The recent American presidential campaign has had the perverse effect of postponing any serious national debate on the future U.S. course in Iraq. Electoral considerations placed a premium on consistency at the expense of common sense, with both candidates insisting that even with perfect hindsight they would have acted just as they did two years ago: going to war or voting to authorize doing so. The campaign also revealed the paucity of good options now before the United States. Keeping U.S. troops in Iraq will only provoke fiercer and more widespread resistance, but withdrawing them too soon could spark a civil war. The second administration of George W. Bush seems to be left with the choice between making things worse slowly or quickly.
The beginning of wisdom is to recognize that the ongoing war in Iraq is not one that the United States can win. As a result of its initial miscalculations, misdirected planning, and inadequate preparation, Washington has lost the Iraqi people's confidence and consent, and it is unlikely to win them back. Every day that Americans shell Iraqi cities they lose further ground on the central front of Iraqi opinion.
The war can still be won--but only by moderate Iraqis and only if they concentrate their efforts on gaining the cooperation of neighboring states, securing the support of the broader international community, and quickly reducing their dependence on the United States. Achieving such wide consensus will require turning the U.S.-led occupation into an Iraqi-led, regionally backed, and internationally supported endeavor to attain peace and stability based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Read the whole thing. It chillingly illustrates the current catastrophe, and the hubristic incompetence which created it, better than could a hundred Nation editorials.
It also reinforces my belief that we will only ever see real success in the War on Terrorism when we recognize that terrorism is first and foremost a political problem and not, as Bush keeps insisting, a military one. Unfortunately the U.S. has so polluted its reputation in the Muslim world with it's conduct of the Iraq war that our best option at this point, as Dobbins indicates, is to begin to withdraw and let others move in to clean up our mess. Of course, that would require the recognition on the part of President Bush that things aren't going absolutely swimmingly, and we all know how much he likes staying the course.
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