Competing to lose

National Review Editorial:

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the launch of the Iraq war, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are competing over who is best suited to lose it. Obama touts his judgment in opposing the war from the beginning. Clinton brags that she has “the knowledge and confidence to bring our troops home.” In speeches marking the fifth year of the war, both demonstrated just how determinedly out of touch the Democrats have become with Iraq war as it is, as opposed to how they wish it were.

Both promise to withdraw one or two U.S. combat brigades a month, with Obama specifying that at that pace “we can remove all of them in 16 months.” He stipulates that this will not be “a precipitous drawdown.” One trembles to think how he would define such a drawdown, since he is proposing removing the troops as quickly as believes would be logistically possible.

With our departure, Iraq would lose the most responsible and proficient security force in the country, the force that trains the Iraqi army by working with it closely in combat operations and that has put a lid on the civil war, making a return to a kind of normality possible in many parts of Iraq. It would be wonderful if Iraq were stable enough that it wouldn’t backslide with us gone, but no one in Iraq — not the U.S. command, not the Iraqi government — believes this to be the case.

No matter. Clinton and Obama ignore that, just as they ignore the progress that’s been made over the last year. Clinton says President Bush and John McCain “want to keep us tied to another country’s civil war, a war we cannot win.” Clinton seems unaware that we have succeeded in drastically diminishing Iraqi sectarian strife. She says by the summer “we’ll be right back at square one with 130,000 or more troops on the ground in Iraq.” But it’s not square one if those 130,000 troops are in an Iraq where the civil war has been tamped down, U.S. casualties are lower, and al-Qaeda is on the run.

Retailing the standard Democratic rationale for a drawdown, Obama says “fighting a war without end will not force the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future.” This statement needs some unpacking. Obama is not really proposing to end the war, either, because even as we draw down, extremists will continue their attacks. It is only U.S. involvement he wants to end. All of us want Iraqis to take responsibility for their future, but it matters which Iraqis are doing so and how. Without us, the most dangerous armed elements in the country will be more likely take over. Obama apparently doesn’t care who ends up running the country, as long as they are Iraqis.

Obama resorts to the Democrats’ favorite fairy tale in promising that, after we leave, we will have “a counter-terrorism force to strike al Qaeda if it forms a base that the Iraqis cannot destroy.” He seems to have visions of al-Qaeda bulldozing a runway and stringing up barbed wire around an easily identifiable base. Instead, it infiltrates the population and neighborhoods. For now, American forces are the only ones proficient enough to push it out in counterinsurgency operations.

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The Democrats ignorance of counterinsurgency warfare is profound. One of the ways you can tell that is their comparisons of time lines in the war in Iraq to conventional combat persisting warfare. Counterinsurgency operations on average last 11 years and the insurgents rarely win if opposing forces persist. What the Democrats want to do is stop in the middle while we are still winning. At some debate sometimes before we vote in November, the Democrat candidates need to be probed about their depth of knowledge in counterinsurgency warfare.