As our title announces, we propose to distinguish two distinct phases in non-GOP paleface planmongering, a sort of Vetus Testamentum period that is already over, or nearly over, and a Novum Testamentum whose efflorescence is bound to come, but has not quite arrived yet. The resulting intertestamental gap is dominated by the militant Republicans' Surge of '07. Colonel Fred seems to agree with us about the basic division of times, at least:
| Two new essays on how to disengage from Iraq [sic] . . . both reject the Bush administration's stay-the-course surge and the congressional Democrats' insistence on a fixed timetable for withdrawal. And they're also both utterly unlikely to receive the slightest attention from President George W. Bush. In short, it seems, we're all stuck in a holding pattern, doomed to mere "muddling through," until somebody else sets up shop in the White House on Jan. 20, 2009—an unbelievable 651 days of mayhem to go. |
However it is entirely our own idea, not his, that Plan A (for "Ann Arbour" or "ancient history") is obsolete, whereas Plan C (for "Council on Foreign Relations") is premature. Though too far ahead of its time to have any serious chance of mattering, Plan C is not entirely isolated. There is also what we may very happily call Plan B (for "Brookings Institution"), which Mr. Kaplan does not discuss. We won't either, not just at present, because we expect there will be plenty of opportunities to quarrel with that one later on, both because it is much the heftiest of the three (142 pages to 61 pages in C and perhaps 1.5 pages in A), and because after we get out of the "holding pattern," it seems a more ideologically likely airport for our poor Uncle Sam to land at than the CFR alternative.
Be that as it may, Mr. Kaplan lumps Ann Arbour and the CFR together instead of splitting them up:
| Simon, a Middle East specialist and former National Security Council official, and Cole, professor of Middle East studies at the University of Michigan, have three common premises. First, the surge and the new counterinsurgency strategy almost certainly won't work, in part because the war is not just an insurgency war but also a civil war involving three sects (and divisions within those sects) against one another. Second, the U.S. occupation strengthens the insurgents and broadens their support at least as much as it weakens or isolates them. However, third, they also emphasize that real hell would break out if U.S. forces suddenly or arbitrarily withdrew. Cole, while fiercely critical of Bush's policies on Iraq and much else, has long been adamant on this point—that there are degrees of civil war and Iraq hasn't begun to approach the full boil that an unconditional pullout might ignite. |
As you see, Mr. Kaplan does not mention the most basic resemblance of the two, which is simply that neither one was framed with an eye to the special interests of the Big Management Party. Neither Prof. Cole nor Dr. Simon has any use for an "irresponsible" withdrawal of GOP military forces from neo-Iraq, and that is Kaplan's third point, and in both cases notions of "responsibility" are cherished that would pretty well prevent any serious withdrawal in our lifetime, but it is unfair to these planmongers not to notice explicitly that they feel no special responsibility to save the face of the Republican Party. JC would almost certainly prefer to maximize Crawford's embarrassments, except insofar as that would conflict with conducting nonwithdrawal on his own terms, whereas we may as well assume Dr. Simon is genuinely "bipartisan" until there is definite proof to the contrary. Certainly the CFR en masse is bound to take that line when the crisis comes. Our foreign policy gentry may well decide that the interests of the USA, as CFR-conceived, require letting the invasionite stumblebums off very lightly, but we may stipulate in advance that that conclusion will be quite free of all partisan GOP taint. There's slightly more danger of a Democratic Party taint, actually, an obtrusion of "Just look how we competent folks conduct our invasions and occupations, as for instance in Kosova!" Still, at bottom the CFR/ISG gentry are bipartisan/nonpartisan enough to be getting on with, and so too will their schemes for nonwithdrawal be.
As to the substance of Mr. Kaplan's three similarities, I suspect he has lumped together rather more than the two plans he purports to be comparing. The first two come straight out of the Conventional Wisdom Catechism, it seems to me, once the dwindling band of Crawfordites are excluded as unwise. It's such orthodoxy that it bears repeating:
| First, the surge and the new counterinsurgency strategy almost certainly won't work, in part because the war is not just an insurgency war but also a civil war involving three sects (and divisions within those sects) against one another. Second, the U.S. occupation strengthens the insurgents and broadens their support at least as much as it weakens or isolates them. |
The one or two percent of anti-hawks who actually know a little something about the fomer "Iraq" may have reservations about the first point. Mr. Badger and Dr. Cobban and Dr. Visser are bound to smell some sulphur in the casual assumption that "sectarianism" really exists and really matters. But 98% of us good guys agree collectively to it, even if our individual views were outvoted in the caucus, and as for the second point, it looks like a full 100% consensus to me. The upshot is that any paleface planmongering that does not come from unrepentant aggression fans is likely to agree that The Surge won't work, that there is some sort of civil war going on already in neo-Iraq, and that it only makes bad things worse that the natives see so many inscrutable armed aliens running around the landscape of "their" "country."
Before I start drawing distinctions rather than obscuring them, here are the concrete recommendations with which Plan C concludes, with numbers added for ease of reference:
| The United States should: [1] Declare its intention to disengage the majority of U.S. combat forces from Iraq within twelve to eighteen months, to begin once the results of the surge become known. [1.1] Retain the forces necessary to secure Baghdad International Airport, the Green Zone, and access routes that connect them. [1.2] During the disengagement period, stage the drawdown to maintain the forces in Iraq needed to protect or relocate vulnerable minority populations and suppress insurgent activity in the largely Sunni provinces. [2] Shift focus to containment of the conflict and strengthen the U.S. military position elsewhere in the region. [2.1] Plan for humanitarian contingency operations. [2.2] Refocus on containment of the war in Iraq. [2.3] Reinforce the U.S. military presence elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region, for example, Kuwait; explore options for increasing special operations forces deployed to Jordan; and increase the number of rotational deployments to the region, including joint exercises. [3] Engage Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, members of the UN Security Council, and potential donors in a stabilization plan for Iraq. [3.1 Prepare to provide Jordan with help in managing the cross-border refugee flow. [3.2] Work with the UN secretary-general to form an Iraq stabilization group, including Iran and Syria, with an emphasis on control of borders, management 42 of refugees, economic and technical assistance to Iraq, and diplomatic support for political reconciliation [3.3] Work with the UN, NATO, and neighboring states on plans for humanitarian intervention in the event that violence in Iraq becomes genocidal. [3.4] Act decisively elsewhere in the region, particularly on the Palestine-Israel impasse by articulating a vision for final status, and on support for Lebanese sovereignty. |
As a mere curiosity, observe that the Hashimite monarchy gets mentioned twice, whereas most comparable documents pay no attention to it worth mentioning, presumably in accordance with the maxim de minimis non curat lex. On the other hand, Jordan is not required to do anything except be where it is.
The great primâ facie difference between this agenda and that Rube Goldberg contraption out of Ann Arbour that has been discussed already is that everything in is to be done by only one agent, Uncle Sam. This alone makes it vastly more sensible and potentially workable, although to be sure Mr. Kaplan is right to warn us that the Crawfordite extremists are not going to touch most of it unless somehow compelled to. After unity of action, the second big difference from Plan A is that there is no mention of native politics at all. In his analysis, I presume Dr. Simon suggests various things that the Green Zone collaborationist politicians might be well advised to do, but he does not attach sufficient importance to such points to admit them to his executive summary. (For once, by the way, we really have an executive summary, a list of things to be done, even if it is not called that and comes at the end.)
As you recall, Prof. Cole's central gimmick was entirely about native politics. Mr. Kaplan notices that it is there, but he does not sound especially interested in it:
| The impending departure of U.S. troops may impel mainstream Sunni insurgents to turn against the jihadists. It may also compel the Sunni Arabs to take part in the negotiations on some national accord, knowing that American troops will not be there to protect them against Shiite or Kurdish reprisals. Cole further recommends holding new provincial elections so that the elected Sunni Arab representatives could stand in for guerrilla groups in the national talks, as Sinn Fein did in Northern Ireland. |
The unemphasized part of that paragraph again seems to come rather from Mr. Kaplan's idea of the anti-hawk general consensus than from the two plans specifically compared. Rather puzzlingly, he himself began by distinguishing the position of "congressional Democrats" from the proposals of his planmongers, and the former would seem to me the most suitable pigeon hole in which to file the notion of a salutary shock administered to frivolous indig pols. In any case, Mr. Kaplan is not himself specially interested in the neo-régime, as indeed, why should be be, when he calls his column "war stories"? Still, in that light one is a bit disappointed that he offers no significant military analysis of Dr. Simon and Prof. Cole either. One might even complain that he only brings these characters on stage to lead up to the dismal announcement that there are 651 bombing days left before anything serious can be done about the bushogenic fiasco. Very likely that will prove to be the case, but pointing it out to us resembles a US politics story more than a proper war story. Certainly the planmongers themselves do not make that particular point, or show any sign of not wanting all their suggestions implemented at once.
This brings me to the distinction abbreviated in the title, that Colean planmongering is obsolete, and the Simonian type premature. Pari passu one could, however, say that they have in common that their preferred notions are certainly not going to be realized at the moment. Something like Dr. Simon's may be realized eventually. The Ann Arbour sort of contraption, though, could only have got off the runway if it had been launched very early in the course of the quagmire. If even then. So much is dictated to non-American actors who have no very obvious motives to speak the exact lines that Prof. Cole has written for them that the whole production he envisions would have been possible only with both an "international community" and a local Levantine cast much more willing to do things Uncle Sam's way than at present. It is (barely) conceivable that Plan A might have done the trick if it had been part of a package deal in the fall or winter of 2002-03 specifying that those arrangements were to be imposed on a post-Ba‘th Iraq after the Crawfordites invade and conquer it with explicit authorization from the Security Council behind them. Instead we have watched nearly four years of the Lone Ranger and Tonto before the "problems of success" mounted up to a point where the gruesome twosome had to take serious notice of anybody's ideas but their own.
Starting from where we find ourselves, or rather will find ourselves after The Surge of '07 peters out indecisively, Dr. Simon's Plan C makes such lemonade as it can out of the militant GOP's Lone Rangerism lemon. We can ask other international agents to accommodate themselves to American schemes of glory, but we definitely do have to ask, and we may even be reduced to bargaining and making certain concessions to the lesser breeds without that we should ideally prefer not to have to grant. The CFR/ISG gentry profess to be all in favor of such a basis for foreign and invasion policy. We may get to see the objective sincerity of those professions put to the test: do they really want to be multilateral forever and on principle, or are they only trying to get back to a normalcy where Uncle Sam more or less can write everybody else's lines for her? I expect it will be an interesting show, not only internationally but at Beltway City also, where the CFR/ISG gentry will have to revise Sen. Reid's and Speaker Pelosi's lines as well to obtain their desired nonwithdrawal, and may even collide with recalcitrance on the part of Televisionland and the electorate.
Success is avoiding "irresponsibility" is not guaranteed to Dr. Simon's approach, but with Prof. Cole's approach practical success is unimaginable. Even if we elected Don Juan himself President of the United States, and fortified him with all the powers that the incumbent endeavors to usurp, Uncle Sam would still wind up either garrisoning neo-Iraq forever, or getting out of it indecorously, for all that Plan A does not embrace either horn of the dilemma.
Plan C requires some interior redecoration to make it a marketable product, but the CFR folks still have 651 days to work on it, unless the Crawford cowpokers collapse unexpectedly, and the decorators may pull it off. Doubtless my public relations advice is not worth having, but if asked, I'd advise them to avoid the word "withdraw" and emphasize instead that they propose to "end the occupation" of neo-Iraq, which is close enough to the truth for political purposes. Garrison neo-Iraq forever, but don't get lured into trying to "occupy" it ever again! Clause [1.2] should accordingly be revised so that there is no suggestion of a "disengagement period" that will come to an end. "Disengagement" by itself, however, seems an admirable weasel word for the judicious and responsible combination of nonwithdrawal and nonoccupation, privately conceived of by the foreign policy gentry as a permanent state of affairs although better not publicly paraded as such.
'Tis so judicious and responsible that one wonders why the Crawfordites never thought of it for themselves. The stumblebums never seriously wanted to administer their conquered provinces, after all. If we are seeking individual scapegoats, perhaps it was Sultan Jerry and Khalílzád Pasha who are most to blame for getting the militant GOP tied up, or tied down, in the occupation business. But probably the chief fault should be found elsewhere, in the psychology of the Showboat-in-Chief, so to dub him, or in the political sociology of the Big Management Party. They could never do anything quietly, never restrain themselves from hogging all the limelight available. That self-indulgence would have been injudicious even supposing that pretty well everything they trumpeted in advance had not turned out to be a blunder. Presumably the CFR/ISG gentry will learn from this deplorable example what to avoid when it comes to the marketing and implementation of Plan C or something like it.
"Softly, softly, catchee monkey!"
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