"Winning the Unwinnable War"

"Winning the Unwinnable War" is the title of an article in the January/February edition of Foreign Affairs. The article is written by James Dobbins, the Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Insitute, and a former special envoy to Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia and Afghanistan. He starts the article off in blunt fashion.

The beginning of wisdom is to recognize that the ongoing war in Iraq is not one that the United States can win. As a result of its initial miscalculations, misdirected planning, and inadequate preparation, Washington has lost the Iraqi people's confidence and consent, and it is unlikely to win them back. Every day that Americans shell Iraqi cities they lose further ground on the central front of Iraqi opinion.

This is far from the consensus view, at least so far as it's been made public, and at least outside of the community of staunch opponents of the war. But it's become an unspoken undercurrent to official discussion of the war in Iraq, as indicated by the gradual change in the tone of the administration's public pronouncements as they shift from discussion of the willingness to "stay the course" to more concrete ideas about how to measure progress such that we will know when it is time to begin bringing American troops home. Dobbins is among the first to articulate publicly that we have already lost the war in Iraq, but he will not be the last.

Dobbins is not so fatalistic about the ultimate outcome of the conflict. Provided we get out of the way, he finds reason to believe that the Iraqi national government can eventually assert it's authority over the country, and establish stability.

The war can still be won--but only by moderate Iraqis and only if they concentrate their efforts on gaining the cooperation of neighboring states, securing the support of the broader international community, and quickly reducing their dependence on the United States. Achieving such wide consensus will require turning the U.S.-led occupation into an Iraqi-led, regionally backed, and internationally supported endeavor to attain peace and stability based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Dobbin's ultimate solution, to shift the battle against the insurgents ever more to the shoulders of the Iraqis themselves, is the same one we pursued in Vietnam. Unfortunately it was a colossal failure there. The problem was the same one we confront now; how to go about assisting in the creation of a legitimate Iraqi government, without giving the Iraqis sufficient reason to concluce that the government is merely an American puppet. It's a fine line to walk. Too much independence, and we risk not giving the Iraqi government enough support to fight the insurgency. Too little, and we make it appear the government takes it's orders from Washington. Dobbins points out however, that Iraq is not like Vietnam in a crucial aspect:

Such caution is all the more warranted because, in one important respect, the Iraqi insurgency is very different from the communist and nationalist insurgencies of the Cold War: it lacks unity of command and an overarching ideology. The only factor that unites Muslim fundamentalist mujahideen, secular Baathist holdouts, and Shiite extremists is their desire to expel American forces--a goal that a majority of the Iraqi people seems to share, too. If that rallying cause can be weakened by diminishing Washington's involvement, the Iraqi government should be able to play on divisions among the rebels, steering some of them away from violence and toward the political mainstream, while marginalizing or dividing the rest.

However, he also goes on to list a number of difficulties that are presented by this approach. One is that we must back away from the Fallujah-like operations, where we lay siege to and obliterate Iraqi towns and drive out civilians by the hundreds of thousands. He also argues that we simply must be more discriminating in our operations against the insurgents. There can be no rampant shooting of Iraqi civilians after an American convoy is bombed, or dropping of "smart" bombs on buildings full of civilians. He calls for more special forces-like operations, and less armored columns patrolling Iraqi streets. Unfortunately such a shift may produce more American casualties, which will undermine support for any long-term engagement here at home.

Dobbins discusses more elements to this strategy in his article, which is worth reading in full. But in essence the war in Iraq is not a war that we can win. In the end it will require careful strategy and patience, as well as dimissing many of our notions about how to fight and win this war.

The real question of course is whether or not this is something the Bush administration can pull off. Despite the fact that they appear to be finally confronting the reality of the situation, the sad fact is that by the time they get around to agreeing with some of Dobbins conclusions, it will already be too late for even the Iraqi government to forestall civil war.