rssWithdrawal from Iraq Will Undermine Sadr
Monday, November 24, 2008 at 2:19 pm
- 2 Comments
Those of us in the antiwar camp have argued for years that the surest way toward a moderate political future for Iraq — not that there’s any sure way! — is to bring the troops home. Ho-ho, you might roll your eyes, you would say that, wouldn’t you, opponent-of-the-occupation, you. And, you know, fair enough. But many of us came to this position not because of a knee-jerk pacifism, but because that’s what the constellation of considerations in Iraq and the U.S. national interest suggested.
One such person whom no one could credibly describe as a knee-jerk pacifist is retired Army Col. Pete Mansoor. Mansoor is a counterinsurgent luminary, Petraeus’ executive officer in Iraq and contributor to the Army-Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual. Small Wars Journal republishes an interview Mansoor did with the Consortium for Complex Operations, which you may remember from a TWI piece a couple months ago. Check out what Mansoor has to say about Moqtada Sadr:
Muqtada al-Sadr realized he cannot continue to lose political and popular support and survive, so he decided to convert his militia into a social and humanitarian organization (with political overtones, for sure). Now that U.S. forces appear to be on a timeline to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011, this takes away the major plank in the platform of the Sadrist politicians.
Notice that, in context, Mansoor isn’t making a point about what policy should be. He’s not so much as dipping a toe into the trecherous waters of the Iraq debate. What he’s doing is cleanly, clearly and clinically analyzing the factors that contribute to the Sadrist movement’s strength. The U.S. occupation is only one part of that. But it’s an important pole in the tent, and removing it will require a countermove on Sadr’s part to secure the foundation.
Mansoor is hardly the only one recognizing the symbiotic relationship between the U.S. presence and Iraqi political disfunction. At the Center for American Progress’ Wonk Room, my friend Matt Duss interviews Safa Rasul Hussein, deputy national security adviser in the Maliki government, who explains that the U.S. has to get out if the Iraqis are to have any hope of sectarian and political reconciliation:
But also there are factions of the people who will go to the U.S. to solve their problems. And once the U.S. [is] out, these people have no other way to solve their problems than to sit [and talk]. So this will be another motive for them, to push them toward reconciliation. That’s what I meant.
The obvious question all this raises is how much more progress could have been made if we hadn’t waited years to admit that the occupation undermines the political dynamics we’d like to see in Iraq. (Mansoor makes the good point that fears of seeming too much like an occupier despite being an occupier also provided an excuse for inactivity on providing security for the population.) Of course, the easiest way to have not gone down this miserable road would have been never to have invaded in the first place, but still.
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2 Comments
Comment posted December 6, 2008 @ 2:43 pm
Spencer,
True, removing forces would take away an excuse for Sadr. But if history has taught us anything it's that the people in these situations who pretend to have grievances always come up with a way to make the grievance continuously relevant. “You see, the Iraqi regime is still just a puppet of the American imperialist infidels!” etc.
You say that “for years” you've argued that bringing the troops home would be the way to marginalize the radicals. But that's not really what Mansoor is saying. In fact, his argument (and mine) is that the new COIN strategy over the past 2 years has marginalized him to the point where he cannot achieve his political goals using his militia. It was the security implemented by the Americans that made this happen. Had the US withdrawn a while back, you'd still have the conditions of insecurity. Remember, al Qaeda's longer-standing grievances are against the apostate governments of Muslim countries. Attacking the US was primarily to stop us from propping up those governments. As such,you'd still have al Qaeda in Iraq doing their best to overthrow a Shi'a-dominated government, with no American troops there to stop them. The Iraqi army was, and still is, in no way ready to create that security.
If we withdrew years back, civil war would have still ensued, AQI would still be active. When AQI hit Samarra in early 2006, the Americans essentially became bystanders. You had radical militias and death squads going after Sunnis and AQI hitting back. The Iraqi Army would be completely helpless in all of this. Mansoor is arguing that American withdrawal will further hurt an already damaged Sadr. But what happened in the last two years was necessary to get to this point.
Comment posted December 6, 2008 @ 10:43 pm
Spencer,
True, removing forces would take away an excuse for Sadr. But if history has taught us anything it's that the people in these situations who pretend to have grievances always come up with a way to make the grievance continuously relevant. “You see, the Iraqi regime is still just a puppet of the American imperialist infidels!” etc.
You say that “for years” you've argued that bringing the troops home would be the way to marginalize the radicals. But that's not really what Mansoor is saying. In fact, his argument (and mine) is that the new COIN strategy over the past 2 years has marginalized him to the point where he cannot achieve his political goals using his militia. It was the security implemented by the Americans that made this happen. Had the US withdrawn a while back, you'd still have the conditions of insecurity. Remember, al Qaeda's longer-standing grievances are against the apostate governments of Muslim countries. Attacking the US was primarily to stop us from propping up those governments. As such,you'd still have al Qaeda in Iraq doing their best to overthrow a Shi'a-dominated government, with no American troops there to stop them. The Iraqi army was, and still is, in no way ready to create that security.
If we withdrew years back, civil war would have still ensued, AQI would still be active. When AQI hit Samarra in early 2006, the Americans essentially became bystanders. You had radical militias and death squads going after Sunnis and AQI hitting back. The Iraqi Army would be completely helpless in all of this. Mansoor is arguing that American withdrawal will further hurt an already damaged Sadr. But what happened in the last two years was necessary to get to this point.
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