On the road to ruin - Air Force Community - Air Force Times

On the road to ruin

News that the White House is now, more than four years into the Iraq war, seeking a “czar” to oversee policy implementation is a long-overdue admission that the administration has failed to effectively organize all elements of national power to win the war.

News that three retired four-star generals have refused the position, one very publicly, reflects the fact that the administration has no strategy to win the war.

Retired Marine Gen. John Sheehan, invited to take the war czar job, explained “Why I Declined to Serve” in a Washington Post Op-ed on April 16th. After prolonged discussions with members of the administration, he found that “there is no agreed-upon strategic view of the Iraq problem or the region.”

The article is a stunning indictment of strategic incoherence in the Bush administration. In an earlier Washington Post article, Sheehan was quoted as saying, “The very fundamental issue is, they don’t know where the hell they’re going.”

That the “surge” of some 30,000 additional troops to Baghdad is providing additional security to the neighborhoods in which they are stationed should come as no surprise. But this does not solve any of the underlying problems that create instability in Iraq.

The most dangerous problem is sectarian violence and the prospect of widespread civil war. The Iraq government’s failure forced people to turn to militias for protection. The Shiite-dominated government of Iraq has not demonstrated that it intends to be a government of all Iraqis, rather than just a government of, by and for the Shiite.

Complicating the situation is the increasing intrasectarian violence as factions within some ethnic and religious groups fight for power.

The Sunni insurgency is at the core of Iraq’s problems and is responsible for most U.S. casualties. The Sunnis do not believe that a Shiite-dominated government will protect their rights; indeed, many believe that it will slaughter them. The massive infiltration of Iraqi security forces by sectarian militias suggests that the Sunnis have good reason to be concerned.

When the surge ends, the Sunnis rightly fear that there could be hundreds or thousands, rather than just dozens, of their brethren tortured and killed weekly.

The foreign Salafists represented by al-Qaida in Mesopotamia continue to fuel the fire of civil war. While that is the immediate goal, recent statements by Osama bin Laden indicate the long-term goal may be a greater Shiite-Sunni civil war. He hopes such a war will overthrow the House of Saud and economically exhaust the U.S.

Iraq’s neighbors continue to support various factions in the Shiite-Sunni civil war. Iran provides substantial assistance to the government — a current joke in Washington is that “The war in Iraq is over. The Iranians won.”

Jordan and Saudi Arabia allow infiltration of al-Qaida and other insurgents into Iraq. Even Turkey, deeply concerned with its own Kurdish insurgency, is becoming active in Iraq.

None of these problems has a short-term solution. In fact, solving any of them will be enormously difficult. Solving them without a strategy is impossible.

In contrast, the insurgents have a strategy: Exhaust the will of the American people and the U.S. will withdraw its troops.

At the same time, opponents of the war are pushing to get out of Iraq based on the misguided assumption that things will be better if we leave. In the same way the administration did not seriously think through what would happen after Saddam’s government fell, the get-out-of-Iraq-now crowd refuses to consider that a precipitate withdrawal could result in wholesale slaughter of civilians, the establishment of al-Qaida safe havens and a broader regional war that could tip the global economy into recession.

What to do? The first step is to recognize that the administration’s four years of ineptitude have squandered any chance for a good outcome. However, with a strategy that is realistic, sustainable and bipartisan, we may achieve a “least-bad” outcome that avoids genocide, al-Qaida safe havens and regional war.

• Realistic. U.S. strategy must view Iraq and the region as they really are, and let go of the myth that Iraq can be a flourishing democracy any time in the foreseeable future. It must also recognize that the U.S. no longer can determine outcomes in Iraq and that any solution involves working with others in the region, including Iran.

• Sustainable. An essential task of the new strategy must be sustaining the political will of the American people. A coherent, well-articulated strategy will go a long way toward that goal. Americans will support a long-term effective strategy but have shown limited tolerance of incompetence. Sustainability will also require significant troop reductions to ensure the continued viability of the Army and Marine Corps.

• Bipartisan. The administration took a pass on bipartisanship when it ignored the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, and in the current political climate, bipartisanship sounds like a pipe dream. But if American political leaders are unwilling to work with each other to fashion a compromise, they have little moral standing to suggest that Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders do so in Iraq.

The soldiers and Marines working to bring security to Baghdad under Army Gen. David Petraeus’ leadership make huge sacrifices. They are willing to do so, but they should only be asked to do so if the U.S. has a strategy that will garner returns on their sacrifices.

The path we are on will result in failure in Iraq, a high probability of disastrous regional war and an exhausted and broken military. Surely the soldiers and Marines sacrificing their lives in Iraq deserve more. One might go so far as to suggest that they deserve a national leadership with a realistic strategy that shows them where the hell it’s going.

James N. Miller is senior vice president at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C., and served as a deputy assistant defense secretary under President Clinton. T.X. Hammes is a retired Marine colonel who served in Iraq and is the author of “The Sling and the Stone.”