Five Bedrock Washington Assumptions That Are Hot Air
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Iraq no longer Exists
Five Bedrock Washington Assumptions That Are Hot Air
By Andrew J. Bacevich
“Iraq no longer exists.” My young friend M,
sipping a cappuccino, is deadly serious. We are sitting in a scruffy
restaurant across the street from the Cathedral of St. John the
Divine on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It’s been
years since we’ve last seen each another. It may be years
before our paths cross again. As if to drive his point home, M
repeats himself: “Iraq just doesn’t exist.”
His is an opinion grounded in experience. As an
enlisted soldier, he completed two Iraq tours, serving as a member of
a rifle company, before and during the famous Petraeus “surge.”
After separating from the Army, he went on to graduate school where
he is now writing a dissertation on insurgencies. Choosing the
American war in Iraq as one of his cases, M has returned there to
continue his research. Indeed, he was heading back again that
very evening. As a researcher, his perch provides him with an
excellent vantage point for taking stock of the ongoing crisis, now
that the Islamic State, or IS, has made it impossible for Americans
to sustain the pretense that the Iraq War ever ended.
Few in Washington would endorse M’s
assertion, of course. Inside the Beltway, policymakers,
politicians, and pundits take Iraq’s existence for granted.
Many can even locate it on a map. They also take for
granted the proposition that it is incumbent upon the United States
to preserve that existence. To paraphrase
Chris Hedges, for a certain group of Americans, Iraq is the cause
that gives life meaning. For the military-industrial complex, it’s
the
gift that keeps on giving.
Considered from this perspective, the “Iraqi
government” actually governs, the “Iraqi army” is a
nationally representative fighting force, and the “Iraqi
people” genuinely see themselves as constituting a community
with a shared past and an imaginable future.
Arguably, each of these propositions
once contained a modicum of truth. But when the United States
invaded Iraq in 2003 and, as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell
predicted, broke
the place, any merit they previously possessed quickly dissipated.
Years of effort by American occupiers intent on creating a new Iraq
out of the ruins of the old produced little of value and next to
nothing that has lasted. Yet even today, in Washington the
conviction persists that trying harder might somehow turn things
around. Certainly, that conviction
informs the renewed U.S. military intervention prompted by the rise
of IS.
So
when David Ignatius, a well-informed and normally sober columnist for
the Washington Post, reflects
on what the United States must do to get Iraq War 3.0 right, he
offers this “mental
checklist”: in Baghdad, the U.S. should
foster a “cleaner, less sectarian government”; to ensure
security, we will have to “rebuild the military”; and to
end internal factionalism, we’re going to have to find ways to
“win Kurdish support” and “rebuild trust with
Sunnis.” Ignatius does not pretend that any of this will
be easy. He merely argues that it must be -- and by implication
can be -- done. Unlike my friend M, Ignatius clings to the
fantasy that “Iraq” is or ought to be politically viable,
militarily capable, and socially cohesive. But surely this
qualifies as wishful thinking.The value of M’s insight -- of, that is, otherwise
intelligent people purporting to believe in things that don’t
exist -- can be applied well beyond American assumptions about Iraq.
A similar inclination to fanaticize permeates, and thereby
warps, U.S. policies throughout much of the Greater Middle East.
Consider the following claims, each of which in Washington circles
has attained quasi-canonical status.
* The presence of U.S. forces in the Islamic world
contributes to regional stability and enhances American influence.
* The Persian Gulf constitutes a vital U.S. national
security interest.
* Egypt and Saudi Arabia are valued and valuable American
allies.
* The interests of the United States and Israel align.
* Terrorism poses an existential threat that the United
States must defeat.
For decades now, the first four of these assertions have
formed the foundation of U.S. policy in the Middle East. The events
of 9/11 added the fifth, without in any way prompting a
reconsideration of the first four. On each of these matters, no
senior U.S. official (or anyone aspiring to a position of influence)
will dare say otherwise, at least not on the record.
Yet subjected to even casual scrutiny, none of the five
will stand up. To take them at face value is the equivalent of
believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy -- or that John Boehner
and Mitch McConnell really, really hope that the Obama administration
and the upcoming Republican-controlled Congress can find grounds to
cooperate.
Let’s examine all five, one at a time.
The Presence of U.S. Forces:
Ever since the U.S. intervention in Lebanon that culminated in the
Beirut bombing of October 1983, introducing American troops into
predominantly Muslim countries has seldom contributed to stability.
On more than a few occasions, doing so has produced just the
opposite effect.
Iraq and Afghanistan provide mournful
examples. The new
book “Why We Lost” by retired
Lieutenant General Daniel Bolger finally makes it permissible in
official circles to declare those wars the failures that they have
been. Even granting, for the sake of argument, that U.S.
nation-building efforts were as pure and honorable as successive
presidents portrayed them, the results have been more corrosive than
constructive. The IS militants plaguing Iraq find their
counterpart in the soaring
production of opium that plagues Afghanistan.
This qualifies as stability?
And these are hardly the only
examples. Stationing U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia after
Operation Desert Storm was supposed to have a reassuring effect.
Instead, it produced the debacle of the devastating Khobar
Towers bombing. Sending G.I.’s
into Somalia back in 1992 was supposed to demonstrate American
humanitarian concern for poor, starving Muslims. Instead, it
culminated in the embarrassing Mogadishu firefight, which gained the
sobriquet Black Hawk Down, and doomed that mission.
Even so, the pretense that positioning American soldiers
in some Middle East hotspot will bring calm to troubled waters
survives. It’s far more accurate to say that doing so
provides our adversaries with what soldiers call a target-rich
environment -- with Americans as the targets.
The Importance of the Persian
Gulf: Although U.S. interests in
the Gulf may once have qualified as vital, the changing global energy
picture has rendered that view obsolete. What’s probably
bad news for the environment is good news in terms of creating
strategic options for the United States. New technologies have
once again made the United States the world’s largest producer
of oil.
The U.S. is also the world’s largest producer of natural
gas. It turns out that the lunatics
chanting “drill, baby, drill” were right after all.
Or perhaps it’s “frack, baby, frack.”
Regardless, the assumed energy dependence
and “vital
interests” that inspired Jimmy Carter to
declare back in 1980 that the Gulf is worth fighting for no longer
pertain.
Access to Gulf oil remains critically
important to some countries, but surely not to the United States.
When it comes to propping up the wasteful and profligate American way
of life, Texas and North
Dakota outrank Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in
terms of importance. Rather than worrying about Iraqi oil
production, Washington would be better served ensuring the safety and
well-being of Canada, with its bountiful supplies of shale oil.
And if militarists ever find the itch to increase U.S. oil reserves
becoming irresistible, they would be better advised to invade
Venezuela than to pick a fight with Iran.
Does the Persian Gulf require policing from the outside?
Maybe. But if so, let’s volunteer China for the job. It will
keep them out of mischief.
Arab Allies: It’s
time to reclassify the U.S. relationship with both Egypt and Saudi
Arabia. Categorizing these two important Arab states as “allies”
is surely misleading. Neither one shares the values to which
Washington professes to attach such great importance.
For decades, Saudi Arabia, Planet
Earth’s closest equivalent to an absolute monarchy, has
promoted anti-Western radical jihadism -- and not without effect.
The relevant numbers here are two that most New Yorkers will
remember: 15
out of 19. If a conspiracy consisting almost entirely of
Russians had succeeded in killing several thousand Americans, would
U.S. authorities give the Kremlin a pass? Would U.S.-Russian
relations remain unaffected? The questions answer themselves.
Meanwhile, after a brief dalliance
with democracy, Egypt has once again become what it was before: a
corrupt, oppressive military dictatorship unworthy of the billions
of dollars of military assistance that Washington provides
from one year to the next.
Israel:
The United States and Israel share more than a few interests in
common. A commitment to a “two-state solution” to
the Palestinian problem does not number among them. On that
issue, Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s purposes diverge
widely. In all likelihood, they are irreconcilable.
For the government of Israel, viewing
security concerns as paramount, an acceptable Palestinian state will
be the equivalent of an Arab Bantustan, basically defenseless,
enjoying limited sovereignty, and possessing limited minimum
economical potential. Continuing Israeli encroachments on the
occupied territories, undertaken in the teeth of American
objections, make this self-evident.
It is, of course, entirely the prerogative -- and indeed
the obligation -- of the Israeli government to advance the well being
of its citizens. U.S. officials have a similar obligation: they
are called upon to act on behalf of Americans. And that means
refusing to serve as Israel’s enablers when that country takes
actions that are contrary to U.S. interests.
The “peace process” is a fiction. Why should
the United States persist in pretending otherwise? It’s
demeaning.
Terrorism: Like
crime and communicable diseases, terrorism will always be with us.
In the face of an outbreak of it, prompt, effective action to
reduce the danger permits normal life to continue. Wisdom lies in
striking a balance between the actually existing threat and exertions
undertaken to deal with that threat. Grown-ups understand this. They
don’t expect a crime rate of zero in American cities. They
don’t expect all people to enjoy perfect health all of the
time. The standard they seek is “tolerable.”
That terrorism threatens Americans is no doubt the case,
especially when they venture into the Greater Middle East. But
aspirations to eliminate terrorism belong in the same category as
campaigns to end illiteracy or homelessness: it’s okay to aim
high, but don’t be surprised when the results achieved fall
short.
Eliminating terrorism is a chimera. It’s not going
to happen. U.S. civilian and military leaders should summon the
honesty to acknowledge this.
My friend M has put his finger on a
problem that is much larger than he grasps. Here’s hoping that
when he gets his degree he lands an academic job. It’s
certain he’ll never find employment in our nation’s
capital. As a soldier-turned-scholar, M inhabits what one of
George W. Bush’s closest associates (believed to be Karl
Rove) once derisively referred to as the
“reality-based
community.” People in Washington don’t
have time for reality. They’re lost in a world of their own.
Andrew J. Bacevich, currently
Columbia University’s George McGovern Fellow, is writing a
military history of America’s war for the Greater Middle East.
A TomDispatch
regular,
his most recent book is Breach
of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.Follow TomDispatch
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Copyright 2014 Andrew Bacevich
This article originally appeared in TomDispatch.com
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