Robert Kagan and Jean Renoir are not soul mates. Renoir’s 1937 film, La Grande Illusion, remains one of the best anti-war films ever made. Kagan’s column in yesterday’s Washington Post, Grand Delusion, is one among a constant ooze of sludge-like shoot-em-up paeans to The Surge that will be remembered, if at all, only as an example of crackheaded magical thinking applied to the most desperate foreign policy fix this country has ever devised for itself. Choosing a title that plays on Renoir’s film, which Kagan can’t possibly have misunderstood, is only the beginning.
American soldiers are finally beginning the hard job of establishing a measure of peace, security and order in critical sections of Baghdad — the essential prerequisite for the lasting political solution everyone claims to want. They’ve launched attacks on Sunni insurgent strongholds and begun reining in Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia. And they’ve embarked on these operations with the expectation that reinforcements will soon be on the way: the more than 20,000 troops President Bush has ordered to Iraq and the new commander he has appointed to fight the insurgency as it has not been fought since the war began.
Magic. Previously unreliable Iraqi forces will unite under the leadership of General David Petraeus, who will achieve what others have not using barely a third the number of troops his own counterinsurgency manual says are required. Magic. And the delusional are those who refuse to feel the magic.
Kagan says that those opposed to The Surge should be “be hoping and praying that the troop increase works.” They should not be exploring alternatives. They should not be attempting to force the administration into considering alternatives.
On that last, I have to agree: there should be no expectation that the administration will consider alternatives, and any alternatives under consideration outside the White House should take that into account.
Kagan says it’s absurd to propose alternatives, such as shutting off funding, that don’t address the likely results of a US withdrawal, i.e., the outbreak of an unrestrained civil war, complete with ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide and massive intervention by neighboring states.
He’s right about that too: any alternative should address those issues. But there can be no alternative, bad or good — and there are no good ones, only ones that might conceivably be less bad than the worst — so long as the administration are allowed to continue doing what they’re doing. Kagan’s argument doesn’t explicitly acknowledge that, but that’s the foundation of it. Since no one has come up with a way to derail the White House, the only non-delusional option in Kagan’s portfolio is prayer.
Congress probably won’t shut the money off. They probably shouldn’t, because this White House has no qualms whatsoever about playing chicken with the lives of our troops or the fitness of our military. They. Don’t. Care.
They would rather leave 150,000 troops in Iraq without adequate support than bend to the will of Congress. They have neither the desire nor the skill to embark on a diplomatic effort to minimize the fallout from our departure. They are in fact attempting, deliberately and with considerable success, to ratchet up a sectarian cold war in the Middle East. They appear to be planning an attack on Iran, knowing full well that US troops in Iraq will suffer horribly from it and that the cold war between neighbors will turn hot, if only by proxy in Iraq.
What Kagan advocates is a minor variation on the Cold War mantra those of us beyond a certain age remember from our grade school years: duck and cover. It didn’t work in Hiroshima, it wouldn’t have worked in Witchita and it won’t work now. If we are to succeed in Iraq, by which I mean avoiding a military and economic catastrophe, the conversation has to begin with an end to the Bush administration.
Among the obstacles General Petraeus faces in his new command is an insurgency that has four years of higher education under its belt. The raid in Karbala that saw four US soldiers captured and five killed was the work of someone’s equivalent of Special Forces. They had US uniforms and weapons, and they spoke English. They had better intelligence than the US, which they must have obtained from Iraqis. The raid was likely intended, among other things, to send the message that there is no one in Iraq wearing a uniform and carrying a gun, American or otherwise, who can be trusted. It is calculated to make an impossible situation yet more so.
Hope and pray, boys and girls. Duck and cover.
Grab your ankles, indeed.
So, why does the Army spend a great deal of money developing contingency plans if the Generals with responsibility abandon them at the first sign of political pressure from the Whitehouse. Why does this country promote such weak-kneed Generals into the top positions. Generals that have as their top priority their career path rather than the soldiers that are so brave yet are commanded so poorly as well as the nation that they let down so completely.
Yes, I know that Gen. Shinseki got canned for attempting to be the rare good General. But the next General needed to repeat Gen. Shinseki’s message, and the next and the next until they got it right. Instead we got stuck with Gen. Tommy Frank and those that followed.