Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

My take on Iraq has clarified over the past three months: I hope that our armed forces are driven out of Iraq, just as they were driven out of Viet Nam. If it costs as much in blood, treasure, and opportunities lost, I see no reason to regret this--because we've shown that we're unteachable, and that we'll never really learn what losses are. We're stupidly grandiose: it seems to be our fate.

I'm surprised to hear that sentiment from you, Alabama.

While I agree with you on the hubris driving the occupation, I am not looking forward to the losses of life and the woundings that a military defeat in Iraq would entail.

Already it seems likely that the Pentagon is lying about casualties (www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109411260427557669). The Culture of Lies that my work describes (www.americanpolitics.com/20020405Utwater.html) is widening and widening. At some point, this will bring on social collapse.

Far better that we, as a people, should walk away from the cataclysm we are bringing on ourselves. There's an election coming up. Maybe we will.

Handing over "sovereignty" in June keeps looking better and better as a political gambit. While it changed little on the ground in Iraq, it changed the narrative fundamentally. No matter what happens in Iraq, it is now treated by most of the media as not our problem (never mind that the troop commitment hasn't changed) and ignored the way international news is usally ignored by Americans. Stories like this one are dutifully reported, but the perception is that things are getting better. You can't hide from reality forever, but the task was only to hide from it through November. I can't think of a better way to accomplish this than the method already used.

Charles, three months or so ago I thought we might have gained the hard-won wisdom needed to walk away from the cataclysm we are bringing on ourselves, and that we would express this wisdom through an effective exercise of the vote. What has bothered me deeply is the Republican National Convention--not because it was partisan (we expected that)--but because it demonstrated convincingly that the folks in charge have gained absolutely none of that "hard-won wisdom". I'm impressed. It tells me that Viet Nam didn't enlighten those folks. Of course I hope I'm wrong about this, which would make me twice-wrong, first, in that misplaced optimism, and second, in the bad guess that the "eye-opening" convention brought to my mind.

If prominent Republicans stand up and denounce the war, then, as you say, "maybe we will". I hadn't imagined that possibility.

Ayatollah Sistani insists on immediate elections. We’re building a climate where anti-Americanism is the norm. Even moderate candidates will probably promise to throw us out. You can bet that the winner will have to follow through. No Mid-East central power base and no good will for us. Bush is doing everything possible to build hate - his results are complete failures. Results matter.

Then what? An Islamic Republic or theocracy? A strongman - Saddam lite? Increasing Iranian influence? Or a power struggle and possible split-up? None of these results favor us. Because of bush.

Brad -- You recommended, down a ways, a Fallows article in the Atlantic. That sent me to the Atlantic site where I re-upped my subscription (which I'd dropped a while back because Atlantic had gotten so fiendishly centrist) and downloaded the earlier Fallows article about the lead-up to war in the Jan/Feb 04 issue. Reading that in the light of what has happened since is fascinating: Fallows goes into the internal battles within the Admin. and how we were so damn unprepared for what's happening in Iraq. Highly recommended. Would be glad to email it along to anyone who can't find it...

Apparently Peter Galbraith thinks Iraq is going to splinter and that's not a bad thing.

I agree with Alabama to some degree and suspect that Iraq will be the watershed moment in this country's rush towards self-destruction. Dramatic? I would like to see our (ineffective) security forces out of there, replaced by those of neighboring countries. I don't want to see any more American military killed but even more I don't want them to be responsible for any more Iraqi lives. But I would like to see our repair and development squads stay and at least do a halfway decent job of fixing what we've broken. At the very least, we should fund reconstruction.

Maybe I'm overly influenced by Frank Rich in this morning's Times who fixes on the testosterone driven administration. We're in a hall of mirrors in which this (apparently) winning tactic of playing the virility card comes from an administration loaded with a hothouse breed: significantly secretive, dependent men of little personal courage and integrity.

At these prices, we don't need any Iraqi government at all.

September 5, 2004

FRANK RICH - NYTimes
How Kerry Became a Girlie-Man

ONLY in an election year ruled by fiction could a sissy who used Daddy's connections to escape Vietnam turn an actual war hero into a girlie-man.

As we leave the scripted conventions behind us, that is the uber-scenario that has locked into place, brilliantly engineered by the president of the United States, with more than a little unwitting assistance from his opponent. It's a marvel, really. Even a $10,000 reward offered this year by Garry Trudeau couldn't smoke out a credible eyewitness to support George W. Bush's contention that he showed up to defend Alabama against the Viet Cong in 1972. Yet John F. Kerry, who without doubt shed his own blood and others' in the vicinity of the Mekong, not the Mississippi, is now the deserter and the wimp.

Don't believe anyone who says that this will soon fade, and that the election will henceforth turn on health-care policy or other wonkish debate. Any voter who's undecided by now in this polarized election isn't sitting around studying the fine points. In a time of fear, the only battle that matters is the broad-stroked cultural mano a mano over who's most macho. And so both parties built their weeklong infotainments on militarism and masculinity, from Mr. Kerry's toy-soldier "reporting for duty" salute in Boston to the special Madison Square Garden runway for Mr. Bush's acceptance speech, a giant phallus thrusting him into the nation's lap, or whatever. ("To me that says strength" is how his media adviser, Mark McKinnon, forecast the set's metaphorical impact to The Times.) Though pundits said that Republicans pushed moderates center stage last week to placate suburban swing voters, the real point was less to soften the president's Draconian image on abortion than to harden his manly bona fides. Hence Mr. Bush was fronted by a testosterone-heavy lineup led by a former mayor who did not dally to read a children's book on 9/11, a senator who served in the Hanoi Hilton rather than the "champagne unit" of the Texas Air National Guard, and a governor who can play the role of a warrior on screen more convincingly than can a former Andover cheerleader gallivanting on an aircraft carrier.

Anne, Last week's Newsweek with Bush on the Cover said it all. Low Angle shot to frame Bush's crotch, John Wayne stance, arms out like a gun slinger, lower Lip drooping like a petulant toddler. In anyother country a Photo like that would have the public howling, intead it only us.

The definition of courage and manliness has hit a new low.

We don't need elections in Iraq now. We need them a year ago. We screwed the pooch on this one when the Army stormed into Baghdad and did ... nothing. We took over Saddam's palaces like we'd just won a game of "capture the flag", and (I assume) waited for the Iraqi people to acclaim Chalabi as their beloved dicator. Whoever planned the "occupation" was delusional to the point of psychosis.

Now it's a year later, and we're wondering how to get the worms back in the can. We don't have a can that's anywhere near big enough.

I'm reminded of one of John O'Hara's best pieces of work, Appointment in Samarra which, as I remember it (40+ years since last read), was about the inexorable power of destiny. Bush's entire life showed that he was doomed to f-up the presidency -- which many of us knew 4 years ago although I for one never imagined how bad it would get.

Retreating into fiefdoms is the perfect counter to the shock and awe decapitation strategy of the US. Our troops zoomed into Baghdad, but we do not have enough to rule all the cities without cooperation. I suspect the Iraq war aftermath will be studied extensively by military historians as the perfect example of why shock and awe cannot win.

As for the Frank Rich post, will someone ask him to quit whining?

I don't know whether the break-up of Iraq would be a good thing in the long run. I doubt anybody else knows either, but lots of folks are pretending they do - most of them insist it would be bad. There is a strong tendency in Washington to wring hands over any big change - there were even those who fretted that Stalin's departure from the scene would be bad for US interests. So it is not surprising to read article after article saying that the break-up of Iraq would be terrible. Some big policy thinkers claim other nations in the region would prevent Iraq from breaking up. Given the burden that Kurds and Shiites bore under Saddam, and the threat Sunni seem to feel now that they don't have political dominance to protect them, maybe seperate rooms wouldn't be such a bad idea. Certainly, we'd want to be careful about the way it was handled. The spectacle of the US condoning a division on ethnic lines would send tremors through Moscow, Bejing, New Delhi and a lot of other places.

Two more American soldiers were killed today, For what? A slow-rolling partition where passionate parochialisms will prevail.
What Churchill said about the communist Poles in 1945 applies to Bush and Cheney: they are the greatest villains imaginable. They ducked away when offered the chance to serve in a war they supported with empty phrases, and now send others to die in a war they whipped up with lies. Political and moral cowards.

The problems with Iraq breakup are the same ones caused by Yugoslavia breakup. Ethnic tensions and politics rise to the fore. Yes there are certain areas that are so predominately Shia or Sunni or Kurd, that they could break off without problem. However, there are many cities and locations where the population consists of mixed ethnic groups. Baghdad is a prime example, with Sadr City being primarily dirt poor Shiite and Mansour being wealthy Sunni. Then their are areas of N Iraq where ethnic Turkmen enter the mix. Kurds and Turkmen traditionally are at odds. If the Kurds took over these areas, Turkey (a NATO ally) might feel compelled to step in and protect the ethnic Turkmen from the Kurds. The Kurds have long standing grievances with Turkey over Turkey treatment of their ehtnic Kurd population. So independent Kurdistan could easily find itself at war with Turkey (or Iran which has its own Kurdish population. Parts of Iran apipear on the map of Kurdistan.) Baghdad would be like Sarajevo. Anyway, it is impossible to seperate Iraq into ethnic onclaves because the ethnic groups overlap. It would be like trying to separate the USA into two countries, one black one white. Where would you draw the lines? Who would have to relocated. Dividing Iraq would solve little and create a host of new problems.

bakho,

Hard, yes. Impossible? Cyprus, the Balkans, North America (from small to big and peaceful to awful) all show the extent to which populations can be shoved around. Even though the process would be awful, we have to be aware of the possibility that resisting a drift toward division might mean something even worse, over time. We have sufficient examples of the bad that can happen when ethnic divisions don't lead to countries breaking up, and not all of them are worth trying again.

Partition woundn't solve all problems. Nothing will. The question is whether partition would solve more problems than any other available solution. There is a hellofalot of ethnic warfare in the world, some part of which can be blamed on occupying powers sprinkling members of their own ethnic groups around occupied regions to cement control (as in Iraq). Some part can also be blamed on former colonial powers drawing arbitrary lines on maps (as in Iraq). I don't know how results would compare between some future in which very little goes right, but Iraq's borders are maintained, and one in which Iraq comes apart.

Iraq is not the only case in which the politically dominant group has gathered the fruits of coercive power to itself, doing little for other groups, or stepping over into actively doing harm. Can we really be sure that the Tutsi and Hutu people would not have been better off if each had the option to up stakes and move to an ethnic homeland?

It's possible to think about immediate consequences of an iraqi breakup.

First, there's the matter of the borders between the three new states. These are not set, and there are wide bands of mixed ethnicity so that doesn't say where they should be. This sort of thing typically leads to wars. But maybe the mixed areas are full of people of good sense who will decide for themselves where the borders will be and will discourage their new nations from fighting.

Then there is the problem that there is oil in the north and oil in the south and no oil in the middle. How would the sunnis support themselves? They've been living off oil revenues like the rest of iraq, and they wouldn't have any unless they went out and conquered some. They need one or the other area to share oil revenues with them.

Get both of those settled and it would be 3 countries that have the stresses of getting along with their neighbors, which would likely be easier than getting along inside a government. Shia and sunni who want two different religious governments could work toward two different governments without getting in each other's way. Of course, a federal government could let individual provinces each do their own thing, and coordinate provinces on the issues that needed the entier nation. i dunno.

Are there other important issues or do these cover it?

We can't let Iraq fall apart because the Turks will be forced to fight the Kurds in the north and the Iranians will absorb the entire south and become much much bigger and richer and control a significant part of the Gulf and they will have nukes.

This great game is all about who controls the oil. The Gwaihir oil fields are rapidly depleting in Saudi Arabia. I learned this week, 50% of the oil pumped there is sea water that then has to be removed again! Amazing number, if true! If it rises even ten percent more in the sea water/oil ratio, the fields will collapse suddenly since sea water doesn't have the viscuous mass that oil has, ie, a sudden earthquake and the wells go dry!

We are in the first stages of WWIII, aka, the Apocalypse. This will be three religions vying to control the last remaining world oil fields.

Possibly as Juan Cole suggests we are not paying attention to how strong Iraqi nationalism is. Jaun Cole does not think a break up likely.

Elaine, you have proposed two hypotheticals. Maybe if the kurds become independent the turks will feel obliged to fight them. If that happens, perhaps we might help out with airstrikes. We could for example strike at kurdish forces found in turkey, and at turkish forces found in kurdistan. The same planes could do both jobs though it would be only polite to choose carefully which airfields to land at after each mission.

The turks are getting the idea to treat their own kurds well or at least better than before. Maybe they'll get some nonviolence going, we can at least hope.

Lots of shia in the south have given the impression they don't want to live under iranian rule. There are various plausible reasons that might be true; of course they've had a long time as a subject people to learn how to tell conquerors what they want to hear, so we'd have to find out.

If they fight the iranians we could give them air support, we could even move in troops and help liberate them again with the understanding that we intended to leave as soon as they felt secure. Ideally they would have a referendum and decide which parts of southern iraq to give to iran by which citizens nearest the border wanted to go. They don't absolutely have to fight over it.

If the iraqis choose to split up, it might be very bad but it might not. We should be careful how much we sacrifice to prevent it, when what we want to prevent is really a set of consequences that might come from that and might not, and that might happen regardless.

It should have been clear by April that the war in Iraq has been lost by the US; all that remains is the optional massacre of Iraqi civilians. (Before anyone points to the destruction of Najaf, what I am talking about is a REALLY BIG massacre.)

I think the end is closer than anyone imagines. Many Americans in Iraq will die for nothing; how many and when is uncertain, but not the deaths.

This business of Iraq fragmenting like Yugoslavia looks to me like an image conjured up by those who wish to find some reason that the continued efforts of US forces to exert control are not entirely futile, that the deaths are not meaningless. The deaths are meaningless. The US presence has no positive aspects whatsoever.

Soon enough -- before June -- there will be a regime hostile to the US in power in Baghdad, and it will be holding war trials in absentia of US commanders and politicians. They will have a mountain of plausible evidence.

Today's Boston Globe has a perceptive article

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/09/07/the_unwinnable_war/

on the symbolic nature of the Iraq war in the US consciousness. This is nothing new: there will only be hope for US relations with the rest of the world when American writers and thinkers stop using the term "Vietnam" to mean "the American experience of Vietnam" when it should be used to designate a real country inhabited by 10s of millions of real people.

Ditto for "Iraq."

They haven't had elections yet because this administration doesn't want a democratic Iraq: they halted elections over a year ago, and haven't shown any significant interest in de-halting them since.
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