# Posted 10:56 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

PHIL CARTER IS STILL ONE OF THE BEST: Capt. Carter returned from Iraq a while ago, but I unfortunately fell out of the habit of reading his blog. If you have been reading Intel Dump all this time, then good for you. If not, you may want to start with Phil's most recent post, a brief commentary on Michael Ignatieff's mea culpa for supporting the initial invasion of Iraq. Although less than enthralled with Ignatieff's penchant for abstraction, Phil points to two paragraphs in Ignatieff's essay that struck him as insightful:

The decision facing the United States over Iraq is paradigmatic of political judgment at its most difficult. Staying and leaving each have huge costs. One thing is clear: The costs of staying will be borne by Americans, while the cost of leaving will be mostly borne by Iraqis. That in itself suggests how American leaders are likely to decide the question.

But they must decide, and soon. Procrastination is even costlier in politics than it is in private life. The sign on Truman’s desk — “The buck stops here!” — reminds us that those who make good judgments in politics tend to be those who do not shrink from the responsibility of making them. In the case of Iraq, deciding what course of action to pursue next requires first admitting that all courses of action thus far have failed.

Phil comments:

In the Iraq context, I think Ignatieff's point is somewhat oversimplified. Americans will pay many costs for leaving as well. But in broadbrush strokes, he is correct. The worst consequences will not weigh on the judgment of the American people and politicians who will inevitably make this decision. And because of that fact, I think the decision is pre-ordained. At some point, maybe in this political election cycle, or maybe in the next one, America will withdraw from Iraq.

I basically agree. American voters will not resist a withdrawal from Iraq because of the mass slaughter that may follow. The more positive way to present that statement, if one is an advocate of withdrawal, is that Americans will not keep sending their soldiers to die in a war they believe is essentially lost.

Both of these interpretations have some merit. If American voters had to pay the same price as Iraqis for a withdrawal, those voters might be willing to keep paying for and fighting a war in which the prospect of victory is remote.

It is worth adding that the unstated premise of both Ignatieff's argument and Phil's commentary is that American voters don't believe that we will endanger ourselves here at home by pulling out of Iraq. That danger is what the Bush administration has been emphasizing for some time by reminding us that Al Qaeda sees the war in Iraq as the central front in its struggle with the United States. In response, Democrats have spoken of leaving a smaller force behind to deal with Al Qaeda.

What do most Americans think of Bush's argument and the Democratic response? You tell me. Personally, I think it would be very dangerous to give Al Qaeda a victory in Iraq, but it is several steps from there to another attack on the homeland.


Not because Americans are especially short-sighted or self-centered, but because democratic republics are set up in order to ensure that

Labels: Iraq, Phil Carter, Withdrawal

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# Posted 8:11 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THERE WOULD BE A MASSIVE SLAUGHTER AFTER OUR WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ? From Meet the Press, on Sunday:

[David] BROOKS: Well, if we leave, we could see 250,000 Iraqis die...So are we willing to prevent 10,000 Iraqi deaths a month at the cost of 125 Americans [per month]? That’s a tough moral issue, but it’s also a tough national interest issue because we don’t know what the consequences of getting out are. And the frustration of watching the debate in Washington, very few people are willing to, to grapple with those two facts, that there’s—that the surge will not work in the short-term, but getting out will be cataclysmic. And you see politicians on both sides evading one of those two facts. But you’ve got to grapple with them both...

[TIM] RUSSERT: But, David Brooks, you, you will hear a lot of people will say, you know, “The administration has made misjudgments before about WMD, about the level of troops needed, about being greeted as liberators. They could be wrong about what would flow from a redeployment of American troops.”

MR. BROOKS: Absolutely they could be wrong.

That's not a bad question for Russert to ask a devil's advocate. I imagine that a lot of Democrats deeply believe that talk of a post-withdrawal genocide is just another Bush administration scare tactic. But Russert's phrasing of the question elides some important differences. The belief that Saddam had WMD was the considered opinion of both the US intelligence community and numerous foreign intelligence services, not to mention Saddam's own generals. In contrast, there was a bitter and partisan debate about how exactly American soldiers would be greeted in Iraq.

So, then, what degree of consensus is there on the potential for post-withdrawal violence? Clearly, since this is a question about potential, any answer must be speculative. Yet serious observers seem persuaded that massive violence is almost inevitable. Russert himself is well-aware of that fact. Earlier in the show, he asked Russ Feingold the following question:

MR. RUSSERT: John Burns, the bureau chief in Baghdad for The New York Times, who’s lived there for some time, offered these words this week: “It seems to me incontrovertible that the most likely outcome of an American withdrawal any time soon would be cataclysmic violence. And I find that to be widely agreed” among “Iraqis, including Iraqis who strongly opposed the invasion.” Is—are you concerned that we leave behind violence, catastrophe, genocide?

Sadly, Feingold's answer was no. He only expected things to get better, since "it is our occupation, as it’s perceived, that leads to so much of this free- floating violence throughout the country."

Somehow, in spite of all their criticism of the Bush administration for its naive assumptions about and failure to plan for post-Saddam Iraq, leading Democrats are being aggressively naive about and refuse to plan for post-America Iraq. Perhaps they, too, have departed from the reality-based community.

Labels: Iraq, Withdrawal

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# Posted 11:32 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

PLAN B IS A DELUSION: Stephen Biddle is one of the top military analysts in the country. He wrote in this morning's Post that:

Growing opposition to the surge has not yet translated into support for outright withdrawal -- few lawmakers are comfortable with abandoning Iraq or admitting defeat. The result has been a search for some kind of politically moderate "Plan B" that would split the difference between surge and withdrawal.

The problem is that these politics do not fit the military reality of Iraq. Many would like to reduce the U.S. commitment to something like half of today's troop presence there. But it is much harder to find a mission for the remaining 60,000 to 80,000 soldiers that makes any sense militarily.

I don't have the expertise necessary to agree or disagree, but the political implications of Biddle's argument are quite unusual. He's telling us that the respected centrists have a much less coherent, sensible position than either of the poles. Of course, neither the advocates of extending the surge nor those of immediate withdrawal want to acknowledge that the other has a reasonable argument. Yet Biddle says they both do.

Tom Friedman [behind the NYT firewall] agrees with Biddle's main point:

The minute we start to withdraw, all hell will break loose in the areas we leave, and there will be a no-holds-barred contest for power among Iraqi factions. Our staying there with, say, half as many troops, will not be sustainable.

And yet Friedman supports withdrawal, because it means no more dead Americans and gives us a longshot at making peace by scaring the Iraqis into a compromise. In contrast to just about everyone else who wants a withdrawal, Friedman is honest about the probable consequences:

Getting out...means more ethnic, religious and tribal killings all across Iraq. It will be one of the most morally ugly scenes you can imagine — no less than Darfur. You will see U.S. troops withdrawing and Iraqi civilians and soldiers who have supported us clinging to our tanks for protection as we rumble out the door.

Another Darfur and another Saigon. A moral failure and an epic humiliation. That is the cost of surrender. If America decides that is our best option, we should do so in full knowledge of its drawbacks. But I am not yet persuaded.

Labels: Iraq, surge, Withdrawal

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