We haven’t tended to engage much with Iraq on GlobalDashboard, in my case largely because I’m not sure I have much to add – though I’ve long felt that Democrats calling for withdrawal don’t seem to have much of a strategy underpinning their position. But when two serious experts on completely opposite ends of the political spectrum say the same thing on the same day, then it’s at least worth a listen.
First up, Bill Clinton’s National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, had this to say in an FT piece on the 23rd, co-authored with Bruce Riedel at Brookings:
A clear US commitment to a complete, irreversible withdrawal from Iraq may now be the only way to develop a regional concert of powers that could work with Iraqis to try to stabilise the country and cauterise the conflict.
The continuing US and British occupation is a roadblock to that co-operation. The galvanising impact of a decision to depart unequivocally can be the last best chance at preventing the conflict from boiling over beyond Iraq to the whole region. How we design and implement our departure is our last significant remaining leverage.
Meanwhile, our favourite grandfather of fourth generation warfare, Bill Lind, has a piece in the 30 July edition of the American Conservative entitled “How to win in Iraq”, which he previews on his blog:
The central strategic question is, how can a state be re-created in Iraq? There is no guaranteed answer; it may not be possible. What is guaranteed, however, is that the United States cannot do it. The problem is legitimacy. To be real, a future Iraqi state must be perceived by Iraqis as legitimate. But anything the United States, as a foreign invader and occupier, creates, endorses or assists automatically thereby loses its legitimacy.
What the U.S. must therefore do is get out of the way. When elements in Iraq move to re-create a state — and those elements must be independent of the current al-Maliki government, which, as an American creation, has no legitimacy — we have to let them try to succeed. There is, in turn, only one way for us to get out of the way, and that is to get out of Iraq, as rapidly as we can.
