Desiring Machine

I am on John Kerry’s mailing list and got an email recently about getting out of Iraq in 2006, with a link to a petition to impose a May 15th deadline for withdrawal. There are some choice quotes from the email that sum up my feelings quite succintly.

More citizens every day joining in support of our May 15 deadline for Iraqi leaders to stop their squabbling and form a government.

…

It’s time for Iraq’s leaders to seize the opportunity for democracy in Iraq that our troops are sacrificing every day to create. If Iraq’s leaders can’t move past their infighting and endless delays to form a new government by May 15, we should immediately withdraw all of our troops. If they meet the May 15 deadline, we’ll bring America’s combat troops home by the end of the year and put the future of democracy in Iraq where it belongs — in the hands of the Iraqi people.

This is exactly right. It really is time for Iraq to take command of its own destiny. To hear Neo Cons like Wolfowitz, Perle, and Kristol talk about Iraq a big part of their justification was that America did not do the Iraqis full justice after the first Gulf War by letting Hussein stand. And there is certainly some blood on our hands for the way we let various Hussein opposition groups shift in the wind after the first Gulf War. Wrongly, or rightly Bush Jr. took on the task and completed what his father left undone. However, in my mind the Bush team were so fixated on the paper tiger dictator Hussein, that they failed to account for the real test, managing a post Hussein Iraq. Bush was certainly aware of the fact that going into Iraq would invariably lead to a long term entrenched military involvement. But I think he brushed this concern aside and did not take it seriously. Or else there is a more sinister explanation. This foray into Iraq represents a new hot war fought in the desert sands with a cold war global strategic mindset. From the very instant that I saw the World Trade Center towers fall on T.V. I remember thinking we are doomed, the American public is going to demand blood and the unfolding conflicts will be like trying to shoot gnats with a bazooka gun. The use of force will be disproportionate and ultimately inaffective. That was exactly what I thought the minute the towers collapsed and that is what I still think today. Every time I hear about the war on terror, I think this nation is slipping irrevocably into a new hysteria where Terror becomes the new Red, and that the thing that most preoccupies that average American voter is that “OMG!! Osama Bin Ladin is after my precious bodily fluids“, or someting along those lines. Apologies to Mr. Kubrick, RIP.

But there is a fatal flaw when a Cold War against Terrorism is fought as a hot conflict. It is a formula for disaster because the strategic thinking does not approximate or account for the tactical thinking on the ground. With a sectarian insurgency willing to die fighting you this quickly becomes a sure fire way to bleed your treasury, and destroy an entire generation of hard working forces in the field. It may sound rhetorically pleasing for Bush to assert “we have no time tables”, but this just masks the fact that he has no real exit strategy, and probably never did. Or moreover this flies in the face of a century of time tested military strategy. In the conflict against Japan, it is argued (now controversially) that the bomb was dropped to prevent a million deaths that would have ensued if we had marched to Tokyo instead. We ended a “police action” in Korea after it was determined that it is was just too costly to completely remove the communists from North Korea. We left Vietnam after years of conflict when we didn’t seem to gain any ground in the jungle. And moreover who is adequately prepared to fight a jungle war when children and farmers are willing to lob grenades at you as you wander through their villages never quite certain who is friend and who is foe. The conflict was a mess and the American public said enough is enough and four years later Nixon finally recognized the will of the people and withdrew. Even in the Gulf War, Bush senior was willing to exercise constraint and was satisfied with a policy of containtment in the end, because the removal of Hussein might create a power vacuum in the region. Bush Jr. doesn’t seem to hold any of this concern. For whatever his initial reasons, WMD, political consolidation of power, oil money, or paternal approval and one upmanship, he has now opened a Pandora’s box and we are left to pick up the pieces. I think the train wreck of Bush’s foreign policy stems from a strategic thinking that doesn’t fully account for the required tactics on the ground. The unilateralism and Cold War mindset severely under estimates the difficulty of the problem. I don’t think the will of the American people is in place to accept 20,000 dead American solidiers and a 15 year conflict that could reach in the trillions of dollars. I know I am not prepared for this. If we are determined to keep troops on the ground then the only solution is to internationalize the effort in a big way. This would require that Bush eat a lot of crow and actually visit with the Europeans directly and offer major concessions. It is not enough to simply send Condoleezza Rice over there and flip flop like a choking fish in front of the British public. He needs to go in person and be prepared to do whatever it takes. Since I don’t think Bush intends to do this the only other solution is withdrawal.

I have heard it often echoed that we were sold the war and Bush started it, there is nothing we can do about the past and so we must stay the course. In the media the rightist fanatics have used the phrase “cut and run” as a mighty cudgel to rhetorically beat into submission anybody who disagrees with the Neo Con mindset and the fallacy that a Cold War against terrorism can be fought as a hot conflict on the ground. We must not let this rationale blind us and cloud our ability to think clearly about the issue. I understand the frustration and the psychological motivations the make people fear the phrase “cut and run”. No one wants to lose, a lot of hubris and honor get wrapped up inside intentions and after it all falls apart you come to the conclusion that you have nothing left to lose. This is not correct thinking. Dylan put this idea best in his song Trying to Get to Heaven when he says:

When you think that you lost everything
You find out you can always lose a little more

This mindset does not help in the casino when you are down to your last few chips and lay them all on the black jack table in desperate hopes of doubling up, and it certainly doesn’t work in geo political conflict. The best bet is to walk away with the few chips in hand and your dignity still in tack.

Now to the Iraqis. I think John Kerry is absolutely correct when he says it is time for the Iraqis “to seize the opportunity for democracy in Iraq”. There is precious little that we can do to help that end at this point. Our continued presence creates the stain of occupation, and our withdrawal in fact presents Iraqi leadership with a strong incentive to get their act together. We must let Iraq form to it own devices and see what it brings. If it produces a brutual dictator that oppresses its people then we can cross that bridge when we come to it. I am not suggesting that we drop support of Iraq, just that we start to remove the boots on the ground. I still believe in nation building, I just think that boots on the ground is not a long term sustainable and viable strategy. There is lots we can do and should continue to do to help the people of Iraq, the continued use of aid, extensive cooperative and diplomatic involvement with the other leaders in the world to rally material support for Iraq, UN involvement and continued monitoring of the situation. I would even be emenable to a limited number of bases in the more stable quarters of the country to act as a bulwark. But it is time to get real about the situation, and time for us to place the burden of democracy directly on the Iraqis. Bush has shown an appalling lack of leadership on this issue so it is time for us to demand it from all of our leaders in congress. You can start this effort by signing John Kerry’s petition and you can do it this fall by only voting for politicians who unequivocally voice support of withdrawing from Iraq.

Update April 21, 2006: Serendipity is a miraculous thing sometimes. Not long after posting this blog entry I stumbled across Mark Morford’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle “Chips down, Bush prepares a Hail Mary bet” via Daily Kos. Mark’s analysis is spot on and we share similar analysis of Bush’s strategic thinking, especially when it comes to reckless gambling as evidenced by this quote from Mark’s column:

His pile of betting capital is down to a tiny lump, nothing like back when he had the table rigged and all the pit bosses worked for him and the pile was as big as a roomful of Texas cow pies. But now, fortune is frowning. In fact, fortune is white-hot furious at being so viciously molested, spit upon, raped lo these many years. The truth is coming out: Bush has now lost far, far more bets than he ever won.

What’s to be done? Why, do what any grumbling, furious, confused, underqualified alcoholic gambler does: reach down deep and say, “To hell with the nation and to hell with the odds and to hell with the rest of the planet,” and pull out one more desperate, crumpled war from deep in your pants, slap it on the table and hear the world moan.

I can only hope it doesn’t come to this. I hope the forces of sanity are strong enough to prevent Bush from taking a desperate leap and using Nuclear weapons in Iran. But you can never be sure what a desperate man down to his last few chips at the black jack table will do. More times often than not I think the impulse to put all the remaing chips on the table is the most compelling option. I know I have succumbed to this flawed gambling logic a few times when I have been down on my luck playing black jack.