A Wish List
By streiff Posted in Featured Stories | War — Comments (13) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Tomorrow President Bush will announce the strategic direction we will take in Iraq.
It’s hard to see what he can offer up in the way of newness because, in my view, what we need to succeed in Iraq is time and it is unclear whether there is the political will to devote the requisite time. In my view, the president has to present a compelling case as to why the effort is worth the blood and treasure and to reiterate that we will prevail whatever the cost and however long it takes.
I am afraid that the core message, prevailing, will get lost is a dog’s breakfast of timelines, accomplishments, surges, and withdrawals. Some of those things will be necessary to buy time but by themselves they will achieve nothing.
The key items that I would like to hear:
Read on.
Iraq is a part of the Long War
What we are involved in really has to be renamed to achieve some degree of public coherence. We are involved in a struggle between political modernism and one variety or another of totalitarianism. We are involved in a struggle with a loose coalition of state actors who can produce chemical, biological, and/or nuclear weapons and state and non-state actors who are perfectly willing to use them indiscriminately. So far, the ground troops in this war have been muslim extremists but the problem but the war is not limited to the ground troops and the countries that produce them.
North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, the Sudan, the Philippines, Indonesia and other areas are theaters in this war.
This is not our “last chance” to win
Though success becomes more difficult the longer the Iraqi government is unable to establish security in Iraq, the actions announced, presumably some sort of a troop surge and some kind of accomplishment-based timeline for the Iraqi government, are not a double-or-nothing-Hail-Mary-pass operation. They are actions brought on by a specific set of circumstances. America never has a “last chance” to win so long as we are resolved to win.
Victory is the goal
One of the common leftie comments on Iraq is “I don’t know what a victory would look like” as if their paucity of imagination were an indictment of the entire enterprise. I’ve even received an email from an acquaintance, a fairly senior Army officer with three tours in Iraq behind him, who advises to not talk about victory because it is imprecise.
I think victory has been defined by the White House on a number of occasions, the definition is on the White House website and the president shouldn’t run for nuance when most Americans will respond to something more finite, like being in favor of winning.
Often presidents quote from famous Americans to make a point, I’ve got one here I wish President Bush would use:
"Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American."
Or something along this line, anyway.
Our patience with Iraq is infinite, our patience with Maliki not so much
Maliki has squandered the goodwill he brought with him into office through his weasely playing of both ends against the middle. Though I think Saddam’s execution was long overdue and justified, Maliki’s lack of control over his own government functionaries reduced the triumph of justice to a tawdry lynching. I’m not necessarily opposed to tawdry lynchings for tyrants, but I am opposed to having them televised.
At some level I need assurance that Bush has had a come-to-Allah meeting with Maliki and he understands that he is not irreplaceable, right now I think a trained seal would be an even swap, and that he needs to either govern or to get out of the way and let someone else have a try. Part of that understanding has to be that Sadr cannot continue to front an armed militia.
Iron will
Just as Maliki needs to be told how the cow will eat the cabbage, so too must Pelosi and the pro-defeat wing of the Democrat Party. He needs to lay down a marker that he will not allow the Democrats to defund this war, dishonoring us all in the process, as they did in 1974 with South Vietnam.
He should make clear to the Congress, just as Teddy Roosevelt made clear when ordering the Great White Fleet to sail round the world in 1907, that he has enough funding authority to send troops to Iraq, what Congress does to support them once they are there is up to the Congress.
Those are my hopes for tomorrow. My expectations are that once the State Department and a phalanx of lawyers get finished with the speech it will be a hopeless pail of pablum that will do nothing to aid the Administration or Iraq or the nation.
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A Wish List 13 Comments (0 topical, 13 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
because the Iraqis are going to have the fight the war regardless. So I'm not really concerned about how they see it beyond wanting the same basic things that we do in Iraq.
I don't see why we have to harmonize the war we're in with the one the Iraqis are in because we are fighting markedly different wars. The Iraqis may opt out of the war when they think their part is done and I wouldn't have a problem with that at all.
I disagree that NoKo is part of this war except to the extent that it's a proliferation threat. The NoKo threat is real but it's separate and doesn't require the same strategies, allies, or timetables.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
the most likely user of a North Korean nuke is Iran or a terrorist group. As I said, I think the war is as much about those who would engage in WMD proliferation as it is about jihadis.
As to Allies, I don't see much of a different set. China has an Uighar insurgency problem, Russia has one in Chechnya. Australia, at least, recognizes this as they are assisting in naval operations against North Korea smuggling of currency and meth.
I think whatever strategy we develop has to include all these players and while the local tactics we use may very well be different, they are all part of the same war.
And we simply differ on timetables. I don't like them in any way, shape, or form and I'd be against using them.
We are involved in a struggle between political modernism and one variety or another of totalitarianism.
This seems imprecise at least. Totalitarianism, in the minds of alot of thoughtful Conservatives over the years, is in fact the culmination of political modernism. And it is political modernism, in all its advanced forms, which we (here at RS for instance) spend our time resisting in our domestic politics.
Forgive me for interjecting theory, but this "war for modernism" talk only serves to point up one of the sources of incoherence you rightly decry. The enemies of "political modernism" here at home, Streiff, are you and me: people who still believe patriotism has value; who still believe the family is an absolutely indispensable support for any civilized order; who still affirm a Divine authorship of creation; who are still prepared to render judgment against sin and decadence. Etc.
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
I totally subscribe to that, Paul, or at least I don't view myself as an acolyte of Zawahiri (on the one hand) or Kim Jong Il (on the other).
I think patriotism, family, and God are perfectly modern views, at least in a vaguely Fukayama-esque view of the world, and islamofascism and totalitarianism, the latter at least since the fall of the USSR and maybe since the death of Stalin, throwbacks to an earlier era. One of those eras being much earlier than the other.
Here is how the theory goes: The modern project in politics has consisted of the reduction of sources of power independent of the State, and the rationalizing of all human relationships. The culmination of this is in totalitarianism, which first appeared with the French Revolution, when the modern theories were first applied systematically, and matured throughout the 19th century before exploding on the scene between the world wars.
The relation of Islam to all this is somewhat obscure to me, as its politics are for the most part emphatically premodern -- except for some late and isolated interactions with 20th century totalitarianism.
My point is that I do not think it likely that we will achieve clarity or coherence by this narrative of modernism vs. totalitarianism.
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
All ideas were modern when first promulgated. The modernity that I support - I won't speak for Streiff, or anyone else on this - is the modernity of Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, among many others. While several of those have been dead for nearly two centuries and one for merely a matter of weeks, they are all modern when compared to the principal (though not sole) opponent in the GWOT - Islamic fundamentalism. Some of radical Islam's allies of convenience claim to be Marxist, and Marxism, by definition, regards itself as 'modern'. But I do not see it as such. It is a backward looking ideology, resistant to the industrial revolution.
So I have no problem calling my bekiefs 'modern'. Your beliefs are different in several areas, but in the struggle that Streiff is commenting on, we are allies.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
Was Jefferson's agrarianism modern? Was Lincoln's unparalleled infusion of his rhetoric with Biblical language and idiom modern? Was Hayek's defense of tradition modern?
There was, undoubtedly, something modern in all of these men; but most of them were also the inheritors and preservers of a tradition much older than the dawn of the Modern Age. To set this struggle up as between modernity and ... what? barbarism, premodernity, whatever, is to degrade the older tradition within which they moved and thought.
I could go further and point out that part of "modernity" itself was a recovery of the ancients; or that recent research has gone a long way toward showing how much that we think of as modern was really an inheritance from the Middle Ages. The grasp of, for instance, market economics achieved by the Schoolmen is remarkable. The roots of modern science in mediaeval polymaths like Oresme and Buridan is increasingly difficult to deny. In short, this my point is only this: it will not really bring much clarity to think about this struggle as one between modernism and totalitarianism.
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
if you will, for a moment, consider as correct my thesis that there is a unity of effort between various islamist non-state actors, islamist states, and totalitarian regimes to freeze, if not roll back, a global drift towards Francis Fukuyama's end of history?
First, I reject Fukuyama's End of History thesis, because I reject the doctrine of Progress upon which it rests. I will cleave to my native Christian eschatology instead.
I do agree with you that there is a coalition of interests whose disparate designs include a check on American power, and that certainly the most spiritually vibrant, and physically bold interest among them, whose aim goes far beyond a mere "check" on our power, is the Jihad.
Without the Jihad there is no war; without the Jihad the coalition of interests collapses in upon its decrepitude. So I agree that there is a "unity of effort between various Islamist non-state actors, Islamist states, and totalitarian regimes [and I would add the various criminal non-state actors, like those probing us on our southern border as we speak] to freeze, if not roll back," American power. But I firmly believe that the Jihad is the sine qua non of this unity, and that therefore the coherence you rightly seek lies in defying our sham proprieties and, so long as the Jihad remains an integral part of the Islamic creed and culture, treating Islam as the menace it is.
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
It strikes me that there are even more dangerous enemies within the gates. I think you'll appreciate this artcle.
However one thinks about whether it was to begin with or not is beside the point. It is now. And we DO have to think about it in over-all strategic terms. And personally, that includes the possibility that Iraq has become our Gallipoli. I'm not saying it is or it isn't. But I do believe we need to rethink our options in Iraq in terms of how they will impact our strategic interests elsewhere. After all, the goal is not necessarily victory in Iraq, but victory in the GWOT (however imprecise that definition may be). In that regard, and in my view, it would be a mistake to think of the GWOT as just Iraq, or even just islamofascism. We have to think truly globally.
the "long war" as you describe it, how do the Iraqis see it? Do they agree with your description of it, and if not, what are the implications for how we proceed there?
It seems that the war we're fighting is not the same war they're fighting and until we harmonize the wars going on in our heads, success or victory or whatever will be elusive.
and you could, I imagine, ask the same question of the American public...