Iraq

By John Hannah

There are some noteworthy developments this past week on the Iraq front that merit attention. First, after Sunday's horrible bombings in Baghdad, President Obama immediately phoned Prime Minister Maliki and President Talabani to offer condolences and reaffirm U.S. support. The president also issued a strong statement condemning the attacks and making clear that "America will stand with Iraq's people and government as a close friend and partner as Iraqis prepare for elections early next year, continue to take responsibility for their future, and build greater peace and opportunity. Together, we will continue to work for lasting security, dignity, and justice."

This response from the Obama administration was in stark contrast to two months ago, when twin suicide truck bombs hit the Iraqi Ministries of Finance and Foreign Affairs, killing at least 100 people and injuring hundreds more. The president was largely missing in action on that occasion -- no phone calls, no statement. Instead, Vice President Biden spoke to Maliki and issued a one-sentence readout of the call.

Iraq's heightened profile on the president's radar screen is only to be applauded. With more than 100,000 American combat troops still in country, and Iraq's success by no means a foregone conclusion, it's entirely fitting that the commander-in-chief remain intensely focused on the situation there. With just this minor investment in time and political capital, Obama has reminded our soldiers, our enemies, and -- perhaps most importantly -- the Iraqi people, themselves, of America's resolve to remain engaged and to help Iraqis consolidate their political, economic and security gains. For our Iraqi allies, it's hard to over-estimate the reassurance provided by this kind of steady determination from the president of the United States.

Also noteworthy in this respect was Obama's public remarks during his Oct. 20 Oval Office meeting with Maliki. True, the president opened with a long salvo on Afghanistan that left the Iraqis somewhat miffed. But he recovered with his first meaningful invocation of the "d" word as applied to the Iraqi context. And not just once, but on three occasions:

We have seen in the last several months a consolidation of a commitment to democratic politics inside Iraq. ... I just want to ... reemphasize my administration's full support for all the steps that can be taken so that Iraq can not only be a secure place and a democratic country, but also a place where people can do business, people can work, families can make a living, and children are well educated. And that broader sense of a U.S. relationship with a democratic Iraq is one that I think all of us are confident we can now achieve." (emphasis added) 

During his campaign, as well as during the first months of his administration, the president's default position was to talk Iraq down, and to leave the impression that America's only stake in the country was to wash our hands of it as soon as possible. That now seems to be changing, as the administration begins to realize that America's strategic interests could in fact be reasonably well served by having a potentially very prosperous, very powerful democratic friend in what historically has been one of the Arab/Muslim world's most influential countries. Moreover, this can be achieved through a relatively modest dedication of additional political, economic, and security resources -- even as U.S. forces continue to withdraw from Iraq and America's combat role dramatically diminishes.

If pursued, the president's shifting paradigm on Iraq and its possible role in American strategy in the Middle East is a most welcome development that deserves encouragement and support from both sides of the political aisle.

TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

By Peter Feaver

Professor Andy Bacevich, a prolific critic of American foreign policy, has proposed an intriguing grand strategy for the conflict formerly called the war on terror: let's approach the war on terror as if it were another Cold War. Since Andy knows first-hand the personal tragedy of these wars -- his son died while serving in the Army in Iraq -- his powerful voice of moral authority garners a respectful audience every time he speaks on the subject.

I am sympathetic to the Cold War frame and offered it as a useful way for thinking about the problem of terrorism almost exactly 8 years ago, as did other commentators -- notably, Eliot Cohen. We thought that the framework was a useful antidote to the pre-9/11 mindset which viewed terrorism narrowly through the lens of law enforcement and thus limited policymakers only to a very restricted set of law enforcement tools. The broader Cold War frame incorporated all of the law enforcement tools, plus additional ones. I don't remember Andy (whom I consider to be a friend and long-time debating partner) being persuaded by our reasoning then; I rather recall him thinking it would lead to what he calls American "militarism." But evidently he has come around to our point of view now.

In so doing, he joins President Bush, who used that frame in his 2006 National Security Strategy and his follow-on National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. The three pillars Andy highlights would all produce emphatic head-nodding from any Bush administration alum. Pursue decapitation, meaning tracking and killing the terrorist leaders? Of course, and the Bush administration dramatically ramped up these efforts. Pursue containment, meaning improving law enforcement, tracking vigorously international financial transactions and weapons transfers?  Absolutely, and the Bush administration was very innovative in these areas. Compete with the jihadis on both a material and an ideological terrain? Again, this was a centerpiece of the Bush administration effort.

Even Andy's eloquent peroration -- "The upshot is that by modifying the way we live -- attending to pressing issues of poverty, injustice, exploitation of women and the global environmental crisis -- we might through our example induce the people of the Islamic world to consider modifying the way they live." -- reads like one of President Bush's speeches. If a Bush speechwriter were penning it, he might throw in a reference or two touting No Child Left Behind, the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, the Malaria Initiative, the efforts in women's education, and the increased funding for renewable energy, all of which (and more) were viewed in much the same way Andy is suggesting here: part of an all-elements-of-national-power comprehensive approach to combating terrorism at both the material and ideological levels.

Now I recognize that many people, chief among them the current administration, would all argue that the Bush administration should have done even more on all of those dimensions. But the strategic pillars Andy recommends did comprise important parts of the Bush strategy and, on each of these dimensions, the Obama team has been trying to do the same thing, only harder, faster, and better.

Where he departs from what might be considered Bush/Obama orthodoxy is when Andy suggests that we can accomplish all of this even better if only we would abandon the fight in Afghanistan and also in Iraq (the Iraq point is implicit in his most recent articulation, but explicit elsewhere in Andy's writings). That is the novel bit of his proposal: the notion that the Cold War frame works better if only we would get out of Afghanistan (and Iraq). That was not President Bush's view and, so far at least with respect to Afghanistan, that is not what President Obama has embraced.

Nor does it follow inexorably from the Cold War frame. One can view the larger conflict as a Cold War, and still believe it is essential to prevail in theater combat in Afghanistan. One can even argue, as McChrystal, Petraeus, Bush, and Obama have, that prevailing in Afghanistan is an important -- Obama used to call it a necessary -- step in prevailing in that larger contest. Andy's new spin on grand strategy is in promising that we have a better shot at winning the larger contest if only we embrace the inevitability of defeat in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the sooner the better.

It is a very enticing vision, but it rests on some hazy premises. Yes, we would prefer to be able to whack the terrorists from afar and do so in a fashion in which no civilians die. But who will give us the pin-point intelligence (and so much more of it than we are getting now), after we have abandoned our erstwhile allies in Afghanistan and Iraq? How often will the terrorist leaders we are hunting show up within range of assault helicopters away from civilian population centers, thus allowing us to do the Delta Force strikes Andy favors rather than the Predator strikes we have increasingly relied upon?  How can we be sure that our departure will encourage the Muslim world to see the terrorists as offering only a "retrograde version of Islam" and not, in fact, as the "stronger horse" that has defeated its second great superpower?

As long as one elides over these tough questions, one can stay focused on this promise that we can have it all and for less sacrifice, more gain for less pain, more security for less security operations. Such a vision is far more enticing than McChrystal's somber and stark catalogue of the costs entailed in pursuing success, or the similarly painstaking evaluation of the alternatives that leaves Steve Biddle endorsing a surge in Afghanistan.

Indeed, Andy's message is so enticing, I would be surprised if we don't hear this chorus growing. The question is: Will President Obama join it?

By Peter Feaver

It does not look like the world will wait while we sort out healthcare. On the contrary, it is looking more and more like gut-check time for our wartime Commander-in-Chief. He is facing serious challenges in both of his major military conflicts, Iraq and Afghanistan, and very ominous clouds on a third front, Iran. I think in his first 8 months or so in office President Obama has surpassed the gloomiest predictions about how he would handle the portion of the job for which he had the least preparation. But the next couple months will really test his mettle.

The challenge on the Iraqi front is multifaceted, but the aspect that may be most critical will be how he deals with Iraqi over-confidence. The recent bombings underscore that it is woefully premature to declare "mission accomplished" in the counter-insurgency. The 2007 surge strategy reversed the trajectory in Iraq, but there is still a long way to go. Perhaps the phased withdrawal laid out under the Status of Forces agreement will be gradual enough to meet President Obama's cleverly-formulated goal of "leaving Iraq more responsibly than we went into Iraq." But ever since we transferred sovereignty to Iraqi authorities in 2005, a persistent pattern has emerged: Iraqis have been over-confident in their ability to govern and provide security and have been underwhelming in their delivery of the same. They have done well where U.S. forces have been well-aligned, well-resourced, and well-led. They have done much less well in other areas. Unfortunately, U.S. leverage over the Iraqis is diminishing on an almost daily basis and the faster we pull out the faster our leverage erodes.

This is a challenge to Obama because the facts on the ground in Iraq may require that he resist the political instincts he has honed in a domestic context, all of which will be pushing him to get out of Iraq as fast as the logistics train will let him.

The domestic context is also a critical factor in the Afghanistan challenge. As a recent Washington Post poll makes clear, public support for the Afghan mission is starting to wobble. There is even a slim majority giving the negative answer on the "is it worth it" question. I have never liked that question because it involves almost hopelessly complex and incommensurate judgments. From a policy point of view, what matters the most is the public's stomach for continuing the fight and I do not believe that the "worth it" question taps into that well. The poll is somewhat more encouraging on the dimension that the Gelpi-Feaver-Reifler model identifies as key: optimism about eventual success. The public shows continued optimism on that score and I believe that translates into a reservoir of public support that President Obama can tap.

The challenge for Obama is that his military advisors and independent experts may believe that eventual success requires the commitment of additional troops and resources to Afghanistan. And on the question of more troops, the recent poll makes clear, Obama does not have a reservoir of support -- indeed, the numbers are running nearly 2-to-1 for reducing rather than increasing troops. President Obama could shift those numbers, if he came to believe that an increase was necessary and if he committed the political capital and the bully pulpit to the job. But he would be dealing primarily with skeptics within his party. He enjoys robust support from across the aisle. His problem is with the majority opinion of his own party. At a time when he is facing a within-party backlash over health care, can he also do what it takes to bring his partisan troops in line?  As Will Inboden points out, the great presidents with which he likes to compare himself managed this tricky maneuver; the not-so-great ones he does not want to emulate did not.

The third great Commander-in-Chief challenge is still on the horizon and not (yet) predominantly military in form: Iran. Over the next couple months, the deadlines President Obama himself set for his Iran policy will come due. By mid-September, we will see whether the Iranians respond meaningfully to the offer of direct negotiations. By the end of the year, President Obama has promised to reassess whether this gambit has yielded results. At best, the Israelis may be on a similar clock; at worst, their clock may be ticking even faster. That means that within a few short months, at a time when both Iraq and even more probably Afghanistan will be constituting grave military challenges, President Obama will have a fateful military decision to make concerning Iran. If the diplomatic track does not produce results, and if he chooses to eschew the military option, he still will face the daunting challenge of persuading the Israelis to eschew the military option.

The last several weeks have marked a consequential chapter in how historians will evaluate President Obama's domestic legacy. The next several months could be an equally consequential chapter for how historians will evaluate him as Commander in Chief. For all of our sakes, I hope he performs well.

By Christian Brose

Consider this for a moment from today's New York Times:

Insurgents struck at the heart of the Iraqi government on Wednesday in two huge and deadly bombings that exposed a new vulnerability after Americans ceded control for security here on June 30. Nearby American soldiers stood by helplessly -- despite the needs of hundreds of wounded lying among the dead -- waiting for a request for assistance from Iraqi officials that apparently never came.

"As much as we want to come, we have to wait to be asked now," said an American officer who arrived at one site almost three hours after the blast.... At one blast site, American soldiers snapped pictures of the devastation before ducking out of the streets.

This is the harbinger of the new phase of the U.S.-Iraq relationship. The first phase, from 2003 to about 2005, consisted of Americans and our allies largely doing things for Iraqis, and often doing them very, very poorly. The second phase, stretching from 2005 to 2009, consisted of Americans and Iraqis trying desperately to do things together, miraculously avoiding not one but several total meltdowns and ultimately managing to snatch some elements of success from the jaws of failure. Now, with the implementation of the Status of Forces Agreement and President Obama's plan to withdraw U.S. forces, we have entered the third phase, the leap in the dark: Iraqis doing things largely and increasingly on their own while America, the coalition of one, stands on the sidelines in fewer and fewer numbers, advising, encouraging, supporting, and at times, just watching and waiting and wringing our hands. In this case, literally.

It's tempting to look at this and conclude that the sky is falling. That would be wrong, and here I humbly part ways with Tom Ricks's ongoing predictions of an "unraveling." Violence, as Peter Feaver has argued, is an unreliable metric for measuring success or failure. Just because terrorists can carry out a few coordinated, spectacular acts of carnage does not necessarily mean that they are a growing or reemerging threat to the Iraqi state. What's more, the attacks were surely made easier to carry out by what is an undeniable sign of progress: the removal of blast walls from the Baghdad streets. This says less about the capabilities of Iraq's enemies than it does about the increasing normalization of life in the country (though risks do come with that). And by all accounts, the Maliki government responded to these attacks as well as could be expected.

Let's not forget either that attacks like these still remain outliers in a far larger trend: Iraq's emergence as a normal country, with normal politics, a growing economy, and an increasingly capable government. Friends who have recently flown into Baghdad describe a scene that was unfathomable to them a couple years ago: kids playing in the streets, markets full and bustling, the sights and sounds of a normal Arab capital. These bombings won't change that. And this extends to Iraq's politics as well, which is increasingly colored by the jockeying and horse-trading of the democratic process. Even Maliki, with all of his troubling strongman tendencies, is being checked and balanced by Iraq's other rival factions. Talk of coups, or a reborn insurgency, or a renewed civil war all seem misplaced at this time.

Still, this new phase in Iraq will be far from smooth and peaceful. And more and more, the United States, like that soldier yesterday, will be a spectator, watching and waiting in the wings. Our main source of leverage is flying out of the country on C-17s -- which makes our diplomatic role, and our new ambassador, all the more important. We are leaving Iraq to the Iraqis, and though it will be hard and awful to watch as they struggle imperfectly to get their arms around the still-monumental problems that their country faces, this is the right thing for us to do. The days of America rushing in to help at every sign of trouble are over.

This war had to end at some point, and amid all the close calls and near catastrophes, we are fortunate that it is ending in the way that it is. And yet, days like yesterday are a reminder of how grim and costly this success will remain: sporadic violence that continues to murder and maim innocent Iraqis; an Iraqi government that, even when doing its best, will continue at times to fail its people; and America still able to help, still wanting to help, but not allowed to help, and in some sense, knowing it shouldn't help. This is success, but right now I don't feel much like clapping.

ALI YUSSEF/AFP/Getty Images

By Peter Feaver

I had some sympathy for the Obama folks when I read this newspaper account of yesterday's meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. Apparently, it was a solid, business-oriented meeting. And since President Obama has reportedly stopped holding regular video-teleconferencing with Maliki (a staple of US-Iraqi relations under the last Administration), this meeting was especially important.

What caught my eye was President Obama's comment at the end of the story: ""Overall," Obama said, "we have been very encouraged by the progress that has been made."

This statement struck me as both honest and misleading. Honest, because if you start with a January 2007 frame of reference -- say then-candidate Obama's claim that surge was going to have no impact on violence -- then the progress has been remarkable and very encouraging. But it also struck me as misleading in the sense that it did not also say that the recent spike in violence, and even more the recent flare-up of Arab-Kurdish tensions, is undoubtedly discouraging, and I would be surprised if the Obama team did not feel the same. Of course, as the Post story related, Obama also acknowledged that there are "tough days ahead" in Iraq. But the overall message was one of progress, a word he invoked 6 times in the prepared remarks and 3 times in the answer to the first question and that is the lede for the story.

That got me wondering: would those folks (say the mainstream Bob Woodward or Tom Ricks, let alone other people in the nuttier fringes of the Bush-bashing chorus) who established a cottage industry lambasting Bush Administration rhetoric as "happy talk" rise up and start calling a foul on President Obama? President Bush regularly caveated his statements of progress with reminders that there were "tough days ahead" and, if memory serves, Rumsfeld was the guy who coined "long, hard slog." In their coverage of Bush, sometimes the reporters would include mention of the caveats and qualify their lede accordingly; sometimes the reporters would include mention of the caveats and yet stick to a "happy talk" lede; and sometimes the reporters would simply omit any mention of the caveats, perhaps the better to advance the "happy talk" lede. Regardless of how many times President Bush presented carefully caveated assessments, the Bush-bashers could always rest their indictment on one or two off-the-cuff uncaveated remarks.

At what point will Obama's rhetoric on Iraq suffer this same fate? I hope never and, even more, I hope it never deserves to. It is appropriate for President Obama to balance "if it bleeds, it leads" coverage with mention of developments that are not getting as much press attention. And it is appropriate for President Obama in public to exhort the Iraqis towards greater progress by emphasizing the positive rather than dwelling on the negative. In fact, President Obama has talked so little in public about Iraq I would welcome virtually anything he said. Of course, I also hope that President Obama is as candid and clear-eyed about the challenges in private as his predecessor was, and I hope he continues to offer appropriate caveats even if he is stressing a publicly optimistic message. If the "happy talk police" give him the free pass they never gave his predecessor, so be it. The Iraqi challenge is hard enough without having to duck "police" brutality, even if it is only rhetorical.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

By Peter Feaver

The recent Kurdish gambit on a separate constitution is precisely the sort of thing I was worried about in making Vice President Biden the point man on Iraqi political reconciliation. When he was running for president, Biden sought to distinguish himself on the Iraq issue by prominently embracing the plan proposed by Peter Galbraith for forcibly dividing Iraq into three regions. This plan was popular with the Kurds -- no surprise, Galbraith was a long-time supporter of Kurdish interests -- but with no one else in the region (although the Iranians may have secretly liked it). It was panned by independent experts, and the American media generously avoided taking it seriously.

The Kurds may have taken it seriously, however, and their recent actions would seem drawn from the Galbraith-Biden playbook. Of course, one cannot blame Biden for Kurdish obstreperousness, but it is undeniably awkward to have America’s point man on the issue criticizing the Kurds for doing what for years he claimed was the only long-term solution for Iraq.

Biden is hardly the first political leader to be caught undermining his own campaign rhetoric on vital matters of national security. President Bush, himself, campaigned against the idea of using the military for nation-building and then committed the military to two massive nation-building projects in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Biden’s predicament is especially thorny, because to accomplish his new assignment, he must go beyond the pedestrian political hypocrisy of saying one thing and doing another. He must also somehow persuade the Iraqis that he no longer believes what he once emphatically said. And he must accomplish this at a time when American prestige and leverage (what the Iraqis call wasta) is steadily diminishing in Iraq.

By Peter Feaver

I received a couple high, hard, fast ones from fellow FP blogger (full disclosure: and old friend) Tom Ricks recently.

What provoked his ire was a blog post of mine which expressed concern about whether it was prudent to stick inflexibly to the withdrawal schedule. I noted that people whose judgment I respected were on both sides of the "is it safe to do this now" issue. I concluded that I hoped it was safe to do so but I also hoped it would not lead to a stampede for the exit that would leave Iraq in a far worse position. My policy conclusion, Tom conceded, was the same as his own.

So what led him to reach deep into his junior-high gym-bag for such rocks as "kool-aidish" and "repeat after me?" Apparently my sin was I referenced an article by Fareed Zakaria that was entitled (by Fareed, not by me) "Victory in Iraq." In my blog post, I did not use the word "victory" to characterize the situation in Iraq. Check that, I deliberately did not use the word victory. Instead, I wrote "the opportunity for a decent outcome in Iraq seems tantalizingly close." But Fareed did use the v-word and I did link to it, albeit with an explicit sense of irony, and I guess that was enough for Tom to revisit the central theme of his work: Bush (and people who worked for Bush) merit history's condemnation because they/we made mistakes in Iraq.

Tom is perhaps the most celebrated advocate of this view and, like all partisans in a fight, he is keen to see that his villains stay in the stockade. Thus, when a former Bush-staffer like me says that we should be careful not to undo the progress we have achieved since 2007 -- or when another former Bush-staffer like John Hannah (the other villain in his piece) says that after all the mistakes the Bush administration made in Iraq it would be a shame to squander recent progress with a hasty exit -- we must be condemned, even though those points are exactly the ones that Ricks himself makes.  

I don't have quite the same animus he has and feel more comfortable in the role of an umpire who just calls them as I see them. Tom and I agree that the Bush administration made mistakes in Iraq and that these mistakes have had tragic costs associated with them. Where we appear to part company is here: I think that the Bush administration also did some things right in Iraq, notably President Bush's surge decision, and that this means that President Bush salvaged some things in Iraq that the next team should seek to preserve. And Tom and I appear to part company on one further matter: I believe the other team is up at bat now, and so it seems proper to attribute to them the consequences of their choices, just as we did with the consequences of the previous team's choices.

I think Tom is persuadable on this last point, because it is the logical conclusion of an insight I read from a trenchant observer of the Iraqi scene writing in 2008: "...the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered probably have not yet happened."

So was Tom chiming 13 when he went after me? The umpire in me says that this was less a 13th chime and more a good-old-fashioned bean ball. I can take a bean ball or two just so long as they don't tap into something deeper still.

By Peter Feaver

I was wrong (and lots of people are adding, "again"). It turns out that Dennis Ross will not be taking up the strategic planning portfolio, as I had previously thought, but will instead take up the broader Middle East portfolio. The wiring diagram is not clear from afar (and may not even be clear from close up) but it looks like he will have a position more like a combination of the roles filled by Elliott Abrams, who covered everywhere the "Near East and North Africa" from Morocco to Iran (but not Iraq), plus Meghan O'Sullivan, who had Iraq and Afghanistan. He also has Pakistan, and so that gives him a remarkably broad regional portfolio that encompasses the two hot war military conflicts plus arguably the most urgent national security problem (Iran). It encompasses the portfolios of two formidable Special Envoys housed at State -- George Mitchell (Israel-Palestine) and Richard Holbrooke (Af-Pak). It also, quite deliberately I suspect, matches almost exactly the portfolio of General Petraeus, CENTCOM commander. That is a lot of grist for one mill, and more world-historical-figures than most mortals could hope to coordinate. But Dennis has formidable talents and will, I believe, work well with Tom Donilon, the deputy national security advisor who is said to have been the one most keen to bring him on board. So I think it will work out well. For my part, I will be interested to see how all these people coordinate with the Global Engagement Directorate which struck me as an intriguing office when it was announced (especially for the region that comprises Dennis Ross's portfolio)  but which, so far as I can tell, is still in the process of getting its sea legs.

As for my old post on the NSC's strategic planning cell, I now believe it is being filled by Ambassador Mary Yates. She has a long and distinguished record of public service. She is a career Foreign Service Officer with an extensive career with emphasis on Africa. She most recently served as the senior civilian advisor at the new military command of AFRICOM. This experience of close coordination with the uniformed and civilian sectors of the Department of Defense -- at the intersection of policy and operations - will be valuable for her in her new post. The key to succeeding in the strategic planning office lies in establishing close working relationships vertically with the top people -- Jones and Donilon -- and horizontally with the other heavyweights at the NSC -- likely to be Ross and McDonough - and diagonally with the other key offices in the White House. If Ambassador Yates can do that, the office has the potential to make useful contributions to the system. The Obama administration likes to think big about domestic and foreign affairs and so it is a good time to be sitting in the "big think" chair.