My own suspicion
The Administration's strategy in Iraq -- maybe; too early to be at all sure -- can be divided into three phases:
Phase One: 2003-04 -- the creation of a national government led by American-friendly figures supported by a popular election, protected by American troops, and presiding over a free-market economy with little or no social safety net and an extraordinary indifference to indigenous policing of all kinds. This was a dream world projected by neo-con imperialism clad in a rhetoric of freedom that had no more than superficial appeal to the people living in Iraq. Inevitably it produced, beneath its own language, ideas, and systems of governance, a real world of tribal, ethnic, and sectarian rule that operated on an almost microscopic level and was almost invisible to the occupying foreigners. Gradually this fractionation of Iraq led to conflict among the myriad of bewilderingly varied groups; the breathtaking libertarianism of the occupying forces was an open invitation to staggering waste, fraud, and abuse; voting by people brutalized by Saddam for decades was more a function of self-interest, of course, than a commitment to allegiance to a consensually formed government; the lack of any guaranteed benefits (police, energy, education, you name it) produced overwhelming disapproval of the occupiers, whose act of liberation from Saddam was soon forgotten, as the occupied always forget what the occupiers came to do. By the time of the American presidential election all knew that this strategy was producing increasing violence, mounting casualties, and a rapidly accelerating pernicious cycle in which real governing occurred far beneath the purview of the occupiers. Unfortunately the Kerry campaign could not communicate the truth in the face of Swiftboating and a seemingly brainwashed mainstream media. The President was re-elected, which led to phase two, already decided upon in advance of the election.
Phase Two: 2004-06. In this period the Administration elected to use military force against Sunnis, chiefly, permitting the British to turn governance over to Shiites in their territory and tolerating, for the most part, Sadrist rule in Baghdad and other areas. The Kurds were permitted to do much as they pleased. The national government became more a fiction than a reality. The fundamental concept of American strategy was to suppress militant Sunnis. The attack on Falluja was the kick-off of the strategy. It was effective in the short-term and making the mistake of believing in the short-term, the Administration pursued this strategy to its inevitably calamitous result: it galvanized Sunnis into a reasonably coherent group willing and, tragically, able to create a civil war. The Baker study group suggestion that the Administration reverse this strategy and support the Sunnis was a doomed attempt to reverse history. What was done was done by the election of 2006.
Phase Three: 2006-08 (and now we really are into conjecture). In this period, the Administration sought balance -- attacking Sadr to send a message to Shiites; executing Saddam to send the same message to Sunnis; arming Kurds to send a message to Shiites and Sunnis; spending money on social services even without a means of distributing them except through the real local governing groups that everywhere have the stamp of sectarian, tribal and even linguistic difference. Implicitly the Administration dared the Iranians to enter the country, but even the Iranians knew better than to interrupt their adversary's mistakes when they were still unfolding. The Saudis insisted on abatement of the attacks on Sunnis, but refused, as always, to address the violence perpetrated by the Sunnis. Balance was the goal of the third phase, but the odds on achieving a perfect equilibrium of the oscillating seesaw were very long. By the 2008 election, Americans were galvanized in opposition to the Administration and not a candidate up for election from dog catcher to President supported the incumbents in the White House. But what would occur in 2009 was too hard to predict -- at least from the year 2006.
I'll have to mull over this narrative Reed. But here's one part that doesn't click for me:
Inevitably it produced, beneath its own language, ideas, and systems of governance, a real world of tribal, ethnic, and sectarian rule that operated on an almost microscopic level and was almost invisible to the occupying foreigners.
Microscopic? You mean nobody noticed when Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim was car bombed to death along with about 100 other Shiites in August of 2003?
I seem to recall lots of Iraqi experts insisting even before the invasion on the vital importance in Iraq of the networks of clan, tribe, sect and nation writhing beneath the oppressive thumb of Saddam. Several predicted that the invasion would generate preceisely the sort of chaos we see now.
December 29, 2006 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
even the Iranians knew better than to interrupt their adversary's mistakes when they were still unfolding.
Seems to me that the Iranians have handled this whole affair pretty shrewdly.
Or, as one commentator put, the US is playing checkers, while Iran is playing chess.
December 29, 2006 8:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is Reed's point, I believe--that the occupying forces had no conception of complexity and depth of the tribal, political and religious networks that were operating in Iraq. The interactions reach to the nearly microscopic level of extended families.
December 29, 2006 8:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
The narrative up to this point seems balls on accurate.
But before I go on with that I have to fully agree with Dan that many people were very aware of the sectarian issues. In fact that is why Sr. didn't follow the Republican Guard back to Baghdad as they were fleeing Kuwait...
Phase 3? Grope around in the dark with no plan for a way to regain even some control of the country. World and regional pressure will mount for us to resolve the problems we created in Iraq mainly the ehnic cleansing and the resultant humanitarian crisis for all the countries surrounding Iraq in terms of taking in refugees. The UN still upset about the invasion to begin with will be prodded into getting involved in the crisis, whether they will or won't is uncertain. We will try to accelerate training for the Iraqi security forces and that will be much of the "progress" we will be told about by the adminstration trying to show Bush is serious about getting out, while nothing of meaning gets accomplished. In short more of the same out of us and an irritated and more unstable world...
2009 and after? Waaaaaaaaay too far off, lol.
December 29, 2006 10:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
yes, that's a better way to express my point.
December 30, 2006 7:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
This has just been one more incidence of a strong barbarian military force which attempted to invade and conquer the cradle of civilization. Unfortunately the barbarians have not been sufficiently adaptable to be able to deal with peoples and the complex of societies which exist and live daily with the remains of the many regimes that have risen, operated and fallen between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
The American invasion is just one more failed barbarian invasion of the cradle of civilization. It has failed more quickly than most.
December 30, 2006 7:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
OK, fair enough. Yes, our guys seem to have been very unprepared for what they were going to be dealing with.
December 30, 2006 8:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr Hundt's narrative does a good job of showing how the Coalition spent the political capital aquired when it decapitated the Baath regime. Amazingly enough, there is still some funds left in that regard but certainly not enough to create a "balanced" environment. There may be enough to strike some deals that would be an alternative to all out war.
But to understand "Phase 3" we also need to look at the narrative of how the groups presently under arms in Iraq have developed since the fall of Saddam. That is when the civil war started.
This war has been fought not so much despite the presence of the occupation but through it. Each of the groups under arms either fights or allies themselves, negotiates or refuses to negotiate as part of their strategy in a conflict that understands that the U.S. presence is a stage that will pass. In some ways, all of these groups receive a benefit from dragging out the occupation as long as possible.
The biggest benefit of prolonging the occupation has been to provide cover for the civil war itself. The trend from 2003 to this moment on the eve of 2007 has been the progressive dissolution of that device. During the next year, that context for the U.S. presence will disappear entirely.
The result will not be so much a matter of the occupation losing power and influence as it will become an operation that becomes increasingly irrelevant to the events surrounding it. At that point, the only way for the Coalition to get back into political power would be for it to formally ally itself with one group at the expense of the others.
December 30, 2006 8:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
On the contrary - I would say that right now the Radical Republican strategists (Norquist certainly; I am not sure if Rove is still considered trustworthy or not but if he is he is in) are looking at 2012. The current plan is to throw enough troops in to keep things from totally falling apart and create loud media circuses every 3 months or so from now until 2008. Then let a Democrat win the Presidency (preferably Hillary, but any one will do), have Iraq fall apart on his/her administration, and come back in 2012 with an approved Radical candidate (perhaps even Jeb).
sPh
December 30, 2006 8:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I can see what you are saying sPh, but if that is their plan they are as bad at planning as Bush was at planning the war. If a dem gets elected in '08, which I am putting my money on, Iraq will be in better shape no matter what he/she does in terms of policies. And assuming the next president is a dem I think it is fairly safe to say that most it not all of our troops will be out of Iraq...and there will be no downside to that in a majority of the electorate's eyes.
December 30, 2006 8:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
yes, interesting and important point: as I understand your argument, the United States is going to have to choose a faction -- indeed, find a faction -- that it and its Iraqi government will support. To put it another way, in order for the Iraqi government to win any legitimacy, or even to survive, it will have to find support from some set of tribal, ethnic, and sectarian groups. But instead it appears that the new American plan will be to borrow from the British strategy in India in the 19th century: divide and conquer. The purpose of that strategy was to hold India forever, which was impossible and, even worse, was a recipe for maintaining economic backwardness in India. One would think the same fate would befall a divide and conquer strategy in Iraq: impossible to achieve and producing terrible destruction in the course of trying to achieve it.
December 30, 2006 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Hundt,
Your comparison to the imperial method used in India is an excellent model of the "balancing" act being (or about to be) proposed as the "new way forward."
But I wasn't advocating allying ourselves with a specific cluster of groups so much as pointing out that taking sides would be the only way to make the U.S. military presence germane to the "facts on the ground" if the war consumes the entire country.
Such an alliance would signal the end of much pretense. A certain pretense allows the administration (not only this one) to be supportive of a number of competing interests at the same time. The administration would have to be in dire straits to risk losing that special relationship with other nations. It is why many who have sharply criticized the strategy used up to this point nonetheless feel they are hostages of the operation.
Formally taking sides in the Iraq war would create immediate problems for whoever is charged with managing the policy there. The action would bring about a whole series of alliances that would compel others to choose sides, leading to a larger and perhaps even more bizarre sort of war than is happening now.
The problems with both overt “neutrality” and “partiality” make me think that striking a deal as a process of national reconciliation (as suggested in the ISG report) is the best for all involved. The report suggests that the U.S. could exchange a specific set of benefits it had hoped to secure through taking down Saddam for a specific set of conditions that would allow the different groups to stop fighting. That way, the "set of tribal, ethnic, and sectarian groups" you refer to would be a viable basis for mutual self-interest rather than marking the favored group as the handmaiden of the U.S.
By giving up substantial assets, the deal could be a way for the U.S. to relinquish imperial objectives there without losing its image as the guarantor of the New World order.
Perhaps it would be wise to provide the naked emperor with a strategically located cabana.
December 30, 2006 5:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Baker & Co. tried to erect such a cabana for Mr. Bush, but he disdained it.
December 30, 2006 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think this is a pretty good summary, although I'd suggest a slight revision.
I think your stage 1 is exactly right - way too few people emphasize the economic "shock therapy" dimension to the early occupation and the disaster that helped to created.
I think stage 2 and 3 are also accurate depictions of elements of US policy, but your dating of them is not quite right.
I'd say stage 2 began when you say it did - roughly - and continued on through 2005. The idea was that the Sunni insurgencies could be crushed militarily and that the rest of Iraqis wanted basically what the US wanted. By the end of 2005, it became clear that both of these things were not happening or true. This stage ended about a year ago, after the last elections and upon Zalmay Khalilzad becoming ambassador. At that time, stage 3 began, as US policy attempted negotiation with the Sunni insurgency. However, there were two major stumbling blocks - a) a key insurgency demand - probably the most important demand - is that the occupation end in short order; b) the Samarra mosque bombing. Since the US won't cave on the insurgency's central demand, combined with the symbollic power of the mosque bombing, meant this tactic didn't succeed. And in fact, 2006 was the worse year since the occupation began.
The US's next strategy was to try to create a "new moderate" coalition in Parliament, but his strategy has failed basically before it started. So the US is stuck (somewhat) right now, not knowing whether to go back to either Stage 2 or 3 tactics. My sense is what is going to happen is that the US is going to return again now to Stage 2 - crush the insurgency - as a pretext for attempting stage 3 at a later stage.
December 31, 2006 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have two problems with Reed's narrative.
First, I don't think it is nearly explicit enough in connecting U.S. policy and its shortcomings to the present outcome of sectarian chaos.
Second, by treating the sectarian division as somewhat sui generis, it treats it as something that could be "solved" by striking the "right deal", some kind of explicit social and political contract.
A more realistic narrative would recognize that U.S. policy, since 1991, and even more intensely since 2003, has been breaking down Iraqi society. The sectarian chaos is not a simple conflict between interest groups, it is an outcome of the systematic destruction of a society's political and economic infrastructure and institutions. Critically important features of the conflict -- such as the kidnapping and execution of prominent members of the middle class, including medical doctors as well as civil servants -- are not indicia of a conflict, which will be "solved" by formulating a "deal" among political parties.
The sanctions regime before the war, the bombing campaign during the war, the failure to provide security or to seize and dispose of Saddam's munitions stockpiles in the immediate aftermath of the war, tolerating the massive looting that destroyed much of the country's infrastructure, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army, the bizarre libertarian reforms of Reconstruction, the corrupt failure of Reconstruction to improve the country's infrastructure, the massive unemployment (+40%), the massive overcrowding in a country with terrible housing shortages (Sadr City has a population of 2,000,000 in a space, which would be among the most densely populated urban areas in the world if it had its designed population of 500,000), etc.
For years, the U.S. has been saying that it will train and equip an Iraqi Army and Police force. It hasn't happened. IT HAS NOT HAPPENED!!!
The sectarian chaos and violence is not a product, simply, of complex conflicts among ill-defined tribes and clans and families and religious identities. This is a society in which all the secular infrastructure and institutions have been systematically destroyed, and all that is left, are the family relationships.
It is not any different in principle from the gang violence, which arises in poverty-stricken U.S. cities, where people live in overcrowed conditions, unemployment is high, the police force is inadequate and untrustworthy. No one thinks the problems of East L.A. or South Central L.A. can be solved with a simple political "deal" between the Catholics and the Protestants, or, even, the Bloods and the Crips. Only Baghdad is in a condition a thousand times worse than any U.S. ghetto slum, where violence is still exceptional and the electricity and water and sewage work, where hospitals are open albeit overcrowded and poorly-run, and most people are employed, even if not paid well.
The violence in Iraq does not have its foundation in a centuries-old sectarian conflict, that can be solved with a political "deal". I am not saying that $20 billion in potential oil revenue don't figure into it, but also figuring into it, is that there is nothing else in that miserable country anymore, except $20 billion in oil revenue, and no institutions strong enough to make an uncorrupt deal over oil stick.
Even more profound than the oil prize, though is that there is nothing else left intact in Iraq. The foundation of chaotic violence is an average age of 19, unemployment over 50% in an economy near total collapse, electricity that is available less than 6 hours a day, non-existent or completely untrustworthy police, health and safety services, and, oh yes, did I mention vast stockpiles of munitions and hundreds of thousands of former soldiers trained in their use.
It is all very well to think the U.S. will "take sides" in this chaotic conflict, but there is no way to bring "order" to a society and economy in such a decrepit state, without oppressing the population viciously and thoroughly. Gates and Negroponte are old hands with death squads and the like, so maybe that's where we are headed. But, one thing I am absolutely certain we are not headed toward is "victory" in any way, shape or form.
December 31, 2006 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
And an excellent point it is! Reed perhaps has in mind the Flowers and Candy Crowd? The guys who "embedded" Ahmad Chalabi with the 3d Division and dressed him as Lawrence of Arabia for triumphal entry into liberated Baghdad?
Paul Wolofowitz informed a senate panel in 2002 that the US expected a congenial Iraqi welcome for its Saudi bases because unlike their Wahabi neighbor to the South, Iraq was a largely secular culture and had no religious shrines.
Truth as ever first casualty
December 31, 2006 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
The New Raj has been playing the old imperialist game since the Mission Was Accomplished.
In a few days the Decider will favor us with his decision, expect a new way forward in the SOS. Bush has a new buddy - al-Hakim who has seen his progressively deteriorate in favor of his rival Muqtada Sadr. The Surge will in part be used to divide and conquer the UIA coalition and neutralize the Shiite threat to US lines of communication should the Decider's next steps forward lie northest toward Tehran.
December 31, 2006 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
If you've never read Allison's seminal "Essence of Decision" you should. I agree. Reed could have been more explicit. He could have written a book. Perhaps he, along with I suspect a couple dozen Dr. Bruce types, may even now have in process,
December 31, 2006 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Calling something "microscopic" implies that a normal person would not notice, and the implication is that ignorance of the "complexity and depth" of networks is a primary fault, as well as a result of simple unpreparedness.
I don't see it. The U.S. destroyed every other institution in the society, until nothing else was left, but the atavistic tribal and family networks. You don't think the destruction had something to do with the pathological manifestation of those networks? Do you think the religious and tribal networks would be operating like gangs of nihilistic thugs, if the U.S. had done some reasonable macroscopic things like provide security in the immediate aftermath of war to prevent massive looting, or kept intact the Iraqi Army, or actually put into place an electrical infrastructure capable of providing electricity 24/7 reliably, so that a modern, urban economy could function?
"Microscopic"?? Let's not kid ourselves. The Bush Administration was unprepared in every way, shape and form, and its policies have been actively destructive to Iraq and a primary causal agent in the present chaos. But, the policy failures were macroscopic and obvious, not microscopic and subtle.
What Reed should be asking is why the Bush policy has been what it is, without making excuses for them. Maybe, the Bush policy, has not been a "mistake" at all. Bush is remarkably incompetent, that is given, and his incompetence has reached down the U.S. government hierarchy to every level. But, at bottom, I would hypothesize that Bush and the PNAC neocons wanted a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq, and realized that the only way that would work, is if the Iraqi government was so weak and dependent, that it could never ask the U.S. to leave.
The U.S. went about an occupation and reconstruction policy aimed at creating a weak Iraqi government.
The problem is that that weak Iraqi government, combined with all the destruction, the failures of reconstruction to create a viable economy, and the temptation of the oil prize, let loose the forces of chaos.
Ultimately, the "fault" was the unspoken goal of Bush's war: a permanent U.S. military base in an Iraq compelled to be a U.S. ally.
The strategy employed to realize that goal was incompetently implemented, to be sure, but, ultimately, a strong Iraq would ask the U.S. to leave, so U.S. policy could not achieve its ultimate objective by actually making Iraq, strong.
That fundamental contradiction in U.S. policy, hidden behind the obscurity deliberately hoisted over U.S. goals in Iraq, is at fault.
December 31, 2006 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with Dan K (top of comments) on this idea that somehow the real situation in Iraq was "microscopic," that it was just too hard to figure out what would happen after the invasion.
The reality in Iraq was always life-size; the problem was that the NeoCons had their macro-glasses (the political theory equivalent of beer goggles) turned up so high that they couldn't see anything but a vast swath of red, white and blue settling triumphantly over a post-Soviet world. For this incredible error in thinking, and for the decision to use Afghanistan and Iraq as tees to launch their American Superpower campaign, they deserve the scorn of realists everywhere.
The media, having missed the basic flaws in NeoCon thinking early on, tends to provide the NeoCons with an unfortunate cover by implying that the Iraqi situation was somehow difficult to understand, or that the NeoCons executed the invasion badly. Even if the invasion was poorly understood or executed, American foreign policy began falling apart the day the PNAC crowd decided to push a sole-superpower agenda. Reed, it would be good if you could revisit that first pgph. Just my 2 cents.
December 31, 2006 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
Cross post to AAbroad..
"The facts are being fixed to the policy"???
Say it ain't so Dr Bruce!
All symptoms that in the Bush administration internal process, policy is fixed not made. After all, he is the Decider!
Time for a reality check...
December 31, 2006 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not into futurism, so I hesitated to post at all. But I'll say that the Bush policy is putting a lot of strain on the next presidential candidate of his party. Either the candidate runs against Bush, dividing the party, or gets saddled with war. Hence, I predict some serious administration efforts in mid to late 2008 to show that, as one GOP president claimed, peace is at hand.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
December 31, 2006 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
In the most significant movement of dissident soldiers since Vietnam, nearly 1,000 active-duty officers and enlisted personnel have petitioned the government to withdraw from Iraq.
Full story, About Face: Soldiers call for Iraq Withdrawal, appears here.
January 1, 2007 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you think the religious and tribal networks would be operating like gangs of nihilistic thugs, if the U.S. had done some reasonable macroscopic things like provide security in the immediate aftermath of war to prevent massive looting, or kept intact the Iraqi Army, or actually put into place an electrical infrastructure capable of providing electricity 24/7 reliably, so that a modern, urban economy could function?
There's no way to tell. The monumental incompetence of the occupation obscures whether there was a path that would have ended up in some scenario that would be regarded as positive.
My view is that it would have been politically impossible to commit the resources necessary to reach a positive scenario. It would have taken another year to build the troop strength to the 500,000 soldiers, and by then the inspectors would have proven that there were no wmd.
This notion you have of "providing security" is pretty vague. The normal thing to do in an occpation like this one, especially with a heavily armed population, is to impose martial law with very strict curfews. But it's pretty clear that the US did not have the forces necessary for such a program.
In my view, this conflict was unwinnable for the US. But it was certainly not winnable with the force that was available for the occupation.
Reed's point, that the US had no understanding, and no intelligence sources to enhance that understanding, of the interaction of cultural networks, ethnic ties, religious belief and family ties that prevailed across Iraqi society. Even with intelligence sources, understanding these networks would have been very difficult, because speaking frankly had been a good way to get killed for the last two generations.
The degree to which these clowns underestimated the difficulty of constructing a civil, pro-American society is really mind-boggling. It's as if they just took the most oprimistic, idiotic beliefs and inscribed them in their hearts, because any alternative would have meant failure, and failure is, as the president likes to say, unacceptable.
January 1, 2007 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you want to break it down like this, you surely have to posit "Phase Three" as either the realization of the Bush Cabal's long-term goals in Iraq (ie, control of Iraq's oil and permanent military bases) or the abandonment of those goals (ie, full retreat).
I am still astonished at how the oil issue is habitually left out of any discussions like this. How on earth are you going to understand the Bush administration's thinking (especially Cheney's) if you do not factor in the billions of dollars worth of black gold beneath the Iraqi desert sands?
Big Oil and Big Money got together to drive down the price of oil for the 06 mid-terms (link here). It wasn't enough to keep full control of the US government, of course, but what's astonishing is that nobody in the anti-Bush, anti-war crowd even dares to imagine that such things are really going on, right now, and that this is what this whole debacle in Iraq is really all about.
Right now ("phase two") Big Oil is still pressuring the Iraqi government to sign PSAs (Production Sharing Agreements) which will hand over control of Iraq's oil revenues for generations to come. That's the real game, right there. That's how Bush will define "victory".
January 2, 2007 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink