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Three Choices on Iraq, Mr. President, by Richard Holbrooke |
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Three Choices on Iraq, Mr. President
25.10.2006
By Richard Holbrooke |
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Dear Mr. President: As
soon as the midterm elections are over -- and
regardless of their outcome -- you will have to make
the most consequential decision of your presidency,
probably the most complicated any president has had
to make since Lyndon Johnson decided to escalate in
Vietnam in 1965, and far more difficult than your
decisions after Sept. 11, 2001. Then, you rallied a
nation in shock, overthrew the Taliban in
Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and
confronted Iran and North Korea over their nuclear
programs -- acting in all cases with self-confidence
and overwhelming national approval.
Now all four projects are in peril. With far less
public support, and time running out on your
presidency, you must reverse the recent decline in
Afghanistan; get North Korea back to the six-party
talks; isolate a cocky, dangerous Iran, which thinks
events are going its way; and, above all, figure out
what to do with Iraq. So allow me to offer some very
unsolicited suggestions on that war.
Broadly speaking, you have three choices: "Stay the
course," escalate or start to disengage from Iraq
while pressing hard for a political settlement. I
will argue for the third course, not because it is
perfect but because it is the least bad option.
In your radio address last week, you said that "our
goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging: ... victory."
You added that the only thing changing "are the
tactics. ... Commanders on the ground are constantly
adjusting their approach to stay ahead of the enemy,
particularly in Baghdad."
One can only hope that you do not mean those words
literally -- or believe them. "Stay the course" is
not a strategy; it is a slogan, useful in domestic
politics but meaningless in the field.
Your real choice comes down to escalation or
disengagement. If victory -- however defined -- is
truly your goal, you should have sent more troops
long ago. You and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
say that the commanders in Iraq keep telling you
they don't need more troops, but, frankly, even if
technically accurate, this is baffling.
Plain and simple, there are not, and never have
been, enough troops in Iraq to accomplish the
mission.
But where would more troops come from? The Pentagon
says the all-volunteer Army is stretched to the
breaking point; it is now recruiting 42-year-olds
and lowering entry standards. Afghanistan also needs
more troops. And suppose additional troops do not
turn the tide? Does the United States then send
still more? Even advocates aren't sure escalation
will produce a turnaround.
The last option is the most difficult for an
embattled wartime president: Change your goals,
disengage from the civil war already under way,
focus maximum effort on seeking a political
power-sharing agreement, and try to limit further
damage in the region and the world.
Even your strongest critics understand that
disengagement is fraught with risk. You have warned
of the bloody consequences that might follow a U.S.
withdrawal. Preventing such a tragedy must be your
first priority. For this and other reasons, I do not
favor a fixed timetable for withdrawal, since it
would give away any remaining American flexibility
and leverage. But the kind of killing that you
predict would follow an American departure is
already under way, and nothing we have done has
prevented it from increasing rapidly. At the current
pace, there will be well over 40,000 murders a year
in Iraq. A recent University of Maryland poll found
that 78 percent of Iraqis surveyed believe the
American presence is now "provoking more conflict
than it is preventing," and 71 percent support a
U.S. withdrawal within one year.
I urge you to lay out realistic goals, redeploy our
troops and focus on the search for a political
solution. We owe that to the Iraqis who welcomed the
overthrow of Saddam and put their trust in us, only
to find their lives in danger as a result. By a
political solution, I mean something far more
ambitious than current U.S. efforts aimed at
improving the position of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
by changing ministers or setting timelines for
progress.
Sen. Joe Biden and Les Gelb have advocated what they
call, in a reference to the negotiations that ended
the war in Bosnia in 1995, a "Dayton-like" solution
to the political situation -- by which they mean a
looser federal structure with plenty of autonomy for
each of the three main groups, and an agreement on
sharing oil revenue. Your administration has
dismissed these proposals out of hand, and the time
lost since Gelb first presented them more than two
years ago has made them far more difficult to
achieve.
Yet only two weeks ago, the Iraqi parliament took a
big step toward creating more powerful regions, with
an interesting proviso to delay implementation for
18 months. You could use this legislation as
leverage to negotiate a peaceful arrangement for
sharing power and oil revenue, while redeploying and
reducing our forces in Iraq. If such an effort
fails, nothing has been lost by trying.
Those who say this is a proposal to partition Iraq
into three countries (which it is not) and would
trigger all-out civil war are misrepresenting the
idea, while offering nothing in its place.
Whatever else you do, Mr. President, you should send
American troops to northern Iraq (Kurdistan), which
is still safe but increasingly tense, to reduce the
very real risk of a Turkish-Kurdish war.
In recent years, almost any advocate of a change in
policy has been accused of wanting to "cut and run."
Such rhetoric works against the bipartisanship that
this crisis requires. But if you were to decide to
draw down American troops -- without a fixed
timetable -- and seek a political compromise, the
responsible leadership of the Democratic Party would
surely work with you, especially if the Iraq Study
Group, co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton,
recommends significant changes in policy, which you
could use as a starting point for rebuilding a
bipartisan national consensus.
This crisis is far too acute for recrimination. If
we are still at war during the 2008 campaign, as
seems likely if you do not change course, it will
benefit neither party but will leave your successor
with the same choices you now face, but under far
worse circumstances.
WashingtonPost com
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