Lugar and Iraq

Dick Lugar, (R-IN), former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, came out today and said that we need to undergo some serious self-examination in Iraq. The media has basically spun it as Lugar throwing up his hands - they'd love that - but I think the reality is more nuanced, as his remarks reveal. This isn't to say he's proclaiming that we stay the course, but neither is he demanding we leave tomorrow.

He also, I think, does a fair job of slapping Democrats for their politicizing of the conflict:

The prospects that the current "surge" strategy will succeed in the way originally envisioned by the President are very limited within the short period framed by our own domestic political debate. And the strident, polarized nature of that debate increases the risk that our involvement in Iraq will end in a poorly planned withdrawal that undercuts our vital interests in the Middle East. Unless we recalibrate our strategy in Iraq to fit our domestic political conditions and the broader needs of U.S. national security, we risk foreign policy failures that could greatly diminish our influence in the region and the world.

The current debate on Iraq in Washington has not been conducive to a thoughtful revision of our Iraq policy. Our debate is being driven by partisan political calculations and understandable fatigue with bad news -- including deaths and injuries to Americans.

What he misses is that in saying all of this, he's part of the problem. We don't need 535 commanding generals - we need to essentially shut up and let the war be run by the generals (who have the training) and the executive branch (who don't have the training but do have the prerogative of running foreign policy). Imagine if after the losses at Normandy and the bloody struggle in the Norman bocage, Congress had voted to cut funds for our boys over there! But I do agree almost entirely with this statement:

The task of securing U.S. interests in the Middle East will be extremely difficult if Iraq policy is formulated on a partisan basis, with the protagonists on both sides ignoring the complexities at the core of our situation.

He's right in saying that - it's mostly the Democrats he's aiming at (after all, no one on the left side of the aisle has ever said what Iraq will look like if we precipitously withdraw).

He then more or less jumps ship but also hedges his bets:

In my judgment, the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved. Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term.

I do not come to this conclusion lightly, particularly given that General Petraeus will deliver a formal report in September on his efforts to improve security. The interim information we have received from General Petraeus and other officials has been helpful and appreciated. I do not doubt the assessments of military commanders that there has been some progress in security. More security improvements in the coming months may be achieved.

So the surge isn't working...but it may yet work but anyways, let's look for an easier course of action (this coming from a guy who was reelected last year with 87% of the vote!). He also kindly identifies three factors that he views as the root of the problem: "the political fragmentation in Iraq, the growing stress on our military, and the constraints of our own domestic political process." Who to blame? British, Democrats, Democrats. His arguments about the first of these are troubling:

I see no convincing evidence that Iraqis will make the compromises necessary to solidify a functioning government and society, even if we reduce violence to a point that allows for some political and economic normalcy.

In recent months, we have seen votes in the Iraqi parliament calling for a withdrawal of American forces and condemning security walls in Baghdad that were a reasonable response to neighborhood violence. The Iraqi parliament struggles even to achieve a quorum, because many prominent leaders decline to attend. We have seen overt feuds between members of the Iraqi government, including Prime Minister Maliki and Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who did not speak to each other for the entire month of April. The Shia-led government is going out of its way to bottle up money budgeted for Sunni provinces. Without strident intervention by our embassy, food rations are not being delivered to Sunni towns. Iraqi leaders have resisted de-Baathification reform, the conclusion of an oil law, and effective measures to prevent oil smuggling and other corrupt practices.

His omission of sectarian labels here obfuscates issues: the Shia (especially more radical elements, those allied with Moqtada al-Sadr) would love a free hand to deal with their Sunni co-religionists and pay them back for the years of mistreatment under the Hussein regime; of course they're calling for our withdrawal - that would give them the freedom of action they covet! But if we can reconstitute our spine and show some commitment to building a better Iraq, many of them will fall into line for lack of a better option. He continues with this line of argument:

[Foreign Minister Zebari] believes other policy advancements will take considerable time, but that consensus is the safest and most appropriate approach in a fledgling democracy.

This may be true, but Americans want results in months. Meanwhile, various Iraqi factions are willing to wait years to achieve vital objectives. Even if the results of military operations improve in the coming months, there is little reason to assume that this will diminish Sunni ambitions to reclaim political preeminence or Shia plans to dominate Iraq after decades of Saddam's harsh rule. Few Iraqi leaders are willing to make sacrifices or expose themselves to risks on behalf of the type of unified Iraq that the Bush Administration had envisioned. In contrast, there are many Iraqi leaders who are deeply invested in a sectarian or tribal agenda. More often than not, these agendas involve not just the protection of fellow Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, but the expansion of territorial dominance and economic privileges.

Even if U.S. negotiators found a way to forge a political settlement among selected representatives of the major sectarian factions, these leaders have not shown the ability to control their members at the local level. After an intense year-and-a-half of bloodletting, many sub-factions are thoroughly invested in the violence. We have the worst of both worlds in Iraq - factional leaders who don't believe in our pluralist vision for their country and smaller sub-factions who are pursuing violence on their own regardless of any accommodations by more moderate fellow sectarians.

In effect, we're a nation with the attention-span of a toddler and we're stamping our foot and demanding something new now that we've grown tired of the struggle in Iraq; and whose blood will be shed for our childishness? Iraqis' of course. As I stated earlier, I disagree with his belief that even a change in the military balance won't affect the calculus of the leaders - they'll adjust to fit the new playing field.

There's much more that I don't have the time or interest to quibble with; feel free to do so yourself!