Despite the best efforts of the Ministry of Information, relatively little attention was paid to last week's withdrawal of the last active combat battalions from Iraq. My first reaction was to wonder why the media and public were not treating this as a major story, instead focusing on the idiotic Ground Zero nontroversy and various other tabloid quality nonsense. But the reasons are pretty obvious. First, this is largely symbolic and the U.S. military presence remains considerable. The idea that this is a withdrawal is eerily reminiscent of Bush's "end of major combat operations" with its glaring adjective. Second, Iraq is completely fucked up to an extent that we dare not speak. To draw attention to the withdrawal would raise too many questions about what we're leaving behind. Lastly, we'll probably be going back in soon if the performance of the Iraqi Army is any indication.
The victory narrative – er, "success," since the word "victory" has been stricken from our political lexicon – is entirely hollow, as Hannah Gurman points out. A national myth might be a small price to pay, however, if it contributes to getting us the hell out of there. That seems unlikely. While the administration(s) have been touting the might of the 650,000 strong Iraqi Army for eight years now, only a fraction of its manpower is remotely reliable and an even smaller fraction (estimated at 50 battalions) is capable of carrying out combat operations unassisted. Ray Odierno is already working the media and laying the groundwork for an American return, noting that we'll go right back in if there is a "complete failure" of the security forces in place. I'd put the odds of the Iraqi Army's failure at, oh, about 100%.
It goes without saying that "success" applies only from the American perspective, and even then only inasmuch as success is defined at getting the hell out. Iraq is a disaster. The talk of success and withdrawal contrasts markedly with the car bombings and mortar attacks and this cute little story about terrorist sympathizers who infiltrated the police and let some al-Qaeda guys out of prison. Does that sound like stability? Like something that will function as a state? At best it sounds like a second Afghanistan. The American Embassy, the grandiosity of which has been pointedly noted over the years, includes its own water, power, and sewage facilities, a telling statement of what Washington really thinks about the "progress" made in Baghdad.
The reality is that Iraq lacks functioning infrastructure, an economy outside of servicing the U.S. military and foreign contractors, or anything resembling an effective government (in which ex-Baathists, hidden insurgents, and plain ol' corruption remain epidemics). To be brutally frank, this amounts to par for the course in Central Asia and much of the Middle East. Hell, even given its sad state of affairs at present, Iraq is still in better shape than a number of countries in the region that haven't suffered eight years of foreign invasion (Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, most of Pakistan, and so on). But the war was supposed to turn Iraq into a beacon of democracy in the region. If the outcome is that we made Iraq into West Pakistan or Lesser Armenia, I'd say we aimed for the moon and ended up exploding on the launch pad. The outcome, even though it is what any thinking person would have expected at the outset of this misadventure, will linger on as an embarrassment to the U.S. much in the same way that Vietnam did for an earlier generation.
What happens next in Iraq? The neocons were right about one thing: without the U.S. military there, things will probably get much worse in a hurry. Where my opinion diverges from theirs is that I don't see this undeniable fact as a reason to make an indefinite commitment to keeping a presence there and sustaining a couple hundred U.S. combat deaths per year until 2030 or whatever. Our military presence is still substantial – there are almost 70,000 troops still in the country – and of course our economic investment will continue (and continue bankrupting us). I get the feeling that we'll have a hard time defining anything as "success" except for getting the hell out, and the State Department and Pentagon might want to dust off some tricks from the Cold War playbook, starting with the chapter about how to prop up a failing puppet regime.
Ike says:
The War is over! Long live the War!
J. Dryden says:
"The reality is that Iraq lacks functioning infrastructure, an economy outside of servicing the U.S. military and foreign contractors, or anything resembling an effective government." Well, if that's the case, it looks as though we *did* remake Iraq in our image. Because…I'm pretty sure you just described our own country.
Aslan Maskhadov says:
Where did you get the idea that Iraq is better off than Turkmenistan or Azerbaijan?
HoosierPoli says:
Yeah, Iraq is gonna be fucked up when we leave. My question is, so what? Are we really going to pick RIGHT NOW to develop a conscience about the human cost of our retarded foreign adventures? Let's just get the hell out, they may wind up figuring out their own problems, and maybe they'll all be so distracted fighting each other that they'll forget that they hate us.
A larger point that I was thinking about today is that Vietnam isn't the only other black mark on our resume. Pretty much nothing the US has done militarily since the second world war has really gone well. Korea is like Iraq, an embarrassing failure with huge human cost dumped down the memory hole. The Gulf War was a total military victory which, as we saw, didn't really accomplish anything other than give armchair generals something to get overconfident about. If you go through the use of military force over the past 65 years, you have a litany of middling-to-awful wastes of taxpayer money. I just came home from a year and a half in Germany, and on the interstate, I realized that both countries pay their taxes, but Germany get roads, and the US gets wars.
The Man, The Myth says:
To add to what HoosierPoli said: I would suggest everyone read the new book from andrew bacevich, an academic, veteran, and war critic. Its called Washington Rules and I'm half way through it. Very convincing stuff.
Bugboy says:
As the Jr. Senator from Va. said: "We won the war, all that remains now is the occupation."
Edward says:
"…without the U.S. military there, things will probably get much worse in a hurry. "
I have mostly heard Iraqis describe the U.S. presence as a source of instability, although some Sunnis seem leary of a U.S. withdrawal. I have read two of Petraeus's advisors (and Biden?) advocate a divide and conquer strategy against Iraqis and I frankly wonder if the U.S. was behind the bombing of the mosque in Samara, which ignited all-out war between Sunnis and Shiites.
justin says:
@Edward
Seconded, a large number of Iraqis have often and continuously identified U.S. troops as a source of instability and violence. In any case, putting forward the claim that when we leave things are going to get worse is a pretty big assumption that requires a heavy burden of proof since it is often offered as a reason for continued occupation. I don't think anyone should just accept this framing – Americans as cops and keepers of the peace in Iraq – without thinking about it quite a bit.
Edward says:
Here is an article discussing a regional effort to resolve Iraq's political problems:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LH24Ak03.html