Iraq - A Strategic Blunder?

[Dayuhan]

Give it some thought. It was also calculated to show the collection of nations from which the threat originates that attacks on US interests world wide emanating from the ME would, contrary to previous experience, bring a disproportionate response.

The response notably attacked a nation only peripherally if at all involved. It also was aimed at giving the nominal enemies what they though they wanted but in a quite different place and not with results they anticipated -- so I'm not at all sure they got what they needed...

I don't see that disproportionate response carries much deterrent force if it isn't applied to those who did whatever it is we are responding to. The message we communicate is that you can attack the US and get away with it, and benefit from it, because the response is going to be applied to somebody else, leaving you with a propaganda bonanza.

I think the people who attacked us did get what they needed, and far more of it than they expected. Fortunately for us, they were unable to exploit the opportunity we gave them to the fullest possible extent. It's useful to have incompetent enemies, but it's not something we want to rely on.

Our strategic weakness lies in long-term political will. Our vulnerability is the war of attrition. This is no secret: we know it, our allies know it, our enemies know it. They can't defeat us, but if they can maneuver us into the right position, they might be able to outlast us and achieve the same effect. We know they will try to maneuver us into long-term static occupation of Muslim nations: that's where they want us to be. It is in our interest not to permit them to place us in this position. Seems to me we haven't exactly achieved that.

[Ken White]

I don't see that disproportionate response carries much deterrent force if it isn't applied to those who did whatever it is we are responding to.

Who would we respond to in this case? All those probes and provocations were nominally and officially performed by non-state actors from throughout the ME. No one nation was responsible, it was an area attitude that was to be deterred (actually, disrupted is a better word in the near term; the deterrent aspect rolls around to about that 2033 date I mentioned...). Iraq was chosen because it was a pariah state that had a leader even fellow Arab despots could not stand, it had little to no involvement, no Iraqi nationals had been in the attacks to that time, it was geographically central and should have been a military pushover. We were going to topple and leave.

The message we communicate is that you can attack the US and get away with it, and benefit from it, because the response is going to be applied to somebody else, leaving you with a propaganda bonanza.

That's true in western terms. It is not true in the ME. They understood that we were saying "you folks need to stop allowing your citizens to attack us or this could happen to you." Recall it was preceded by the Bush speech that announced preemptive attacks were on the table (June 2002). I'd also submit that propaganda bonanzas are fleeting.

news cycles and all that...

I think the people who attacked us did get what they needed, and far more of it than they expected. Fortunately for us, they were unable to exploit the opportunity we gave them to the fullest possible extent. It's useful to have incompetent enemies, but it's not something we want to rely on.

In reverse order; we have been benefiting from that incompetence since 1775 but I agree it's not a good idea to rely on it. The fact that they were unable to fully exploit the situation is not totally their responsibility; we aided by striking where we did and by several other actions -- and, most of all, by the hard work of an Army that went in unprepared but turned it around the hard way. We can disagree that they achieved all their aims; they didn't and we didn't. Wars are like that.

Our strategic weakness lies in long-term political will.

I agree in general. There are occasional exceptions.

Our vulnerability is the war of attrition. This is no secret: we know it, our allies know it, our enemies know it.

I think there are several misperceptions there but acknowledge they are the common wisdom. The American people are a lot tougher than many think. They are not casualty averse as many believe; they simply want payback for bodies lost in the form of results. They also do a pretty good cost benefit analysis -- thus we are still in Iraq in spite of seven years of screaming to get out...

They can't defeat us, but if they can maneuver us into the right position, they might be able to outlast us and achieve the same effect. We know they will try to maneuver us into long-term static occupation of Muslim nations: that's where they want us to be.

I think they are beginning to discover that wasn't quite as smart as you think and they thought.

It is in our interest not to permit them to place us in this position. Seems to me we haven't exactly achieved that.

I agree with the first thought, obviously the second is true but I think it's a bit more complex than that. Why did we stay in both Iraq and Afghanistan; the plan in each was to topple and leave. What changed that? I believe it was a different cause for each nation but both changes hit at about the same time, May of 2003...

[Dayuhan]

Who would we respond to in this case? All those probes and provocations were nominally and officially performed by non-state actors from throughout the ME.

Then we respond to the non-state actors, or - to the extent that they had them - their state sponsors.

No one nation was responsible, it was an area attitude that was to be deterred (actually, disrupted is a better word in the near term; the deterrent aspect rolls around to about that 2033 date I mentioned...). Iraq was chosen because it was a pariah state that had a leader even fellow Arab despots could not stand, it had little to no involvement, no Iraqi nationals had been in the attacks to that time, it was geographically central and should have been a military pushover.

"Area attitude" seems to me too vague a focus for blame, and far too vague a focus for retaliation, disruption, or deterrence. We were not attacked by a nation or an area, we were attacked by a specific group of individuals. Of course our response removed any immediate incentive for further attacks: once the desired goal of US military engagement in Muslim territory was accomplished, there was nothing to be gained from further attacks. I can't really see that as an outcome of disruption or deterrence, and I can't see how the invasion of Iraq was meant to disrupt or deter AQ.

That's true in western terms. It is not true in the ME. They understood that we were saying "you folks need to stop allowing your citizens to attack us or this could happen to you." Recall it was preceded by the Bush speech that announced preemptive attacks were on the table

That would have made the Iraq operation a shot across the bow of the Saudis, which would be as hollow a threat as anyone ever made. The US is not going to invade Saudi Arabia, even if more Saudi citizens have a go at the US. We know that, the Saudis know it, and AQ knows it. I'm sure OBL regrets it bitterly - a US invasion of Saudi Arabia would be AQ's wettest dream - but it's not going to happen. Of course in the remote recesses of the neocon ivory tower a few woolly-headed souls clung vaguely to the notion that the emergence of a stable, prosperous democracy would force reform in Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc, but that was fantasy from the start, and I doubt that any of the autocrats in Riyadh or Tehran lost any sleep over the prospect.

We can disagree that they achieved all their aims; they didn't and we didn't. Wars are like that.

They achieved their immediate aim: US engagement in Muslim territory. The goal was to draw the US into Afghanistan; that was achieved. Iraq was a bonus that AQ was unable to exploit fully for a number of reasons, not least their own ineptness. Whether or not they will achieve their long-term goals in Afghanistan remains to be seen, but they aren't doing badly.

The American people are a lot tougher than many think. They are not casualty averse as many believe; they simply want payback for bodies lost in the form of results. They also do a pretty good cost benefit analysis -- thus we are still in Iraq in spite of seven years of screaming to get out

Absolutely. I didn't say or mean that the American deficit of long-term political will or the American vulnerability to wars of attrition were absolute. They aren't. They remain the most vulnerable point in our edifice, and the point that our opponents, especially those with little conventional military force at their disposal, will try to exploit. Whether or not they succeed remains to be seen. Every gambit is a gamble. Osama needed a jihad; without one he and his group would have faded into oblivion. The US was the only available candidate. AQ sucked us in, they got that far successfully. Whether they can chew what they bit off - or whether we can - is still being settled.

[Fuchs]

Ken, I think I understand that political system dysfunction, and it needs to be cleaned up sometime.

Again; attention, national energy, time was wasted by looking outward at a distant and pretty marginal (yet inflated) problem instead of bundling that for a domestic breakthrough effort.

No amount of foreign political success (if there was any to speak of) would weigh heavier than the domestic imbalances that look like they're going to capsize the ship.
The whole attitude to economic affairs needs to change, several dear myths (such as "we should improve our economy by buying more") need to be shattered, special interests groups be defeated (and not granted the right to make political donations) and the whole system of talking points and idiot pundits needs to be exposed and replaced.

The nation will never do this as long as much of its attention is bound by scaremongering and violent conflicts and its reasoning restricted by jingoism.

[Dayuhan]

Again; attention, national energy, time was wasted by looking outward at a distant and pretty marginal (yet inflated) problem instead of bundling that for a domestic breakthrough effort.

It was difficult to argue in Sept 2001 that the problem was marginal or inflated. It looked more like what it was: a serious problem that had been swept under the rug for too long. Possibly the reaction was excessive and misdirected, but there's little doubt that the problem tself had been ignored for way too long.

The same can be said of the economic issues, many of which were stretched to near breaking in the dysfunctional economic policy environment of the 1990s, a time relatively free of jingoism and external entanglements. By the time Bush took office the economy was in such a marginal state that it's difficult to see how a "domestic breakthrough effort" could have been managed. Bush's economic and foreign policies were dominated by attempts to deal with a horde of chickens coming home to roost. Those problems were undoubtedly mismanaged in many ways, but there was little opportunity for proactive policy, and it's hard to say what that administration would have done if given the opportunity for proactive rather than reactive policies.

[Fuchs]

Iraq didn't look like a serious problem to me ever after Desert Storm, and even in late '90 I considered it to be little more than a nuisance.

It takes a quite distorted view on what's serious and what not to rate such a distant, largely disarmed state as a serious problem while the own economy is turning to illusions and losing substance.

It was also obvious by basic statistics that the PRC deserved much more attention already in the early 2000's than the whole ME.

A proper reaction would have reduced the oil addiction to a ME-oil-independent level and a focus on increasing the industrial output instead of outsourcing it (alternatively, reducing consumption to a sustainable level).
Great power gaming in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Mid East and Far East did not offer any solution for the real national domestic problems. They were at best opium for the people, helping the government in an election or two.

I'm quite sure that historians in 50 years will call the 2000's a lost decade for the whole West (Europe had its parallel follies) and won't find much if any good policy. I'm also quite sure that they won't be amazed by some disruption grand strategy or whatever Ken thinks about.

[Ken White]

I'm quite sure that historians in 50 years will call the 2000's a lost decade for the whole West (Europe had its parallel follies) and won't find much if any good policy.

Not on that, I agree with that...

I'm also quite sure that they won't be amazed by some disruption grand strategy or whatever Ken thinks about.

That. You're wrong about that. I'll be long gone but you can send down a note with the apology for your error...

[Dayuhan]

It takes a quite distorted view on what's serious and what not to rate such a distant, largely disarmed state as a serious problem while the own economy is turning to illusions and losing substance.

9/11 distorted lots of views; that's what it was meant to do, and it succeeded. As I've said before, I wasn't in favor of the Iraq operation; it was justified but it wasn't smart. However, assuming that if it hadn't happened the US could, or far more remotely would, have managed some sort of burst of economic enlightenment is beyond far fetched. Certainly the Iraq war ran parallel to a run of bad economic policy, but there's lettle meaningful evidence to suggest a causative link. Economic policy was no better in the relatively peaceful 90s.

I do suspect that if 9/11 hadn't happened, the Bush administration's handlling of the 2000/2001 recession might have been much better, and much trouble down the line might have been prevented. That, however, is pure conjecture.

Again, on both the economic and foreign policy levels the Bush administration was defined by the need to deal with problems that the Clinton administration had declined to manage. These problems were poorly managed in both cases, but there was in either event little opportunity for major reforms in the reactive mode that was imposed by prior neglect.

It was also obvious by basic statistics that the PRC deserved much more attention already in the early 2000's than the whole ME.

China's emergence received plenty of attention, but it's not something that required action on the part of the US or anyone else. Again, assuming that relations with China would have been managed better if the ME had not been an issue is conjecture. What would you have done with respect to China that was not done?

A proper reaction would have reduced the oil addiction to a ME-oil-independent level and a focus on increasing the industrial output instead of outsourcing it (alternatively, reducing consumption to a sustainable level).

And how would you propose to do that? You ascribe to government powers that government does not have.

First the notion of being independent of "ME oil" is a farce. Everyone who depends on oil depends on ME oil, whether or not they actually import any. Oil is globally priced and the removal of any major ME producer imposes the same price penalty on all consumers.

The US is about as likely to become independent of ME oil as Europe is to become independent of Russian gas. For the forseeable future we simply have to accept and manage the reality that our energy supplies are controlled by powers that are unreliable and potentially hostile. I'd actually rather depend on the Saudis than on the Russians, who seem more inclined to manipulate energy supplies for political gain.

Oil dependence was deeply entrenched by the extended glut, and as long as oil remained cheap any action taken by government to reduce dependence was going to be insignificant, short of imposing a massive tax on energy, which no American administration will do as long as democracy is in place. In the last few years we've entered what appears likely to be an extended period of high oil prices, which opens a real opportunity to reduce dependence. The oil-dependent powers of the world may or may not make use of that opportunity.

American manufacturing has been hampered by half a century of a seriously overvalued dollar, which imposed a massive disincentive to any American entrepreneur or corporation entering a line of business that required it to export or to compete with imports. That reality has shaped the US economy to a degree that will require decades to reverse. Again, as long as the dollar was overvalued any policy government adopted to promote manufacturing was equivalent to spitting into a typhoon. That problem has now been alleviated to some extent, though ideally the dollar would fall more. Again, that opens an opportunity, but it's an opportunity that didn't exist for most of the 00s.

Certainly the last decade has seen an abundance of bad decisions in both economic and foreign policy, but claiming a causative relationship between the latter and the former is conjecture, I suspect with a bit of wishful thinking mixed in. An absence of foreign entanglement is no assurance of good economic policy, as we saw in the 90s.

I'm quite sure that historians in 50 years will call the 2000's a lost decade for the whole West (Europe had its parallel follies) and won't find much if any good policy.

I suspect that historians in 50 years will see the 2000s as a desperately needed wake-up call to the West, on a variety of levels. How the West responds to that call is still being defined. Easy to say the response has been unimpressive (not just from the US), but we were very deep in our rut and it's still the early going.

[Ken White]

from the British and the rest of Europe that have not done the US any great favor. We were and are a bit different. British and European attitudes are fine and they work over there, many do not transfer here at all well...

Ken, I think I understand that political system dysfunction, and it needs to be cleaned up sometime.

Totally agree; I keep telling everyone who'll listen to vote out all incumbents until Congress gets the message and reforms itself -- they're the problem and they're pretty much untouchable -- except at the ballot box.

Again; attention, national energy, time was wasted by looking outward at a distant and pretty marginal (yet inflated) problem instead of bundling that for a domestic breakthrough effort.

True but there were valid domestic political reasons for that inflation and though distant and marginal, it could have later been a major problem. We don't like threats, even vague ones...

The nation will never do this as long as much of its attention is bound by scaremongering and violent conflicts and its reasoning restricted by jingoism.

Probably correct in many senses but I doubt we'll see any significant change in the near term. We'll keep muddling along. Most Americans can and will live with that...

[Ken White]

W is a gambler...

Then we respond to the non-state actors, or - to the extent that they had them - their state sponsors.

I totally agree as do many in the government -- unfortunately, there are others who do not agree and the result is we have no mechanism to do that and the previously used mechanisms are no longer politically acceptable. Would you be among the first to condemn such quasi legal operations?

"Area attitude" seems to me too vague a focus for blame, and far too vague a focus for retaliation, disruption, or deterrence. We were not attacked by a nation or an area, we were attacked by a specific group of individuals.

Those individuals came from a specific area of the globe and from a specific subset of persons from that area. Don't know how much time you've spent in the ME but if you've been there, you should have picked up on the fact that they are clannish, xenophobic, anti-western in cultural orientation and consider the US the most evil batch of Kuffars around. That attitude is endemic. They understood what we were doing and why. Didn't appreciate it, either -- but they had to and did respect it, no matter how reluctantly and no matter what they said in public for consumption in the west. They had to and do respect it in spite of the errors in execution which certainly adversely impacted the 'lesson' value. While adversely impacted and extended in time, it still conveyed the message that we are capable of dismantling your country and will do so if you provoke us beyond the point of your safety. That BTW is also one reason the current administration is continuing many earlier policies and is tougher than its base likes; a little unwanted but forced sense of continuity and will there...

Of course our response removed any immediate incentive for further attacks: once the desired goal of US military engagement in Muslim territory was accomplished, there was nothing to be gained from further attacks. I can't really see that as an outcome of disruption or deterrence, and I can't see how the invasion of Iraq was meant to disrupt or deter AQ.

Do not conflate AQ with Islamist fundamentalism in totality. There have been further attacks, they were themselves disrupted. The intent was not to disrupt AQ -- how do you disrupt a Starfish? How do you deter an aggregation with no population or infrastructure to protect? -- it was to disrupt the ability of wealthy persons in the ME to fund and foster anti western fomentation and terrorism and even more specifically, to disrupt and deter tacit support by some governments in the ME and south Asia (which do have populations and infrastructure...) to and for such actions and of which we were very much aware but which previous administrations had been reluctant to address.

Iraq was to divert attention and to send a message, the rest of the strategy was long term and designed to be out of sight to most while Iraq was sucking the news streams -- as Afghanistan is now doing. And, yes, that is an expensive diversion as was expected. The slow success of shutting of the money and turning governments that do not wish to turn is proceeding glacially -- but pretty much unstoppably in the background.

That would have made the Iraq operation a shot across the bow of the Saudis, which would be as hollow a threat as anyone ever made. The US is not going to invade Saudi Arabia, even if more Saudi citizens have a go at the US. We know that, the Saudis know it, and AQ knows it. I'm sure OBL regrets it bitterly - a US invasion of Saudi Arabia would be AQ's wettest dream - but it's not going to happen.

True but perhaps not for the reasons that many believe. What the Iraqi operation did with respect to Saudi Arabia was allow us to remove the US forces based in there which in turn allowed the Saudis to dismantle their own AQ. It also will eventually allow Iraqi oil to assist in diluting the Kingdom's net clout.

Of course in the remote recesses of the neocon ivory tower a few woolly-headed souls clung vaguely to the notion that the emergence of a stable, prosperous democracy would force reform in Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc, but that was fantasy from the start, and I doubt that any of the autocrats in Riyadh or Tehran lost any sleep over the prospect.

I also do not think Bush bought into the neocon stupidity, he simply used them to further his own agenda.

They achieved their immediate aim: US engagement in Muslim territory. The goal was to draw the US into Afghanistan; that was achieved. Iraq was a bonus that AQ was unable to exploit fully for a number of reasons, not least their own ineptness. Whether or not they will achieve their long-term goals in Afghanistan remains to be seen, but they aren't doing badly.

In order; not in the form they expected or wanted;it wasn't so much their own ineptenss as it was a matter of scale in a venue where they had no presence. They got outflanked. It was far from a bonus, really,it was a diversion with which they were unable to cope due to that scale. They're not doing nearly as well in Afghanistan or Pakistan (the latter nation is why we're still in Afghanistan...) as many think. We'll see.

AQ sucked us in, they got that far successfully. Whether they can chew what they bit off - or whether we can - is still being settled.

Did we get sucked in or did we willingly take the bait for several less obvious reasons?

As for still being settled, true. But the goat entrails are reading well...