Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.
Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.
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Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
Probably the most concise thumbnail desription of what corroborating data has since indicated is the "Iraqi mindset" came from Fareed Zakaria two or three years ago: "Thank you for liberating us, now go -- and take us with you." As the soldiers write, such an outlook is at complete cross purposes with what the stated goal of invasion was supposed to be. That is probably the most irreconcilable factor as to why the war is truly lost; those goals are no longer achievable.
At some point, possibly even some point relatively soon, the violence and carnage will begin to abate. After all, between the known casualties and deaths, the refugees who have been lucky enough to escape, and the internally displaced, somewhere around 20% of Iraq's pre-war population (by the writers' own back-of-the-envelope estimations) is gone, smithereened by sweet freedom or merely driven from their homes by roving gangs of sectarian thugs.
Conventional wisdom reasonably assumes that there will be a short-term spike in violence after we eventually draw down troops, whether to the internal super-bases or to the sidelines in Kuwait or Qatar. (Or, alternatively, continue to up the proportion of off-the-books PMCs. Successmanship!) But after that, chances are that there will be some pattern of re-normalization, relatively speaking, if only because there's no one left to kill.
And guess which of the cockroaches of the commentariat will be the first to scuttle out of the woodwork and take credit for such a return to civilization (however carefully parsed), use it as rationalization for the years of horror which preceded, use it to vindicate (in their minds) the permanently befouled record and tragic judgment of the current administration. They'll certainly never acknowledge or endorse what these service people have written in their Times op-ed; once they have abdicated their role as handy props, people like Billy Kristol no longer have much use for their observations.
I don't think there's any big secret to this, except that the people who got us into this mess have a vested interest in not changing their minds, and not pointing out some hard truths -- that not everything is about us, and this is particularly true in the case of Iraq. As long as Bush and Cheney are near the knobs and levers of power, the operational strategy will never reflect that. They are more interested in kicking the can just long enough to save face, than in finding the least ugly way to bring some resolution.
All the rationales from Vietnam are being revisited one by one, when the subject of withdrawal comes up -- it's an irredeemable loss of face; we've sunk too much into this to turn back now; the Chinese will swoop in, head towards Indonesia, and grab the world economy by the short hairs by extorting the high-volume shipping trade through the Straits of Malacca.
Well, none of those things were quite true, now were they? The face we lost was primarily due to the dirty black ops and scorched-earth policy we inflicted on civilians; we sunk too much in because we never should have been there in the first place; and the Chinese are our good buddies and the Straits of Malacca are as secure and propserous as ever. And Vietnam, no thanks to us, has come back to become a reliable quasi-capitalist trading partner.
It's probably too late to accomplish anything meaningful in Iraq during the remainder of the Cheney regime, and the puling Democratic opposition will never stand up to these people in any meaningful fashion. They will always allow themselves to be cowed by Cheneyite imputations of character and patriotism, which is why people keep voting Republican -- you may not like where they stand, but at least you know where they stand. The best we can hope for over the next year is keeping Junior's drinkin' finger off the "attack Iran" button.
In the meantime, maybe we all start taking a more comprehensive look at the interdependent dynamics of all these enormous cogs in the machine, and decide to be more judicious about where we steer that machine next. Because the next fucktard that votes for someone they'd like to have a beer with gets foot patrol in Fallujah. See how you like that beer then, Chief.
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