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November 26, 2005
Staying the Course, and Paying for It
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 withdrawing. More than that, though, are the benefits of staying, most importantly that our current apparent grand strategy has a chance of working. Sadly, neither the President nor the media has done a good chance of explaining our grand strategy, so let me start with that. (Note: I could easily be wrong here; the lack of communications on our grand strategy is understandable, but makes this kind of discussion hazardous.)
When you look at the enemy, it is clear that terrorism is not what we are at war with. While terrorism is abhorrent, it is a tactic that is neither unique to our enemy nor even the most abhorrent thing about our enemy. (In my book, their inability to coexist with anything or anyone that doesn't share their ideology is the worst thing about them.) Rather, it is militant fascist theocrats with an extremist Islamic flavor — the jihadis — that we are at war with. The jihadis have expansive goals: restoring or creating theocratic control (led, of course, by them) over all of the lands that have ever been governed by Muslims, and the spreading of that theocracy to every place where Muslims live or have lived. The jihadis are willing — indeed, eager — to kill every person in their way, and every person who doesn't believe the way that they do: women who "don't know their place", homosexuals, Jews, Christians, pagans, other non-Muslims, ex-Muslims, any Muslim who is not sufficiently extremist or sufficiently ideologically pure (note that the Shi'a in Iraq are bombed more than "collaborators" or Americans or other coalition troops), intellectuals, communists, atheists, and so forth. In other words, the jihadis are an implacable enemy: we cannot surrender to them except by becoming them, and joining them. We cannot run from them or hide from them: they will come until they are dead, or we are dead. They believe that god is on their side. They are not driven by poverty.
Considering these facts, and the actions of the Bush administration in fighting the enemy, I hypothesize that our grand strategy is as follows: remove the sanctuaries of the jihadis (in order of size) to disrupt their ability to carry out large-scale plans; remove the state sponsors of jihadi terror groups (in order of risk of transfer of WMD to the jihadis) to ensure that small terror cells cannot carry out raids with consequences disproportional to the size of the cell; eliminate the terror cells person by person and by disrupting the cohesion of the network, both by direct action and by, for example, cutting funding and transport links; and undercut future recruiting efforts by creating and expanding democracy within the Muslim world.
Now, if this is indeed the grand strategy, then how does Iraq play into it? First, Iraq was a potential sanctuary for the jihadis. The combination of Salman Pak and Iraq's tendency to give refuge to terrorists is sufficient to indicate that Iraq was at least potentially a sanctuary. But the combination of these with the payments made to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, the sanctuary given to Abu Nidal and other terrorists, and various other things makes it certain that Iraq was (was) a major state sponsor of jihadi terror. Since Iraq was also believed to possess chemical and biological weapons and to be developing nuclear weapons, this made the perceived risk of WMD transfer quite large. Further, Iraq had a largely secular population, with a minimum of overt jihadis and sympathizers. All of these factors made Iraq an ideal target after Afghanistan was neutralized.
All of that is, however, fairly irrelevant to what we do now, except to the extent that we might regress — or worse — by pulling out. So let's assume that I get my way and we stay in Iraq, building democracy and killing jihadis. What then, are the costs of that course, and what must we be prepared to do? What challenges do we face?
First, we have to realize that our reserves and in particular the National Guard are near the breaking point. We have deployed so many, so often and for so long that we are nearing the statutory end of our ability to deploy the Guard as units, though some individuals will be able to be deployed for some time to come. Second, we cut the military dramatically after the end of the Cold War; in essence we cut about half of our combat forces. This means that we are able to sustain deployments much smaller than we might like: perhaps 125000 ground troops indefinitely, 300000 for up to three years (after which training and morale issues would leave us unable to fight large campaigns for as much as 5 to 7 years). Our commitments in Kosovo, Korea and other areas make this even harder than it would otherwise be. Military transformation increases the number of deployable combat units, but not sufficiently to drastically change those numbers for some time to come. Third, we are nearing the point where large fractions of our equipment are getting worn out from use. This will require a replacement cycle, with the corresponding investments. Finally, we have to realize that we are not done with the war even when the Iraq campaign ends: at the least we will almost certainly have to deal with Iran by use of force, and we may have to deal forcefully with Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as well.
In order to fix these problems, and be prepared for ongoing campaigns, we need to make many changes, and they are going to cost. We have to extend transformation to include changing the role of the Guard and reserves, so that we can fight extended wars without calling up Guard and reserve units and troops on a continual basis. We must increase the size of the military, particularly the Army. The Army, in fact, needs to be expanded by at least 50% in order to undertake continuous operations and occupations and still maintain our other commitments. This should have been done soon after 9/11, and not having done so is perhaps the largest mistake the Bush administration has made in the war. We must also be prepared to replace much of our military equipment (particularly trucks and personal equipment, but also including armored vehicles). All of this is going to cost. Worse, all of this is going to take significant expenditures of political effort, and cutting of non-military programs and pork in large swathes.
Two other questions that Dave raises are metrics (how do we know when we're done?) and usable subsets (what do we get along the way, even if we fail to reach our final goal?).
As far as metrics go, that is a very difficult question. Enemy casualties is useful as a side effect (it makes the future enemies we fight less well trained, less capable), but not as a metric, because the enemy does not need large numbers of people to stay in the fight. More useful is the amount of territory under enemy control in various degrees. When we get to the point where the enemy controls no territory at all, though, the enemy might still be able to fight, because he doesn't have to control territory to carry out attacks, though controlling territory makes carrying out attacks much easier. Another useful metric is the number of Iraqi government security forces capable of carrying out operations with US logistical and heavy weapons support, and the number capable of carrying out operations without such support. But again, this is not a complete metric, because the operations have to be effective. The number of Sunnis involved in the political process is also a useful metric. But the reality is that none of us are in a position to really know what metrics are useful; for that we actually have to trust those we've elected to run wars for us.
But I believe that Dave is wrong in saying that there are no usable subsets of our actions in Iraq. In fact, we have already accomplished several of these: we have ended the torture and killings that Saddam used to maintain control are ended; Iraq is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism; Iraq definitively no longer has WMDs nor the capability to make them; the United States has gained useful bases in the heart of the Middle East. Some or all of these might be undercut if we leave too soon, while others will not. If we do stick it out, as I hope, until the Iraqis effectively control all of Iraq, we will gain other benefits besides democratization of Iraq. These include, not least, dealing a body blow to the idea that the US will just cut and run when things get tough.
Are there costs? Yes. But as Dave points out, there are costs to cutting and running, too, and in my estimation those costs are much, much higher.
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» Discussing withdrawal from Iraq from The Glittering Eye
I tried a little while ago to start a discussion of this subject without a great deal of success. The conversation quickly degenerated into name-calling. Now Dan Darling has started a discussion of the same subject over at Winds of Change. Dan add... [Read More]
Tracked on November 27, 2005 10:18 AM