I've already worded out pretty hard this weekend re: How to Train Your Dragon, and I'll be the first to admit that I don't know enough about this topic to hold forth indefinitely. But I've been sitting on this for a couple weeks, and I do want to say a little bit about the current resurgence of violence in Iraq and what America ought to do about it. (And say it now, before things change again)
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| Supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria wave al-Qaeda flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul, Iraq. (Associated Press) (IDK if I'm actually allowed to repost that here, but sue me.) |
I was never a fan of the war. I remember during the build-up, when GWB pushed and pushed for Iraq to allow UN weapons inspectors into the country, and they did, and then in one particular news article, I remember GWB describing the no-weapons-here reports coming in from the inspectors as "like the replay of a bad movie." And it was clear to me then that Bush and his crew had decided they wanted a war and that they would find a way to get one. And so it proved to be; Iraq was not an al-Qaeda ally, Iraq was not building or hiding WMDs, and our invasion made a god-awful mess of things that it took us years to painstakingly reassemble. I wasn't a huge fan of John Kerry as presidential candidate either, but I was still horrified that even after Bush started an entirely unneccessary war that already was showing signs of bogging down into insurgency, American voters not only reelected him, they gave him carte blanche in both houses of Congress. I was enthusiastic about Obama's candidacy in 2008 for a number of reasons, but chief among them was that he was not Bush and seemed committed to reversing some of the most harmful things Bush was doing. His record there has been mixed, which is partly his fault and partly that of the Congresses with which we have partnered him, but he did get us out of Iraq.
And that was a relief. Exiting with something approaching dignity did not erase the shame I felt on behalf of my country, but at least it was behind us. And then, apparently just like the entire rest of the country, I moved it into my mental outbox and lost all interest, succumbing to a not-unreasonable case of Iraq fatigue. Sure, I saw occasional news headlines about suicide bombings, but I rarely even bothered to click on them; suicide bombings are just a thing that happens in the middle east, I suppose is how the reasoning goes, and it no longer has anything to do with us.
And then, last month, Iraq was right back into a civil war. Oh joy.
Again, I am not at all an expert on this topic. I may have been aware of the chaos and bloodletting during the occupation, but I had only fuzzy understandings of the causes beyond 'they're different types of Muslim and don't like each other.' I knew nothing about the strategic picture and how it changed over time; in short, I knew only what was most prominent in the mainstream media, which was largely a valuable but incomplete picture of the chaos on the ground unburdened by any attempt to paint a larger picture of cause and effect. Since the latest resurgence of violence, I've done a bit better, I think, in terms of finding and reading sources concerned with providing information rather than maintaining market share. For example, while I've known since the start of the war that Sunnis and Shi'ites were rival branches of Islam that sometimes broke into open conflict, it was not until June that I learned that Iran and most of Iraq are Shi'ite, Saudi Arabia is Sunni, and what impact that has on the strategic balance of the middle east. So I speak from a position of as much knowledge as I've been able to find, but I'm well aware that there are realities in Iraq that very few Americans can actually grasp.
But the best we can do is the best we can do, and as an American voter who came of age in the era of Iraq, it behooves me well to have an opinion on what is happening in that unhappy nation and what, if anything, we should do about it. And while I recognize that my longstanding biases toward this war - or the previous war, at least - make it difficult for me to render a dispassionate judgment, I honestly think that for the time being, the best thing for America to do is as little as possible. Here's why.
Note: A helpful but by no means comprehensive list of sources is at the end. If you think I'm making any claims that the facts don't support, call me out on it in the comments and we'll go from there.
1. This is not our fault
I need to establish this as quickly as possible: as far as I can tell, America is not to blame for ISIS (now just IS) snapping up half of Iraq in the course of a weekend. That's not to say that America is blameLESS; it is clear that had America made many decisions differently, going all the way back to the decision in 2003 to invade, this would almost certainly not have happened. But for all the many mistakes America made, everything I can find suggests that leaving Iraq helpless and alone is not one of them. By the end of 2011, Iraq had a constitution and a government well into its second term; it had overcome the worst of the sectarian bloodletting, not by crushing the enemy (although many were, in fact, crushed), but by driving a wedge between the instigators (Sunni operatives of al-Qaeda who had intentionally incited the civil war by attacking Shi'ite populations and shrines) and the Sunni tribesmen who fought alongside them out of distrust for the Shi'ite-led government that had replaced the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein. Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had agreed to incorporate minority Kurds and Sunnis into the government and to enfold the veteran Sunni fighters of the 'Awakening' who fought alongside the United States into the national security forces. The army had been trained and equipped at great effort and expense by America and included competent, battle-proven officers and soldiers of all sects. And most importantly, it seems clear that the Iraqi government wanted us gone. At the very least, they refused to accept terms for a basing agreement for U.S. troops to remain in the country; the sticking point appeared to be judicial immunity for American servicepeople, and while I understand it's not an exciting prospect to have a bunch of armed people running around your country not subject to your laws, I'm given to understand that's a pretty standard clause in troop basing agreements. It's the same thing that Karzai has been fussing about in Afghanistan. So we could - in fact, the government wanted to - have left a small force in-nation for training, security and special operations, and Iraq either desired conditions so onerous that we said no, or didn't want us and imposed such onerous conditions that we'd have to say no; I suspect the latter, although in this I'm entirely dependent upon people making second- and third-hand judgments.
In any case, it seems that we did right by Iraq before leaving; we cleaned up our own mess to the utmost of our abilities and managed to leave them in good shape to handle things on our own. There was no glaring omission of our responsibilities that left the door open for Islamic State.
It might also be argued that we are to blame due to our actions or inactions in other theaters - in particular, our failure to support the moderate rebels in Syria who have since lost ground to ISIS and similar groups, and a failure on the part of press, public, and policymakers alike to recognize and act against the ISIS threat before it could be realized. And it is true that we did neither of those things. But I'm going to make an argument here that I think should be obvious but that seems not to be commonly held in Washington: we are not obligated to be in charge of defending against threats to other nations' security. We are not the sole or even primary line of defense for any nation except ourselves ... and arguably Japan, which is its own special case. We certainly maintain alliances with a great many nations for the purposes of sharing information and taking joint action against common threats, but in doing so, we do not assume responsibility for maintaining their sovereignty unless specifically agreed by treaty, which I just finished describing was not the case for Iraq. So while it is possible that other actions by America could have prevented or at least forestalled the development of the Islamic State, it was at least as much Iraq's job to be monitoring this sort of thing and taking measures against it as it was ours. And given how utterly they clearly failed to do so, I don't see how the resulting mess can be fairly laid at our feet.
2. The primary threats to Iraq's security are not IS fighters but disaffected Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds
As I described above, Iraq was actually in pretty decent shape when we left them. Unfortunately, it seems to have taken very little time to drive what momentum they had straight into the ground.
For starters, it seems that Maliki had no sooner seen the last of American troops but he started reneging on all those agreements to share power with anyone who was not, like him, a Shi'ite. The fighters of the Sunni Awakening were never incorporated into the armed forces - which is just stupid, not only because of the loss of trained and capable personnel, but the fact that this left those same trained and capable personnel beyond the control of the government AND with a chip on their shoulder. Not only that, but those Sunni and Kurdish personnel already serving in the army were removed from positions, sidelined, forced to resign, or court-martialled, which stripped the military of many competent leaders and soldiers, including any remnants of Saddam's army that had been found trustworthy enough to return; led to ranks being staffed by political and sectarian reliability rather than competence, with predictable results for training, readiness, and morale; and sent a clear message to Iraq's minorities that the armed forces were not their armed forces. They were of, by and for the Shi'ites.
The political offices promised to minority groups were likewise not shared; in particular, the various ministries in command of the police, army and intelligence agencies were held for members of Maliki's party or Maliki himself. While this might be reasonable in many nations, it's important to remember that just a few years ago, Sunni and Shi'ite were killing each other in batch lots; by ensuring that all organs of state authority were held in Shi'ite hands, Maliki was not merely breaking his promises but arguably posing a clear and present existential threat to the Sunni and Kurdish populations of the country. Sectarian violence began to rise again, largely instigated by Shi'ite groups who seemed strangely immune to prosecution and government intervention; I would guess that there are still many grudges from the Saddam era that were expressed against the formerly dominant Sunnis under the tacit acceptance or even approval of Maliki's government, at the local if not national level.
And so, when a virulently Sunni armed group began tearing into northern Iraq, and the demoralized and unprepared military began collapsing rather than fight for a population with which few of them had any ties, I can't find it in me to particularly blame the many Sunni tribes and elders who took this chance to overthrow what had become essentially a hostile occupying power. Nor can I blame in the slightest the Kurds, who not only wheeled out their own well-trained militia to oppose the encroaching IS forces, but took the opportunity to snatch up some territory that they've wanted restored to them for generations. The Kurds have had a raw deal in Iraq, and I can't think that they owe a whole lot of anything to ANY government in Baghdad, let alone one so systematically determined to ignore their interests. They've wanted their own state for years; now seems like a perfectly reasonable moment to start establishing it. (And let's be honest; they have their own government services, their own administration, their own fricken army. Declaring a separate state seems to be rather a formality at this point.)
ISIS built a respectable force of well-trained, battle-ready foreign fighters during their adventures in Syria. But they simply did not and do not have the manpower to overrun or occupy half of the much-larger Iraq in a single gulp. They managed this only because of the simultaneous self-inflicted weakness of the Iraqi (Shi'ite) forces opposing them and the willing support of the far more numerous local Sunnis who joined them in their advance. And while I could understand the case for America intervening to protect an ally against a foreign invasion, it's much less noble to intervene to protect an incompetent government against the largely local uprising provoked by its own neglect and paranoia. Choosing sides in government v. terrorist is one thing; choosing sides between Shi'ite and Sunni, which is what we would be doing, is quite another.
3. Iraq has everything they need to fix their own damn problems
So I would strongly argue that Iraq's problems are largely Iraq's fault. Perhaps the incursion by ISIS was unavoidable, but were it not for the failure of the Maliki administration to follow through on its promises, the invaders would have received little if any local support and would have been met by a well-trained, well-equipped and multi-ethnic military. The fighting, had any occurred, would no doubt have been bloody and bitter, but light infantry armed with assault rifles and pickup trucks should be manageable by a professional army supported by the best in U.S. military export technology. Clearly, that didn't happen.
Fortunately, the playbook for resolving this mess has already been charted out; this is, after all, the second time an extremist Sunni group supported by local Sunni tribes fought against the central government, and the solution the first time around - isolate the extremists from their local supporters and turn the Sunni tribes against them - is once again a perfectly valid response. America managed it that time by brokering a political compromise to give the Sunni fighters a stake in the central government at the same time al-Qaeda's bloodthirsty antics were turning their local allies against them. Already, it seems, ISIS' decision to rebrand as the Islamic State and declare a caliphate has perturbed many of the Iraqis who joined their advance a month ago. The tricky part, of course, is that the Sunni tribes have already done this dance and got burned on the political follow-through; they're not likely to rejoin the government fold for any thing best characterized as a 'promise', however well-intentioned.
In particular, it seems clear that Iraq will not be whole as long as Nouri al-Maliki is Prime Minister. Unfortunately, elections this spring delivered his bloc the first chance at creating a government, and he shows no signs of going gentle into that good night. While I don't know the details of the Iraqi consitutional process for forming a goverment, it requires no stretch of the imagination to suppose that, even absent the blocs that helped him form previous governments, a stubborn prime minister will be able to drag out the process of creating a government enormously. Worse, Iraq's still-new constitution might not hold up under the strain; it would require only a few actors to get tired of going through the process and take extrajudicial action - most likely in the form of violence - to thoroughly undermine the legitimacy of the constitutional process, which would be bad. Also complicating the question is the support Maliki holds from other players - America backed him for two terms as PM and is regrettably but understandably hesitant to throw him completely under the bus, and Iran appears ready to back him to the hilt. So there are a lot of challenges in between Iraq and forming a new, multiethnic government capable and willing to make clear changes that will enfranchise non-Sunni groups in Iraq's political equation. However, I doubt anything short of that will suffice for most of the Sunnis currently holding out against the government, and even if those Sunnis grow disenchanted with IS, they need not adhere to all the new Caliph's decrees in order to present an ongoing challenge to the authority of the Baghdad government.
So: it will be messy, and it will take a while, and the time it takes will allow IS to become more and more entrenched and commit more and more crimes, and there is a very real possibility of the whole thing going off the rails, but in spite of all of this, the Iraqi political process should, eventually, be able to evict Maliki and create the conditions needed for reconciliation. Whether they're ever able to get the Kurds back into the fold is a whole other question, but one about which I frankly don't give a damn. The Kurds don't appear to be posing a particular threat to anyone who isn't trying to bother them. Let them have their country with blessings; whatever problems that creates in terms of other Kurdish minorities throughout the region are unlikely to be more destabilizing than having the Iraqi Kurds maintain their own army and sitting poised for the chance to break off of Iraq at the first warning. Some fights aren't worth having.
Now obviously, there are no guarantees that Iraq's government will pull this off. Maliki might manage to finagle his way back to the top. He might be replaced by another coalition that likewise also reneges on whatever promises they made to minority groups to win support. He might be replaced by a model multiethnic coalition too late to do any good. The process might collapse in recrimination and bloodshed. So given the uncertainty of the outcome, why shouldn't America take a more active role?
4. America has even less chance at fixing this than Iraq does
Keep in mind: the main threat to the Iraqi government is not the Islamic State; it is the Sunni fighters who have had it with the Shi'ite government's shit and, from their perspective, are launching a popular uprising every bit as valid as the Arab Spring revolts of 2011. So what options does America have to fix this? We can certainly bring diplomatic pressure to bear on the various government players to get their act together, and I'm quite sure that we're already doing so. We can attempt surgical operations through special forces or drone strikes against IS leaders, but even a successful campaign is unlikely to do much the desired result - a collapse of IS forces and a restoration of the central government's authority - and the risk of doing further damage is enormous; one misaimed missile that strikes a civilian home or vehicle, or one intelligence botch that sends troops after local Sunni fighters instead of - or even in addition to - IS foreigners, and the entire Sunni community will be hardened against us, and by extension, the central government. Even a pinpoint-perfect campaign would almost certainly incite resentment, as can be clearly seen from our adventures in Pakistan.
Another option would be to hold off on direct intervention and instead try to shore up the Baghdad government with weapons and logistic support (and, in fact, that is precisely what we are doing), but this too is a mistake. For starters, arming a military that is just as likely to be used for sectarian purposes by the ruling clique as it is to be deployed against 'terrorists' is an invitation to a disaster with our name on it even worse than the aforementioned drone strikes gone awry. Furthermore, at this point, there is no reason to believe that the military is competent to drive IS out of Iraq with or without our equipment. For that matter, one of the leading reasons we have refused to arm the Syrian rebels is that we fear our equipment falling into extremist hands, while all the while we have been funneling huge amounts of equipment to Iraq; in a week, ISIS managed to take more of our materiel from the Iraqi army than they ever could have gleaned from arms deals with the Syrian resistance. If our objective is to keep American hardware away from extremists, we should be demanding the return of every article of equipment we've sold to Iraq in the past five years. I understand why the Obama administration's immediate response to the ISIS incursion was to speed up the delivery pipeline, but I believe that is a mistake; until such time as there is a government in Baghdad worthy of the name, any weapons we send into Iraq is just more fuel on the fire. My feelings for the several hundred military 'advisers' he has sent are identical to my feelings about weapon shipments, only more so.
The only other option that comes to mind is a boots-on-the-ground invasion, which manages to combine all the disadvantages of every other option into one neat package. Not only is it domestically unthinkable to send American troops back into Iraq, but it's not at all clear who we would be shooting. IS isn't stupid; they can blend into a civilian population as well as any veterans of asymetrical warfare. Moreover, there is zero chance that we could engage ISIS without getting drawn into conflict against at least elements of the Sunni tribes who we so badly need not to antagonize. And even if we could somehow swoop in and crush all the antagonizing forces without sparking a fullscale war on our own, doing so would do incalculable damage to the political process in Baghdad, and without the elusive and possibly mythical inclusive Baghdad government, anything we accomplish is simply a stopgap until the next round of mismanagement sparks the next round of revolt.
And last of all ...
5. Our interests in this fight are not worth the consequences getting involved
Which is not to say that we don't have interests. To have Iraq collapse into rubble mere years after we pulled out would do undeniable harm to American prestige (although I'm not convinced that would be entirely a bad thing; America could stand to be a lot more wary about what the world thinks of us). The lawlessness of a civil war will provide havens for those who wish to mount attacks on America to plan and prepare to do so. And there is a humanitarian interest in preventing Iraq from becoming the same horror story as Syria (although our failure to do so there would make this a ... problematic justification to intervene in Iraq, at best). But getting involved in a fight purely to protect one's own prestige is the textbook definition of o'erweening pride, and if anything should be clear by 2014, it's that America doesn't actually care about humanitarian causes unless the perpetrators also happen to be on our shit list. Which leaves the question of havens for terrorism.
One of the writers who has helped me understand what is going on in Iraq had the following to say about calling the Sunni militants in Iraq 'terrorists':
So while there is no doubt a terrorist element to the Sunni fighters in Iraq, they are currently focused on other goals, and it would be impossible for us to combat the terrorists among them (on their native turf, at least) without also fighting the many fighters entirely concerned with their beef against Baghdad. Doing so would create legions of enemies for us where none now exist and greatly enlarge the threat of terrorism, which is the only way Arab tribesmen in the middle east are actually able to act against America. Which isn't to say never; if Iraq breaks down into full civil war or even multi-state solution with one part governed by extremists occurs, the worst will have come to pass and we certainly will be free to send our drones to gather intelligence and drop bombs and scout for special forces raids on terrorists in Sunni territories of Iraq, just as we currently do in a host of other nations. As long as there is a chance of NOT provoking that worst-case scenario of civil war and terrorist havens, however, discretion would appear to be the better part of valor.Without getting into arcane and useless debates about what constitutes a “terrorist,” as a practical matter it is a mistake to think of these groups as being principally a bunch of terrorists.The problem there is that that implies that what these guys mostly want to do is to blow up buildings or planes elsewhere around the world, and particularly American buildings and planes. While I have no doubt that there are some among the Sunni militants who want to blow up American buildings and planes right now, and many others who would like to do so later, that is not their principal motivation.Instead, this is a traditional ethno-sectarian militia waging an intercommunal civil war.
So, Iraq is a mess. And there aren't any really good options. I feel a lot of sympathy for Obama, who must want nothing more in this world than for Iraq to be a stable, self-sustaining country that deals with its own shit and leaves us out of it. I appreciate the hesitance he has thus far shown to hurl the lives, fortune and sacred honor of America back into the balance, even as I wish he had held back further, delaying the deployment of any troops ('advisory' or otherwise) and the flow of war materiel until the Iraqis get at least the first parts of their political house in order. I hope the administration is serious about preventing mission creep, and that they are prepared and willing to cut off support for the current government if all other avenues for change run dry. But most of all, I hope that Iraq can find some way to live with itself. That might mean separation - Kurdistan at the least, and possibly along the Sunni-Shi'ite split. But one way or another, people have to get tired of killing each other eventually. I hope Iraq gets there soon.
Sources:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/iraq-conflict-isis-militants-post-grisly-images-of-mass-killing/ (a report from early June on apparent war crimes committed by ISIS forces)http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2014/06/14-iraq-military-situation-pollack (super-useful article breaking down the players, the causes of the conflict, and the most likely outcomes; so far as I can tell, it still holds up fairly well a month after it was written)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/06/18/how-arab-backers-of-the-syrian-rebels-see-iraq/ (another super-useful article describing the war from the Arab perspective, highlighting all the ways in which an injudicious U.S. response could backfire)
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/06/iraq-christians-seek-refuge-with-kurds-2014624867119947.html (one of the many stories depicting the Kurds establishing their bona fides as trustworthy and reliable in probably preparation for a bid to gain full independence)
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/06/mapping-out-iraq-fighting-groups-201462494731548175.html (a nice interactive map of the sectarian faultlines in Iraq and a listing of the major factions in each sect and how they relate to each other)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-19/maliki-proves-losing-bet-for-u-s-as-iraq-s-unifier.html (in-depth article on Nouri al-Maliki and his general uselessness. Since it was written, he has dug deeper and deeper to resist increasing calls to step aside.)
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/islamic-state-claims-shia-mosque-destruction-20147414533266331.html (more recent story about IS destroying Shi'ite institutions, which is likely to enrage Shi'ites and disgust moderate Sunnis in approximately equal measure)
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/07/03/328145985/have-the-islamist-militants-overreached-in-iraq-and-syria (most recent story, suggesting that IS already is losing traction with its allies, but not necessarily making it more likely for the government to retake its territory)
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