Defcon Blue

There’s a dangerous and incorrect consensus forming on the War in Iraq. It’s bringing together arch conservatives like Bill Crystal and Tony Blankley and moderates and liberals like Hillary Clinton and Thomas Friedman. Conservatives are desperate to explain how their “Grand Idea” of pre-emptively invading Iraq and toppling its dictator, Saddam Hussein went so terribly wrong. Liberals like Hillary Clinton and 199 other Democrats in Congress are trying to explain why they voted to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq. The new consensus: The war in Iraq was a great idea that President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and others screwed up in execution.

Although this conclusion is politically convenient for both conservatives and many liberals, it is wrong and I want to set the record straight. Although President Bush’s execution of this war has been shockingly incompetent, execution was not the problem with this terrible escapade. The Bush Administration never had a post-war plan and if it had bothered to try to make any plans it would have realized that toppling Saddam Hussein was opening a can of worms. If you decapitate a dictator in a multi-ethnic state you always end up with either partition, or civil war or both. (See my previous post). You never end up with a Jeffersonian democracy.

So if almost everyone agrees that this war has been a calamitous mistake, why does it matter whether it was a good idea done wrong or just a bad idea from the start? It matters because the history of this war will be used to justify a war in the future. You can see it happening today. For 20 years it was conservative dogma that the Vietnam war was a great idea executed poorly. The Lyndon Johnson White House micro-managed the generals until the war was lost. That is why Vietnam failed, poor execution. The fact that the Vietnam war was a terrible idea from the start has been completely forgotten by conservatives. So this time when Conservatives get a new “big idea:” into their heads to invade an Arab country so we can create a new Arab democracy, they are sure that it will be quick and easy. All we have to do is not interfere with the Generals and invading Iraq will be a piece of cake.

Just listen to the Bush Administration from the President on down talk about the war. “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” said Vice President Cheney in his now famous comments on Meet the Press in 2002. President Bush consistently says that he will listen to his Generals. At a September 2006 news conference Bush said: “And that’s the way I will continue to conduct the war. I’ll listen to generals.” This is convenient from two standpoints: one he will fix the error that Johnson committed and he can ignore anyone else who disagrees with him.

Don’t let the history be written this way. This war was LOST from the day it was started. President Bush was able to choose the time, place, and circumstances of this war. He chose to start a pre-emptive war against a country that had not attacked us. He chose to start a war that the overwhelming majority of Arabs thought was unjustified. He chose to justify the war on the basis of obviously flimsy evidence. If he had real evidence he would have done as Kennedy did and brought the 3′x5′ glossy satellite photos into the United Nations Security Council. He chose to send as few troops as possible and to use private contractors as much as possible. He chose to treat this war as cheap, easy and without costs to the American people. As a result, Americans do not view this war as vital, Arabs view this war as unjust and everyone wants to blame Bush’s incompetence in execution.

President Bush’s execution of this war has been completely incompetent bordering on criminally negligent, but that is not the reason this escapade is going to fail. The war in Iraq is going to fail because we invaded, unprovoked or threatened, an Arab country and tried to install our own puppet government. We removed a dictator in a multi-ethnic state and hoped everyone would suddenly get along and forget 1000 years of history. The execution has been terrible but the idea of starting this war was unconscionably horrible. The two hundred Democrats and uncounted Republicans who supported this war can’t get off by just blaming Bush. We must get the history right so that the errors of this war can’t be used to justify another unjust war.

President Bush’s policy goal in Iraq is a free, democratic and unified Iraq but these goals are incompatible and therefore impossible to achieve. The fundamental problem with our policies in Iraq is that they demonstrate a complete lack of understanding about nationalism, ethnic groups and nation states. Iraq is not a single nation and as such it can never be a single democratic state. Our policy in Iraq will fail because democracies are based on single nation-states. Iraq has two ethnic groups and two rival religious sects. They will never freely work together to form a single democracy. History demonstrates this clearly.

Since the rise of the nation-state in the mid 19th century, there have been only two forms of stable government: nation-state and dictatorship. Nation-states are states that are composed of a single ethnic group, e.g. Germans, French, Italians. Ethnic groups have a single common language, religion and culture. When people are free to choose their own form of government, they always choose to be in a single ethnic group state or a nation-state. (The United States is a rare exception in that our “ethnic group” is ideologically based: hard work, freedom from tyranny etc.)

The reason people choose to be in single ethnic group states is that they fear being repressed by “others”. When a state is composed of several ethnic groups, inevitably one group accumulates more power and the other group or groups feel repressed. The Russians dominated the Soviet Union, the Serbs dominated Yugoslavia, The Austrians and Hungarians dominated the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Sunnis dominated Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.  All of these states, once held together by dictatorship, split in to their component ethnic states once the dictatorship weakened or fell. The same will happen to Iraq.

Iraq is comprised of three distinct groups: the Arab Shiites, the Arab Sunnis and the Kurds. These three groups will not want to remain in a single democratic state where one group could dominate any minority. The Shiites were repressed under Saddam Hussein’s rule and they will do whatever they can to maintain a dominant position in the new Iraq. The Sunnis were cast from power by the United States and now resent being the minority. The Kurds fear being under either Arab group. The majority group, the Shiites might want to maintain Iraq but the minorities, the Sunnis and the Kurds will want self-determination, that is, to be in their own nation-state, free of Shiite oppression.

US policy ignores the dynamics of these multi-ethnic states. The United States current stated goal is to help “Iraq’s leaders build a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself” - Bush Dec 2, 2006. The problem with this goal is that it is not possible. We cannot build a democracy comprised of three distinct groups who will not want to stay together. Our only choices are: Establish a new dictatorship, ease the transition to three states or leave. The end result in Iraq will be either a Shiite dictatorship or a three state partition.

The United States should try to assist with a peaceful partition of Iraq. This would include advocating for a 3 state solution, providing security guarantees similar to those provided to Kuwait, including, possibly, the stationing of troops (the ultimate security guarantee) in any new state that wanted them there. If we are unwilling or unable to support a 3 state solution, then we should pull out of Iraq as soon as possible. We could do this by declaring victory or by facilitating our replacement with United Nations or Arab League peace-keeping troops. Our current policy is fatally flawed and if we do not readjust our goals to achievable ones, President Bush’s Iraq policy will fail.

Over the past twenty years, Republicans have successfully positioned themselves as the party that is strong on National Defense. At a time when America and the world are consumed with fear about Islamic radical terrorism, the Democrats need a strong coherent message on national defense. If they do not have one, they will be doomed to also-ran status until the current atmosphere of fear and uncertainty subsides.

I believe that Republicans do not and should not have a monopoly on defense policy. In the case of the current administration, its policies have been incredibly ineffective or even damaging to America’s national interest. But Democrats share in the blame for these policies because they have failed to present an alternative vision for the so-called War on Terror.

The purpose of this blog is to help progressives define a strong national security policy, one that protects American lives, promotes American values around the world provides an alternative to our current slash and burn policies.