Justus For All

This Christian Science Monitor article reviews the debate on what to do now in Iraq.

Basically, there are three plans.  The Democrats phased withdrawal plan, the McCain 20,000 more troops plan, and the Abizaid (and probably Bush) stay the course plan.  General Abizaid also claims that the doom in Washington is unwarrented and progress is being made in Iraq.
I think it is worthwhile to speculate on Abizaid’s motivations here (those of McCain and the Democrats seem pretty clear.)  It could be argued that Abizaid is either simply cowtowing to his Commander in Cheif here.  It also could be argued that he is simply to personally invested in succeeding in Iraq to admit that what he has been doing hasn’t worked.  On the converse it can be argued that he is the expert and much more dialed in to what is really going on then politicians in Washington or we as observers.

I think another thing to look at when evaluating these plans is not just their chance of success, but what our options would be in the case of failure.  One lesson in military matters that I think we often forget is that in the end, the only prerequisite for winning is not losing (our adversaries seem quite up to speed on this lesson, unfortunately.)  I think this lesson was first pouned into me when reading an account of the Boer War (I think it was in James Michener’s The Covenant.)   The vignet, as I recall it, was a German and someone else discussing Redvers Buller.  The German military oberver talked about and how inept, slow and incompetant he was.  His partner in the conversation pointed out that Buller kept his army together, avoided casualties and simply kept on coming, and in the end he one.  He aslo said that when Germany faced off against England, it would be Generals in the mold of Redvers Buller that defeated them.  I don’t know how well that applied to WWI, England in that war was a spendthrift of soldiers as anyone, but it is an interesting parallel with Chruchill’s stoicism against the Nazi Army.

In any event, the point is that often wars are not won by a brilliant daring strategy, but by being conservative and maintaining one’s options.  Another was of looking at this principle is the well worn saying “Amateurs strategy. Professionals talk logistics.”   So I think looking at each of these three options through the lens of what can we do if it fails, may be more useful than how likely it is to succeed.

I think it pretty obvious that if we take the redeployment plan and the Iraqi people can not, or will not, step up and the country spirals in to full scale civil war (and possibly AL-Qaida safe havens) there won’t be a lot we will be able to do.  Until another major attack takes place on U.S. soil, there will certainly be no political will to re-enter Iraq.  It is an exit strategy, but it is also a one-way door.

The additional troop plan has similar problems.  Abizaid makes it pretty clear that even 20,000 troops cannot be sustained (I think that may be the real story here, it is probably well past time to increase overall force strength.)  Given that, if the 20,000 troops are not able to do the job, and if they don’t break the morale of the insurgents, we are faces with a morale issue of our own.  In simple terms, putting in an extra 20,000 troops would degrade our capabilities, whatever its tactical success might be, it would be a logistical failure.  While we would still have more options then if we left Iraq, we would face even greater political struggles to continue the fight as well as decreased ability to do so.

The ’stay the course plan’ seems to be able to be maintained indefinately from a purely military perspective.  Of course domestic morale is a different story there, but that can perhaps be worked on.  If Abizaid is correct that progress is being made in Iraq, in both military capability and political mautrity, then eventually this will be a winning strategy regardless of how slow the progress is.  Of course if progress is not being made, or worse if the Iraqi situation is devolving then obviously some sort of change must be made.  Evidence is mixed on this count, but my analysis is that progress is indeed being made, although the progress is far less ’sexy’ and newsworthy than the challenges.  Basically, the Iraqi forces are getting better (somewhat slowly) and the politcal process in Iraq is maturing (although with fits and starts, and sometimes a step back for every two steps forward.)

With this analysis, it seems that the best way to avoid losing is to follow Abizaid’s prescription.  The pressing issue in following that though seems to be shoring up domestic support for the project.  Doing that, especially with a media that is at best skeptical of our efforts there is certainly a challenge.

At the same time, it does seem likely that some refinements in ‘the course’ we are staying on are appropriate.  I hope (and expect) that the military is constantly looking at what is and is not working.  Perhaps it would help if this analysis was more availble to the public as a whole.  If we saw that our forces are learning and improving in how they are handling the situation in Iraq, it might go a long way toward increasing confidence in eventual success.