22 October 2006
No Good Exit Strategy
By Gwynne Dyer
Landlubbers usually get maritime analogies wrong. "Changing
course" is not cowardice; it's the sensible thing to do if the ship is
headed for the rocks. "Cutting" (the anchor cable) "and running" (before
the wind) is what you do when the storm is raging, the anchor is dragging,
and the ship is being driven onto a lee shore. And only very stupid rats do
not leave a sinking ship.
About four years too late, the Masters of the Universe are having
second thoughts about the wisdom of the whole misbegotten enterprise in
Iraq. Washington swirls with leaks, like the secret report by Colonel Pete
Devlin, the US Marine Corps chief of intelligence, that US troops in Anbar
province, the heartland of Sunni resistance, control nothing beyond their
own bases, and that the Iraqi government has no functioning institutions in
the province. And senior Republicans are seeking an exit strategy that will
absolve their party from blame for the disaster that is today's Iraq.
The long-term domestic political strategy is clear: blame the
Iraqis themselves. William Buckley, conservative editor of the National
Review, is already writing things like "our mission has failed because
Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of
130,000." We did our best for them, but they let us down.
That argument may well persuade American voters in the long run,
because they have never had much knowledge of Iraq, nor much interest in
it. But if, as expected, the Republicans lose control on one or both houses
of Congress this November, then the Democrats will make President Bush's
last two years in office miserable with Congressional investigations into
the lies used to justify the invasion and the staggering incompetence of
the occupation. So either Mr Bush must be persuaded to change course, or
else the Republican Party must put some distance between itself and Bush.
That's where the Republican grandees come in.
The Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan commission co-chaired by the
first President Bush's secretary of state, James Baker, will present its
recommendations for future strategy in Iraq -- essentially, for an exit
strategy -- in December or January. It is as an attempt by the grown-ups in
the Republican Party to separate the current President Bush from the
ignorant ideologues who encouraged him to invade Iraq and still refuse to
admit their mistake, but it will not succeed in that aim, for two reasons.
One is that there is no longer any good exit strategy from Iraq.
American military deaths there will probably exceed one hundred this month
for the first time since January, 2005. At least 3,000 Iraqis are being
killed each month, but a recent study by a team of epidemiologists at Johns
Hopkins University suggests that it may be as high as 15,000. The country
is just as likely to break up if American troops stay as if they leave, and
the ISG's talk of seeking help from Syria and Iran to stop the rot is sheer
fantasy.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, returning early this month from a
two-week tour of the Middle East, said: "Most of the leaders I spoke to
felt the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath has been a real disaster for
them. It has destabilised the region." But nobody feels that getting
deeply involved with the Bush administration's policies as the American
adventure in Iraq nears its end is wise or even safe.
Syria's Baathist regime counts 2,000 Iraqi refugees crossing its
border every day, and contemplates with horror the prospect of inheriting
Anbar province and perhaps the whole "Sunni triangle" of Iraq. Bashar
al-Assad's regime in Damascus is based on Syria's Alawite (Shia) minority,
and so many more Sunni militants could shift the balance in Syria in favour
of the Muslim Brotherhood and another Sunni uprising. But becoming
associated with American policy in the region would only make the risk of
revolution worse.
Saudi Arabia is urgently building a 550-mile (875-km.) high-tech
fence along the full length of its border with Iraq in anticipation of a
flood of jihadis and refugees heading south when Iraq breaks up, but it
will not intervene in some futile attempt to stop it. Iran expects to
benefit from close links with the Shia parties that dominate most of
Arabic-speaking Iraq, but has no incentive to save the United States from
humiliation or even to prevent the break-up of Iraq. Why should it?
The other reason that the ISG's recommendations will be ignored is
that far too many people have already been killed for Mr Bush and his
advisors to admit that their "war of choice" was all a mistake. As
Vice-President Dick Cheney told Time magazine this month: "I know what the
president thinks. I know what I think. And we're not looking for an exit
strategy. We're looking for victory."
What they really need is a strong-man who could hold Iraq together
and support their policies in the region. Somebody like Saddam Hussein,
perhaps, but Washington lost control of him long ago, and besides he's due
to hang later this year. So it may yet come to the Famous Final Scene, with
people scrambling onto helicopters from the roofs of the Green Zone in
Baghdad.
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