What Will Bush Do About Iraq?

Thomas Powers writes on intelligence and has an interesting Op-Ed in today's New York Times. It points to the past stubborness of presidents faced with bad war options like Johnson in Vietnam. It points to Robert Gates' role in facilitating the secret war against the Contras even after Congress had passed the Boland amendment trying to stop it and how Gates proved a loyal CIA soldier for two presidents. Powers concludes:

Today the choice facing Washington is not quite as stark as the one that confronted Lyndon Johnson in 1965, but it is close. Mr. Gates has spent the last nine months working as a member of the Iraq Study Group, whose much awaited recommendations will be revealed next Wednesday. Getting out is the simplest remedy, but no one wants to shoulder the blame for what follows. Staying the course has already been rejected by the president. That leaves only some kind of altered or renewed effort to postpone the day of reckoning. Defeating the insurgents is only half of the challenge; harder will be finding some way to restrain or disband the Shiite militias without bringing them into the war against us. Down that road would lie a spiraling conflict as protracted and unwinnable as the war in Vietnam. The Republicans may have lost the midterm elections, but to my ear, on the subject of Iraq, the president has never sounded ready to accept anything that might be called defeat. Iraq is not Vietnam, but we are the same. We find ourselves, at a parallel moment, militarily committed to a policy on the verge of conspicuous failure. The American people, now as then, are unsettled by the phrase “cut and run” and reluctant to put their judgment ahead of the president’s. Above all, American presidents are the same. Bad news from Baghdad and opposition at home may point to a lowering of expectations, at the very least, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Presidents take failure personally, can lift their voices above the din of opponents, and can use the immense power of their office to force events in the directions they choose. The verdict of the elections was clear. The public wants to let Iraqis handle their own troubles from here on out, while we start bringing our soldiers home. But that’s not what President Bush has said he wants, so there will very likely be a series of fights over Iraq that will extend to the president’s last day in office. Robert Gates is smart, quiet, dogged and loyal: a well-considered choice for defense secretary by a president determined to bring home that “coonskin on the wall,” to borrow a phrase made memorable by an earlier president in a similar fix, Lyndon Johnson.

I agree with Mr. Powers that this is indeed the most likely outcome. The one possibility I hadn't thought of is that our actions might bring the Shia into the war against us; oh my, and I thought I was pessimistic.

Guard Against Post-Election Over-Optimism About Iraq?

Here are some excerpts from Seymour Hersh's latest New Yorker piece, The Next Act:

“Iraq is the disaster we have to get rid of, and Iran is the disaster we have to avoid,” Joseph Cirincione, the vice-president for national security at the liberal Center for American Progress, said. “Gates will be in favor of talking to Iran and listening to the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the neoconservatives are still there”—in the White House—“and still believe that chaos would be a small price for getting rid of the threat. The danger is that Gates could be the new Colin Powell—the one who opposes the policy but ends up briefing the Congress and publicly supporting it".... [A] former senior intelligence official said[:] “Cheney knew this was coming. Dropping Rummy after the election looked like a conciliatory move—‘You’re right, Democrats. We got a new guy and we’re looking at all the options. Nothing is ruled out.’ ” But the conciliatory gesture would not be accompanied by a significant change in policy; instead, the White House saw Gates as someone who would have the credibility to help it stay the course on Iran and Iraq. Gates would also be an asset before Congress. If the Administration needed to make the case that Iran’s weapons program posed an imminent threat, Gates would be a better advocate than someone who had been associated with the flawed intelligence about Iraq. The former official said, “He’s not the guy who told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he’ll be taken seriously by Congress.”

Hersh reminds us that it would be dangerously naive to assume that Gates' replacement of Rumsfeld and the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group will get us out of Iraq or devise a better solution to Iran's nuclear ambitions (whatever those are) than a U.S. military attack on Iran. Hersh also correctly notes that Israeli hawks are pushing hard to get us to either attack Iran or give them the go ahead to attack. Our Middle East policy continues to hurtle toward the abyss; instead of trying to minimize Muslim hatred toward the U.S. and Israel we are engaging in policies that will make our terrorism problem worse. This is one of the most remarkable ironies of the Bush administration: while trumpeting their concern to fight terrorism and protect the American people they are increasing terrorism and making us less safe.

Bush not only exacerbates our problems with Iraq, Iran and Syria, but his "malign neglect" worsens the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Pulitzer prize winner Bill Gallagher is correct: "More than any other measure, more than 10 million airport-security officers, more than walls and sealed borders, a resolution to the Palestine issue will do more to stem terrorism, help pacify the region and protect U.S. security than anything else."

What Does the Robert Gates Appointment Mean?

In today's Washington Post James Mann's "Understanding Gates" questions how much of a change Gates will be over Rumsfeld. Mann's caution that we cannot be certain precisely which position Gates will take on Iraq is well taken. Nonetheless, I strongly disagree with Mann on one point: "Rumsfeld was never a neoconservative; he was an obstreperous contrarian, committed not to putting forward any particular philosophy but to aggressively challenging whatever ideas his bureaucratic opponents and critics put forward."

Rumsfeld, as I think a reading of Mann's Rise of the Vulcans shows, was not simply a "contrarian". He was, except for very early in his career, a consistent advocate of 1) suspicion toward and confrontation with the Soviet Union, 2) over-estimates of Soviet military power ("Team B"), and 3) virtually unlimited increases in defense spending to "protect" us from the Soviets; finally, 4) he was the man who strongly advocated and had virtually sole responsibility for executing the Iraq War. Rumsfeld may not have been a "neo-conservative" in precisely the same sense that Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith are, but who hired all three of them for top jobs in his Defense Department? I'm willing to grant that Rumsfeld is not as consistently considered a "card carrying" neo-con but there is precious little light between his positions and those of the usual neo-con suspects; and referring to him as simply a "contrarian" is one of Mann's characteristically overly charitable accounts of the "Vulcans".

Mann's points about Gates' history are definitely worth taking into consideration and only watching Gates' performance and who he allies with will tell us where he stands today on Iraq. Reading the Wikipedia article on Gates suggests additional reasons to worry about how much of a pseudo-conservative he may turn out to be.