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November 18, 2005

Consequences

The change of heart today by Congessman Murtha (D-PA) on support for the war is very troubling, the more so because he did not change from supporting the war to suggesting we should eventually withdraw from Iraq: he changed from supporting the war to suggesting that we should run from with our tails between our legs, claiming victory of some sort:

The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. … We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.

[snip]

The threat posed by terrorism is real, but we have other threats that cannot be ignored. We must be prepared to face all threats.

[snip]

I said over a year ago, and now the military and the Administration agrees, Iraq can not be won “militarily.” I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is to Iraqitize, Internationalize and Energize. I believe the same today. But I have concluded that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress.

Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis.
I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy. All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free. Free from United States occupation. I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process for the good of a “free” Iraq.

[snip]

Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily.

While, as InstaPundit notes, and as the Congressman himself notes, the Congressman's change of heart is not new, the sentiment is certainly becoming more widespread. Ignoring for the moment that the Congressman's reasoning (that I largely did not reproduce, but encourage you to read) is largely specious (quick example: how does withdrawal improve our intelligence services?) and while his claimed facts are open to question, the call for total and immediate withdrawal is worrying, because it is part of a major offensive on the part of the Left to force the US to concede defeat, and thus needs to be addressed. I would like to address it in part, by looking at the consequences of US withdrawal.

To begin, it should be remembered that the best case and the worst case almost never happen. So it is unlikely that the terrorists would throw down their arms and stop attacking the US; our friends and allies would rally to our side with support and assistance in achieving our foreign policy aims without our using force against well-defined enemies; Iran would stop developing nuclear weapons; China would suddenly come around and see us not as a competitor but as a friend; and the world would march on in freedom and peaceful coexistence. It is equally unlikely that the terrorists would immediately take down the Iraqi government; the Israelis would use their nuclear weapons against Iran and (since they would face incredible isolation and political pressure after such an act) against nearer enemies and potential enemies as well; the US would be unable to act abroad unilaterally; Afghanistan would fall; and Musharraf would bow to the inevitable and start giving nuclear weapons to terrorists in order to avoid being assassinated. But what is likely?

First, let's look at what the Congressman apparently hopes will happen: the military will be able to fight elsewhere and sustain that fight; recruitment will increase, and the recruits will be of better quality; procurement will increase, both in replacing worn out equipment and in getting new gear; there will be less military spending, easing the deficit; fewer Americans will be killed and wounded; fewer Iraqis will be killed and wounded; the insurrection and terrorism in Iraq will stop; terrorism globally will decline; the Sunnis will join the political process. (All of these are inverse statements of what the Congressman declares to be wrong; presumably he believes that our withdrawal will put them right.)

And the Congressman has a plan:

To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.
To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines.
To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq

So let's look at his plan, and his hopes, and whether his hopes are likely to be fulfilled or his plan is likely to work to fulfill those hopes. Also, let's look at the things that he didn't mention that might happen on the other side of the ledger.

In the very short term, as we were withdrawing, attacks on Americans would dramatically increase. By attacking us in this way, the enemy could plausibly claim to have driven us out by force, not because we lost our will. Given the, um, interesting ideas that are widely believed in the fantasist Arab culture already, this idea would have wide currency. And how could we refute it? By saying not that we were defeated, but are cowards? This would not only lead to the revival of the jihadi movement, which has taken some major body blows in the region because (a) they can't drive us out and (b) they are killing lots of Muslims instead of lots of Americans and Jews, it would also lead to the essential collapse of reforms towards democracy or at least political concessions on the part of the other Arab states in the region. It would also destroy any chance of a peace in Israel, because it would confirm the thesis that a Western power, including Israel, could be driven out by persistent and violent terrorism. In Iraq itself, of course, the government would face a problem with the terrorists and insurgents already operating in Iraq.

What the US military presence in Iraq provides the Iraqi government currently, besides more people and weapons to conduct operations against the enemy, are two capabilities: the ability to relatively precisely target the enemy, and defense against foreign invasion. Without the US, Iraq could probably manage sufficient logistics and support to protect its oil infrastructure, keep the Shia and Kurd areas relatively peaceful, and ensure its continuation in power absent a foreign invasion. The Iraqi government can also defeat the enemy in country, but the methods will be different. Absent US air power, electronic assets, heavy weaponry like artillery and tanks, and exquisitely-trained soldiers, the only option for the Iraqi government is slaughter. Not only would more pro-government Iraqis die in the bloodbath that would follow American withdrawal, but more civilians — by far — would be killed, particularly Sunni civilians. Given their capabilities, it's the only way the Iraqi government could stay in power. And since the Iraqi government and other "collaborators" would be killed by the Sunnis and the terrorists if they were defeated, the government has a powerful incentive to kill first and thoroughly. The idea of "diplomatically pursu[ing] security and stability in Iraq is laughable: who in Iraq would listen to us after we abandoned them?

If Syria or, much more likely, Iran were to invade Iraq, the government would almost certainly collapse. The Iraqi military and police have been being tuned for counter-insurgency, with the US providing defense against foreign invasion. The Iraqi military simply doesn't have the capability to defend the country against an invader who has tanks and artillery and even a few aircraft. The government would fall, probably within months, and likely to be replaced by a Shia theocracy satellite to Iran. This could even kick off a regional war, because the Saudis, Syrians and even Jordanians would be unwilling to let Iran have the Iraqi oil fields.

But with Iran the regional power, and the US uninvolved, it's a certainty that the US would lose pretty much all of its regional bases except perhaps in Afghanistan. The Saudis have already kicked us out. The premise is that we would withdraw from Iraqi bases. The Gulf states would kick us out, probably all of them would, because they know we wouldn't defend them, but our presence would draw terrorists and Iranian ire. The latter, in particular, would be a problem, because again Iran would be the regional power, and could get its way pretty easily.

And the idea that our "quick reaction force" (which would not be "in the region" for the reasons noted above) or our "over-the-horizon presence of Marines" would deter anyone after we ran from Iraq is ridiculous. Why would we use the military where we would undoubtedly take more casualties for less gain, after we showed in Iraq that we weren't willing to take a trickle of casualties for a huge gain? And why would we intervene to save Iraq after we had abandoned it?

Domestically, of course, the Republicans would be turned out of power in a way that would rival the post-Watergate gains made by the Democrats. The Republicans have not been socially conservative enough to excite the social conservative part of the Party, while not being fiscally conservative enough to excite the libertarian part of the Party. The only thing that's kept the Republicans in the majority domestically has been support for the war. If the war is abandoned, the Republicans will be seen as uncommitted to principles domestically or economically, as feckless and ineffective, and they will be (rightly) turned out in droves. (And make no mistake, this is the end that the Democrats most hope for and cherish; in the process, they tend to not see or to discount all of the other things that would follow our defeat in the war.)

Beyond domestic and Iraqi issues, there would be a number of secondary effects. Our ability to get our way in international fora would be even more reduced than it is now: with what would we threaten or promise? Few people fear our economic retaliation, because WTO rules make that virtually impossible, at least on a large scale. And no one would consider our military, because we would have proved that we could be beaten. Would we collapse, as the USSR did, after it was beaten? Clearly not. On the other hand, our ability to conduct diplomacy would collapse, as the USSR's did, and for the same reasons.

Iran, of course, would get its nuclear weapons eventually. The US certainly would not have the political will to act in Iran when it had lost that will in Iraq. Iran would be a tougher fight altogether, and there would be less provocation (no string of UN resolutions or of firing at US warplanes enforcing those resolutions), while attempting to use intelligence of Iran nearing nuclear capability would be laughed out of the forum of public opinion, since that was part of the justification for intervening in Iraq, and is being painted as the entire justification for intervening in Iraq. What it would do with them is anyone's guess, but a very good guess is "destroy Israel". Whether Israel would attempt to keep Iran from getting them is not clear, though I suspect that they would, knowing what the Iranians have said about losing several Muslim cities being worth destroying Israel. If Israel did attempt to stop Iran from completing nuclear weapons development, their only real option is preemptive nuclear strikes. The Israeli aircraft don't have the range, and they do not have the refueling capacity, to keep up a sustained conventional strike against the Iranians.

So now let's go back to the Congressman's hopes, and pitilessly demolish them.

Would withdrawing from Iraq increase the military's ability to fight elsewhere and sustain the fight? In purely military terms, yes. Since we would no longer be involved in one fight, those resources would be available elsewhere. Of course, politically that would be a non-starter, unless the US or, say, Western Europe were directly attacked, which means that our ability to fight elsewhere would be irrelevant. For at least a decade, the US would be unable to intervene militarily virtually anywhere in the world. And would we then get our second Reagan, or our second Carter? Would we resurge or decline? It's impossible to tell.

Would recruitment increase, and recruits be of better quality? Um, no. First, the morale of the military would be shattered. Experienced troops and officers would flee the military at their first chance to do so, and the result would be more unfilled slots. Recruiting is a kind of economy, with the demand being unfilled slots, the supply being recruits, and the cost being the quality of the recruits. With a booming economy (which, despite the MSM's continual gloom seeking, we have), shattered military morale, the inevitable budget cutting (see below for more) and so on, means that the demand would far outrun the supply. This would be made up by raising the cost, that is, by lowering the standards. We would likely end up with the kind of recruiting situation we had in the late 1970s: extraordinarily low quality coupled with constant retraining because of high turnover rates. That was horrible in the late 1970s; with today's demands from both technology and doctrine, it would be unsustainable: the Army would lose the ability to effectively conduct low-casualty wars.

Would procurement increase? Would there be less military spending, easing the deficit? Of course, these two hopes of the Congressman are pretty much mutually exclusive: you cannot cut the budget and increase procurement at the same time. During the 1990s, we were burning through Cold War surplus (our military is about half the size, in fighting units, as it was in 1991) to replace equipment. That equipment will be burned through in the next few years, and so we will face using worn out equipment or raising military spending. We cannot do both. Well, we could, if we again dramatically cut the military, probably by half again. In the process, we would get rid of a lot of capabilities, likely including sufficient amounts of our capabilities that we would be unable to mount an Iraq-sized intervention without a couple of years of rebuilding first. We would be limited to small-scale missions, because we wouldn't have the troops, equipment and logistics to support a large-scale operation. Current weapons systems are expensive, and you cannot both cut the budget and keep current, especially when you have to replace a generation of the most expensive weapons (aircraft, ships and armored vehicles) all at the same time.

Would fewer Americans be killed and wounded? In the very short term, while we are withdrawing, no. More Americans would be killed because, as noted above, the enemy would attack more in order to claim they beat us, rather than our will collapsed. In the medium term, probably, because we wouldn't be fighting in Iraq and it would take the terrorists a little time to recover. But within two years or so, our casualties would increase. First, the terrorists would be intent on driving us completely out of the region, so they would be attacking our troops in Afghanistan, as well as our embassies, American universities, and corporate and military interests throughout the region. Even if the terrorists did not resume attacks in the US on the scale of 9/11, our casualties in civilians and non-military government agents in the Muslim world would likely exceed our current military casualties.

Would fewer Iraqis be killed and wounded? Clearly not, as explained above. But who would notice, since it wasn't Americans dying? While 30000 civilians in two years seems like a lot of dead people, it wouldn't surprise me to see the Sunnis put down with civilians dying at a rate of 30000 every few months. Again, the Iraqi government's options are limited. And like the killing in Cambodia and Viet Nam, I expect that the Left would not notice; and to the extent that it did notice, it would be to blame it on the US for not protecting the enemy after we abandoned our friends.

Would the insurrection and terrorism in Iraq stop? Probably. Absent a foreign invasion, I suspect that the Iraqi government could kill terrorists, insurgents, sympathetic civilians and uninvolved civilians at a high enough rate to end the terrorism and insurgency. Assuming, of course, that the army and police don't desert en masse out of fear after we leave. If they do, then the terrorism and insurgency would likely continue until either foreign invasion intervened, or the government of Iraq collapsed.

Will terrorism decline globally? Um, not hardly. Why would a tactic that had proven successful be scaled back or abandoned? In short order, there would be a sharply increased amount of terrorism in the Muslim world. Shortly thereafter, there would be increased terrorism on the periphery of the Muslim world, Islam's bloody borders. And if the terrorists were to succeed in pulling down some governments and establishing a caliphate (a possibility the Congressman is either unaware of or simply declines to mention), there would likely be serious attacks against Western and Jewish targets generally. For that matter, it's not even necessary to establish a rump caliphate to do this: the Syrians, Iranians, Saudis and Pakistanis would probably be willing to provide sufficient support to the terrorists to ensure that they could plan, train for and carry out attacks in Europe and the US.

Would the Sunnis join the political process in Iraq? No. The Sunnis are increasingly participating because it looks like we are going to win handily. If it begins to look like we are going to lose (or if we simply announce we've lost and run away), there would be no incentive to counter the strong disincentive of being killed for "collaborating". So the Sunnis would withdraw from the political process, and turn to violence. And they would have to do it quickly, to avoid the slaughter the Shia and Kurds would try to inflict on them, both for revenge and for the practical reason of not putting themselves back in the position they were in under the Sunnis last time.

There are two other significant downsides of withdrawal not addressed by the Congressman even in the negative: international cooperation and Korea. International cooperation, both on terror and on other matters, would become a much more rare commodity. First, the US would be seen as needing the cooperation more, and so (politics also being an economy) the price would go up. In many cases, the price would be out of our reach, because better deals could be found by cooperating with our enemies than with us. Ask the French, or George Galloway, about "oil for food" deals and how much you can profit, with essentially no risk, by adhering to US enemies.

As to Korea, China has been allowing North Korea to slowly starve. This would not continue. The South would know it could not count on the US for the harder task of fighting or occupying North Korea, since we were unwilling to take on the easier task of occupying Iraq, and so the South would likely build up its military significantly. China does not want a free North Korea to encourage the Chinese people towards freedom, so they would prop up the regime. With nothing to fear from the US, the Chinese would have every incentive to do so and would see little in the way of downsides. Japan and Taiwan and South Korea, realizing they have to fend for themselves, would likely develop nuclear weapons as fast as they could. There would almost certainly be a series of wars, probably including China invading Taiwan, over territory in SE Asia.

It has always been the case that most casualties are suffered not in the battle, but in the rout afterwards. If we allow ourselves to be routed, the likely consequences are severe. We should be aware of them, and ready to face them, before we incur them.

UPDATE: Instapundit has lots of concurring opinions. In particular, read Pejman Yousefzadeh.

UPDATE: Dave Schuler also has thoughts on this, and in particular on what responsibilities grown ups in a free society should have when their nation is at war.

My own preferences are that Congressional Democrats should alter their current trajectory from withdrawal to establishing a lasting peace in Iraq, the White House (and Congressional Republicans) should alter their stance from counter-confrontation to fixing whatever is wrong and speeding the pace of strengthening the Iraqi government’s position (even if doing that has political cost), and that bloggers would start confronting each others’ arguments rather than each other. Tain’t gonna happen.

Dave also points to Joe Gandelman's excellent roundup of opinion on this.

UPDATE: Kevin Aylward has also read Murtha's plan.

UPDATE: Ralph Peters has bitter words about the Democrats' electoral be-damned-to-the-consequences maneuvering.

Posted by jeff at November 18, 2005 11:10 AM

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Dave Schuler carries forward a discussion started by Dan Darling: whether you think we should stay in Iraq or leave, or something in between, what are the costs? I personally feel that we should stay. In part, this is because of the downsides of withdr... [Read More]

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