Over on Joshua Micah Mitchell’s Talking Points Memo, Steve Clemons has written a fine commentary on Juan Coles’ equally fine 10-point plan to deal with Iraq. There’s something in these two posts to anger almost everyone. Both writers understand that the Iraqis need to take control sooner, rather than later, and that they will need, not only our help, but the help of other nations, mainly those who were our close allies until our arrogance forced them to distance themselves from us. Clemons is especially clear on that last point:
As best I can tell, President Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove turn every battle — all of them — into winner-takes-all, take-no-prisoners skirmishes. This is not strategy. This is just clear-cutting — when America lets them get away with it.
Strategy would be losing the right battles to your friends so that America wins from them the support it most needs.
But both writers also make the forceful point that simply withdrawing from Iraq would be an abandonment of responsibility and would lead to many more deaths than the on-going insurgency actions are causing. Coles is concise and lucid on the likely results of a quick and unqualified U.S. withdrawal:
For one thing, there would be an Iraq civil war. Iraq wasn’t having a civil war in 2002. And although you could argue that what is going on now is a subterranean, unconventional civil war, it is not characterized by set piece battles and hundreds of people killed in a single battle, as was true in Lebanon in 1975-76, e.g. People often allege that the US military isn’t doing any good in Iraq and there is already a civil war. These people have never actually seen a civil war and do not appreciate the lid the US military is keeping on what could be a volcano.
The 10-point plan he suggests is pragmatic and convincing, involving quick U.S. withdrawal from urban areas, followed by withdrawal of most ground troops. Those troop withdrawals would be accompanied by continuing U.S. air support of Iraqi military and security forces in firefights with guerilla units, protection of key Iraqi military leaders from assassination attempts, and material support for the Iraqi’s development of a strong armor corps. As a quid pro quo for that military assistance, the U.S. should demand district elections that would insure Sunni Arab participation in the Iraqi parliament, along with amnesty for former Baath Party members who have not been proven to have committed serious crimes, and the reinstatement of those who have been fired from the schools and the civil bureaucracy. With regard to reconstruction, Coles calls on Congress to rewrite the laws requiring that reconstruction funds must be spent with U.S. companies; those funds, he says, should go to Iraqi firms, to help rebuild the economy. Finally, he calls on the U.S. to participate in regular top-level meetings with the foreign ministers of Iraq’s neighbors, along with Russia, “to help put Iraq back on its feet through diplomacy and multilateral aid.”
This step will require that the Bush administration cease threatening regularly to bomb Tehran or to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. For the sake of getting out of Iraq without a world-class economic disaster, the US will just have to deal with the real world, which contains Iran and Syria.
This is all good sense. It is not strident, and it is not political jockeying for position. It deals with the situation that exists, here, there, and now. If the Democrats were serious about presenting us with alternatives to the demonstrably flawed policies of the Bush Administration, instead of simply wringing their hands and counting on Cindy Sheehan to deliver the electorate, they’d take something like Coles’ 10-point plan and make it into a plank. It’s certainly one that someone should be running on.
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