Lost in Iraq

Today's Washington Post editorial on Iraq and the Petraeus/Crocker testimony seems to me to be a brilliant summation -- as Post editorials often are -- of the blinkered conventional wisdom of the establishment. You can say many bad things about the Bush/McCain/Kagan worldview, most of all that it's completely detached from reality, but at least one has to concede that if the real world were like the world they're describing, then their policy conclusions would follow. The Post, however, knows they're wrong, knows that things are much bleaker in Iraq than they say, knows that the costs of an indefinite commitment there are high and the prospects for success low, but just wants to do it anyway.

Because, hey, why not? But at the end of the day, the Iraq problem, though thorny, isn't ultimately all that thorny. We really can just walk away. I first came around to the "set a deadline" point of view in late 2004. In the three years since that strategy was rejected, basically every single bad consequence (ethnic cleansing, civil war, Iranian influence, al-Qaeda propaganda gains) that I was warned would follow from leaving happened even though we stayed. There's no sense in looking at a complicated, unpredictable situation that crucially depends on dozens of variables outside of our control and simply assuming that all potential ills will flow from U.S. military withdrawal and all potential goods will flow from a continued presence. It's not being glib to assert confidently that if we do leave Iraq and stop squandering our blood and treasure that, that no matter what happens the United States of America will endure and most likely Iraq will, too. This idea has taken grip that it's the height of seriousness to contemplate Iraq with nothing but dread and agony, but insofar as the upshot of this is merely to produce paralysis and to de facto endorse the policy prescriptions that follow from the hawk faction's fantastical analyses, there's nothing serious about it.

U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Jeffrey Allen

Comments

The only thing to understand about the continuing status quo is that it represents the inability to admit a mistake and change course.

Posted by Bill | April 9, 2008 12:26 PM

Actually, the "worldview" of the Post editorial is related to why Bush won reelection against Kerry and the Democrats in 2004 over the issue of Iraq.

Basically, something like 70-80% of Bush voters believed that Saddam/Iraq had attacked us on 9/11. So *naturally* we had to reasonably retaliate by counter-attacking Saddam and even occupying his country.

And only limp-wristed Frenchies like Kerry would have gotten second thoughts about this retaliation for 9/11 just because the going had gotten tough. People like that would have sued for peace with Japan in 1942 just because we'd lost some additional battles after Pearl Harbor.

One's view of reality has a lot to do with how you interpret ongoing political debates.

Posted by RKU | April 9, 2008 12:44 PM

The argument for a continued US presense is this: "Look at how fucking bad it is! We agree on that, right?! It's horrible! Imagine how much worse it would get if we left!", without acknowledging that perhaps our presence there in the first place galvanizes and radicalizes the anti-imperialist sentiment in the first place.

That's not to say we're imperialists, but we ARE perceived as such.

There's no doubt that things, in general, are more or less better now than they were before the surge, but that doesn't mean it's a result of the surge. The surge was a good test for an extended US presence. But I wonder how much of the results we've seen have to do with the fact that we're paying Sunnis not to shoot us and the Shiites, and the most powerful Shiite militia voluntarily laid down arms for a little while. More US troops didn't really have much to do with any of that. I just wonder about the whole correlation/causation thing.

Posted by socctty | April 9, 2008 12:46 PM

in many ways the Washington Post, the NYTimes, the broadcast media are worse than the Bush policies they encourafe/enable. But of the lot the neocon Post which pretends to be reputable is the worst. So typical of their depravity was their mad rush to satisfy the demands of their right wing base that they hired Ben Domanech, an intellectual zero (even before the MOST cursory vetting would have revealed his inveterate plagiarism). The whole episode is not atypical...it illustrates clearly the way the Post views its function... as primarily a propaganda tool for the right wing. If one wants some idea of what is going on in the country or the world...the Post provides insight into the right wing psyche. But actual information must be culled from non-traditional sources such as the internet. When the slow demise of Washington Post is complete and it is taken over by Murdoch, I for one will not be lamenting its passing.

Posted by della Rovere | April 9, 2008 12:47 PM

But at the end of the day, the Iraq problem, though thorny, isn't ultimately all that thorny

Well, on the other hand that's the problem, isn't it? Iraq may be a mess and a disaster, but as far as people in DC, or anywhere in elite America, are concerned it's just not that bad. The Kagans of the world are not getting killed, their sons and daughters aren't at risk. Yes, the war's expensive but America's a rich place and if large parts of our infrastructure collapse in 20 years no one will connect that to Iraq. There is, and this is the tragedy, seemingly no downside for the Kagans, the Liebermans, the Feiths of the world to keep doubling down, tripling down, quadrupling down on Iraq. Realistically these people are so complicit that they have no choice but to demand the Iraq venture continue. If we succeed in Iraq their reputations are restored and their enemies shamed, if we fail - well, we never actually fail per se, we'll just keep it going.

In any case the media is so complicit in the whole Iraq debacle that they will never demand accountability from these experts. And they'll pull out all the stops to make sure that even if Obama wins, his mandate won't be large enough to shut this game down.

Posted by vanya | April 9, 2008 12:51 PM

One problem with making a good decision about Iraq is that at an intuitive level, people greatly overvalue losses as compared with potential gains. The late Amos Tversky and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman labelled this phenomenon "loss aversion" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion). That makes it a tough sell to people that it is a good idea to cut our losses even when logic dictates that we should. What we need, but don't have, is a clear-thinking leader willing to do the hard analytic work of looking soberly at the costs and benefits of the situation and then make a case to the American people. I have much greater hope that Obama can do this than either Clinton or McCain.

Posted by Steve | April 9, 2008 12:57 PM

That's not to say we're imperialists, but we ARE perceived as such.

It depends whom you mean by "we".

Many people running the administration currently *really are* imperialists, by any meaningful definition of the term.

Most American people are not. (Actually, most have no particularly coherent views of America's proper place in the world at all.)

Much of the rest of the world doesn't draw such distinctions, however. The actions of our current leaders reflect badly on all of us.

Posted by Ryan | April 9, 2008 12:58 PM

della Rovere - Your criticism basically just says they were liars in the past so they must be lying now in this article.

The article itself is generally fair, if extraordinarily set in the abstract. It's a fair assessment.

I think ultimately General Petraeus did very, very well, but we need to realize this this boils down to something of a cliche already: The solution in Iraq isn't a primarily military-oriented one, and we can't expect General Petraeus to solve all the problems in Iraq.

We're wasting our fucking time and money and military if we just think we can blow stuff up and expect people to be happy about our presence there. Our exclusively military presence there is nothing but a rallying call to replace all the insurgents we've killed. As long as we actively ignore Iran and Syria, we're going to be treading water.

Posted by socctty | April 9, 2008 12:58 PM

You do the Post a favor in assuming that they're acting in good faith. They aren't. While distancing themselves from the Bush Administration verbally, their story is exactly the same: the Surge has been a big success, therefore it must be continued, indefinitely. We must avoid any premature decisions -- "premature" means "deciding to leave." Whatever the Post's analysis is, the prescription is always the same: massive U.S. troop presence for, well, for forever, pretty much.

Posted by Alan Vanneman | April 9, 2008 1:03 PM

I think it is funny that the Post, so worried about the future costs of social security, which could amount to trillions, shows a carefreeness about maintaining a 500 billion dollar deficit and spending another 200 billion dollars on the Iraq war that would do a Bear Stearns trader proud.

I'm sorta fascinated by the demographic. The D.C. area is one of the most liberal and democratic in the nation, but the Post is positioning itself to endorse McCain for president - which would mean that both major newspapers in the D.C. area support McCain. Now I think that disconnect says a lot about the media stranglehold in D.C. It is funny how loosening the laws against monopoly in the media have advantaged the right enormously, isn't it?

Of course, if Bush's test forever education policy wasn't bringing in the bucks to Kaplan, the only profitable branch of the media mini-empire, Don Graham might not be so sanguine about running a republican paper in a democratic region.

Posted by roger | April 9, 2008 1:38 PM

Matt, the more times you say this the better it sounds. From a cynical, political point of view it is masterful--the Dem's will almost certainly pick up the tab when people have to finally confront the sheer pointlessness of it all. The costs is truly staggering, to Americans and Iraqis.

Posted by Chris Dornan | April 9, 2008 1:39 PM

"Basically, something like 70-80% of Bush voters believed that Saddam/Iraq had attacked us on 9/11."

I think attacking Iraq convinced them of this - after all, why else would we have invaded?

A majority of Republicans still believe it. Interesting that support for a key policy is largely based on something that never happened at all, something that the Administration doesn't even claim to have happened.

I could also point out that a majority of Democratic voters now remember being against our invasion at the time, which isn't true either.

Someday I have to run for office on an anti-voter platform, cursing them all as slack-jawed troglodytes.

Posted by gcochran | April 9, 2008 1:53 PM

We're on going on about +/-250 consecutive weeks multiple US deaths by violence as a security force. I don't think there were ANY weeks in the occupation of Japan or Germany where US troops suffered organized violent attacks. Forget the 100 Year comment, how many more weeks should the US endure violent death while spending billions a week in order to enable Iraq to do....what exactly? How many more weeks Sen. McCain? Another 250?

Posted by joejoejoe | April 9, 2008 2:36 PM

Congress just needs to decide to succeed in withdrawing from Iraq without it turning into chaos.

Posted by Th | April 9, 2008 3:01 PM

Glenn Greenwald ripped Megan McArdle and another guy a new one in his column yesterday about how the press continues to refuse to report the realities of Iraq, Bush torture, etc., while concentrating on nonsense like Obama's bowling score.

Glenn said there were two reasons for this:

1) A "drooling self-love" for an America that can do no wrong.

2) Support for the Establishment because they're part of it.

He's basically correct. A lot of this applies to Matt as well. Matt and the rest of the country still can't bring themselves to the point of believing, let alone saying, that the United States is being run as a criminal enterprise for the profit of a few rich people. Because that would reflect on the electorate as being suckers or worse, criminals themselves.

But this has always been true of virtually every state in human history. It's the definition of the state. The state is an extortion/protection racket. It's that simple.

As Chancellor Sutler said in "V", "I want EVERYONE to remember WHY THEY NEED US!"

As long as this is not acknowledged, any state will get away with this sort of thing over and over until there is a revolution or it is destroyed by outside forces. And then that state is replaced by another who will do the exact same thing.

It's the nature of chimpanzees.

And now Bush and Cheney are going to attack Iran, and this whole discussion will be replayed over the next five or ten years. And nothing will change.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 9, 2008 5:26 PM

It's one thing to say that the news and editorial departments in a paper are separate.

It's another when editorials sound like their authors don't actually read the news section of the same paper.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | April 9, 2008 5:38 PM

*They* were Wrong then....no flowers, no warm greetings...and *They* are Wrong now..."we've got to *win* or else...no flowers, no win, just business of war as usual.

Posted by newbroom | April 9, 2008 5:44 PM

But at the end of the day, the Iraq problem, though thorny, isn't ultimately all that thorny. We really can just walk away. I first came around to the "set a deadline" point of view in late 2004

Well, there ya go. The debate is over. "Liberals" will cajole, lie, obfuscate, anything, to not debate, and have for decades. Just like they've been doing with Iraq for 5 years.

Posted by SteveIL | April 9, 2008 5:47 PM

"But at the end of the day, the Iraq problem, though thorny, isn't ultimately all that thorny. We really can just walk away."

Iraq would fall apart within weeks after we left, and the BushCo crowd has always known this. That's why their whole "strategy" has been to kick the can down the road so the next president is stuck with a hobson's choice: continue the war indefinitely, or walk away and be blamed for the chaos.

Posted by kafka | April 9, 2008 7:04 PM