Victory "Defined"
posted by Will
Quote in the Washington Post on the Democratic response to the Bush “Plan”: “We need leadership, and we need a policy on Iraq that includes a flexible timetable for completing our military mission there, so that we can focus on our national security priority -- defeating the global terrorist networks that threaten the U.S.” Well said, Senator Feingold, well said. Now repeat that 5,000 times a day in every venue you can get access to.
The President’s “Plan” for Iraq is drawing fire for being insufficient, stubborn, and nearsighted. Rightly so. But the administration’s reasoning should also be drawing fire for being internally inconsistent, specious, and circular.
cont'd after link
Right at the top, in the Executive Summary, are several points that seem so patently and blatantly false that it would be laughable if it weren’t so scary. Further, they illustrate some of the basic fallacies upon which the administration continues to pin its ill-defined hopes. See this under "Victory in Iraq is Defined in Stages":
“Longer term: Iraq is peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism.”
compare with, just below it:
“Failure in Iraq will embolden terrorists and expand their reach; success in Iraq will deal them a decisive and crippling blow.”
So, the global war on terror is elsewhere? Finally it is admitted that Iraq is not the central front of the war on terror? We need Iraq to help us fight global terror...somewhere else?
Now, it’s been a long time since I was taking formal logic, but I don’t think W.V.O. Quine would like this kind of reasoning. The “planners” sound like they can’t quite distinguish between cause and effect. Maybe they should study up. Crack a book. I think their argument is supposed to go something like this: Everything in Iraq will be great...once we’ve defeated the terrorists...which will, in turn, help us to fight the terrorists...which is critical because if we leave now there will be terrorists...so we can’t talk about leaving, at all, yet because then the terrorists that are there will be encouraged to become terrorists once we leave...so there will be an insurgency and terrorists if we leave immediately.
But there already is an insurgency, and Iraq is already an operations haven for terrorists. Senators Kerry and Reed were right to call the addministration on their straw man argument. It only further highlights that Murtha is absolutely right: the administration is failing--completely--to take into account the effect that our troops’ presence in Iraq has on encouraging young, unemployed, uneducated Iraqis to join the insurgency. Maybe if they had their old military jobs all along, they’d listen to reason.
It’s silly, frankly. If the enemy is “diffuse and sophisticated”, as the “Plan” says, will they really be stumped by the lack of an American drawdown strategy? Does it seem to anyone like the insurgents are waiting to hear about when we leave to start operations? They're already blowing things up left and right, kidnapping Westerners, and assassinating the lawyers in Hussein's trial. Will even a stable government in Iraq with perpetual American support hinder their operations?
Not to mention that Iraq is certainly not the only place in the world where terrorists can plan attacks against America. Has Saudi Arabia’s stable government done a good job of preventing terrorists from hatching plots on its soil? Afghanistan? Pakistan? Iran? 9/11 was hatched, at least in part, in Germany, and right here in the U.S., too. The insurgency is a separate problem from the global war on terror. Utterly separate. And our plan, so far, to link the two is only hurting our efforts to win both struggles.
This is the second silly inconsistency in the Plan that I’ve noticed so far, and I’m still only talking about the Executive Summary. Defeating the “disparate” elements of the insurgency is “planned” thusly:
"Each element shares a common short-term objective – to intimidate, terrorize, and tear down – but has separate and incompatible long-term goals. Exploiting these differences within the enemy is a key element of our strategy."
What this fails to consider is that for however long our military is in Iraq, those “differences” are meaningless--the only goal they will all have is the continued fight against American forces. Their hope for whatever nasty vision they may have for Iraq’s future is overshadowed by the presence of an American occupation. Therefore, in fact, the only way to begin “exploiting” the incompatible long-term goals of the various factions in the insurgency is by LEAVING and allowing the Iraqis to exploit the incompatibilities. So, our strategy for stopping the insurgency relies on something that can only obtain when we do what the plan says we will never do! Without being anywhere close to clear-headed enough to realize it, Bush’s “Planners” actually agree with Murtha, only in a twisted, inverted, and dangerous way.
Also, the American presence in Iraq creates political problems for the Iraqis that we hope will “stand up” so that we can “stand down”. As long as we are there, they have to walk a fine line of working with us while appearing independent. A stable Iraqi government, as many Iraqis leaders have said, demands that America leaves so that the government can get busy legitimating itself. Our war “planners” have read way too much Robert Dahl and not nearly enough Rodney Barker. The American presence does not provide Iraq with some fixed quantity or ‘reservoir’ of legitimacy and stability. Stability will only arise in Iraq when an Iraqi government is allowed to independently legitimate itself as a political force. I’m not saying I know how to make that happen, but the presence of 150,000 American troops sure hasn’t helped so far.
This “Plan” is appalling in the same way that the initial estimates of the war planners were. Remember Wolfowitz saying the war would pay for itself? In George Packer’s The Assassin’s Gate, which tells a story that deserves more attention in day to day war reporting that it gets, we see military “Planners” guessing that we’d be out of Iraq by August, 2003. AUGUST, 2003! We’ll be welcomed as liberators, remember? How’s that again, Cheney? The idea that this administration has any credibility left with which to even begin to shape a new and realistic plan for Iraq is insane.
The President’s “Plan” for Iraq is drawing fire for being insufficient, stubborn, and nearsighted. Rightly so. But the administration’s reasoning should also be drawing fire for being internally inconsistent, specious, and circular.
cont'd after link
Right at the top, in the Executive Summary, are several points that seem so patently and blatantly false that it would be laughable if it weren’t so scary. Further, they illustrate some of the basic fallacies upon which the administration continues to pin its ill-defined hopes. See this under "Victory in Iraq is Defined in Stages":
“Longer term: Iraq is peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism.”
compare with, just below it:
“Failure in Iraq will embolden terrorists and expand their reach; success in Iraq will deal them a decisive and crippling blow.”
So, the global war on terror is elsewhere? Finally it is admitted that Iraq is not the central front of the war on terror? We need Iraq to help us fight global terror...somewhere else?
Now, it’s been a long time since I was taking formal logic, but I don’t think W.V.O. Quine would like this kind of reasoning. The “planners” sound like they can’t quite distinguish between cause and effect. Maybe they should study up. Crack a book. I think their argument is supposed to go something like this: Everything in Iraq will be great...once we’ve defeated the terrorists...which will, in turn, help us to fight the terrorists...which is critical because if we leave now there will be terrorists...so we can’t talk about leaving, at all, yet because then the terrorists that are there will be encouraged to become terrorists once we leave...so there will be an insurgency and terrorists if we leave immediately.
But there already is an insurgency, and Iraq is already an operations haven for terrorists. Senators Kerry and Reed were right to call the addministration on their straw man argument. It only further highlights that Murtha is absolutely right: the administration is failing--completely--to take into account the effect that our troops’ presence in Iraq has on encouraging young, unemployed, uneducated Iraqis to join the insurgency. Maybe if they had their old military jobs all along, they’d listen to reason.
It’s silly, frankly. If the enemy is “diffuse and sophisticated”, as the “Plan” says, will they really be stumped by the lack of an American drawdown strategy? Does it seem to anyone like the insurgents are waiting to hear about when we leave to start operations? They're already blowing things up left and right, kidnapping Westerners, and assassinating the lawyers in Hussein's trial. Will even a stable government in Iraq with perpetual American support hinder their operations?
Not to mention that Iraq is certainly not the only place in the world where terrorists can plan attacks against America. Has Saudi Arabia’s stable government done a good job of preventing terrorists from hatching plots on its soil? Afghanistan? Pakistan? Iran? 9/11 was hatched, at least in part, in Germany, and right here in the U.S., too. The insurgency is a separate problem from the global war on terror. Utterly separate. And our plan, so far, to link the two is only hurting our efforts to win both struggles.
This is the second silly inconsistency in the Plan that I’ve noticed so far, and I’m still only talking about the Executive Summary. Defeating the “disparate” elements of the insurgency is “planned” thusly:
"Each element shares a common short-term objective – to intimidate, terrorize, and tear down – but has separate and incompatible long-term goals. Exploiting these differences within the enemy is a key element of our strategy."
What this fails to consider is that for however long our military is in Iraq, those “differences” are meaningless--the only goal they will all have is the continued fight against American forces. Their hope for whatever nasty vision they may have for Iraq’s future is overshadowed by the presence of an American occupation. Therefore, in fact, the only way to begin “exploiting” the incompatible long-term goals of the various factions in the insurgency is by LEAVING and allowing the Iraqis to exploit the incompatibilities. So, our strategy for stopping the insurgency relies on something that can only obtain when we do what the plan says we will never do! Without being anywhere close to clear-headed enough to realize it, Bush’s “Planners” actually agree with Murtha, only in a twisted, inverted, and dangerous way.
Also, the American presence in Iraq creates political problems for the Iraqis that we hope will “stand up” so that we can “stand down”. As long as we are there, they have to walk a fine line of working with us while appearing independent. A stable Iraqi government, as many Iraqis leaders have said, demands that America leaves so that the government can get busy legitimating itself. Our war “planners” have read way too much Robert Dahl and not nearly enough Rodney Barker. The American presence does not provide Iraq with some fixed quantity or ‘reservoir’ of legitimacy and stability. Stability will only arise in Iraq when an Iraqi government is allowed to independently legitimate itself as a political force. I’m not saying I know how to make that happen, but the presence of 150,000 American troops sure hasn’t helped so far.
This “Plan” is appalling in the same way that the initial estimates of the war planners were. Remember Wolfowitz saying the war would pay for itself? In George Packer’s The Assassin’s Gate, which tells a story that deserves more attention in day to day war reporting that it gets, we see military “Planners” guessing that we’d be out of Iraq by August, 2003. AUGUST, 2003! We’ll be welcomed as liberators, remember? How’s that again, Cheney? The idea that this administration has any credibility left with which to even begin to shape a new and realistic plan for Iraq is insane.
1 Comments:
I agree wholeheartedly. All I was pointing out was the fact that the claim in the Strategic Plan seemed to be that we needed Iraq to be stable so that it could help us win the global war on terror--elsewhere. My problem with that is exactly what you said--that there weren't terrorists there before we invaded, and now the Iraq war is being sold to us as no longer the central front of the war on terror, but an ally that we need to fight terror around the world. The inverted logic has come full circle: when there were no terrorists in Iraq, Bush said we needed to fight the global war on terror there. Now that there are terrorists in Iraq, we supposedly need to not withdraw so that we can craft a new ally to help us fight terror elsewhere that should have been where we put our focus all along. And you're also right that we can never get them all. The way to win is to let Iraq become a country with a future, and the only way to let that start to happen is to get out of its way.
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