The cost of weakness in Iraq

The Belmont Club:

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Recently some of the advocates of engagement with Syria and Iran, who proposed a regional conference to negotiate a withdrawal via a 'comprehensive settlement' have also advocated radically increasing troop numbers in Iraq in a "last ditch attempt to stabilize it". This is truly laudable, and it is very probable that increasing troop numbers may have a significant military benefit. However, without a firm bipartisan determination to impose the American will -- provided that can be articulated by both parties -- any gains from reinforcement will be temporary and fleeting.

For those gains to last, any access of strength -- or any other measure in Iraq -- must be implemented as part of an overall strategy to make Syria and Iran leave Iraq alone; and impress that failure to do so will result in their abject defeat. It is up to the professionals to decide how that defeat should be administered. Whether by a combination of military, diplomatic or economic means does not matter. Troop strength can be increased; it can be decreased; it can be shifted out of theater or moved around as desired. Blockades and sanctions may be imposed. Diplomatic demarches employed; conferences convened. Even a "responsible redeployment" is not out of the question. These are all tactics which men who are professionally employed to judge such matters can use as they see fit. But the strategic aim must be fixed. Iraq must no longer be assailed in the thinly veiled manner of the past by either Syria or Iran.

In the closing year of the Vietnam conflict, President Richard Nixon unleashed the US Airforce for the first time upon North Vietnam in Operations Linebacker 1 and 2. Accounts of the Linebacker 2 tell of POWs in the Hanoi Hilton listening to the B-52s crunch up the Hanoi docks, like Godzilla come to end the world. They told of brutal guards cowering on the floor as the POWs laughed manically behind bars; the guards asking in panic each time the floor shook "what was that?" And the answer was: "it is hand of God coming to take us home". Stirring stuff. Yet ultimately futile. The POWS did come home, but Linebacker changed nothing strategically because it was a brilliant military operation aimed at easing a retreat rather than achieving victory. Iraq does not need another Linebacker 2. What it needs is a bipartisan consensus to identify what American war aims are in this theater. Too long has the task been put off. But once the result is known it should be the only outcome permissible and the only choice for Syria and Iran.

The Linebacker operations against Hanoi succeeded in a way that critics of the bombing had always denied. The Democrats had always resisted the heavy bombing of North Vietnam because it would bring the Soviets and the Chinese into the war. It did not, and if it had been applied five years sooner it would have been even more effective because the subsequent US withdrawal would not have been as complete and the resistance of the Democrats to destroying the North Vietnamese attacks on South Vietnam would have not been as effective.

The problem with bombing Iran is that the targets that make the most sense have little to do with the war in Iraq. We need to destroy Iran's ability to make war as well as its nuke facilities, however that destruction would have little impact on their use of proxy warriors unless the regime collapsed, which is unlikely. In Syria the target that would do the most good in terms of Iraq's insurgent would be to close the Damascus airport where most of the jihadis begin their journey into Iraq. However, the airport is not an obvious military target which makes it politically remote that it will be attacks unless there is some more overt use by the enemy.