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December 2, 2005

Overblown Rhetoric

What is it about the Iraq war — or President Bush in general — that leads to overblown and unsupportable rhetoric? I used to have a lot of respect for Martin Van Creveld, a military historian who has written some really good analysis, but what is this? First, Van Creveld lays out a short surrender:

The number of American casualties in Iraq is now well more than 2,000, and there is no end in sight. Some two-thirds of Americans, according to the polls, believe the war to have been a mistake. And congressional elections are just around the corner.

What had to come, has come. The question is no longer if American forces will be withdrawn, but how soon — and at what cost. In this respect, as in so many others, the obvious parallel to Iraq is Vietnam.

Confronted by a demoralized army on the battlefield and by growing opposition at home, in 1969 the Nixon administration started withdrawing most of its troops in order to facilitate what it called the "Vietnamization" of the country. The rest of America's forces were pulled out after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated a "peace settlement" with Hanoi. As the troops withdrew, they left most of their equipment to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam — which just two years later, after the fall of Saigon, lost all of it to the communists.

Clearly this is not a pleasant model to follow, but no other alternative appears in sight.


Other than the facts that the military is not demoralized and no one is showing up at anti-war demonstrations, it's just like Viet Nam. Right, yeah, got it.

Then, having surrendered, Van Creveld notes that we cannot flee Iraq as we fled Viet Nam, leaving our equipment to the Iraqi government, because we can't afford to leave the equipment (at least the big pieces). This is followed by a huge narrative that I can only describe as a Leftist wet dream, with tales of confused routs towards Baghdad and then southwards, harried on all sides like the British fiasco in Afghanistan in 1841, taking massive casualties in their desperate flight. Behind the retreat, "Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war" and [a]ll this is inevitable!

Then, Van Creveld says that we can't abandon the region. We will need an ongoing security presence to counter the nightmare resulting from our withdrawal:

Yet a complete American withdrawal is not an option; the region, with its vast oil reserves, is simply too important for that. A continued military presence, made up of air, sea and a moderate number of ground forces, will be needed.

First and foremost, such a presence will be needed to counter Iran, which for two decades now has seen the United States as "the Great Satan." Tehran is certain to emerge as the biggest winner from the war — a winner that in the not too distant future is likely to add nuclear warheads to the missiles it already has. In the past, Tehran has often threatened the Gulf States. Now that Iraq is gone, it is hard to see how anybody except the United States can keep the Gulf States, and their oil, out of the mullahs' clutches.

A continued American military presence will be needed also, because a divided, chaotic, government-less Iraq is very likely to become a hornets' nest. From it, a hundred mini-Zarqawis will spread all over the Middle East, conducting acts of sabotage and seeking to overthrow governments in Allah's name.


No mention is made of how we might use any such stay-behind force — let alone where we would base it — given that we'd just run from Iraq, causing the problems he foresees. If we ran from Iraq because of 2000 casualties and bad public opinion, where would the will to take on a nuclear-armed Iran or armies of terrorists (who would not, after all, be attacking the US, but other Muslims) come from? Oh, except that if we leave a military presence there, the terrorists would be attacking Americans; it's just that we would have foreclosed any ability to respond to the attacks.

But the crowning achievement in foolishness is the conclusion:

For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.

Really? The most foolish war in 2014 years? Worse than Germany's attack on Russia, or Japan's attack on the US in WWII? Worse than the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or the British invasion of Afghanistan? Worse than Agincourt? More foolish than the War of Jenkins' Ear?

This is not serious military analysis: it is blind, unthinking panic.

UPDATE: Wretchard has similar thoughts on Van Creveld, while taking a broader view about the difference between words and reality.

Posted by jeff at December 2, 2005 10:14 AM

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Comments

There's no earthly way that, if we are routed from Iraq, that we will maintain any presence in the region. The reasons for this are rooted in the American political experience.

Our policy in the region was dominated for many years by Hamiltonian “realists”. That policy failed. Demonstrably. We won't go back to it. If our current, Wilsonian idealist strategy, fails (can a rout be anything but a falure?), we won't try that again for the foreseeable future.

That leaves two alternative streams of American political thought for future policies: Jeffersonian and Jacksonian. If we adopt a Jeffersonian policy, we'll disengage from the region. If we adopt a Jacksonian policy, there'll be no region from which to disengage.

Posted by: Dave Schuler [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 2, 2005 11:41 AM

And my suspicion is that we will start with a Jeffersonian withdrawal into isolation (remember that this was President Bush's first inclination, prior to 9/11, for which he was soundly criticized), until we are attacked again in a big way. When that happens, you are correct, there will be no region from which to disengage. If we abandon idealism, there is only rejection or ruthlessness to turn to. We already know that we cannot buy off the local dictators and gain any kind of peace.

Posted by: Jeff Medcalf [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 2, 2005 12:27 PM

it is blind, unthinking panic.

Yep. But not over the situation in Iraq. I suspect Prof. van Creveld is panicking over the fellow members of his tribe (academics) ostracizing him as a heretic. So he's making a dramatic gesture to show which side he's on, and objective weighing of the facts be damned. I've got a couple of his books, fortunately written before us-vs-them trumped other values in his work.

I'm filing him with David Brin, who's gone from useful analyst to fanatic. More reasons I worry about how deep the divide is getting in this country.

Posted by: Karl Gallagher [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 2, 2005 3:27 PM