A do-nothing policy in Iraq is not a safe option for Bush

A do-nothing policy in Iraq is not a safe option for Bush
By Gideon Rachman
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: August 15 2006 03:00 | Last updated: August 15 2006 03:00


Pessimism, resignation and despair are states of mind that are meant to be foreign to the American spirit. Nonetheless, a deep bipartisan gloom has descended over the American political class as it contemplates events in the Middle East - and, above all, Iraq.

It has been left to Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, to make a stab at restoring the spirit of can-do optimism. When it was put to her recently that the Middle East was in crisis, she remarked perkily that the Chinese word for crisis combines the characters for danger and opportunity. This observation - which might be mildly interesting if you came across it in a Christmas cracker - somehow failed to persuade sceptics that the Bush administration is on top of the situation.

The American public is certainly not convinced. A recent poll for CNN showed only 36 per cent of Americans now "favour" the war in Iraq, down from 72 per cent support when the war began. As far back as November, a majority of Americans were telling pollsters that the war was a mistake and that it was more important to bring US soldiers home than to help Iraq towards peace, freedom and democracy.

Elite opinion is now catching up with the public. Congress was clearly shocked this month when America's senior generals in Iraq gave markedly gloomy testimony to the Senate, in which they talked openly about the possibility that the country could descend into civil war. Senior senators such as Chuck Hagel, a Republican, and Chris Dodd, a Democrat, say that the civil war has already begun, and that - as Mr Dodd put it - "we are being asked to be referee".

Administration officials have to argue publicly that the situation can still be salvaged. But the Washington pundits, who do so much to frame public debate, are throwing in the towel. Tom Friedman of The New York Times, an early and influential enthusiast for war in Iraq, now argues that America has failed and needs to consider "how we might disengage with the least damage possible". Even many of the neo-conservative commentators who were most closely identified with the drive to war in Iraq now openly accept that the American effort in Iraq is more likely to end in failure than success. So an intellectually chaotic search for a "plan B" is under way. Mr Friedman advocates trying to convene a grand regional peace conference - and, if that fails, American withdrawal.

The neo-con position is that George W. Bush, president, should send in more US troops to stabilise the situation. But most are realistic enough to know that this is highly unlikely. So David Frum, co-author of a grandiloquently titled book, An End to Evil, is now pushing the idea of a "concentration of US forces on the part of Iraq where the US mission has succeeded" - Kurdistan. The idea is that the US army could then use its Kurdish bases to "strike when needed at terrorist forces elsewhere in Iraq". Meanwhile, over at the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, Max Boot - another prominent neo-con - argues that the US should consider reducing its troop numbers to 50,000 (from the current 130,000) and concentrating on a training role.

Yet none of the options being floated - more troops, fewer troops, withdrawal to Kurdistan, partition of Iraq, a grand regional conference, total withdrawal - really convinces anyone.

With anti-war sentiment rising, the mid-term elections looming and the war costing billions of dollars a month, there is just not the public support for the kind of massively increased military effort the neo-cons are talking about.

The idea of partitioning Iraq also provokes certain obvious objections. The country's population is so ethnically mixed in its biggest cities that partition would probably spark ethnic cleansing and an even bigger bloodbath. Iraq's neighbours might well feel compelled to intervene to protect their own interests. There is already rising anxiety in Washington that Turkish forces might soon cross into Iraqi Kurdistan to attack Kurdish insurgents. The end result of a partitioned Iran could well include a Sunni area that may become a base for al-Qaeda and a Shia area under the sway of Iran and Hizbollah.

Most people see talk of a sharp reduction in troop levels or an American pull-back to Kurdistan as little more than a face-saving prelude to total withdrawal. As Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution puts it: "Once American troops pull out of Baghdad, who is ever really going to believe that they might come back?"

Total American withdrawal - essentially leaving Iraq to its fate - is not an attractive option either. It would look enormously feckless if, after all the grand talk of freedom and democracy, America's legacy to Iraq was a civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The Iraqi state that emerged at the end of the process might also be heavily under the influence of Iran. Indeed, one striking aspect of current Washington chatter about Iraq is the extent to which fear of Shia militancy - linked to Iran and Hizbollah - is almost displacing the fear of Sunni jihadism; which in turn had displaced the original fear of Saddam Hussein.

Those who wish to try to avert all of these malign outcomes still talk hopefully of some sort of "grand bargain" in the Middle East, in which some diplomatic genius stitches together a deal that resolves all the linked problems of the region: Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and the Iranian nuclear dossier. Perhaps a peace conference could be called, involving all relevant regional players - including Iran and Syria. Perhaps. But given the current prominence of hardliners across the Middle East,

and Mr Bush's deep reluctance to engage with "evil" regimes, a grand bargain seems almost as implausible as the spontaneous emergence of peace in Iraq.

So the current betting is that the Bush administration will stumble on with the status quo - slightly increasing troop numbers in the short term, while still aiming gradually to hand over to Iraqi forces over the medium term. Such a policy might allow the president to hand the responsibility for the really tough decisions over to his successor. But there is no guarantee that even the current bloody and unsatisfactory status quo can be maintained for two more years.

The death toll of Americans in Iraq is still far short of the 58,000 who were lost in Vietnam. But the political consequences of American failure in Iraq could be higher. American fears of a "domino effect" right across Asia, following the fall of Vietnam, were not realised. But there is no guarantee that the consequences of a failure in Iraq will be so easily contained.