A Republic, If You Can Keep It

So said Benjamin Franklin after the Constitutional Convention, when asked what kind of a government the delegates had given them.  Today, 18 December 2011, the last American troops left Iraq and, at 6:59 a.m. EST, Secretary of Defense Panetta signed Mod 9 to EXORD 1003 Victor, formally ending Operation New Dawn—and by extension, the Iraq war.

This seems like a good occasion to write again, if only to record my thoughts.  I stared at the Defense Press Secretary’s tweet for some time (@PentagonPresSec), thinking of something substantive to add, and then simply retweeted it.  It seemed like something that shouldn’t just be a passing comment.

Which leaves us with the question, “What next?”  Last week, President Obama thanked returning troops, and in what may be the ultimate irony of his administration, praised them for leaving behind a sovereign, independent, democratic Iraq—the exact end state formulated by President George W. Bush and derided by the left, including candidate Obama.

Apologies in advance for politicizing this moment, but there are a couple things about this week that are bothering me.  I won’t go as far as some pundits who’ve said the President was trying to take credit for our success in Iraq.  (He wouldn’t say victory.)  Still, I find it interesting that he’s the President is quick to blame his predecessor for the economy being worse than he thought when taking office, but doesn’t seem to blame (or credit) Bush for saddling him with an Iraq withdrawal timeline.  I’d like to think otherwise, but I suspect we’ll hear reelection candidate Obama point out that he brought the Iraq war to a conclusion, as promised. 

That should be a mistake, because any opponent should quickly ridicule any such claim—this President withdrew the troops on the exact timeline established by his predecessor, three years after taking office, not the 18 months he kept repeating during the 2008 campaign.  The only thing substantive he can claim credit for is failing to reach an agreement to let the troops stay longer.  If I can make the argument, a Presidential candidate should certainly be able to.  (Add a couple quips about a pattern of diplomatic failure, etc., until the “time’s up” chime rings.)

But, with that off my chest, I will give President Obama some credit, on faith.  There is a reasonable intellectual argument that the only way we could ever prove to the Iraqis that we would leave—is by leaving.  Perhaps Iraq will be fine; perhaps the Iraqis will be asking us to return in 2014, but even the Sadrists can no longer claim we’re an occupation force. 

The Iraqi military and police probably aren’t as ready as we, or they, would like—but it’s their country, and they’ve stepped up, and you can’t always wait until everything is ready.  They still have to worry about Iran, but that will be a continued counterinsurgency fight.  Iraqi Freedom may not be the last state-on-state conventional land attack, but there won’t be another one for a while.  Most Iraqis may be Shia, but they don’t want to be ruled from Tehran any more than they want to be ruled from Washington, DC.  Why do you think Sadr called everyone liars when they said he was hiding in Iran?

So, while the politics of this day are inescapable, I’ll close with some thoughts of hope.

I think Iraq will be fine.  In fact, despite its rough neighborhood, I think Iraq is going to thrive.  And, I’ll stick to the prediction I made in May 2008—when Iraq looked into the abyss and stepped back—within 10 years, Iraq will be one of our “go to” partners when a coalition is needed, because of the tenacity, skill, and courage of their new army.

Some of which, I’d like to think, we taught them.  And some of which, they just needed to be shown they had, all along.

Nuclear Posture Review: A Whole Lot of Nothing

From Charles Krauthamer on the right to Newsweek on the left, everyone seems to be freaked out over the Nuclear Posture Review. President Obama has either given away our safety or made the greatest strides towards world peace since nuclear weapons were invented.

I think the NPR is a bunch of nothing. In the NPR, President Obama commits the United States to not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons any non-nuclear state that uses chemical or biological weapons against us, as long as they are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Special exceptions are carved out for Iran and North Korea.

Seriously? And, which countries, exactly, are we worried about that 1) don't have nukes, 2) are in compliance with the NPT, and 3) might attack us with chemical or biological weapons? Oh, let's not forget the caveat that we might change our mind.

By my count, we're talking Syria now, Iran in the next few years, and maybe Burma (excuse me, Myanmar). Does anyone seriously think we'd attack Syria with nukes because they attack Israel with chemical weapons? I think Israel might solve that little problem. Iran? Self-solving. They either aren't a threat, or aren't in compliance with NPT. Burma? Same deal. So, the NPR actually says absolutely nothing that couldn't be said by the most right-wing President ever. That also means it's as meaningless as could be--it doesn't change our actual policy one whit. It sounds nice. But, re-read the Bush 2002 National Security Strategy, and ask whether it could have just as easily been written by President Clinton.

Let's not get overly excited, disappointed, or emotional about the NPR. It doesn't really change anything.

Democracy in Iraq

This month, Iraqis went to the polls, again. Key word, again. There's an old saying about authoritarian regimes, "One man, one vote, one time." Iraqis have now voted in as many elections as many adult Americans. (Given the 62% voter turnout in this latest election, they've voted in more elections than many Americans. Or Europeans, for that matter.)

It was just a few years ago that the intelligentsia spoke smugly about how silly George W. Bush was to believe that democracy could survive, let alone flourish, in the Middle East. This foolish man simply didn't understand that...well, these people just didn't have a culture that could support democracy. There were plenty of highbrow explanations--decades of living under dictators, the belief among some (radical) Muslims that a government created by Man was questioning God's will, or some other story.

It really came down to one thing: many of these elites didn't think (whisper) Arabs were up to it. The soft bigotry of low expectations doesn't stop at the water's edge, sadly. I was ready to celebrate how obviously wrong they've been proven, until I read the comments posted online following a New York Times article about the Iraqi election. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

Overwhelmingly, the posters ridiculed the notion of Iraqi democracy. They were apparently still living in 2005, when the Iraqi army and police forces resembled Barney Fife more than competent organizations. Bush Derangement Syndrome was on clear display. (How long has he been gone?) Even after Newsweek acknowledged that victory in Iraq is finally close at hand, the smug, self-proclaimed, smarter-than-you-because-I-read-the-Times were insisting that the US military is still in the lead, it still occupies the entire country, and Maliki is a hand-picked stooge.

Ask any vet who's been to Iraq since the surge, and he or she will tell you the Iraqis have been in the lead for quite a while, the army and police are getting there, and Maliki is nobody's stooge but Maliki's (Basrah, anyone?). Frankly, a lot of them probably wish he was ours, because he causes them a lot of grief (albeit nothing like Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai). Of course, what would they know? They've only been there. They aren't writing comments from Massachusetts or California, so how could they know anything?

The really sad part wasn't the leftover BDS, or the tired claims we went there for the oil. (Wow, that worked out well, didn't it?) The sad part was the continuing, subtle racism on the part of these leftist elites. I say leftist based on the overall context of their comments, and I mean racism. The notion that these people could possibly understand democracy still seems absurd to them. These people are just fools under America's imperialist boot; fools who would reelect Saddam if he hadn't been hanged.

Which, of course, is the point--these people are religious (doesn't matter which one); these people are obviously right-wingers (Saddam and W were both dictators, right?); these people don't understand they aren't smart enough to govern themselves, and should be living obediently under their masters like the rest of the Middle East. Yet, some of the smuggest writers couldn't even keep straight which sect of Islam is the majority in Iraq (Shia, for the record) and which one Saddam belonged to (that would be Sunni).

Fortunately for the Middle East, and the world, these people don't listen to the naysayers. Last I checked, they had a civilization 5000 years ago. Iraqi democracy may or may not survive, but I seem to recall some European countries that have had similar problems. I think the Iraqis will do just fine.

Time to Reconsider the World View

Although I have some rather substantial policy disagreements with President Obama, I don't doubt that he's an intelligent person. Furthermore, I think he's spent a lot of time thinking about his world view--how he sees the world; how he sees others; what he thinks others think of him and, by extension, what they think of the United States.

Unfortunately, I don't think he's subjected that world view to a lot of criticism. My sense is that he is surrounded by people who either aren't his intellectual equal or simply don't think carefully about what their world view is. As a result, the President seems lost when others act in ways he doesn't expect.

I saw this pretty clearly when he tried to rethink his Afghanistan strategy--it took 100+ days to come up with a strategy that didn't seem particularly coherent, and that wasn't sold particularly well. It's almost as if his advisors can't communicate with a military that they think is still living in 1985. In fact, the military leadership today probably understands nuanced diplomacy better than the State Department.

But, we saw a similar incoherence this week, in the wake of the failed Northwest airline attack. The President stayed on vacation--that makes sense; you don't want to encourage the enemy by making this larger than it already is. But, his advisors seemed to stay on vacation, too. It took 3 days for Secretary Napolitano to admit security had failed--seriously? Now a group is claiming credit. Are they involved? We have the terrorist in custody--what does he say? If the group did it, we should've been blaming them first, to send a strategic message that we know. If the terrorist acted alone, we should already be ridiculing the Al Qaeda group's claim. But, we're not doing either. We're letting the other side set the communications agenda.

No one in the administration seems to have thought about what the world is really like, and the fact that the administration is expected to have answers for everything, all the time. That's not fair, and it isn't even reasonable, but it comes with the office. They aren't just a domestic administration; they have to deal with foreign policy, too. And that means more than platitudes about how everyone loves us now that George W. Bush is no longer President. It seems like there are a lot of people who hated us under Clinton, and it seems that they still exist.

Love him or hate him, Bush had a clear world view, that he intended to make "Islamo-fascism" simply unacceptable to civilized peoples everywhere. Pretty heady; maybe arrogant. But, at least he knew what he wanted the world to look like when we were done. Any military planner will tell you that's the first step in outlining a strategy--define the end state.

Time for the Obama administration to start thinking a little more about what they want the world to look like, or some very unpleasant "others" are going to offer their version, instead.