Fake Empire

Robert Farley says:

Indeed; to the extent that the United States must devote years, billions upon billions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of troops to "winning" in Iraq, the very purpose of the invasion is undermined. It does no good to "throw some little country against the wall" if in doing so our own capacity to act is severely wounded; other little countries that might have been intimidated take note of the fact that we are incapable of acting. This was, of course, why Don Rumsfeld bitterly resisted proposals to go into Iraq with substantially more troops, why he resisted the idea of increasing troop levels, and why he resisted the shift to counter-insurgency; he understood that such moves undermined the purpose of the invasion in the first place. To the extent that the war has been about the extension of American imperium, it has failed disastrously.

I would just emphasize that bit about Rumsfeld. To the extent that post-2006 tactics have proven relatively successful in stabilizing Iraq, this does not provide a viable tactical implementation of the strategy encapsulated in Bush's preventive war doctrine. That strategy requires that it be possible to subdue medium-sized countries in a sufficiently easy and uncompromising way that we could credibly threaten to do it over and over again.

What we've seen in the "surge" era is that not only is stabilizing an Iraq-sized country extremely difficult, but also that having any measure of success requires you to really lower the horizons for success. One of the most successful things we've done since General Petraeus took over was simply make peace with groups we were formerly trying to subdue. And of course the fewer people you try to fight the lower your costs get, but also the range of objectives you could achieve gets narrower. Bushism was founded on the presumption that we could accomplish a great deal, with ease, through the use of force unrestrained by law or institutions and it failed miserably.

Comments

Better musical reference than usual.

Re: the post. It's imperative that the conversation on Iraq remain focused on what a miserable disaster it has been as a whole rather than on whatever relative gains have been made since the worst days of the cluster-fuck.

Posted by Hlem | July 16, 2008 2:25 PM

Yep, the neocons' dreams of empire were long ago dashed to pieces in Iraq. All that is going on now is people trying to save a little face.

Posted by DTM | July 16, 2008 2:25 PM

Wow, it doesn't get much better than The National. Thanks for that.

Posted by Brent | July 16, 2008 2:25 PM

It does no good to "throw some little country against the wall" if in doing so our own capacity to act is severely wounded

This should be glaringly obvious, but if the objective was to simply throw some pissant little country against the wall, we would have gone to Baghdad, broke all the china and then gotten the hell out.

The fact that we stayed and very clumsily tried to "fix" things should tell you a little more about what our strategy was.

Once Saddam was gallow's fruit, that should have been the end. Its always been about a lot more than just the Ledeen Doctrine, as the Doughy Pantload would call it. Its about the Carter Doctrine - that we will take all measures necessary, up to and including the use of nuclear weapons to "protect" the world oil market.

Posted by calipygian | July 16, 2008 2:27 PM

It does no good to "throw some little country against the wall" if in doing so our own capacity to act is severely wounded

This should be glaringly obvious, but if the objective was to simply throw some pissant little country against the wall, we would have gone to Baghdad, broke all the china and then gotten the hell out.

The fact that we stayed and very clumsily tried to "fix" things should tell you a little more about what our strategy was.

Once Saddam was gallow's fruit, that should have been the end. Its always been about a lot more than just the Ledeen Doctrine, as the Doughy Pantload would call it. Its about the Carter Doctrine - that we will take all measures necessary, up to and including the use of nuclear weapons to "protect" the world oil market.

Posted by calipygian | July 16, 2008 2:31 PM

One of the most successful things we've done since General Petraeus took over was simply make peace with groups we were formerly trying to subdue.

Which makes the present right-wing hissy fit about the surge even funnier. The reduction in violence (which wasn't the ultimate goal of Teh Surge™) did not correspond with the advent of Teh Surge™, but rather with sending cash payments instead of bullets to groups that often had American blood on their hands.

McCain is waving around a doctored quote of Obama from January, claiming that Obama said it yesterday, alleging a flip-flop that requires a braindead certainty that Teh Surge™ is "working."

Time travel. Doctored quotes. Problems with cause/effect relationships. Jesus wept, but these people are stupid.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | July 16, 2008 2:33 PM

I dunno, it seems like the effect of using a hipster song reference for a blog post title is diluted by including a link to the song itself. (Not that I disagree with the awesomeness of The National, or of this video homage.) C.f. Jim Henley's "Buns on the Roof", which gets it motherfuckin' done.

Posted by Charlie Murtaugh | July 16, 2008 2:39 PM

It does no good to "throw some little country against the wall" if in doing so our own capacity to act is severely wounded

This should be glaringly obvious, but if the objective was to simply throw some pissant little country against the wall, we would have gone to Baghdad, broke all the china and then gotten the hell out.

The fact that we stayed and very clumsily tried to "fix" things should tell you a little more about what our strategy was.

Once Saddam was gallow's fruit, that should have been the end. Its always been about a lot more than just the Ledeen Doctrine, as the Doughy Pantload would call it. Its about the Carter Doctrine - that we will take all measures necessary, up to and including the use of nuclear weapons to "protect" the world oil market.

Posted by calipygian | July 16, 2008 2:39 PM

I am strongly anti-Bush II foreign policy, and endorse Matt's (and many other's including Obama's) advocacy of a return the U.S.-led liberal internationalist foreign policy that largely characterized the Cold War. But I'd quibble with this, at least with the assertion regarding the "ease" of the mission: "Bushism was founded on the presumption that we could accomplish a great deal, with ease, through the use of force unrestrained by law or institutions and it failed miserably."

I'd say the Bush Doctine consists of preventive war, unilateralism, and hegemony. The argument in favor of the former was essentially that in the post-9/11 world and era of WMD, it is not feasible to wait until a threat is imminent (or at least is as imminent as the traditional doctrine of preemptive war would require) to confront it. In connection with Iraq, in addition to numerous other false or misleading assertions, the Bush Administration stated that victory would be easy. I don't think, however, that the "ease" of victory was strictly a part of the theory and case for preventive war.

Undoubtedly, the assertion of ease made it simpler to sell the war. But I think that there will not be some (like Kristol, Bolton and perhaps McCain) who will argue going forward that preventive war (for example in Iran) is still the right policy, even if "our goals" cannot be accomplished with ease.

One could argue that if preventive war is too costly, the US won't be able to sustain its hegemony (a Paul Kennedyesque argument) and thus the Bush triad of policies is undermined. The same cast of characters would likely in response point (with some justification) to US resources, the lack of viable major country competitor and the history of such "military overstretch" pronouncements.

All of this is to say, that in arguing against more "Iraqs," it is critical to counter the underlying preventive war principle not just on the ground of costs, but on other grounds such as the manner in which it diverts our attention from the most pressing threats we actually face (Al Qaeda) and the degree to whcih it undermines our leadership in non-financial ways. Of course, Matt is not suggesting otherwise.

Posted by Chunche | July 16, 2008 2:43 PM

"I would just emphasize that bit about Rumsfeld. To the extent that post-2006 tactics have proven relatively successful in stabilizing Iraq, this does not provide a viable tactical implementation of the strategy encapsulated in Bush's preventive war doctrine. "

Why not? They seem to have worked.

According to the anti-war left, the most successful thing would have been to install a puppet dictator who would have crushed all the opposition, à la the Burmese junta or Zimbabwe. Then we could have pulled the troops, Iraq would have been peaceful and not in the headlines.

Posted by Peter K. | July 16, 2008 2:50 PM

I thought Afghanistan was necessary as well as inevitable regardless of what I thought, given where the 9/11 attack was planned and the relationship between the Afghan government and Bin Laden.

I also thought that the recent history of that country would lead to a serious effort to stabilize and rebuild it. After all, the Taliban came to power in the mid-nineties after the Soviets left and two successive American administrations turned their backs on the problems left by the demise of the old order. And while I know that Americans have short historical memories I never imagined that we could forget something in less than ten years. Yet we did and began to pull resources out of Afghanistan (and failed to commit some) almost immediately.

As a result we failed to demonstrate our strength there only to move on and fail to demonstrate it in Iraq as well. We've now spent years telling the world that while we may be stupid and dangerous, we're not really serious. We won't raise taxes to pay for these wars, we haven't increased the size of the military to fight them, and no one is nor should anyone be threatened by our capacity to use force beyond what we can muster by air, because we lack that capacity.

So, with all respect to those who do not like the application of American military force, a group I belong to most but not all of the time, there were countries that feared that we might use it and in some cases that fear may have served us.

That fear, for better or for worse, is gone and that is one of the major legacies of the Bush administration, think of it how you may.

Posted by davido | July 16, 2008 2:52 PM

Peter K,

"According to the anti-war left, the most successful thing would have been to install a puppet dictator who would have crushed all the opposition..."

Uh, no. According to the anti-war left, as well as the anti-war right and center (and both existed before the invasion), we should NOT have invaded Iraq at all!!

Where have you been?

Posted by davido | July 16, 2008 3:03 PM

Maybe we should stick to overthrowing countries like Grenada. Get in quick. Get out before Toby Keith can come up with a sobbing, truculent ballad. Get a Clint Eastwood movie. Then on to the next pipsqueak.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 16, 2008 3:18 PM

Maybe we should stick to overthrowing countries like Grenada. Get in quick. Get out before Toby Keith can come up with a sobbing, truculent ballad. Get a Clint Eastwood movie. Then on to the next pipsqueak.

Howbout that front page article in the Washington Post today?

50% of Americans support a timetable for withdrawl, 49% don't; 48% think Obama would be an effective commmander of the armed forces, 48% don't; 47% trust McCain more to deal with Iraq, 45% prefer Obama.

At this point, only 51% of Americans believe the war in Afghanistan to have been worth fighting.

Most stuff people say about Iraq, you can say about Afghanistan.

Posted by Peter K. | July 16, 2008 3:39 PM

Not to be entirely cynical and elitist, but maybe what we need is a monolithic, permanent foreign policy establishment that would allow gradual evolution of policy goals and techniques. Foreign policy and diplomacy take time to ripen. Swinging from Carter's human rights focus to Reagan's Central American policy to Clinton's activism to Bush's mindless grasp for empire is just not gonna work. Argue all you want about the appropriate set of goals - seriously, do that 'cause we need to have some for the long run - but don't be changing the goals all the time. None of them will be accomplished if they always change before they ripen.

We were once so rich and so powerful that we could afford to be flighty and stupid, but mostly we weren't. Mostly, we wanted to contain the Soviets and the Chinese, and aimed our policies toward that end. We could have been less blinkered and bloody in places far away from the USSR and China, but our core effort was clear and we persisted in it with vigor and cash and amorality. Now, vigor and cash and amorality are available, but persistence is missing.

Posted by kharris | July 16, 2008 3:49 PM

Not to be entirely cynical and elitist, but maybe what we need is a monolithic, permanent foreign policy establishment that would allow gradual evolution of policy goals and techniques.

I don't think this would help much. The foreign policy public was more or less the same group of country club John Dulles types throughout much of the cold war, and we're paying for a lot of their mistakes now.

Posted by Parthenon | July 16, 2008 3:58 PM

I thought that video you linked to was Home Sweet Home by Motley Crue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BBlWxkwJtU

Neocons DO have a similar worldview to drug-fueled rock stars.

Posted by joejoejoe | July 16, 2008 4:16 PM

Excellent post, sir. (And Farley's as well.)

I hadn't recognized that as soon as Bush uttered the first "Stay the course" the course was lost.

Would it be unfair to say that the often remarked key to teh surge's success has been the appeasement of our former Sunni enemies in Iraq?

Posted by hoi polloi | July 16, 2008 4:37 PM

What do you mean fake?

http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.428/summary.asp

It's real if you get the marketing right. Remember, we make our own reality.

Posted by JJ | July 16, 2008 5:34 PM

but on other grounds such as the manner in which it diverts our attention from the most pressing threats we actually face (Al Qaeda) and the degree to whcih it undermines our leadership in non-financial ways. Of course, Matt is not suggesting otherwise.
Posted by Chunche

1. Al Qaeda, recognizing the supreme geopolitic importance of Iraq as well as it being the traditional home of the unified Arab Caliphate AQ wishe(d) to reestablish, poured into Iraq and decleared it the Central Battle. They suffered a huge defeat, losing 12,000 casualties. Worse, they did it in a way that turned the Sunnis in Iraq and elsewhere against them - as the Algerians turned on similar bloodthirsty radical Islamoids in the 2nd Algerian Civil War.

AQ is not a half dozen fugitives hiding in Pakistan. It is a network conducting net-centric warfare. And Iraq caused them to expose a good portion of their operative cells, recruiting network, financing to authorities in Europe and the Arab World. One of the busiest venues in Iraq was other nations flying in to interrogate AQ Islamoids we captured who were citizens of their countries - to learn who all their friends and associates were. Which led to huge roll-ups in places like KSA, Morocco, Algeria, Spain, Belgium.

2. All the screaming the Left, and beating up of America for nation building after a "non-UN-sanctioned aggression" -did- was undermine any possibility that the West would intervene and "nation-build" in places like Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma, Congo. Now the Leftcan wail all they want about "Why isn't someone doing something about places like Rwanda!!" to their hearts content. Unless their beloved UN says go in, (which it likely won't with the ChiCom and Russian veto) they will be pissing and moaning watching noble 3rd Worlders killing other noble 3rd Worlders.

3. We learn from wars. The Iraq one dispelled any notion that Muslims are capable of peaceful rebuilding without inflicting enormous pain 1st on themselves and others. (Same with shitty lands run by blacks that can't seem to build their own nations and keep them running.) It destroyed the Neocons. We do know from Iraq that we can easily wreck a country's infrastructure, destroy it's military, kill much of it's regime and cause a change in leadership - and leave it all broken, at little cost. Anything to repair it though, and the cost in lives and treasure to Americans grows exponentially.

Posted by chris ford | July 16, 2008 6:07 PM

I was going to Chris Ford's post regarding Al Qaeda, agreeing to a limited extent but largely disagreeing with its emphasis and oversights. Then I read: "We learn from wars. The Iraq one dispelled any notion that Muslims are capable of peaceful rebuilding without inflicting enormous pain 1st on themselves and others. (Same with shitty lands run by blacks that can't seem to build their own nations and keep them running.)"

As I don't focus on posts much, I am probably late to the party in discovering that it is not worth engaging Mr. Ford.

Posted by Chunche | July 16, 2008 7:00 PM

"The Iraq one dispelled any notion that Muslims are capable of peaceful rebuilding without inflicting enormous pain 1st on themselves and others. (Same with shitty lands run by blacks that can't seem to build their own nations and keep them running.)"

As I don't focus on posts much, I am probably late to the party in discovering that it is not worth engaging Mr. Ford.
Posted by Chunche

The truth hurts the Lefty Brain. Far easier to declare the truth and the truthsayer repellant than dare dispute the facts..

Posted by chris ford | July 16, 2008 7:40 PM

The truth hurts the Lefty Brain.

Sorry, forgot. You guys are all about the truth.

Posted by JJ | July 17, 2008 10:00 AM