Realistically, Iraq is right where it should be; it's America's priorities that are off kilter
Thomas Barnett
¦"Political Violence Surges in Iraq: Two-Day Toll Reaches 100; Third Charter Deadline Missed," by Ellen Knickmeyer and Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, 26 August 2005, p. A1.
¦"Divided They Stand," op-ed by David Brooks, New York Times, 26 August 2005, pulled from web.
¦"Bush: 'We Will Stay, We Will Fight'; Faced with Rising Criticism, He Says Goals Are Being Met," by Sam Coates and Mike Allen, Washington Post, 25 August 2005, p. A1.
¦"Before it's too late in Iraq," op-ed by Wesley K. Clark, Washington Post, 26 August 2005, p. 21.
¦"Standoff Continues in Crawford: As Bush, Sheehan Return, Both Sides Plan Rallies," by Sam Coates, Washington Post, 26 August 2005, p. A17.
¦"Rallying the Troops and Avoiding Reality," op-ed by Colbert I. King, Washington Post, 27 August 2005, p. A17.
¦"New England, Va. Bases Survive Cut," by Bradley Graham and Eric M. Weiss, Washington Post, 25 August 2005, p. A1.
¦"S.D., N.M. Air Force Bases Get Reprieve," by Bradley Graham, Washington Post, 27 August 2005, p. A6.
¦"China to Allow More Stock Sales: $270 Billion of State Assets Put in Play," by Peter S. Goodman, Washington Post, 25 August 2005, p. D1.
Iraq's tortuously slow movement toward a constitution saps our sense of morale. "My God," we think to ourselves, "can't they move any faster with all this killing going on!"
But the outcome that's unfolding is both expected and probably the best we can hope for. I've said it before and I'll say it again: we killed a unitary state-an artificial unitary state-and what we begat were three societies with a lot of bad blood between them. The two past "losers," the Shiites and the Kurds, will not allow themselves to fall under the control of the Sunnis, no matter how much blood they must spill in the process. Since both have oil, both feel they'll be fine on their own. And they probably will be, especially the Shiites, because of Iran's obvious desire to sponsor and mentor the emergent mini-republic. Turkey, if it got over it's own fears, could play a similar role with the Kurds, but frankly, the Kurds are all right and will be no matter who looks out for them.
The Sunnis remain the odd man out: no oil, no sponsors, no hope for regaining top-dog position. So some significant portion of them will fight on, and so long as its Kurds and Shiites fighting back, it will never end. When Sunnis themselves fight back, then it will end. Sunnis will not fight back until they see that they have no choice, otherwise suffer the odd man out status permanently in a tripartite Iraq that never finds it within itself to ever come back together again.
The constitution process both marks the current state of this unfolding reality and it moves the pile a bit, so long as everyone keeps talking. On the oil issue, the proposal is for revenue sharing on a per capita basis. Smart move by the Shiites and Kurds, and the Sunnis will never get a better deal by fighting. Iraq experts agree: this is a pretty sensible outcome.
This is Iraqi democracy right now-and that's okay.
If we want out, we need to build capacity within these three regimes individually, across the loose federation itself, and then in terms of local patronage expressed by neighbors. Iran needs no push on the Shiites. Turkey will on the Kurds, and that process should involve the EU and all the quid pro quos that implies. The House of Saud is the logically incentivized local on the Sunnis, and if we're not working that conversation now, we should be.
Bush says we will fight on, and this certitude, amidst the losses on our side during this obviously tumultuous time in Iraq, makes a lot of people mad back here in the states-especially parents and loved ones of service personnel over in Iraq right now.
Bush is right to say we will fight on, because if we pull out now and pretend the Gap will be shrunk on its own, without the occasional employment of the Leviathan and-quite frankly-the non-stop deployment of our SysAdmin-type forces over the very long haul, we will simply find ourselves pulled into the next rotten Gap situation a couple of years from now, just as unprepared for the "slog" as we were in Iraq.
Make no mistake: argue yourself out of Iraq and you'll find yourself argued right into the next thing, whether it's North Korea, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Colombia-whatever. The question isn't, "Are we going to do this?" The question is, "Are we going to get good at doing this?"
Because if we get good, then we prioritize our resources better, and thus treat our people better in the process. We get more successful at it as a result, thus we attract more partners. Those partners want a more defined rule set for how we cooperate, and then we have a system emerging. And then we really get good at this. We save lives, we don't waste them. We create connectivity and foster hope. We deal with terrorists by destroying their ability to recruit, fund, and operate beyond the grasp of our law enforcement agencies. We win a global war on terrorism.
But doint all that requires we rethink our military big time, our government big time, and our international security system big time. PNM started that conversation for me and those for whom the book worked. BFA will extend it.
Wesley Clark says, "U.S. armed forces still haven't received resources, restructuring and guidance adequate for the magnitude of the task"-meaning Iraq.
Meanwhile, Americans are fighting tooth and nail to preserve Cold War defense infrastructure all over America. And when we do this, make no mistake: over the long haul we trade lives for jobs. We put our people in the field at risk by preferring to hold onto the past and refusing to admit what we've stumbled into in the here and now-a reality that I call the Gap. It cannot be voted out of office. It is not a Neocon invention. It is one-third of humanity in significant suffering. We owe that Gap plenty-as spiritual people who care about others. And yes, what we owe them first and foremost is an opportunity for security.
Lives will be sacrificed in this process, but those lives won't be in vain if we make the restructuring necessary to give those troops the best possible resources, training, equipment, and doctrine for the tasks ahead.
Instead, big chunks of the Pentagon, of Washington, and of America prefer to cling to the past. We prefer our familiar scary monsters, because they keep our bases as is, our military industrial complex as is, our jobs in our congressional districts as is.
And as a result, we're not waging the peace we should be waging today in Iraq, because we can't get to that point with the limited SysAdmin force capacity that we now possess.
We can make Iraq secure. We can keep the Big Bang moving. We can shrink the Gap. We can do it all.
But not if we're going to refuse to change, move off the Cold War past, get over China. That's our real unwillingness to face reality.
China continues to open up, whereas the Gap continues to burn. At some point we get past China, reorganize ourselves truly for the tasks at hand, attract the allies who want to help us inside the Gap (especially the Indians and Chinese), and we get serious about this whole affair.
Bush started the process, but he has not committed his administration, his government, his Pentagon to the follow through.
If Sheehan et. al force this much needed adjustment, then they will have done God's work. If all they achieve is America's selfish withdraw and refocus on itself, then more lives will be needlessly wasted inside the Gap than we'll ever be able to count. Those lives must count somewhere, sometime, with someone.
We have it within ourselves to do so much better than we're now doing.
When I said just before the election that I didn't think Bush had it within him to make the necessary changes to get broad Core-wide buy-in to that which he started with his Global War on Terrorism and the Big Bang, it's this sort of indecisiveness and inability to act boldly that I feared: this pretense that it's all going well enough and that we really don't need to change that much to succeed.
We do need to change-a whole helluva lot. Millions upon millions of lives depend on this-few of them American. But if we imagine a future worth creating, we will have to value these lives, we will have to wage these wars and win these peace's, and we will have to commit ourselves to shrinking the Gap.
Want connectivity, willing to take whatever content comes with it
¦"Pakistan looks to India to save its cinema," by Ashraf Khan, Variety, 22-28 August 2005, p. 14.
Fascinating bit in Variety: Pakistan cinema is dying, so theater owners are pushing to lift ban on Bollywood films from India. They are saying, "without this connectivity, we cannot survive, so damn your sensitivity on the content-we want our Bollywood!""
thomaspmbarnett.com |
