Efforts by the Obama administration and its allies to paint the failure to achieve an agreement for which they have been actively negotiating as a success in Iraq are unimpressive in themselves. Their argument, stated most cogently by one of the lead negotiators of both this and the previous accord with Iraq, Brett McGurk, is roughly that the negotiations themselves revealed the new maturity and independence of Iraqi politics. That new maturity and independence, they argue, unfortunately led to the inability of both sides to agree on language granting American troops immunity from Iraqi laws, and, therefore, to the scuttling of the negotiations. McGurk argues explicitly that the failure of the negotiations did not result from Iranian pressure or interference, but rather proves the success of policies in Iraq to date.
It’s very odd, of course, to hear that the maturity of Iraq’s politics makes it impossible for the U.S. to reach an accord with Baghdad on an issue that has been satisfactorily resolved by agreements with Britain, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Turkey, and many other countries in which American military forces are present. It is even harder to understand the repeated administration claims that Iran played no significant role in this decision, despite enormous evidence to the contrary (detailed here) and the ongoing Iranian militia campaigns, assassination campaigns, and intimidation campaigns in Iraq and around the region.
Setting these disagreements aside, though, we must reckon with an unpleasant reality: Whether we ultimately persuade ourselves that failing to extend the U.S. troop presence in Iraq was a victory for the U.S., the Iranians are certain that it was a victory for them. Consider the following recent statements by Iranian leaders and military officials after the president’s announcement that the talks were over:
“Today America has been defeated in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it has no choice but [to] leave these two countries. And it has also been defeated in North Africa.” – Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, November 2
“In spite of the military and political presence of America in Iraq, all Iraqi people — including Kurds and Arabs, Shia and Sunni — said ‘no’ to America and this is a very important point.” – Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, October 30
Referring to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s remarks that Iran should refrain from meddling in Iraq following the American troop withdrawal, Iranian defense minister Ahmad Vahidi said the “occupiers of Iraq” have been forced to leave the country and that their “meddlesome remarks stem from their deep fear of seeing the two nations (Iraq and Iran) united.”
“Proposing to strengthen [the] American military presence in the Persian Gulf [by Washington] is out of desperation and [is being proposed] only to compensate for the defeat resulting from its pullout from Iraq.” — Iranian defense minister Ahmad Vahidi, November 2
“The American soldiers had no other choice than to leave Iraq, and this is the beginning of all American forces withdrawing from the region and the people’s intolerance of these ambassadors of death, colonialism, and plundering. Even if the Americans retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan, their problems will not be pushed aside, and the American people will force their government to retreat from the region completely and permanently.” – Chief of the Iranian general staff, Hassan Firouzabadi, October 26
“There is no [longer] any secure place for the U.S. and its puppets and allies. . . . They do not dare to be present in the Islamic territories and they are forced to travel secretly.” – IRGC Deputy Commander Hossein Salami, 1 November
“If the U.S. could deploy its troops in several parts of the world, it would not withdraw from Iraq. . . . But now it has no more room to continue its presence neither in Iraq, nor in the entire region due to the growing spread of Islamic awakening among nations.” – Iranian foreign-ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast, October 24
Lebanese Hezbollah secretary general “Hassan Nasrallah has described the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq as a historic defeat for the U.S. and a true victory for Iraqis. . . . In a televised interview, Nasrallah said on Monday that Iraqis owe this remarkable achievement to the resistance groups, adding that U.S. troops would have stayed in the country if they had felt secure. . . . He also compared U.S. pullout from Iraq to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon.” October 25
(See Will Fulton and Maseh Zarif, “Iranian Reactions to U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq,” 4 November 2011 for sources and more quotations. This product will be updated as new comments become available.)
Administration allies are also arguing, of course, that if — and they don’t admit this — Iraq is being thrown into the hands of Tehran, it is the fault of Bush and the “neo-cons” for invading Iraq in the first place. That argument is also false — Iraqis had been resisting Iranian pressure, had been fighting Iranian militias, and had made a number of important political decisions despite enormous Iranian efforts to prevent them from doing so — while 40,000 American troops were in Iraq and negotiations were continuing to extend the presence of a much smaller number. But no one in the Bush administration or among the advocates of the surge long ago thought that Iraq would be ready and able to stand up to such Iranian pressure without continued active American support this soon, and — the Pollyannaish protestations of administration supporters aside — Iraq is not, in fact, able to stand up to Iran now by itself.
That argument about who’s to blame, however, is also beside the point for those who really care about American national-security interests in Iraq and the Middle East. If partisan political bickering prevents us from recognizing the reality that Iran really has scored an important and damaging victory over the United States in Iraq through the failure of the these negotiations to extend our troop presence, then the prospects for any intelligent strategy to respond to that failure are dim indeed.
— Frederick W. Kagan is director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.
There is a strange disconnect in the way many neocons like Kagan treat the statements of public officials. They seem fully aware that what American politicians say to the public should be viewed skeptically, because those politicians are trying to appeal to their constituents and trying to appear strong abroad. But when a foreign leader says something, particularly something that sounds threatening or imposing, the neocons willingly swallow whatever BS the dictator or theocrat is spouting. This is the case even though such leaders actually have far less accountability and far less incentive to tell the truth than American leaders.
It's tough to see what Kagan expects: for Iran to announce that the U.S. has succeeded in quelling violence in Iraq, and is now leaving because it never had any imperialistic aspirations in the country. These are the same leaders who suggest to their constituents that the OWS protesters are a sign of a coming revolt in the U.S. Accepting the words of some of the world's most untrustworthy leaders as gospel helps Kagan's cause: of seeing dangerous threats everywhere, with the only solution being a constant, aggressive, and expensive U.S. presence throughout the world. But it also places more trust in our enemies than any respectable political commentator would put in an American from either party.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe post was supported by a link to a lengthy article from the Weekly Standard. The article made it clear that Mr. Kagan did not rely on the comments made by the various Iranian leaders to prove Iran had achieved a political or strategic advantage in Iraq (and thus some type of victory). Rather he argues the detailed changes in internal Iraqi politics away from those advantageous to the USA were caused by the Administations bungling and were also greatly influenced by our hastened withdrawel. The reality of these political changes and our withdrawel allowed the Iranian leaders to credibly claim victory. That, it seemed to me was his point in quoting them.
The article gave detailed examples of the change of course in the internal politics of Iraq that resulted from the Obama Administration's actions. Many in this string of posts have asserted we cannot influence Iraq politically seem to operate from an assumption that Iraq has always been a lost cause. Yet none have offered any refutation that the arguments to the contrary supporting Mr. Kagan's claims are false or misguided.
It seems to me we can influence Iraqi politics to our advantage and ultimately to the advantage of the Iraqi people. Yet to maintain influence it is painfully obvious we must retain a significant presence militarily until such time as their politics have matured to the advantage of the Iraqi people.
In my view, that is a worthy endeavor given the sacrifice of our military to this point and the significant threat Iranian influence in our absence has on Iraq the region and the world. After all the real enemy as many have noted, is Iraq's neighbor.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseObama has bungled this, to Iran's strategic gain. That makes it a rueful experience to read these claims of success by the Iranians.
Nevertheless — with due and genuine (indeed, boundless) respect for Mr. Kagan, who's not expressly arguing anything contrary to what I'm about to assert, and who probably didn't mean to imply it by his post here -- we must not measure our success and failures using the criteria of our enemies, and certainly not using their propaganda.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt doesn't matter what the leader of a second rate power like Iran says. Let them, in their delusion, declare victory all they want; we should not allow our policies to be warped by a a desire to defy a country that hardly matters. We have no more business wasting more blood and treasure in Iraq. If the enormous investments we have already made are not enough, too bad. Iraq has been dependent on us for too long.
It is time for us to focus on rebuilding our own country, for once.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"It doesn't matter what the leader of a second rate power like Iran says. "
It would be difficult to imagine a more clueless statement.
Iran isn't too far from hegemonic control over a large part of that geographic region. When you wield that much power over a part of the world that holds more than 50% of all global oil reserves, coupled with the seemingly inevitable possession nuclear weapons with capacity to deliver those weapons to the doorsteps of several European capitols, I'm not sure how you call that country "second rate".
"It is time for us to focus on rebuilding our own country, for once."
...said the ghost of Henry Cabot Lodge.
These words could have described the prevailing opinion shortly before and after the Treaty of Versailles. Look how that turned out.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou don't seem to realize that second-rate powers become first-rate powers very quickly when first-rate powers decline.
This was precisely how we became a first-rate power in WWII.
China and Iran are well on the way to dominating their respective regions. Russia intends to use the energy weapon thru their alliance with Iran to do the same with Europe.
The start of the next world war will happen within a year. This is August 1914 all over again.
If we don't fix our spending problem, we won't be as prepared this time even as we were then, despite having the best armed forces in the world.
We haven't done so well with asymmetric warfare thus far--chiefly because we lack the political will for victory, not least of which because liberals won't fight.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe need a foreign policy that can be run by idiots, because eventually it will be. That means no trillion dollar, triple-bank shot schemes in foreign countries we don't understand and ultimately don't care about. Iran will always win in that part of the world because it's their neighborhood and not ours.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIran is 2nd rate, run by loons. If Iran gets overly agressive with Israel, Netanyahu will rightly bomb them back to the stone age. It's not our fight. Israel can stand up for itself, and I suspect they are itching to do so. Heck, the Saudis might sell popcorn.
Kagan's ideas is akin to the dominoes idiocy of the 1950s and 1960s, which was also wrong. What worries we do or do not have about Iran are still no reason to stay in Iraq another 10 seconds. Our job is done there. To proffer this Iran argument is grasping at straws. Ask any American. And more importantly ask any grunt that served there. And I say grunt, not some nation-building surge general pretending he can turn an Islamic society into Hartford with mosques.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"the dominoes idiocy of the 1950s and 1960s" -- ?
You might recall that the Soviet Union held half of Europe hostage through those years, and there was the real threat that tanks would roll further westward with no notice.
American military dependents stationed in W. Germany in the 1950s, for example, were on orders to head westward with all deliberate speed, leaving copies of their orders at each checkpoint so that their last known whereabouts could be traced later if the Russians overran the country.
The collapse of the USSR was not a foregone conclusion, and even if the West had prevailed against further aggression from the Soviets, it would have been bloody and ugly.
Now kindly apply this lesson to the Iranian situation today, and add in an apocalyptic scr*wball running things in Teheran. Your confidence is touching, but ill-considered.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou're comparing apples and turnips. Culturally much of eastern Europe and even the Russians themselves knew, understood and appreciated Western ideals. Poles, Hungarians, Czechs and Slavs are arguably Western themselves. We cannot change the culture of Iraq and Afghanistan. Pretending otherwise is folly. And to accomplish such a goal:how long? how many casualties? how much of our finite budget already with a deficit of $15 trillion?
In a small way Peter Fuller found out this week. He got fired for the most unpardonable of sins; speaking the truth.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Bugg... We cannot change the culture of Iraq and Afghanistan. Pretending otherwise is folly.
"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Young British Soldier" 1895
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"We can't change the culture of Japan... Oh, wait."
It's good to know that our leftists display they believe that brown people are incapable of embracing democracy and western values.
"Freedom, it's a White guy thing." - The Left.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYout analogy is false, and furthermore, Russian conquest in Europe did not occur as a result of anything like the Domino Theory. Initiallly the USSR gained some territory through deals with Hitler before 1941. The remainder it got through military conquest during WWII, as its armies headed west to destroy Germany; these territorial gains were agreed to by FDR and Chruchill at Yalta. After 1945, the USSR acquired NO territory, because the US and its allies resisted. Berlin Airlift being a case in point. Korea being a case in point.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusedominoes idiocy of the 1950s and 1960s
Not sure if you noticed, but the Kommies took over China and started wars in Korea and Vietnam within the span of a decade. Not long after, Laos and Cambodia kissed Kommie butt. The whole of SE Asia didn't fall but a few pretty big actually dominoes did. Feel free to criticize the way America handled that part of the world then, but the real idiocy is not even trying to comprehend what the area would have looked like if it weren't for our intervention. You think Hyundi would have sprouted when it did, if at all, if North Korea had swallowed up the South? You think Singapore and Indonesia and Thailand would have been completely untouched if the Kommies weren't held in check? Those places started to flourish after it was clear they were not going to be harmed. Even Vietnam is making a comeback, after they've dropped the most oppressive parts of their government.
I could not begin to tell you what the best, most precise strategy is to handle the Middle East right now, but you have to be a moron to not understand that unless you stop aggression it will eventually stop you.
Gee, why didn't we do something when we could have? This is one of the most unnecessary and stupid sentences in any language, when it's said by those who had been minding their own business when all of a sudden some jerk country blows up the @#$%! neighborhood. The fact that 3,000 dead 10 years ago wasn't enough to sink that in someone's head makes me sick.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI was across the river in Brooklyn when the towers fell. I felt the ground shake.
I lost a dear friend, and many neighbors and clients. If I gave you the zip codes of where I have lived in Brooklyn and Queens you would see they were especially hard hit by that murderous outrage.
I will never forget the stench of burning human flesh that stayed in the air for months.
Your argument is because of a. the Vietnam War/the spread of communism(and note here that said communist Red China is now our loanshark for this insanity; Viertnam very close to a economic free market with a few old Stalinists laegley ignored by the populace )and b. 9/11, we should therfore continue these wars indefinitely. Because...I guess.
Words fail me. By such logic we will never leave such places. And our debt will never go down.
We can safeguard out country and our borders. We can get energy from our domestic resources. We could finally tell these loons to pound sand. And instead we have a parts of our government that would rather plays this stupid grand game nonsense at great expense in bllod and tresaure.
Washington and Eisenhower warned us; they knew something about war. And instead chunks of the State and Defense departments would rather live in the past.
Simply your time is past. Your ideas are invalid. And worse, fiscally unsustainable.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAh, no, that's not my argument. But thanks for doing my thinking for me.
Until idiots in this country drill domestically and get us off Middle Eastern oil, we are stuck with what we've got, which is this: we and the rest of the world are dependent on the oil in the most completely unstable part of the planet. We aren't in that dreamy, tell-them-to-pound-sand world at this point, and I don't see us getting there any time soon with the crowd running things. You can live in fantasy land or deal with the world as it is, and I always chose the latter.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe get about 1/5th of our oil from the Middle East.
How little of it do you want, given what we get is from our allies?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMost of our power of course comes from coal plants.
While I'd be all for ramping up our nuclear power, the fact is we won't because liberals made a lousy movie about a meltdown once and Homer Simpson works at a nuclear plant.
Meanwhile, China's got a bunker system for their nuclear arsenal which is about 100 times bigger than needed for the 240 missiles we seem to think they have and Obama's slashing our arsenal unilaterally. But who needs nukes when we intend to gouge our conventional forces so that the indolent can buy more flatscreen TVs?
Of course they'll find they can only watch them when we're not having brownouts.....
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, it's somewhere between 20-25%. There's also:
1.) About half the rest of the world's oil supply
2.) Suez Canal
3.) Our buddy Israel
4.) A bunch of jerks who want nukes
5.) A bunch of jerks who want the U.S. gone
Kinda important area right now and beyond right now.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Ah, no, that's not my argument. But thanks for doing my thinking for me."
Well he doesn't think for himself, so he has to think for *somebody* ;-)
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse