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Iraq: Are we losing? And is Bush the reason why?
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SPENCER ACKERMAN
Assistant Editor, The New Republic
Posted 05.13.04 | 11:30 AM

Mac,

Actually, there's another difference between the two of us: Unlike you, I'm sure I have lost a game when I was Monday-morning quarterbacking. But I don't think I'm relying on hindsight as much as you write. There's not a doubt in my mind that Bush believed that Saddam Hussein had WMD and links to Al Qaeda; on that we definitely agree. I didn't raise the issues of non-existent WMD and Al Qaeda ties to re-litigate the case for war or to lay the mistakes at Bush's doorstep. Instead, I brought them up to point out that regardless of who's responsible for those mistakes, the fact that they occurred seriously undermined the Bush administration's primary rationale for the war. As a result, Bush had no choice but to amplify his remaining, but heretofore subordinate, argument — the need for a democratic Iraq — to justify our presence in Baghdad. I don't doubt for a moment that when Bush stood behind that "Mission Accomplished" banner last May 1, he really meant that the mission was accomplished: We had ended Saddam Hussein's regime, hence ending the threats to our security from Saddam's (phantom) WMD and (illusory) links to Al Qaeda. That, to Bush, was the mission. (Or maybe I'm wrong: John B. Craig, formerly Bush's NSC counterterrorism czar, was recently quoted as saying that "The idea that the administration needed a justification for invading Iraq wasn't raised until after the decision had been made.")

The trouble is that when you emphasize the strategic imperative of democratizing Iraq — as, I think you'll find, Bush began to do about a month after the USS Lincoln carrier landing, when he brought in L. Paul Bremer out of the realization that democratization would take a serious effort — you move the goalposts away from the toppling of Saddam. I don't have a problem with this; like other liberal supporters of the war (and many conservatives), I thought democratization and the promotion of human rights were the most compelling rationales of all, as they tend to provide the most lasting assurances for our national security. But the belated attention that democratization from Bush — as opposed to other elements of the bureaucracy, including the State Department's Future of Iraq Project, the CIA and, yes, many in the Pentagon's policy shop — appears to have equipped him very poorly for confronting the choices that successful democratization demands.

And as I've attempted to demonstrate in my previous entries, it's precisely Bush's inability to head off emerging disasters that is driving us to lose in Iraq: see, for instance, our treatment of the most important Shia cleric in the country as just another Iraqi until he derailed our plan to hand over power; or our inability to provide enough troops for public security, which, as a March ABC News poll showed, is understandably a top concern of 85 percent of Iraqis; or our inability to demobilize or disarm the country's numerous militias; or our inattention to conditions at Iraqi prisons until January, even though Iraqis and human rights groups like Amnesty International and the Red Cross were warning us of the problems it would generate for our effort. And it's also why I don't have much faith in the Bush administration to see Iraq through to becoming a stable democracy in the future. You say that he who doesn't adapt to the circumstances courts disaster, and you're surely right, but you've yet to explain why you think that the policy shifts the Bush administration has put into place over the last several months are sensible ones.

Since this is my last entry, let me end by posing a question. I've noticed that your most detailed posts have been about the military end of our enterprise in Iraq, and, especially in your last entry, you evaluate the wisdom of our decisions largely in the context of what it took to get rid of Saddam. For you, has that been a sufficient justification for the war? I see National Review is running an editorial arguing that democratization is a bridge too far. Is that your view as well, and if so, how does that impact your assessment of what price in blood and treasure the war is worth paying?

I hope you've enjoyed this debate as much as I have. We should have our next go-round over a couple of beers, and charge it to TNR and NRO.

Best,

Spencer


MACKUBIN THOMAS OWENS
Contributing Editor, National Review Online
Posted 05.13.04 | 12:30 PM

Spencer,

Re: justification for the war in Iraq, I remember Irving Kristol writing after the U.S. action in Grenada that the United States should have justified that intervention not on the basis of narrow considerations of security but because we thought it right to liberate an island from Communist tyranny. I believe that he was correct then and that you are right now: A central reason for effecting regime change in Iraq was to free a people from tyranny. However, such a justification would face severe practical diplomatic resistance: The "international community" would never have accepted such a rationale. As it was, we faced insurmountable problems getting international support for a war to disarm Saddam. Diplomatically, we could never have sold a war to democratize Iraq. We would have had even less international support had we attempted to justify the war on such a basis.

You are right to observe that I have concentrated on the military aspects of the war; that's the business I'm in. But I am a Clauswitzian. I understand that war is not fought for is own sake but to achieve some political objective. I believe that my colleague here at the Naval War College, Tom Barnett, has provided a persuasive geopolitical rationale for attempting to democratize Iraq in his recent book, The Pentagon's New Map. According to Barnett, 9/11 revealed the emerging geopolitical reality that the world's most important "fault line" was not between the rich and the poor, but between those who accept modernity and those who reject it. The former part of the globe Barnett called the "Functioning Core," the latter, the "Non-Integrating Gap."

The Core, where "globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security," is characterized by "stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide than murder." The Gap, where "globalization is thinning or just plain absent" is "plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and — most important — the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists."

For Barnett, the key to future global security and prosperity is the requirement of the Core to "shrink" the Gap. Managing the Gap — a policy of containment — is not enough: Such an approach further reduces what little connectivity the Gap has with the Core and renders it more dangerous to the Core over the long haul. The Core must export security into the Gap, providing the stability necessary for the regions within to achieve "connectivity" with the rest of the world and thereby position themselves to benefit from globalization. Otherwise, the Gap will continue to export terrorism to the Core, as it has been doing over the last decade.

Barnett argues that "bin Laden and Al Qaeda are pure products of the Gap" — in effect, its most violent feedback to the Core. 9/11 represented an attempt by bin Laden to create a "systems perturbation" in the Core so that he would be able to take the Islamic world "off line" from globalization and return it to some 7th-century definition of the good life. For Barnett, the proper strategic response to 9/11 is to create a countervailing systems perturbation in the Gap — which is exactly what the Bush administration did by striking Afghanistan and Iraq.

That was the message that President Bush sought to convey to our friends and allies in his speech of September 7, 2003: that Iraq is the central front of the war against terrorism, the Gap's main export to the West, and that if Europe, for instance, does not pitch in to help stabilize Iraq, the Gap may very well strike at Europe as it has at the United States. The recent terror attack in Spain seems to confirm this judgment.

Colin Gray makes a similar point in his recent book, The Sheriff. Both Barnett and Gray support the argument I often make that the real reason for regime change in Iraq is geopolitical: The liberal world you and I desire and its consequent prosperity do not just occur through the actions of a global "invisible hand." Instead, as "hegemonic stability" theory suggests, such an order depends on the willingness and capability of a "hegemonic power" to provide the collective goods of security. In other words, the liberal world order that so many people take for granted does not arise spontaneously; the conditions for peace and prosperity must be created and maintained by the United States or some other hegemonic power.

As Donald Kagan has observed, history seems to indicate:

that good will, unilateral disarmament, the avoidance of alliances, teaching and preaching the evils of war by those states who...seek to preserve peace, are to no avail.

What seems to work best...is the possession by those states who wish to preserve peace of the preponderant power and of the will to accept the burdens of and responsibilities required to achieve that power.


In the context of hegemonic stability, different rule sets are required for the Core and the Gap. In the former, the old rule set continues to prevail, but in the Gap, a new rule set based on preemption and maintaining constant pressure on terrorist sanctuaries is required. "Either the world develops new rule sets to meet the challenges of the age or the rule set misalignment that emerged in the 1990s" will persist — and the terrorists will keep coming at us.

That's what is at stake in Iraq, and why we must win. I happen to think that George Bush understands this better than his critics. His choices have been far from perfect (again, I was out of the office when he called to ask for my advice) but no one else — not Bill Clinton, Al Gore, or John Kerry — would have done a better job.

I too have enjoyed our exchange. Yes, a couple (or more) beers sounds splendid. Beer happens to be my favorite food group. Maybe we can get my favorite editor — the lovely and talented Kathryn Jean Lopez — to join us. And if you are ever in Newport, you should plan to attend the Mudville Study Group, a regular seminar that I conduct for my students at my favorite pub.

Mac

Note: Mackubin Thomas Owens's response concludes this debate.
OWENS
Posted 05.12.04 | 3:00PM

Spencer,

Your comments today confirm an adage that I think I coined: "It's easier to be president when you aren't." This, I suppose, is a variant of the old saw that "Hindsight is always 20-20." Like you, I now see the events of the past year and a half very clearly. Also like you, but unlike the president, I didn't have to make decisions based on incomplete — and unfortunately incorrect — information. I can report that I have never lost a game as a Monday-morning quarterback. You seem to have a similar record. If only President Bush knew then what you and I know now!

I am certainly not the first to observe that if President Bush was wrong about WMDs in Iraq, then so were France, Russia, Germany, most other intelligence organizations throughout the world, Bill Clinton, and Democrats in Congress — whose comments in 1998 have been replayed numerous times. Interestingly, Bob Woodward has shown that the president insisted on assurances from DCI George Tenet that Saddam indeed had such weapons. Unfortunately, the intelligence that Tenet validated was wrong — not for the first time in history — which means that we need to do some real restructuring of our intelligence agencies, not take shots at the president for acting on the basis of what he and everyone else believed — erroneously — to be true.

I am also not the first one to point out the irony of the fact that the president is accused of not acting before 9/11 on the basis of intelligence that was far more ambiguous than that regarding WMDs in Iraq. For months, Bush's critics have accused him of launching a preemptive war against Iraq because Saddam posed an "imminent" threat to the United States. Of course, that wasn't his justification for the war at all. The point of preemption was to prevent the threat of the WMD that "everyone" knew Saddam possessed from becoming imminent. At the same time, these critics accuse Bush of failing to preempt al Qaeda prior to 9/11. But the links that all of the oh-so-smart "hind-sighters" so clearly discern in retrospect were not nearly as clear before 9/11 as the evidence in early March of 2003 that Saddam possessed WMD.

Concerning links to al Qaeda, the fact is that Iraq under Saddam long had been a haven for terrorists. Once again, the president did not claim that the threat of WMD in the hands of terrorists was imminent; the objective of removing Saddam was to prevent the threat from becoming imminent. Since Saddam and al Qaeda had the same goal — to drive the United States out of the Middle East — it is not a stretch to take seriously the possibility that, despite their own deep political differences, they could cooperate on a tactical level to achieve their common objective. After all during the interwar period, the Nazis and the Communists often cooperated to destroy liberal democracy in Germany, waiting until late to settle their own differences.

Regarding your critique of my invocation of prudence, I repeat what I said yesterday. You criticize the president because his policy has not conformed to an ideal that is rarely, if ever, achieved. One who does not adjust his policy or strategy to changes in circumstances courts disaster. People are fond of citing Clausewitz's dictum that "the first, the supreme, the most far reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish...the kind of war on which they are embarking, neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive." But they often misunderstand the meaning of this passage.

They erroneously interpret this passage to mean that one shouldn't undertake a war unless one is sure of where the first step will lead. But that is completely alien to Clausewitz's understanding of war as taking place in a realm of uncertainty. If the original approach isn't working, then the statesman is obliged to adapt to the circumstances, all the while keeping the objective in sight. I interpret the changes you criticize as adaptations of policy to circumstances. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this.

You dismiss my claim that there were risks associated with waiting for a larger force before initiating hostilities. Again, you invoke hindsight to make your point. On March 19, 2002, we did not know, as you claim, that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction to deploy. The commanders on the ground took the threat of WMDs seriously. We know this because the soldiers and Marines on the march up to Baghdad frequently donned their chemical protective suits in response to intelligence and false signals from detection equipment. A commander doesn't inflict such misery on his troops unless he thinks the threat is a real one.

And this leads to one of the risks of waiting — the weather. If you think operating in a chemical suit is hard in mild weather, try doing it when the temperature is in the 100s, which would have been the case if the offensive had been delayed only a month or two. This means that the choice was not really between launching the attack in March or launching it in late April or May (remember we did not know how quickly the move against Baghdad would go), but between launching it in March or launching it in November. And I still think you are dreaming to claim that we could have used delay to bring other allies aboard.

Regarding troop strength, it seems clear in retrospect that there were enough to accomplish the task of taking Baghdad. We erroneously assumed that Baghdad was the Iraqi "center of gravity." Instead, as we now know, Baghdad constituted the "culmination point" of the offensive. The force had to pause before it continued into the Sunni triangle. It now seems clear that this pause gave the insurgents an opportunity to regroup and begin a guerrilla war. As I wrote on NRO, "In retrospect, the refusal of the Turks to permit the 4th Infantry Division to launch a "northern front" may turn out to be one of the most momentous decisions of the war — not because the unit was necessary to topple Saddam, but because an armor unit smashing through the Sunni Triangle while the conventional war was still underway would likely have convinced the population of the region that they had been defeated." But this is an example of the vicissitudes that arise from the nature of war — that it takes place in a realm of chance and uncertainty.

And yes, I remain cautiously optimistic. Again, a little historical perspective is useful. Bad news is not the end of the world. Look at what people were saying in 1863 or 1942. Compared to the news from the early years of these wars, which turned out well, the news from Iraq is not bad at all.

Cheers,

Mac


ACKERMAN
Posted 05.12.04 | 11:30AM

Mac,

You write that "Bush, like Lincoln before him, kept his eye on the main thing." How's that? Lincoln, sure: his objective was always to preserve the Union. Not only did the Emancipation Proclamation not distract from this goal — since, after all, the only way the proclamation could enter into force across the South was for the rebel states to be reincorporated into the Union — it actively promoted it. (See, for instance, the section assuring that freedmen "of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.")

Bush, by contrast, has quite the wandering eye. His initial argument for the war was to rid the world of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction — weapons that the president argued the dictator would be eager to hand over to the Qaeda terrorists Saddam collaborated with. It turns out that not only did Saddam not possess WMD at the time of the war, he didn't have any operative or otherwise significant links to Al Qaeda. The strategic value of Iraqi democracy, much beloved of liberal hawks (myself included) and neoconservatives, occupied a decidedly muted and subordinate place in Bush's rationale, as expressed in his three most important articulations: His October 7, 2002 address to the nation; the resolution authorizing war he submitted for congressional approval; and his 2003 State of the Union address. It wasn't until three weeks before the invasion, when conflict was absolutely inevitable, that Bush amplified the democratization argument at his speech to the American Enterprise Institute — and not until after the absence of Iraqi WMD destroyed the initial justification for war that he turned the volume up full tilt.

Of course, democratization is a far more ephemeral objective than the disarmament or destruction of a regime — or, staying with your comparison, reuniting a nation. Democratization requires applying a theory of how it can be achieved. That involves making choices, some of which are mutually exclusive. For instance, does a durable democracy require the establishment of a constitution before elections and (in this case) the return of sovereignty, or doesn't it? Can a foreign power midwife democracy in an open-ended occupation, or can it be accomplished in slightly over a year? In a country ridden with ethnic and religious differences, does an occupying power need to provide a political forum to address longstanding grievances before handing over sovereignty, or doesn't it? The administration has now been on all sides of these fundamental questions, without ever articulating the consequences of its shifts for attaining our objective. Far from "adapt[ing] universal principles to particular circumstances to arrive at the means that are best given existing circumstances," the administration has waited until events overtook it — witness the November 15 Agreement caucus plan or de-Baathification, to take two quick examples — before declaring that policies it had previously insisted were necessary for the establishment of democracy were to be replaced by their polar opposites. If that's prudence, I'd hate to see recklessness.

Speaking of recklessness, let's talk about troop size for a moment. You write that the decision to use a small force was "risky, but so was a decision to wait for a larger force." But it's not as if we had to invade on March 19. As we know all too well, Saddam was not about to deploy his non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Especially considering our pre-deployment of Special Operations forces to secure the oil fields, we could very well have delayed the invasion a few months in anticipation of a larger force. (That delay might also have given us time diplomatically to bring along more allies, or at least neutralize French objections.) Similarly, it's also not as if the Pentagon couldn't have rotated more troops in after the fall of Baghdad to help provide security. And while I take your point about how uniformed objections to carrying out certain missions has sometimes led our generals to propose inflated force requirements, in this case, the Army was most certainly right. (Or don't you agree?) And if the Bush administration only viewed the Army's recommendations through the prism of civilian control over the military, that speaks very poorly of its ability to wisely judge what force requirements should realistically be.

Finally, I disagree with your statement that the administration has provided the necessary troops when their necessity comes clear. As I argue in this piece, at every stage the Pentagon's inclination has been to reduce our troop strength in Iraq, regardless of the circumstances on the ground. The decision to retain 130,000 troops in the country came only as a two-front insurgency exploded. For that matter, it's still not enough: we were undermanned before the April violence, and instability will only increase.

As necessary as providing stability is, it's not sufficient. We won't win this war on the battlefield; we'll win or lose it in the political arena. And given the lack of emphasis President Bush placed on democratization until that was his lack justification for war standing, it makes a lot of sense that the administration has evidenced little understanding of how to achieve what it claims is its vital objective. Bush, I think, is neither hedgehog nor fox. As a result, I see our goal — democracy in Iraq — as becoming more and more elusive, and that's what drives me to the conclusion that we're losing the war. I confess to not quite understanding what drives you to the conclusion that we're winning, or, at least, not losing.

Best,

Spencer


OWENS
Posted 05.11.04 | 2:30PM

Spencer,

Let me see if I can summarize your points: 1) The Bush administration has made policy by drift, not design; 2) that drift has impeded the ability of the military to adapt to changes by the enemy — and a major cause of this lack of adaptability was the decision to launch the war with an insufficient number of troops — not so much for the march up to Baghdad but for stabilizing Iraq after the conventional phase of the war was over; 3) insufficient internationalization; 4) it has taken conservative supporters of the war too long to warn of problems associated with the conflict.

Concerning point one, critics of the administration seem to demand something that is rarely achieved in wartime: a linear progression from the initial concept of the war to the seamless execution of the strategy to clear victory. I can think of few examples where this happened. War is a hopelessly messy thing, for reasons having to do with some of the factors I described in my post yesterday.

For instance, Democrats and Republicans alike criticized Lincoln for the "drift" in his policy. Was his goal to preserve the Union or abolish slavery? He was accused of policy incoherence when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a step that certainly expanded the scope of the war. Even 140 years after the Civil War, the decisions Lincoln made appear to lack the linearity you demand of Bush. Both had to adapt to changes in circumstances. But Bush, like Lincoln before him, kept his eye on the main thing.

The key to the success of both Lincoln and Bush is to be found in a famous 1953 essay by the British philosopher, Sir Isaiah Berlin. In that essay, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," Sir Isaiah categorized writers, thinkers, and human beings in general according to the dictum of the Greek poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Lincoln was a hedgehog. So is Bush.

What is missing in your criticism of Bush is an appreciation for the role of prudence. According to Aristotle, prudence is concerned with deliberating well about those things that can be other than they are (means) and is the virtue most characteristic of the statesman. In political affairs, prudence requires the statesman to be able to adapt universal principles to particular circumstances in order to arrive at the means that are best given existing circumstances. Strategy is a species of prudence. To achieve the end of policy, a president must choose the means necessary and proper under the circumstances. Some of the means that made sense early on made less sense as circumstances changed. What you call policy drift I would describe as the prudential adaptation of the means to the circumstances. Of course, I would prefer the president to follow all of my policy recommendations, but I always seem to be away from the phone when he calls to ask my advice.

Concerning your second point, a number of very smart people agree with your claim that the force employed in the war was too small to stabilize the situation after the capture of Baghdad. I concede that the decision to launch the attack with the smaller force was risky, but so was a decision to wait for a larger force. There is no such thing as a risk-less alternative. If there were, war would be easy. The fact is that the president weighed the risks associated with both courses of action and decided to accept the risk of the earlier attack. In fact, by choosing this alternative, the Coalition force prevented a number of things from happening that were predicted, e.g. torching of the oil fields.

It is also important to recognize an important bureaucratic context of the decision to reject the call for a larger initial force or to wait for the 4th Infantry Division to redeploy to the south after Turkey refused to permit the opening of a northern front. The service that pushed the hardest for a larger initial force was the Army. The secretary of defense and others in the Pentagon interpreted this as one more example of what they perceived as Army "foot dragging," or what Peter Feaver in his recent book on civil-military relations, Armed Servants, has called "shirking," which he describes as a situation wherein the "agent" (the uniformed military) tries to do what it wants rather than to implement the policy promulgated by the "principal" (the civilian leadership). The new leadership of the Pentagon believed that civilian control of the military had eroded during the Clinton administration and that this was confirmed by the fact that if a Service didn't want to do something — as in the Balkans in the 1990s — it would simply overstate the force requirements. As it has become clear that a larger force is needed, the administration has provided it.

I still don't buy your argument on internationalization. In the context of Iraq, the "international community" and the United Nations means in practice France, Russia, Germany, and China, countries that made it clear that there is no way they would support the war and that they would throw up any obstacles they could when it came to stabilizing Iraq.

Finally, there are plenty of conservatives who have expressed concerns about this or that policy or strategy associated with the Bush administration's conduct of the war. Those who have criticized the administration for attacking with too small a force, for hyping a short war based on "shock and awe," and an over reliance on airpower or long-range precision strike include Tom Donnelly, Bob Kagan, and his brother Fred. Of course on these and many other issues, reasonable people can disagree, which accounts for our own debate.

Cheers,

Mac


ACKERMAN
Posted 05.11.04 | 9:05AM

Mac,

You're absolutely right that we've had to adapt to the changing tactics of our enemies. The problem is that in many cases, the Bush administration's policies have prevented effective adaptation. For example, a young soldier recently described for me his unit's actions against the insurgency late last year. Stationed in the Sunni Triangle, they left the town they were based in to press the attack against insurgents in Samarra. After rounding up several dozen anti-coalition fighters, confiscating weapons and breaking supply chains, they essentially cut off the head of the insurgency there. The problem was, when they returned to their base, "all hell had broken loose." A local insurgent cell had used the unit's time in Samarra to regroup and began launching mortar and IED attacks against what few U.S. forces remained in the town. And those forces (speaking of military transformation, it was actually a Stryker brigade) had just rotated in, and were totally inexperienced at counterinsurgency. To the soldier who told me the story, the lesson was clear: "We don't have enough people." There weren't enough troops, and certainly not enough experienced troops, to fight insurgents in both towns simultaneously.

The lack of troops necessary to provide basic security around the country provides a perfect illustration of how the Bush administration has significantly impeded the adaptive ability you, Moltke, and Clausewitz identify as necessary to prevail in war. To be specific, it seems as if two failures are at work here: the Pentagon's initial decision to field a force well-sized to take out Saddam's regime but poorly-sized to provide security in the wake of its downfall; and the administration's inability to bring a large enough coalition on board after the fall of Baghdad to supplement the troop levels the administration insisted were sufficient in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.

And that doesn't say anything about the political end of the occupation, where the Bush administration has usually adapted too late to realities on the ground. Several of the reversals the CPA has announced over the last year have been tactical pivots, but many more have been on fundamental questions of how to achieve democracy in Iraq. For example, Paul Bremer initially contended that for a stable democracy to come into being, a permanent constitution needed to exist before power could be transferred. In November, after weeks of increased casualties, he changed his mind. Similarly, the Bush administration initially refused to allow the United Nations any political role in rebuilding Iraq, arguing (on background, of course) that no insidious collection of despotic regimes could be trusted to midwife democracy. Yet last month, President Bush and Tony Blair gave full-throated support to U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's attempt to cobble together an interim government.

Which brings me to your question about internationalization. Bush's late-breaking endorsement of Brahimi was an admission that American power by itself is insufficient, and that the missing component is legitimacy. As an occupying power, we possess little or no legitimacy in the eyes of Iraqis, a fact that has only intensified with time. We have needed all along to appeal to a source of legitimacy outside of the fact of our occupation. The foundering of plan after plan due to the objections of Iraqis, especially those of Ayatollah Sistani, has testified to this. Why is appealing to the U.N. in April 2004 any wiser than appealing to it in April 2003? The only difference is that now we're less likely to have the U.N. add a measure of legitimacy to whatever political efforts we'll attempt after June 30 to establish democracy. (All the U.N. wants to do in Iraq at this point is have Brahimi announce the names of the new government and monitor elections.) It's certainly true that internationalization is no panacea. But as Bush has conceded, the alternatives are worse.

I share your confidence in the capability of our men and women in uniform. The problem is that our objectives can't be accomplished by them alone. Policy in Iraq is now made by drift, not design — and unless that changes, our troops can win every battle they fight but the U.S. will still lose the war. My question for you is why it's taken this long for conservative supporters of the war to warn of this.

Best,

Spencer


OWENS
Posted 05.10.04 | 1:00PM

Spencer,

First of all, please call me "Mac." Second of all, I agree with you on a number of points, especially regarding Fallujah. However, I have the greatest respect and admiration for Generals Conway and Mattis and figure they have access to information that neither of us have. I have seen some e-mail traffic that has led me to revise my rather harsh critique of the decision not to clean out the Fallujah rats' nest.

It is also clear that the administration has made some errors of judgment during the war. It seems that its original position was much more optimistic than the facts on the ground have warranted and that the president and secretary of defense have not always immediately acknowledged changes in the character of the war that seemed obvious to everyone else. In addition, I believe that there are some influential actors in the Pentagon who are "technophiles." Such individuals believe that reliance on technology will enable the U.S. to "apply military force with dramatically greater efficiency than an opponent and do so with little risk to US forces." They often also see technology as a substitute for manpower: thus the belief in some quarters that the U.S. Army should be reduced to pay for "transformation." Thank God the technophiles didn't prevail in the run-up to the war.

I see your criticism of the war as having two parts: the planning has been ad hoc and the administration has not sufficiently "internationalized" the conflict. Well, folks have been criticizing the plan from almost the start. It began four days into the war when the supply convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah and has continued with the claim that we didn't pay enough attention to the stability operations necessary to pacify the country. Readers of my stuff on NRO know that I constantly invoke the Prussian philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz when I write about Iraq. The reason for this is that he seems to have developed a general theory of war. Some of his most important observations have to do with the role of friction and uncertainty in war.

By way of a quick summary, Clausewitz argues that while the character of war is infinitely variable, the nature of war is basically immutable. It is a violent clash between opposing wills, each seeking to prevail over the other. In Clausewitz's formulation, our will is directed at an animate object that reacts, often in unanticipated ways. This cyclical interaction between opposing wills occurs in a realm of chance and chaos.

The fact is, the enemy has adapted his approach to ours, and we have had to adapt to him in turn. The war originally envisioned by some, a repeat of Desert Storm, evolved into something else. It is a tribute to our military at all levels that they have been able to adapt to these changes.

I hope those who read my NRO stuff on the war will forgive me for once again citing Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the Prussian General Staff during the wars of German unification, who observed that "...no plan of operation extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force. Only the layman thinks that he can see in the course of the campaign the consequent execution of the original idea with all the details thought out in advance and adhered to until the very end."

His observations apply to what happened, and continues to happen, in Iraq. The commander, wrote Moltke in a riff on Clausewitz, must keep his objective in mind, "undisturbed by the vicissitudes of events."

He continued,
But the path on which he hopes to reach it can never be firmly established in advance. Throughout the campaign he must make a series of decisions on the basis of situations that cannot be foreseen. The successive acts of war are thus not premeditated designs, but on the contrary are spontaneous acts guided by military measures. Everything depends on penetrating the uncertainty of veiled situations to evaluate the facts, to clarify the unknown, to make decisions rapidly, and then to carry them out with strength and constancy.


A look at every war in history validates Moltke's observation.

Much of our problem in understanding what is going on in Iraq stems from atrocious reporting. This is not a call for the press to whitewash the news, but some context would help. One can only imagine how the modern press would report the carnage on Omaha Beach 60 years ago next month.

The operational plan for the amphibious assault on Omaha Beach was extremely detailed. But in conformity with Moltke's dictum, most of the amphibious tanks that were supposed to provide cover for the Omaha Beach landing sank before reaching shore. Combat engineers in the initial assault wave were supposed to destroy the obstacles that the German defenders had arrayed on the beach and mark the approaches for the landing craft carrying the subsequent assault waves. But strong currents carried the landing craft of the first wave off course by as much as 1000 yards.

Consequently, most of the obstacles were not destroyed and as the follow-on waves approached the beach, men began to use the obstacles as cover from the murderous German defensive fires. As a result of this manifestation of friction and chance, landing craft began to stack up, men wading ashore were mowed down, and others, paralyzed by fear, drowned as the tide came in.

Military organizations, of course, attempt to reduce the impact of friction, which according to Clausewitz is countered by training, discipline, regulations, orders, and "the iron will of the commander" — in other words, virtues associated with the traditional military ethos. The U.S. military does a pretty good job of instilling these virtues, which is why I continue to be guardedly optimistic about the outcome.

As for internationalization, what makes you think that things would be going better in Iraq if the effort was being overseen by a corrupt U.N. (which by the way, pulled out of Baghdad after its compound was attacked) or if we were "supported" by more countries such as Spain who caved in to terrorist threat? If you ask me, this is the weakest part of your argument.

Cheers,

Mac


ACKERMAN
Posted 05.10.04 | 8:00AM

Mackubin,

There's no way I'm going to be able to say anything about military tactics that even remotely approaches your expertise. (The difference between us on this issue is measured exponentially.) But it strikes me as a signpost on the road to failure when military tactics diverge from the strategic objectives they're supposed to advance. Consider Falluja. Just before midnight on April 29, the Marines announced that they were not going to attack the insurgents holed up in the city. Instead, they handed security responsibilities to an ex-Republican Guard general, Jasim Mohammed Saleh, who promptly donned his Baath-era uniform and proclaimed the city pacified. Shortly thereafter, when Saleh's culpability in the old regime's crimes became apparent, the Marines installed Mohammed Latif, whom Saddam had jailed, above Saleh. Latif happily proclaimed on Thursday that "there are no insurgents" inside Falluja — since those insurgents have melted into Latif's forces. For the last week the most violent and rejectionist city in Iraq has been broadcasting its victory over the United States. The Marines, however, see it differently. "As long as they can continue to show progress toward the mission ... we feel that we're closer to the end-state objective," Colonel John Coleman, chief of staff to the top Marine commander in Iraq, told The Washington Post. "The overarching aim of this [Marine] force is to basically work itself out of a job."

But the real "end-state objective" of our presence in Iraq can fit on a bumper sticker: to foster a stable democracy. What's happened in Falluja severely undermines that goal. In order to achieve quiet in the city and avoid civilian casualties, we ceded Falluja to a militia that we allowed the insurgents to join. Unsurprisingly, Shia and Kurdish Iraqis are outraged that the Baathists are back in charge. What do you think this militia will do in the future? It will likely attempt to pass itself off as the authentic voice of Sunni interests in Iraq — having bested the Americans — and exert influence, by force, over the political process. That creates a potent disincentive for the various Kurdish and Shia militias to stand down or fold into the national security forces. And as Larry Diamond — a Hoover Institution democracy expert who recently returned from a stint at the CPA — put it in a speech last month, "Unless the political party, movement, and pseudo-religious militias are demobilized and disarmed ... the democratic process will be desecrated by strong-arm methods, intimidation and fraud, and the quest for a free and fair political process will drown in a sea of blood."

For the better part of a year, the Bush administration has ignored looming crises until they explode. Falluja is just one example; witness as well the refusal to treat Grand Ayatollah Sistani as a central actor in Shia politics until he rejected the U.S. handover plan outright (as he had warned for months he would do). If you think that's been bad, wait until you see the negotiations over revenue sharing for the country's oil wealth. The oil is in the Shia south and the Kurdish north, and both groups would prefer to keep the proceeds in their respective regions, while tithing a share to Baghdad. The Sunnis, who are largely left out of the oil game, want the central government to control everything. The CPA has for the large part punted, leaving the question to be settled by men with guns.

The responsibility for this lies with President Bush. Democratization and nation-building experts from across the political spectrum — like James Dobbins, the former envoy to post-Taliban Afghanistan, or former Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre's fact-finding team at CSIS — have for a year been warning about the necessity of internationalization, the dire need to increase troop strength, and, most importantly, the imperative of creating a political process that allows Iraqis to address their long-standing ethnic and religious differences. The administration has opted to blather that everything is under control — remember last summer, when Donald Rumsfeld insisted that U.S. troops weren't facing a guerilla war? — until the line becomes untenable, at which point the administration reverses course again and again. No wonder public support for the war has been declining for months. The ad hoc policy we have now (appealing to the U.N. out of desperation to save a faltering political process, for instance) will likely accelerate the convergence of these two trend lines: our diminishing ability to achieve our objectives and growing public dissatisfaction with the war effort. To arrest this deterioration will take leadership that the current occupant of the White House has failed for a year to exhibit.

Spencer