I’m just back from a lunch here in Charlottesville with George Packer, the thoughtful and well-informed author of a new book on the US engagement in Iraq called The Assassins’ Gate. (He’s spent quite a bit of time in Iraq since the invasion, publishing several good pieces of reportage in the New Yorker along the way.)
There were around two dozen people at the lunch. At one point, one of those present recounted that he had been in DC recently, meeting “the (Republican) chairman of a powerful congressional committee” (un-named)…
- And the chairman said something along these lines: “We told George Bush: ‘You’re not running for election any more. We are. In 2006 and again in 2008. What’s happening in Iraq is hurting us, badly. What will our party’s situation look like nationwide in summer 2006? You have to get serious numbers of our troops out before then. Hold the elections there on December 15! Declare them a victory! Then leave.'”
George, whose book is a careful accounting of many of the shenanigans, uses of double-think, and political acrobatics that had preceded the launching of the war, looked shocked. And said:
- You mean they would be that cynical?
I mean, this is the party that used blatant political maneuvers to get the US into Iraq, back in 2002. In the fall of that year, I remember, Tom Dashiell [the former leader of the Democrats in the senate– remember him?] went to President Bush and begged him to postpone holding the vote on the war until after that round of mid-term elections… Just as George H.W. Bush had done, back in 1990-91, you remember. But in 2002, Bush and Rove said ‘No.’ They insisted that they had to hold the Congressional vote on the war before the elections, and they put the Democrats into a terrible bind over that…
But to think that they would now blatantly use such partisan political reasoning to jerk the US out of Iraq, whether that would benefit the Iraqi people or not? That would truly be a new moral low… On the other hands, the lows do carry on getting lower and lower under this president.
He said that if we suddenly start to see utterances being reported from within the administration about the “Iraqi forces being actually being more capable than we had earlier described them as”, and so on– reports in which he, Packer, evidently did not place a lot of credence– “then we can start to conclude that that kind of advice being given by Republican party stalwarts is starting to be followed.”
Well, guess what? Check out what journos very “well-connected” with the US military and political officials in Baghdad, like John Burns and Dexter Filkins, have started to write in the past few days…
In a talk that Packer had given just before the lunch, he had spelled out his view that the future US policy in Iraq “will be driven mainly by the constraints of the manpower shortage in the US armed forces. (Because there won’t be a draft here.) So these constraints may lead to a withdrawal from the country even if there should not be one.”
That latter thought was Packer’s, of course; not my own. He said he could see some fairly strong reasons why the US should not undertake an inappropriately speedy withdrawal, and estimated it might be “some 7, 8, or even 10 years” till Iraq was sufficiently stable to allow a real US withdrawal.
One questioner asked “What exactly would happen that would allow this withdrawal at the end of those ten years? Would it be that all the insurgents have gotten killed by then? Or would it be the emergence of a new strongman there? Or what?”
This was a really good question– one to which Packer was unable to provide any good answer. And of course, no-one dwelt much at all on what would happen to the Iraqi citizenry– or to the US citizenry, come to that– over the course of those ten further years of war…
I wonder what the republicans will do when the economy gets into trouble from deficit spending, the housing bubble, outsourcing, and general corruption. Maybe they will create a new crisis. Where is Bin Laden when you need him?
This kind of thinking seems normal in Washington. As I understand it the democrats voted for the war hoping to remove this issue from the midterm elections. Didn’t Jimmy Carter try gain popularity from the Iranian hostage crisis ?
“estimated it might be “some 7, 8, or even 10 years” till Iraq was sufficiently stable to allow a real US withdrawal.”
Iraq will NEVER be sufficiently stable to allow a real US withdrawal as long as the US remains. The US is the primary cause of the instability.
Of course policy in Iraq will be set by domestic Republican political necessity. The good name for that is “democracy” — voter disgust sets some limit on what politicians can do. But also, if this Administration has shown anything, it has shown its competence is political bludgeoning of opponents — it has shown zero interest in the nuts and bolts of actually governing and apparently thinks performance in office is irrelevant (as long as its buddies get tax cuts.)
None of that helps with the underlying problem, the U.S. assumption of an imperial right to run it all. That is being eroded by reality, but the process will be painful for all persons and parties here.
After several visits to DC this past year, I am convinced that nearly everything they do is political posturing. Only rarely do you see someone take a position that he/she believes is morally correct, and then stick by it when others let them know it is unpopular.
I believe that Bush does not intend to ever leave Iraq. That would defeat the whole point of the war.
And I agree with Shirin: it will never be stable as long as our military is there.
Next Tuesday is a call in day to US Representatives and Senators. Call them and let them know what you think. Think of it as a “phone march” on DC.
And it is the fact that the repubs are worried about being voted out of office that is started the debate we are having now.
Tom Enghelhardt has a good analysis of all the withdrawal plans coming out lately at Tom Dispatch. Beware of the words used and their real meaning! Withdrawals’ plans are less than withdrawal’ plan; drawdowns isn’t the same as withdrawal .. and when conditions like “after the next elections if the situation allows” are set, it’s like promising nothing. Comparing the different withdrawal plans for Iraq with the Vietnam era Tom Enghelhart shows how with the Vietnamization strategy “Each gesture of withdrawal allowed the war planners to fight a little longer; but if withdrawal did not withdraw the country from the war, the war’s prosecution never brought it close to a victorious conclusion“. Read down to the end because the best part is where he conclude his analyse on the following four objects : “If you pay attention not to the war of words or the storm of confusing withdrawal proposals, but to four bedrock matters, you’ll have a far better sense of where we’re really heading. These are air power, permanent bases, an “American” Kurdistan, and oil; and, not surprisingly, they coincide with the great uncovered, or barely covered, stories of the war.”
His conclusion at the end ? “In the end, ignore (if you can) the whirlwind of withdrawal language that will turn all sorts of non- or semi-withdrawal schemes into something other than what they are, and try to keep your eyes on those shoals of reality.”
What a great post, well worth the reading.