons is only a side bonus. It might buy a few months of relative stability.

But the real goal is to keep American troops in Iraq for decades.

When Bush talks about being vindicated by history, he means that whatever happens to Iraq, ultimately American troops stay on their bases there and control the middle east oil reserves by force ten years from now.

Then he wins, see? It will all have been worth it. At least to neo-cons.

Posted by Cugel | July 20, 2007 12:06 PM

"The argument is that arming the Sunnis may prevent the Shiites from massacreing them after the US leaves. A massacre Matt seems indifferent about and one I am sure he will blame on people "getting us in there in the first place" when it happens."

Maybe if we stopped arming and training the government troops, this would make more sense. If genocide takes place, it will be done by the government we created, armed and trained. If you want to stop training the government and only train the Sunnis, you could be getting somewhere. We're not gonna do that though because that would mean failure.

Posted by Reality Man | July 20, 2007 12:27 PM

What happened to all the Mujehaddin we trained and armed to the teeth? Oh right, they are taking over Afhganistan for the second time. Huzzah.
-J

Posted by John I | July 20, 2007 12:44 PM

BUshco is in Iraq for one underlying purpose: OIL. There is no intention of "leaving" this resource to be controlled by others. Seen in this light all actions by Bushco are understandable.

It is we Americans who will suffer the consequences of this demented policy.

Posted by pookapooka | July 20, 2007 1:39 PM

Reality man,
The Shia factions are probably already armed and organized enough to cleanse the Sunnis from all of the mixed areas, if they so choose. The training we’re giving them won’t make much of a difference, especially since we aren’t giving them heavy weapons. But what has happened in Anbar shows that arming the Sunnis can make a difference. Whether this strategy will work as well in mixed areas like Baghdad or Diyala province is an open question. But it still seems like the best of a bunch of bad options.

John I,
If anything, the example of Afghanistan argues against a complete disengagement from Iraq. After all, the Taliban rose to power in Afghanistan in part because the U.S. simply abandoned the country to fall into chaos after the Soviets left, and did nothing as our nominal ally Pakistan aided the Taliban’s rise to power. Now the Taliban are having a resurgence because the Bush administration was so hell bent on invading Iraq that it botched the war in Afghanistan.

Posted by RC | July 20, 2007 1:56 PM

Krauthammer is a dishonest hack. However opposed the Sunnis are to us now, or to the Shiites, they are inalterably opposed to us and as recent reports have indicated, are only waiting for us to go so they can get down to the real business of battling the Shiite for control of the country. How is this anything other than an argument for getting the hell out?

Posted by Xanthippas | July 20, 2007 3:33 PM

Krauthammer points out that arming the (non-Al Qaeda) while at the same time grinding down the most violent Shiite militias and Sunni al-Qaeda groups could reduce the chances of of an all-out civil war in the future -- and, in any case, at least it's an effective way of marginalizing and defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq:

Maliki & Co. are afraid we are arming Sunnis for the civil war to come. On the other hand, we might be creating a rough balance of forces that would act as a deterrent to all-out civil war and encourage a relatively peaceful accommodation.

In either case, that will be Iraq's problem after we leave. For now, our problem is al-Qaeda on the Sunni side and the extremist militias on the Shiite side. And we are making enough headway to worry people like Suneid. The Democrats might listen to him to understand how profoundly the situation is changing on the ground -- and think twice before they pull the plug on this complicated, ruthless, hopeful "purely American vision.

Posted by Fred | July 20, 2007 6:09 PM

"Non al-Qaeda Sunnis", that should have read.

Posted by Fred | July 20, 2007 6:12 PM

I always laugh when I think back to Navy boot camp.
The Shah's Navy attended the same boot camp I did, and attended the same schools.
Less than two years later, I was in the Persian Gulf protecting Saddam's oil tankers from the Shah's Navy.
Our friends the Iranians became our enemy in less than two years.
Now our friends the Iraqis are the enemy, and our former friend Iran is reaping the benefits.
We actually helped our enemies the Iranians win against our former friends the Iraqis.

Posted by merlallen | July 21, 2007 5:17 AM