Iraq still needs helping hands, and ours are now tied

Posted By Kori Schake Monday, March 2, 2009 - 12:45 PM

By Kori Schake

President Obama has held true to his campaign promise of ending the war in Iraq -- or at least U.S. participation in it. The timeline is a little longer, the end-state force significantly larger, but by the 2010 mid-term elections Obama will have delivered on that which got him elected. He could well be misreading the "change" his election represents -- aren't Americans weary of sweeping ideological missions just now, domestic or international? -- but on Iraq, this is what he promised.

And it's a sensible approach, a huge improvement over positions he took as a candidate. Cheers to Secretary Gates and the military leadership for affecting those changes. The plan identifies a glide path drawing down U.S. forces as Iraqis become increasingly able to protect their own country. It extends the drawdown beyond the Iraqi parliamentary elections in December. It leaves room for renegotiation of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to keep a Korea-style U.S. long-term presence without requiring the Iraqi parliamentarians to agree to it concurrent with the SOFA itself. And it outlines sensible military missions and adequate forces to achieve them.

We supporters of the surge need to acknowledge that many in the military advocated this drawdown -- not least the Service Chiefs, who are worried about the strain on U.S. forces from six years of continuous warfare. But we should all also be worried about committing to this timeline. The problem with establishing timelines rather than objectives is that the enemy accounts for them as well. Why wouldn't the enemies of a strong, stable, democratic Iraq just wait us out? Or take a page from Hezbollah's playbook and harass U.S. forces as we withdraw? Will Iraqi political leaders continue to make brave political choices that stabilize their country? Or will the timeline set them to gaming outcomes for narrow political advantage?

President Bush is as much to blame as Obama for this timeline: Bush accepted it in the SOFA. The Bush Administration argues it was the best deal possible with a sovereign Iraq, and to their credit, they muscled up to the unpleasant reality that their strategy was failing and committed the necessary forces and approaches that have given Obama the political luxury (as John Barry nicely termed it) of ending the war successfully.

But ask the Iraqi Army whether they'll be capable of handling combat operations without U.S. assistance by August 2010. They don't believe so. In fact, some Iraqi national security types are advocating quietly re-labeling U.S. participation with no change to existing operations (the U.S. military is wisely rejecting this). Prime Minister Maliki believed U.S. forces could withdraw years ago. He has a politician's understandable desire to deliver the withdrawal yearned for by many average Iraqis, but not a soldier's sense of the military requirements to achieve it.

Iraqi operations in Basra last year demonstrate the gap. Maliki courageously insisted on extending the government's authority into the Iranian- and Shia-militia-controlled city. The Iraqi military bravely stepped forward for the fight, but it needed lots of U.S. help to succeed -- help from U.S. troops in combat. Both the SOFA and Obama's timeline will prevent such assistance after July 2010, years before the Iraqi military believes it can go it alone.

The non-military areas of concern in Obama's drawdown plan are the extent to which it relies on "sustained diplomacy" (as if the Bush Administration had never thought of that!) and a pledge to "use all elements of American power." The first has been true and is unlikely to yield appreciably different results for the Obama Administration. Appointing an ambassador to Iraq who has no experience in the Middle East wouldn't seem to yield diplomatic advantages. Moreover, the president is overstating the extent to which countries that have national interests at variance with what we're trying to achieve in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will change course based on "sustained diplomacy." Will Saudi Arabia look with any fonder eye on a Shia-dominated Iraq now that Obama is president? Will Iran cease support to Hamas and Hezbollah?

The second diplomatic angle -- using all elements of national power -- is already a tired shibboleth. We all wish the Bush administration had better right-hand/left-hand coordination. But the structural constraint on integrated politico-economic-military strategies in the U.S. government is that we lack robust tools in the non-military realm. We have too few diplomats with too little training. We do not raise in the Agriculture or Education or Housing and Urban Development Departments a phalanx of experts for deployment to countries we're trying to set on a path to success. Our military does those jobs in war because we will not fund a standing capability in civilian realms.

COMMENTS (1)

EXPLORE:IRAQ WITHDRAWAL

Obama crosses (then burns) the bridge Bush built in Iraq

Posted By Peter Feaver Sunday, March 1, 2009 - 4:26 PM

By Peter Feaver

President Obama is walking across the bridge the Bush team built in Iraq. No, not this bridge. Or this bridge. This bridge. He then turned around and lit a match or two to that bridge. But providing things go well in Iraq, or providing that Obama has not burned down the bridge entirely, this may all work out to be as good an Iraq policy as can be expected from the current administration.

Let me explain.

An early name to the surge strategy given by those of us who worked on it (including some of my colleagues on this blog) was the "bridge strategy." In 2005-2006, we were pursuing an Iraq strategy that gave pride of place to training up Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and transitioning to Iraqi leadership, so that Iraqis could eventually win the fight ("stand up, stand down").

There were many premises behind this strategy, but among them were these: 1) insurgencies usually fail so long as the counter-insurgents can stay in the fight long enough; 2)"long enough meant maybe as long as a decade; 3) the American public would not stand for a U.S.-led counterinsurgency resourced at the level it was then being resourced for as long as a decade; 4) through political progress we could reduce the threat to a low-enough level; 5) through accelerated training of the Iraqis we could build up an Iraqi Security Force big-enough to ... 6) shift the relative roles so Iraqis were in the lead and the United States were in support.

If that strategy had not started to collapse over 2006, then the next phase of the strategy called for accelerated training and transition to greater Iraqi leadership in 2007. However, that strategy was failing over 2006, so the Bush Administration set out to figure out what to do in a no-holds-barred internal assessment called the Iraq Strategy Review.

We were working on that review when the Baker-Hamilton commission gave us its recommendation: accelerate the training and transition to greater Iraqi leadership. (There were other elements, of course, but most were largely irrelevant or secondary to the main "what to do in Iraq" issue.) This was an oddly timed recommendation because the Baker-Hamilton Commission stated, 1) our strategy was failing, and 2) the right thing to do was to continue to implement the next phase of that strategy (though, to be sure, they certainly called it something else).

What became the president's view, and thus the dominant view of the inside team was this: we agree that we would like to implement Baker-Hamilton, but we can't do it right away. To do so would be to lose in Iraq. The security challenge of spiraling sectarian violence was too great and the ISF were too small. Handing it over to Iraqis would crack the ISF. Those forces were Humpty Dumpty -- once broken, neither they nor Iraq could ever be put together again.

What we needed was a bridge strategy, a way to get from here (December 2006) to there (the conditions under which it would be safe to accelerate train and transition). That was the surge (and all the other elements of it).

As we now know, the bridge or surge strategy was very unpopular, but it did change the situation in Iraq for the better. And it paved the way for an eventual shift back to the train and transition strategy. With his recent Iraq announcement, Obama has walked across that bridge.

Obama's Iraq speech on Friday does two things. First, with only minor modifications, his "new strategy" simply codifies the Bush plan and embraces the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by Bush. So far so good. As Chris Brose has argued, the speech was somewhat graceless in the way that it ignored what Bush had accomplished in courageously deciding for the surge in the teeth of vicious political opposition. And it certainly was a missed opportunity for Obama to admit that he had been wrong about the surge. For a team that made so much political hay slamming Bush for never admitting he was wrong, the absence of any such grace notes was unfortunate.

Second, and more ominously, the speech attempts to set fire to the bridge by committing inflexibly to a timetable for implementing that strategy that may, or may not, prove reasonable. Put another way, President Obama has offered his own "read my lips pledge" when he says, "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end." He gives himself only the slightest amount of wiggle room when he further states: "And under the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011" (emphasis mine).

Here is the problem. What if the situation in Iraq requires a slightly longer timetable? What if the situation requires renegotiating the Status of Forces Agreement? What if Iraqis ask President Obama for some sort of longer-term strategic partnership that would further cement gains in that region, and do so at an acceptable cost? By that point, will the inflexibility and domestic political point-scoring of this speech have burned any such bridges behind President Obama? Will he be trapped, or will he have the freedom of maneuver he needs to do what is in the best interests of U.S. national security at that time?

President Bush the Father ended up regretting his "read my lips" pledge when he had to break it. I wonder whether President Obama will come to a similar awkward point.

Those are questions for the next couple years. For now, it suffices to note that Obama strolled across the bridge designed by President Bush and built by General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker, and all the brave men and women working for them. That is worth at least a cheer or two.

COMMENTS (3)

EXPLORE:IRAQ WITHDRAWAL

Is two months really all that's different in Obama's plan?

Posted By Christian Brose Saturday, February 28, 2009 - 5:52 PM

By Christian Brose

For the sake of self-preservation, I generally try to avoid grappling with Marc Lynch on Middle East issues, but something about this doesn't sound quite right to me:

I agree with Dan Drezner that the most amazing thing about Obama's Iraqi plan may be that it appears to command such wide-spread support and has been received with a collective yawn from the assembled punditry class. This is particularly amazing because if you ignore the spin, the plan he announced yesterday is virtually identical to the one he presented throughout the election campaign. The only real difference is the move from 16 months to 18 months in the timetable.

Well, yeah, that, but also a few other things. Like the fact that when Obama first announced his withdrawal plan -- in January 2007 -- al-Qaeda largely controlled western Iraq. The Maliki government was still utterly beholden to sectarian interests and losing control of its country. Sadrist militias and other criminal elements were dominant in the south. The Sunni-Shia division was still violent and bloody. And the U.S. military effort to stabilize Iraq was failing.

Yes, some existential political questions still remain unresolved in Iraq today. But whatever one thinks of the counterinsurgency campaign of the surge, the facts on the ground in Iraq are now nearly reversed: Al-Qaeda in Iraq is broken and reeling. The Sunni Awakening has removed the main raison d'etre of the Shia militias (and with it, much of their popular support). The prospect of a failed state in the heart of the Middle East no longer seems like a near-term threat. The Maliki government is pushing the sovereign writ of a representative state into parts of the country it formerly never controlled. And whether you dispute the success of the surge, the perception at home and abroad is that it worked, that U.S. power, competence, and will appear far more credible today than they did in January 2007, and that counts for a lot.

So to say that Obama's plan is basically identical to the one he announced two years ago is true on the face of it. But for reasons he opposed, the context in which he will now implement that withdrawal is totally different. Obama has been consistent. It's just that reality has come to him. And a plan that would have unfolded under conditions of mounting failure (and quite possibly exacerbated them) will now occur from a position of strength and increasing success (and quite possibly reinforce them). Hence the large degree of bipartisan support for withdrawal that now exists. Indeed, the context in Iraq is so different today that one almost wonders whether it is even accurate to call the plan Obama announced yesterday the same plan of two years ago.

But other than those two months, yes, it's all the same.

COMMENTS (0)

EXPLORE:IRAQ WITHDRAWAL

Obama's Iraq speech: Brought to you by George W. Bush

Posted By Christian Brose Saturday, February 28, 2009 - 3:25 AM

By Christian Brose

Today begins the leap in the dark.

For six years we've known that the Iraq war must end and that at some point U.S. forces would leave. The question that always hung out there was -- and then what? President Bush chose not to learn the answer to that question. He could have, especially in January 2007, but he left that decision to his successor -- and left it in better shape than at any point since the invasion. If there was ever a time to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, it is now. And Obama, in large part, has George W. Bush to thank for that. Still looming is the uncertainty of, and then what? And the only answer is, we'll see.

Obama's speech was good. His message to the Iraqi people, and his continued emphasis on Iraqi sovereignty, was right and nicely done. He realistically framed the challenges ahead. Having opposed the war, it's hard to then tell a bunch of Marines that their sacrifice is worth it and that they've won honor for themselves, and yet Obama came off as genuine. That said, though I understand the need not to overstep rhetorically, I wish he would have emphasized more the success of the war (late though it was) rather than just its ending. And by success I mean an increasingly stable, representative Iraqi state that is beginning to be able to meet the needs of its people, protect them, and reconcile with its fellow Arab countries.

Beyond that, a few other things struck me.

1. Obama can say all he wants that he's "ending the war" by August 2010, but believing that is nutty, and being surprised that by then we'll still have 30-50,000 troops in Iraq, as some on the left are, is even nuttier. We knew this was coming. From the moment he said during the campaign that he'd pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 16 months, Obama has backtracked -- first drawing a false distinction between "combat" and "non-combat" troops, and now pretending that a "residual force" of 30-50,000 Americans under arms, many of whom will be fighting al Qaeda, constitutes "ending the war."

2. This speech should be seen in the context of the assurance Obama reportedly made to Sen. McCain and others that he will evaluate the troop drawdown as it unfolds in light of developments on the ground. This will be an important test of Obama's realism.

3. Bush probably would have given a very similar speech. After all, that was the logic of the surge. It was one last push to stabilize Iraq and pass off to Iraqis the best possible situation. And to think that Bush would have just stayed in Iraq forever -- well, that's directly contradicted by the Status of Forces Agreement that he supported. The U.S. government already resolved that point. Some pushed for a maximalist position that would have left as many options open as possible -- on what our troops could do, where they could be, and when they would leave. Bush rejected it because the goal was to leave Iraq to the Iraqis under conditions of success, and now that we finally had them, we had to take yes for an answer. Oh, and it wasn't possible to get a maximalist outcome, even if we'd wanted one, because Iraqis wouldn't go for it.

So maybe Bush would have laid out a different withdrawal plan today than Obama did, but my sense is he too would have begun moving toward the goal of getting all U.S. troops out of Iraq by December 31, 2011 because he had already committed to it.

4. Though Obama said the right things about continuing our non-military commitment to Iraq's success, I question whether the administration fully appreciates the importance and urgency of this point and is really prepared to follow through. The fact that it's been two weeks now, and we still don't have an ambassador in Baghdad, nor will we for some time, is hugely worrisome. As our military leverage decreases, now is the time to ramp up our political, diplomatic, and economic support for Iraq. It was no secret that Ryan Crocker was leaving, and yet here we are, ambassador-less. And with all due respect to Chris Hill, he is not the man we need in Baghdad right now. My own preference would be Bill Burns, if I didn't think he was absolutely indispensable where he is, which I do.

Iraq just had a successful election, and a lot of responsible nationalists won power. We have a deep interest in their success. These Iraqi leaders have enemies, especially Iran, that are out to undermine them at every turn, and we can't let this happen. We can't let the next few years in Iraq mirror Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 -- when the Bush administration assumed that the good guys had won, the bad guys were routed, and that they could start treating Afghanistan like a normal country. The competition for Iraq's future is only just beginning, and we need the best people there to step up our support for responsible Iraqis.

5. At the risk of heading into la-la land, I think Obama should have tipped his hat ever so slightly today to President Bush, Sen. McCain, and other Republicans who had supported the surge strategy, naming them and thanking them. Of course, there's no telling how Iraq would look today had the surge never happened, but it's likely that conditions would be pretty grim and that this withdrawal plan would have the smell of defeat to it, rather than the opposite, as it does.

Obama could have caveated this to death -- "I opposed Bush's decision to begin this war, I opposed how he sold it to America, I opposed the way he prosecuted it," etc. But he could have recognized that Bush's decision to change strategies in 2007 is in large part why the security situation in Iraq has turned around more than anyone could have hoped, why we can now begin drawing down our forces with a good measure of confidence, and why our troops now feel more and more that their sacrifice is worth it.

Not only would this have been magnanimous, it would have been smart politics. It would have acknowledged the bipartisanship that underlies the decision to begin bringing our troops home by drawing an important line of continuity through our Iraq efforts of the past two years. It would have disarmed Obama's more hawkish critics on Iraq by conceding their point on the surge and turning it into an argument for the drawdown, which it is. And it would have shown Republicans that Obama is committed not just to a bipartisanship of style but of substance -- not just being willing to recognize when the other side has valid points, but actually incorporating them into one's own thinking.

The fact remains, we had to leave Iraq at some point. This is as good a time as any to start. And there is bipartisan support to do so, because of the events of the past two years. Now what? Time will tell. I just hope that if, God forbid, things take a turn for the worse in Iraq, Obama will find the same courage his predecessor did two years ago, and that he won't let inconvenient truths become the enemy of good strategy.

COMMENTS (9)

EXPLORE:IRAQ WITHDRAWAL

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.