Speakers:
Thomas R. Mattair
Consultant to government and business
Lawrence J. Korb
Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Barry R. Posen
Ford International Professor of Political Science, Security Studies Program
Center for International Studies, M.I.T.
Gareth Porter
Independent historian and foreign policy analyst
Moderator/Discussant
Chas. W. Freeman, Jr.
President, Middle East Policy Council
Capitol Building, Room HC-5
Washington, D.C.
April 21, 2006
Transcript by:
Federal News Service
Washington, DC
CHAS. W. FREEMAN, JR.: I'm Chas. Freeman. It's my pleasure to welcome you here this morning as president of the Middle East Policy Council, which as most of you know, I'm sure, is a small organization that does three things: raise politically incorrect or neglected issues for public discussion up here in the heart of darkness - (laughter) - on Capitol Hill -- in fact, today is in a sense déjà vu all over again because when I first become president -- in December of '97 I believe -- the first program I presided over in January of 1998 was on the subject of "After Saddam Hussein: Who and What?" -- a question to which we still do not know the answer. It seemed like a relevant question at the time and to be somewhat neglected. Perhaps it will in due course find an answer.
Second, we publish the results of these discussions in our quarterly, Middle East Policy. As the Washington Post used to say, "if you don't get it, you don't get it." And the last session that we did just two weeks ago -- not on Capitol Hill due to political cowardice up here -- was on the subject of whether it's possible to reopen business relationships with the Arab world. That is on our website. I invite your attention to it; it was a very good discussion of a difficult topic.
And finally, outside Washington, throughout the country, we conduct teacher training programs for high school teachers. We train them how to teach about Arab civilization and Islam and thereby confuse high school kids with a fact or two, which they otherwise would never encounter in their experience with our splendid public education system.
At the moment, we are raising money for three purposes - this is not unusual for us. We stumble from moment-to-moment in terms of our operational expenses. We depend on donors for those. We depend on donors for the revamping and renewal and digitization of the curriculum for the teaching training program I mentioned - a special project in which we are engaged. And finally we are attempting to build an endowment, which would put the organization on a sustainable basis for the long term.
We are meeting here today to talk about whether there is a responsible exit from the strategic ambush of Iraq. And the starting point of our discussion is that sooner or later -- as nearly 90 percent of Iraqis' prefer, and as somewhat smaller majorities internationally prefer, and as now a simple majority in the United States prefers - we will leave Iraq. The question is, how and when will we do so and what will we leave behind? The manner of our arrival in Iraq was deeply disruptive of our international relationships, including those in the region. Now the issue is the manner of our departure.
Having just returned from the region, I can attest that this is very much on the minds of rulers there. They fear that having trashed Iraq and set it afire, we will walk away from it and leave them to die of smoke inhalation. They are concerned that an irresponsible American withdrawal would transform what they regard as a severe strategic mistake by the United States into a crime - their word. And they also should be concerned, in my view, that this non-partisan mistake - since there was deafening silence from the loyal opposition as we marched into Iraq - may now be compounded by the introduction of partisanship and that an American debate over who lost Iraq and who created this mess takes on a strictly partisan cast.
I'm not going to recapitulate what we have accomplished in Iraq. It's clear that we did succeed in removing Saddam Hussein and bringing him to trial. We verified that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That's a major achievement for our political-military strategy. We, however, also destroyed the Iraqi state, we dismembered Iraqi politics, we destabilized inter-communal relations in Iraq, we de-secularized political life in Iraq, and we attracted, created, and are now in the process of training an entire new generation of terrorists.
The concern in the region is not only these terrorists will spill over the boarders to display their newly honed skills in urban warfare with attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia or on the government in Jordan, but that there may in fact be something resembling a 21st century version of the Spanish Civil War emerging, in which fights among Iraqis gradually enlist and implicate neighbors and draw others into a widening circle of instability, or even that Iraq might become the cockpit for a version within the realm of Islam of the 30 Years War between Protestants and Catholics, which disturbed the tranquility of Christendom for decades. There is thus a perceived threat to the entire Dar al Islam.
Anyway, enough of my descriptions of what happened. What happened is really less important than what will happen. When you make a mess, you really shouldn't just walk away from it. So the question is, can we still accomplish some of our objectives in Iraq? Can we do something in Iraq to stabilize the situation rather than see it continue to deteriorate? Can we leave in a manner that stabilizes not just Iraq but the region? Can we withdraw with honor in due course and with a sense of accomplishment, or are we simply going to do what is feared in the region - wash our hands of the mess we have created and leave them to deal with the consequences?
We have today a splendid panel to deal with this. I will ask each of them to speak for about 10-12 minutes. When they get close to 12 minutes, I will look menacingly at them - (laughter) - and if they continue to burble on, I will haul them off the podium. But we will have a lively, I trust, question and comment session. And I would only ask, when that comes, that those of you who have questions or comments please identify yourselves even if you are extremely well known and you believe that we should all know who you are. And also, try to be concise and to the point, and if possible, direct your comment or question to an individual or individuals on the panel.
As I said, we have a great panel here. Their biographies are briefly listed on the back of the program so I'm not going to recapitulate them. We will go in the order of the program; that is, starting with Tom Mattair. I want to note that Tom has an article in the most recent issue of Middle East Policy, which is entitled "Exiting Iraq," in which he reviews various exit strategies that have been proposed by different people, many of whom are on this panel. Tom is a Washington-based consultant to government and business. He's been at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in Abu Dhabi for quite a while.
He has a book, I'm told, that's already been published but not exactly circulated for some reason. In any event, Tom will speak first, and then Larry Korb, who probably needs no introduction in Washington. He is a convicted Republican who's working at the Center for American Progress, a former assistant secretary of Defense, a prolific author on defense matters, and the author of "A Strategy for Exit from Iraq."
Barry Posen, professor at MIT, an eminent student of strategy and military doctrine, also the author of a very plausible set of proposals for responsible exit.
And finally, last but far from least, Gareth Porter, a journalist, scholar, and teacher, who is now an independent scholar and journalist here in Washington specializing in national security policy and the frequent poster of extremely interesting and timely analyses of the situation in Iraq. He too is the author of a proposal for an orderly and responsible withdrawal from Iraq.
So with these few words of introduction, allow me please to ask Tom Mattair to take the podium for about 10 minutes.
MR. MATTAIR: Well, thank you very much. It's very nice to be here because actually I was on the staff of this organization in the 1990s and I have warm feelings about it. We're here today to talk about exit strategies from Iraq. We all know the figures about the death and destruction that this has caused so far, and we know the original arguments for the war have proven to be false, but our presence there and the consequences of the war and the way we conduct ourselves from now on does have an impact on our national interest, so we have to do this carefully and there are no easy or good choices really.
I would like to talk about calls for rapid withdrawal and then I would like to talk about the Bush strategy, and I would like to leave calls for withdrawal according to timetables to the people who have written such good programs. And I assume that a lot of you haven't read my article so I will touch on some of the major points of that article and then go off into something new.
The people who call for fast withdrawal are basing this call on some accurate assessments. Resentment of the occupation is one of the motives for the insurgents; lack of a timetable does fuel this motivation. The occupation has not subdued the killing. The occupation does erode the military strength and the global standing and the goodwill that the United States has enjoyed after the end of the Cold War and after 9/11, and the war was certainly based on poor policy making. But their arguments about the consequences of a rapid withdrawal are, I think, too optimistic. It's not clear to me, as they argue, that rapid withdrawal will foster compromise among the sectarian and ethnic groups, that it will diminish the insurgency, that it will lead to improvements in Iraqi security forces, that it will promote reconstruction, and it's not clear to me particularly because the presence of the U.S. forces is not the only motive for the insurgents; the competition for power within Iraq is another motivation of the insurgents. I think the analysis and the predictions both underestimate the ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq. And it's also not clear to me, as they argue, that withdrawal will be followed by regional restraint and that it will allow the United States to prepare its strategic posture.
In fact, other people argue that a rapid withdrawal would have the opposite results, if we haven't trained Iraqi security forces first and if we haven't forged comprises first, that it will in fact undermine U.S. credibility, encourage insurgents, stoke civil war, destabilize the region, spill over into neighboring countries, and lead to interventions by neighbors and jeopardize U.S. security. These are the arguments made by the Bush administration and by many, many leading Democrats.
So that takes us to the Bush strategy, which they call a "victory strategy." And if it were successful it could be an exit strategy, and if it's not successful it could be a quagmire strategy. They say that they will withdraw when more Iraqi troops are equipped and trained, when a democratic government emerges, and when Iraq's economy is rebuilt, and they define that in more specific terms as a constitutional representative government that respects civil rights and has security forces sufficient to maintain order and keep Iraq from being a safe haven for terrorists. And it would mean an Iraq that had a free-market economy that provided basic services and was integrated into the international economy. They claim Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, that our failure would mean that al Qaeda - which is now a part of a larger Mujahedeen Shura, Council of Holy Warriors - that is would control much of Iraq, that it would use it as a base to attack the West, and that because of Iraq's oil, al Qaeda would control a hub of the world's economy.
In evaluating this strategy, it seems to me to be too optimistic. Iraqi leaders may not compromise, security forces may not become more capable and loyal, and the insurgency and corruption may continue to cripple reconstruction. There are so many questions to be resolved. Here are just a few of them. The Sunnis don't think they can be assured of an adequate share of the country's oil wealth under the current constitution, and amending the constitution is going to take a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly - something that the Sunnis will be hard pressed to muster, and even if they did, it would have to go to a national referendum. The Kurds want Kirkuk and its oil and they don't want to be bound by Islamic law. And they may have a hard time finding Shi'ite partners who will agree to this.
The Shi'ites are divided about the question of federalism, and the ones who favor a strong central government and weak autonomous regions, which in my opinion is the best option, happen to be Da'wa and Sadr's followers, who by the way did very, very well within the United Iraqi Alliance and who are actually stronger within the United Iraqi Alliance than the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution. But these are the parties whose prime ministerial candidate we have opposed, evidently because he agreed to ask for a timetable for U.S. withdrawl if he was confirmed, and it would be a huge challenge for them to create a truly national security force under these circumstances when sectarian killing is rampant. And we know that reconstruction is crippled by insurgency and corruption.
Another question about this strategy that I have is I think it's too pessimistic about the consequences of American failure. Al Qaeda followers are small in numbers. Iraq is as big as California. Nationalist insurgents will turn against al Qaeda insurgents; neighboring countries will turn against them. The U.S. will have Special Forces that can target them. I don't see that they can use Iraq as a base, and anyway they don't need Iraq as a base; they've been attacking the West successfully and they're dispersed and they have global reach, and we're very lucky they haven't attacked us again.
So that leads us to the calls for timetables. And, again, I'll leave it to the other panelists, whose work is really very good on this and they'll describe the kinds of support they think the United States should provide as we withdraw and after we withdraw and where this American force ought to be based. But the one thing I'd like to talk about is that these calls - and Senator Levin and John Deutch and other people have also been calling for this, although their plans aren't as well developed as our colleagues. One thing they all have in common is the call for regional cooperation, and that's what I'd like to talk about.
Saudi Arabia and the GGC states are concerned that the Sunnis are being marginalized in Iraq. They have met at their summit conference and talked about this. They're concerned about the fact that Iran has growing influence in Iraq. They're trying to find ways to minimize this. They don't want the Sunnis to provoke a conflict that's going to spill over into Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, but if the Sunnis are the victims of Shi'ite death squads, and if Iran is perceived as being behind this, it's going to be hard for them to tolerate this.
With respect to the calls for talks with Iran that so many people have called for, our ambassador to Iraq has been authorized to engage in these talks, and now, within the last month or so, the Iranians have said they will engage in these talks. But the possibility of these talks comes at a time when the United States is also threatening sanctions and maybe even military strikes against Iran because of its nuclear programs. I think both sanctions and military strikes would blow back on the United States and on the GGC states, and I think - I shouldn't talk about that here but if anyone has a question about that in the Q&A, I'll tell you why I think that. But it may be that the threats have had some kind of beneficial impact because, as I understand it, Iran's supreme leader Khamenei wants these talks, and as I understand it, the invitation extended from the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. As I understand it, the invitation extended by the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq was arranged by Khamenei so that he would be able to point to this as a reason for coming into these talks. And as I understand it, he's very worried about the pressure that's being applied against Iran.
So, this means that if he is going to cooperate regarding Iraq, he's going to want something in return. If Iran can - yes, I think I can do it in two minutes - if Iran can restrain Shi'ite death squads, if Iran can provide intelligence about Sunni insurgents, if Iran can encourage Shi'ites to share power and control over oil in a central government that has real power and that includes the Sunnis, that will help the United States promote compromise and stability and reconstruction. But then Iran and most Iraqi factions will want the United States to leave, and the Bush administration will have to decide if it really does want to leave.
Iran will also want some deal on the nuclear programs, and the Bush administration will then have to decide if it's willing to agree to a deal that tightly limits Iranian uranium enrichment and probably plutonium separation. Here the U.S. would be dealing with Ali Larijani, who has the support and confidence of Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei. I think the U.S. should also use this opportunity to see if talks on other issues are possible - let's say, for example, the extent and character of Iran's conventional military acquisitions and exercises in the Arab Persian Gulf, which are seen as a threat in the GCC states. As for Ahmadinejad, I don't think Ahmadinejad is a major foreign policy player. I think his public outbursts are designed to generate public support that would maybe help him enter the club of major foreign policymakers.
But if we want cooperation on Iraq, and if we want cooperation on nuclear programs and cooperation in the Gulf, we may have to show Iran that these threats are going to cease and that there may be some limited guarantees that they're not going to be attacked if they abide by all these agreements. That means giving up dreams of forcible regime change, and it means banking on a slow and evolutionary process of political change in Iran, and maybe the democracy program would gain more traction in Iran if we had these agreements and Iran were not being threatened.
But there's one final issue - and that's it for me - and that is Israel. And clearly Iran does not recognize the legitimacy of Israel, and that is a problem for the Bush administration and for any American administration, and has a bearing on how they are going to deal with Iran. But Barry, for example, has written an article in which he talked about consequences of Iran actually getting nuclear weapons and how it would be bound by the same laws of deterrence and mutually assured destruction that has usually governed these matters. I won't go that far, but let's just say that Iran did not have a nuclear weapon. What kind of threat does it pose to Israel? The threat doesn't come from its Shahab missiles carrying conventional warheads because Israel has the nuclear capability to retaliate. The threat comes from Iran's support for Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, and that's something that needs to be cut.
Now, how can that be done? This is my last comment. (Laughter.) This may be wishful thinking, but if there were a two-state solution with a secure Israel and a viable Palestine, and Palestinians were satisfied and Arab states entered into normal relations with Israel, I think popular support for these resistance movements would diminish and either Iran would fall into line with that or we would know we had an adversary that required more attention.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you very much, Tom. Thank you very much. I think you've raised a lot of key questions to which we will return during the course of the discussion to come. First, the notion that withdrawal does - to accomplish much -- probably require a measure of conditionality and some concern for what happens thereafter inside Iraq. Second, that there is a regional context. I note that while we appear to be prepared to talk to Iran, there's no indication that we're talking to either the Arab neighbors of Iraq or to Turkey. So we have an odd situation; we're talking to the country that we long refused to talk to but we're not talking to our traditional allies and friends. This is an interesting approach.
We can't get away with talking about Iraq without talking about Iran, not simply because of its influence in Iraq but because of all of the issues you mentioned. And I think you correctly posed a question: Is the policy which essentially says to Iran, abandon your deterrent or we will bomb you, and by the way, we are dedicated to overthrowing your regime - (laughter) - so give up your deterrent or we'll bomb you, and by the way, we won't talk to you about anything other than your getting out of Iraq -- is this policy likely to produce anything other than a rallying of Iranian political support behind Mr. Ahmadinejad? That's an interesting question.
Finally, I think it should be mentioned - and I trust in the context of possible attacks on Iran, which do play into this issue - that we did conduct an operation in Iran in 1980 from Oman - "Desert One," which didn't work. It got us thrown out of Oman for a few years, and my distinct sense from my recent travels through the region is that there's no appetite in the region to allow us to stand on others' territory and throw rocks over the lip of the volcano and then leave them to find out what comes back. There is a point here about logistics. Attacking Iran, and sustaining such an attack requires an enormous amount of logistical support and basing in the region, and I'm not sure it's there for us.
With these observations we turn now to a real expert on those issues and others, Larry Korb.
LARRY KORB: Thank you, Chas., a great pleasure to be here with you. In trying to figure out what to do about Iraq, I'm reminded of a joke I once heard by Brent Scowcroft, a person I think they should have listened to before they got into this. But anyway, he told the story about a very religious man who before he went to meet his maker decided to visit the Grand Canyon. He got on a donkey to take him down to the bottom of the canyon. On the way down the donkey lost his footing and the poor man began to fall head-over-heels toward the bottom of the canyon. Fortunately, he reached out, grabbed onto a branch, and as you might expect, he began to pray. And pretty soon a voice came down from on high and it said, son do you have faith? And he said, oh, yes, I have faith. And the voice came down again and said, let go of the branch. And he thought for a second and he said, is there anybody else up there I can talk to? (Laughter.)
Now, look, we're in a mess. There are no good options. I mean, no matter what you do, you cannot guarantee that it's going to enhance American security. And after all, that's what we're talking about. I mean, the goal of using military power, the goal of the administration is to protect and enhance American security. So what do you do? Now, at the center we put together a plan in late September - it got a little bit of mention, but then one night Howard Dean was on Jay Leno and they said, you Democrats don't have any plans, you know, for what to do. And he said, oh, yes, we do; we have the strategic redeployment plan written by Larry Korb, who used to work for Reagan. And then of course everybody wanted to read it, you know, in terms of, you know, watching my - in fact, my kids called me up and said, I had no idea you had a plan. (Laughter.)
Okay, now, basically here is how we came up with our plan. The first thing you have to realize is that right now the Iraqis do not have an incentive to do what they need to do. And what do they need to do? They need to form a government of national unity and they need to develop security forces who are motivated to protect this government of national unity or this multi-ethnic state, however you want to define it. Right now they have no motivation because we're basically - we have ceded - we, the United States, have ceded control over our policy to them because we're saying, as the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down. Well, what happens if they don't stand up? Okay, you know, we cannot stand down. Now, our plan says what we need to do, and we should have started at the beginning of this year, but basically is tell the Iraqis that by the end of 2007, for all practical purposes, we are going to be out of Iraq. And setting this timetable, in addition to putting them on notice that they need to get their act together, will also send a clear signal to the insurgents in Iraq, many of them whom who are motivated not by this dream of, you know, reestablishing the Caliphate of the, you know, the 6th century or anything. Basically, they see us as occupiers.
I went on one of these trips that Rumsfeld had - he had two of them; after the second one there was no more. And anyway, when I was over there I'm down at Hillia (ph) talking to a Shi'ite, and he said, don't you guys know anything about history? And I'm thinking to myself, yeah, a lot of people making the policy don't. I said, what's the problem? He said, you sound just like the British: We came as liberators, not occupiers. I went back and checked; Major General Maude (sp) said the same thing in 1920. So a lot of people simply don't believe us. And I was further pressed - you know, they said, look, you said you came for weapons of mass destruction; they're not here, okay? And we knew that because we sent a whole bunch of Iraqi-Americans over there before the war to - you know, came back and said, you know, they are not making them anymore. Ties to al Qaeda, as Tom mentioned, they are not very, very close at all. You came for the oil. I said, no, no, no, we didn't. But that's what they believe. So we need to tell them we are out and we don't want any permanent bases. Now, will that defuse all the insurgency? No, but it will defuse a good part of it. And, you know, one of the scary statistics that you take a look at is that 80 percent of the Iraqis want us out and almost half of them think it's okay to kill Americans. So that tells you exactly, you know, the way people are using us.
Why else do you want to get out? You need to get out because the longer you stay your standing and the world goes down, and we do have other foreign policy interests, and we're also ruining our Army. General Maxwell Taylor said something about, we went to Vietnam - and I think it's appropriate here - he said, we sent the army to Vietnam to save Vietnam; we took it out to save the Army. And you're getting pretty close to that right now. Just to give you a statistic: 97 percent of the captains made major last year in the Army. And as one Pentagon official told me, if you didn't have a criminal record you got promoted. Well, they're going to be the ones running your operation the next time. One out of every six kids coming into the military is getting a waiver. Okay, so that's what happening to our Army. Nobody wants to talk about a draft or anything so you continually weaken your Army as you continue to keep up this high level of deployment and pressure on it.
The next thing that would happen is - oh, by the way, we have a homeland to protect. Well, the National Guard isn't here to protect. We saw what happened in Katrina. The best Guard units were over in Iraq, from Louisiana and Mississippi. And, you know, I heard people say, oh, we've got plenty of Guard units still left. Yeah they send the bad down there, okay, to New Orleans. Yes, the numbers, but your crack units and the equipment is over there. So we need to get them back to the United States so they can focus on the homeland. And, oh, by the way, we don't have enough troops in Afghanistan. In case you haven't noticed, it's not going too well there, okay, and we should be sending some more troops to Afghanistan.
So what does our plan say? Okay, we're out by the end of 2007. Now, I think this deals with what people say is your moral obligation because by that time we will have been there pretty close to five years. That's pretty long, okay, in terms of the Iraqis getting their act together. Now, were not going to leave the region. We urge - and we called our plan "strategic redeployment." Now, why did we use that term? Because anytime somebody said, let's withdraw so the timetable - cut-and-run, defeatist and all that - so words do matter. And actually I got it because when I was in the Pentagon we were changing the Navy's homeports, basically, you know, putting some ports in different places, really to drum up support for the Navy, and we called it "strategic homeporting," okay? And so I figured, well, "strategic redeployment," you know, that's sound better, you know, than cut-and-run. So that would, I think, fulfill our moral obligation.
Now, people say, well, what happens if Iraq falls apart? Well, we're not withdrawing from the region. We would leave a brigade in Kuwait, okay? That's, you know, 3 (thousand) to 5,000, you know, Army troops in Kuwait. We would also have a Carrier Battle Group with a Marine Expeditionary Force, as they say, over the horizon so that if it should become another Afghanistan where al Qaeda establishes training camps or what have you, you can deal with it. If you should have, you know, Iran or Turkey or somebody invade, you'd be able to deal with it with your forces in the region. I think that gives you the best hope of fulfilling your moral obligations, trying to bring stability to the region and also protecting our interests.
Now, we also have a diplomatic component. We would urge convening a Dayton-type meeting in Geneva, okay? Remember they had the Dayton Accords to get their people quarrelling over the former Yugoslavia; okay, we would convene that under U.N. auspices to try to work out the arrangements. We would also get the powers in the region together and to talk about what should be done and what they can do to prevent Iraq from degenerating. I don't believe anybody in there wants to see Iraq become a haven for terrorists or degenerate into a complete civil war, and there are things that the powers in the region can do. It's in their interest as well as ours.
Now, I think if you take that overall, you know, approach, you best safeguard American security interests, you are relieve the pressure on your Army, and you give yourself a chance of this thing coming out right. Now, can I guarantee it? No. No matter what plan you have, people are going to say, hey, that has this risk or this. But I can tell you this - and let me conclude on that - stay the course or the strategy for victory is much a worse alternative. Thank you.
(Applause.)
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you very much - very thoughtful, very provocative. I think Larry correctly focused on the costs to the United States of continuing the course both internationally and regionally in terms of our capacity to deal with natural disasters and other consequence-management tasks in the United States, and with our own view of our national honor and our obligation to behave responsibly.
But I have to say, Larry, I'm left wondering - and we'll get into the discussion about this after we redeploy strategically, and thus concentrate the minds of Iraqis, like hanging concentrates the minds of convicts - what happens to the Iraqis and what is their relationship with their neighbors, and is that relationship one that the neighbors will find acceptable or not? I think the regional dimension here remains one that we need to address. If we had a Dayton-style conference, we wouldn't be able, I think, to neglect the interests of the Saudis, the Jordanians, the Turks, the Syrians, the Iranians, and the Kuwaitis as we did that.
Let me now invite Barry Posen the podium.
BARRY POSEN: I want to try to structure the discussion - the overall discussion. Larry and I agree on probably 97 percent of the disengagement plan, and I think I can say in complete honesty we never discussed it until after we had both written our plans. I never saw what he was writing and he never saw what I was writing. So it goes to show that baldheaded guys think alike - (laughter) - or something.
When I first started thinking about this, I used to try to ask myself, well, what does a public policy debate have to look like in order to try to get you to a disengagement kind of solution? It seems to me there is three parts of that public policy discussion: One, we have to establish that the situation in Iraq is not particularly good. Now, I've been giving talks on this for a year and I've never had a problem making a case that the situation in Iraq is not very good. It changes. In other words, when people say, oh, there is progress on a particular front, in some months there is progress and on some fronts there is progress, but in other months there is regress. So I like to portray the problem as a dynamic stalemate and the facts and figures and characteristics of that dynamic stalemate will be different at any different time point. But pretty much I think I think that's where we are, but you always have to be revisiting that discussion.
The second point you need to make - you need to be able to make and sustain is that there is some sort of causal reasons for this dynamic stalemate. In other words, this dynamic stalemate isn't just a result of a bunch of idiosyncratic factors. There are strong reasons why we have a dynamic stalemate, and some of them have been mentioned here, and I won't try to go into all of them here, but the two biggest ones - and just about everyone agrees, even the senior military who say they want to stay the course because that's what they are obligated to do, will say, one, that our presence there activates every political - they don't use this term but it simplifies - every particular dash-ism that there is - nationalism, patriotism, sectarianism, fundamentalism - our presence aggravates all of those "isms." And we know from a lot of history, recent and distant, that those "isms" are great mobilizers for intrapreneurs who want to go after power and want to use violence to do it, whether they are within states or whether among states. As my friend Steve Enever (ph) likes to say, "Nationalism is the atomic energy of modern politics." So our presence there energizes all of these "isms," right?
And you have to remember there is a little footnote here, right: Iraqi society is funny, Sunni rural is funny to us - Sunni rural society is especially funny to us. There are very large but very tight extended families. You hurt or humiliate a guy; you make a whole hell of a lot of enemies. It's as if he had a dozen or two brothers because there is great closeness among first cousins. So you also activate what in our historical lore would be Hatfield and McCoy kind of emotions. That's one. So our presence energizes these "isms" and that's how the adversary replenishes his capability, which he's done over and over and over again.
Already said - second, we're enablers, right? Now, you can use whatever pop psychology term you want or use or you can use some of the fancy social science, right? You can call this moral hazard, you can call it enabling, you can call it infantilizing. We make possible feckless politics among Iraqis. We are their insurance policy against their fecklessness - feckless political politics, feckless administration, and feckless military organization because they are safe from the consequences of their actions and there non-actions. Now, this also means that the stalemate is dynamic because the people we're trying to turn into a state, right, don't feel under any pressure to turn into one. So these are the two big causes that will continue to drive this thing in a negative direction.
Okay, so then the third point, which we all come to, is we have to make a responsible public policy case for disengagement that says here's how you do it, here's a strategy; here's what U.S. interests are, here's what the risks are in our strategy and here's why we're willing to take the risk. Now, Larry has done a very nice job of laying out his strategy; mine's really, as I said, not very different. When I wrote mine I said 18 months but that was months ago - (laugher) - right, so at the time I was writing mine, I was thinking middle of 2007. Larry wants it the end of 2007. Larry, lets you and I arm wrestle about that last six months because that's really the important question. (Laughter.) Larry would win obviously; you know, he's in better shape than I am. So that's not the important thing. The important thing is to state a date certain or to get some of that emotional energy out of the insurgency, to light a fire under the people we're trying to light a fire under. But that's only the beginning of the issue.
What are you going to do with the 18 or 24 months? What's your - what are you going to do? One, you have to reconsider U.S. interests. What are U.S. interests, the core interests? Now, nobody ever wants to talk about this. People can disagree with me what they think the interests are. I'm a realist; I think about power. It's oil. Not oil - the lousy billion or 2 billion or 20 billions bucks that are made out of Iraqi oil or going to be made out of Iraqi oil; it's oil as power. We care about oil as power, right, and I think that's why we're in the Persian Gulf. And if oil weren't a key power asset, we wouldn't be in the Persian Gulf. We wouldn't care about these people. I mean, that's what I think we're there for. That has a lot of ramifications in terms of our interests in Iraq, right? We don't want al Qaeda to come to power in Iraq and get its little hands on a big flow of oil money. Yeah, we don't want other bad people to come into power in Iraq and get their hands on oil money. We'd rather not have outsiders rip Iraq apart to get their hands on Iraq's oil resources. Those are the kinds of key interests we have.
Now, we also have some ancillary interests. It would be nice if Iraq didn't turn into a really comfortable base for al Qaeda. Remember, at least in terms of al Qaeda that calls itself al Qaeda in the land of the two rivers, it is already a base for al Qaeda. So the question of whether you're worse off or better off being - staying or going I think is an open question. So it's those kinds of interests, right? So this means that - what is it that we want? We want to fix it so that as we leave Iraq al Qaeda doesn't come to power; there's no great and international war, right? And, you know, it would be best for the point of view of our interest or the point of view of Iraqi interests if there were no civil war, but I think this is unachievable. So if there is a civil war, I think what we would like it to do is be as short as possible, which means to get to stalemate as quickly as possible. And my own view is they're destined for stalemate. I think that's the direction they are on.
Okay, so we need a - now we have components of the strategy. We need an internal component inside Iraq and we need an external component in the region. The internal component in Iraq, I think we have in our own minds what we think is a plausible solution for this state. It's not a unitary power-sharing state; it's a weak federal state. I think that's the best we can hope for; I think it's the best they can get. There are people in Iraq who don't want to have that happen; there are people in Iraq that do want to have that happen. Unfortunately, we've already signed it away to the Kurds. And changing the constitution to un-signing it away to the Kurds would be very hard, so how are you going to stop others from getting the same thing? Now, there are some who don't want that; they want something else, and they might need to fight a civil war to learn that they can't have it.
Internally the Iraqi military and security forces - I think the Iraqi police forces are lost to us, particularly the national police. We can't fix the police without fighting another counterinsurgency against the Shi'ites and we can't even win the one against the - (audio break, tape change) -- C-plus infantry battalions, a handful of C-plus brigades, a handful - even a smaller number of C-plus divisions, and everything else is missing: logistics, command and control, intelligence, all of the rest. We have got to take this 12 or 18 months we have left to us and try and fix those things up, not to A-plus standards, but just so they can take a punch, so that the insurgents can't roll into the capital city and have the army collapse. That is what we have to fix so that it won't happen inside. And we have to lead the inside people to the idea that this kind of divided - you know, this kind of federal state is all they can get.
And then, as many have said here, we need an external strategy, a diplomatic strategy, right, and that diplomatic strategy, it could rely on Dayton conferences or not Dayton conferences. People like Dayton conferences now. I am not that big a fan of them, but it doesn't really matter. The point is you need a diplomacy with the states in the region, right, in which you explain to them that you're not leaving the Persian Gulf, you have interests there; you are leaving Iraq because you think it's a better way to pursue our interests, that we don't want them to be invading Iraq and we have military power we can use to stop them from invading Iraq.
We also have other kinds of power we can use to stop them from doing things or at least make them pay, and similarly we have got to be nice guys too and say look at the benefits. There are things we can do for you; there are things that a peaceful Iraq, or at least an Iraq that doesn't involve a tearing away at the corpse of this country is - to make that better for you.
Then there is the military component of it, which Larry talked about, which we have to organize ourselves for a kind of offshore intervention. And there is going to be a whole special operations component of this that we talk about but - who know is going on in the world anyway. I mean, this is part of what was the global war on terror and is now the long war.
And we are going to continue that, right, and we will have new opportunities because as we leave places like al Anbar Province, there are plenty of Sunni notables who we know in al Anbar Province who don't like us very much now and whom some of our people would like to kill but are prohibited from killing because we know they are important political figures. Those people are actually going to need help once we leave, and they are not going to have us to use as a unifying force for political mobilization, and they are not going to like necessarily every other opposition group that has been fighting us, and some of these people we can bring over to our side with money and with guns, and with other things, right.
And it is not going to be pretty. None of this is going to be pretty. Anybody who tells you it is going to be pretty is deceiving you, right. So, as I said, internal and external component of this strategy - I would just like to close with one little idea that I don't have in my paper. I mean, the paper was published at Boston. I'm sure you can find it online.
Often, agreements among disputing powers inside a country are hard to keep, are hard to make because people don't have any confidence that the other side is going to keep particularly the most powerful - other members of the agreement. And one of the big problems in Iraq is do the Sunnis have any reason to believe they are going to get paid, right, that they are going to get their share of the oil wealth.
And this is a very unpopular idea in this town but we should remember - actually, we know how to collect the Iraqi oil wealth, right. We had a program to collect Iraqi oil wealth, right, in the Oil-for-Food Program. But we were very lousy at the other side of it controlling what people bought and how much got in Saddam Hussein's hands, but collecting the money was not a problem, and that is because the transactions happened abroad, they happened in dollars, they happened mostly in banks.
So the outside world has a way to help the Iraqis reach an agreement, to help the Sunnis have confidence in the agreement about the distribution of oil wealth by basically saying you guys agree on a split and we will collect the transactions, collect the profits from the transactions, and distribute them to people in your country on the basis of whatever the split was you agreed to, and that is something that the outside world could do; it doesn't have to be the United States. It could be somebody else, all right, and this could be a great help to them, you know, as they come to the end of the trail in their negotiations for what I think is inevitably going to be a weak federal state. Thank you.
(Applause.)
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you. Excellent. Your mention of our senior military, followed by a very intelligent focus on the need to set a realistic objectives, reminds me of an encounter I had at Maxwell Air Force Base towards the end of last year. I gave a talk - obviously conceived as a digression into historical irrelevancy -- I gave a talk on diplomacy as an instrument of statecraft. Since we have a diplomacy-free foreign policy, as I say, this is probably just reviewing the past.
But in any invent, the first question from the floor, by a very intelligent and well-informed Air Force audience was: now, if civilians are supposed to set policy, and the military are supposed to implement policy, why does our president keep saying that we'll stay in Iraq until his generals tell him it's time to leave? And I think that this very pointed question does illustrate the key point that everyone has made, that setting realistic objectives is key.
Second, there seems to be some agreement on the notion that a date certain would have a salutary effect on the Iraqi parties by forcing them to come out from behind the shield of American power and actually deal with each other. I wonder whether the timing of such a withdrawal date is not the subject of bargaining, and whether it's wise to set a date in the absence of discussion with the parties who would be affected by that date, whether they are inside Iraq or in the neighborhood. I just raise that as a question.
The third point, which Barry raised, which I think is also worth pondering, was phrased differently in the context of the Balkans, where the Dayton Accords I note have led to a continuing involvement. They haven't ended anything. There was a British general, I believe, who said that the lesson was that when one was asked to intervene in a civil war, there were three rules that should apply in answering that request. One, don't. (Laughter.) Second, if you do, pick the side that will win. (Laughter.) And third, help them win fast. And there is some merit in a strategy that focuses on a rapid end of the anarchy and strife that accompany civil unrest.
A final point. In discussing Dayton and with the very imaginative and pointed reminder by Barry of the possibility of the a guarantee, or a share of oil revenue enforced externally, I am reminded that when we talk about Dayton, we are speaking about arrangements among the internal parties to a problem that were guaranteed by external forces. And so I come back to the need for some regional framework, which restrains those in the region who could wreck an agreement from doing so and which enlists them in supporting it. And, on that note, I turn to Gareth.
GARETH PORTER: Thank you very much, Chas.
As you have I think discerned so far, there is not a fundamental disagreement on the direction that U.S. policy needs to move.
MR. FREEMAN: That is to say guys with hair and bald guys basically agree. (Laughter).
MR. PORTER: There is certainly agreement on the idea that we need to move towards an internationalization of the process of trying to settle the conflict, and this is what I want to focus on primarily in my remarks.
But before I do that, I want to first of all set the context for this by saying that I have been talking about the need for negotiated settlement in Iraq for now well over a year from the time when we talk about negotiating with Sunni insurgents was regarded as lunacy, when it was believed that - well, there is nobody to negotiate with, and this is simply to establish that, you know, I have embraced the notion for some time that the United States ought to try to use its leverage on both sides, but particularly obviously with the militant Shi'ite party leaders to get them to make appropriate compromises in order to achieve a settlement.
Now, today I'm not so sure about this. In fact, what I want to emphasize is how much this conflict has changed in 18 months. I think that the media has not really done a good job for the most part with some obviously splendid exceptions on the margins of conveying the degree to which the war that Americans were familiar with still think they are familiar with in 2004 and 2005 still exist.
Let me quickly tick off what I think are the most salient points about the very far reaching fundamental changes that have taken place in 2005 and 2006. First of all, the Shi'ite militias have taken over, particularly in the Baghdad area. This is a fundamental change from the situation that existed before that. I won't go into detail. I think, you know, I'm simply sort of jogging your memory of things that you are aware of.
Secondly, because of the - partly because of the creation of Shi'ite militia forces, which were only very - relatively small and did not have the degree of power that they now have, and partly because as a result of the action-reaction dynamic in Iraqi society and politics, the Shi'ite parties now are very, very strongly committed to holding onto their control over the means of - the paramilitary means of violence. This has been a process of - steadily growing process of commitment to making sure that they don't lose what they have gained. And they believe I think in a kind of apocalyptic danger, if they give that up that they will lose power.
So there is a kind of process of the genie coming out of the bottle and not being able to stuff it back into the bottle again. And as a result of that then, the Sunnis having started insurgency for the most part because of a response to the U.S. occupation and all of its attendant disruptions now have a second and I believe even more important reason for maintaining their arms and their armed resistance, and that is the threat, which is not simply a threat but a reality of repression at the hands of Shi'ite militias. It has been going on now for many months, for several months.
And finally, as a result of these dynamics, the United States can no longer get the Shi'ite leaders to do what they want, to make the appropriate compromises with Sunnis. They have tried. And indeed, I think it is time for us to concede that Khalilzad has indeed attempted to apply precisely what Senator Carl Levin and I and many others have called for, which is to threaten the Shi'ite leaders with the withdrawal of U.S. support if they don't do the necessary political arrangements, if they don't agree to necessarily political arrangements in a reasonable short period of time. And frankly that has - it has failed, and it has failed because the Shi'ites now are in a different position from where they were a year, a year-and-a-half ago.
The implications of these changes can hardly be overstated. And I have to say that one of the little-noted events of the past several days is a joint op-ed by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, General George W. Casey in the Los Angeles Times. And I'm a bit surprised that this has not received more attention. In that op-ed, the two senior U.S. officials in Iraq say that - I might as well read it to convey as accurately as possible exactly what they are saying.
They say they write that "The principal threat to stability is shifting from an insurgency grounded in rejection of the new political order to a sectarian violence grounded in mutual fears and recriminations." Now, in my view, this has very far-reaching significance in terms of the politics within the Bush administration. Khalilzad has clearly been trying to get the military and the White House and the Pentagon to focus on the problem militias and sectarian violence for some months now. The military has not been very responsive. Their priority has clearly been to field and Iraqi army, which is overwhelmingly Shi'ite majority with some Kurds and very few Sunnis, and therefore they have not really been supportive of a policy that put it primary emphasis on trying to dampen sectarian violence, sectarian conflict by seeking primarily an agreement between Sunnis and Shi'ites. And obviously there are contradictions, conflicts between a policy that puts primary emphasis, almost exclusive emphasis on fighting the Sunni insurgents on one hand and a policy that puts overwhelming emphasis on seeking agreement between Sunnis and Shi'ites on the other.
Now, the fact that Khalilzad has gotten Casey to sign onto this statement to me means that the military now has reluctantly agreed that they were wrong. In fact, Tom Lassiter of Knight Ridder did a piece very recently that - in which he quoted the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad as admitting that the military had really sort of missed the boat in 2005. They had not really taken seriously the problem of Shi'ite militias. And now they understand that they were wrong.
(Inaudible, technical difficulties) - because I believe today the United States no longer has the capability to use its military power to address the main problem, which is sectarian violence. Military occupation simply is not an instrument that will help us to damp down sectarian violence. It failed utterly in February and early March to do anything about the escalation of Shi'ite violence and retaliation for the bombing of the Shi'ite mosque in Samara. And indeed American troops stood by, the Iraqi military stood by as apparently Sadr's militia wreaked vengeance against Sunnis in the Baghdad area. Now, this to me means that we can forget about the rational for continued occupation, which is that the U.S. military must remain there in order to prevent civil war.
So Khalilzad has failed; the military has failed; what is left? The answer is the only possible hope for peace is to bring the Arab neighbors of Iraq, Iran and Turkey together in an international setting, an international conference to try to arrange an international settlement. Now, I am not confident that this is going to work. I think we have to be realistic and say we don't know if this is going to work; we don't know if the Lebanon model can work in Iraq, but it is the closest thing to a rational approach that we now can identify.
And I have run out of time so, you know, the details of this are going to have to be left for another occasion. But I think the key message that I want to get across here is that the tools that have been tried in the past, which our military force and pressure through Khalilzad on the Shi'ites have not worked, they will not work.
The only possible answer is to apply the approach that did work in Lebanon, which is to get the Iranians to put pressure on the Shi'ites to compromise because the Shi'ites will listen to the Iranians. The Iranians have credibility with the Shi'ites to get the Arab neighbors, Saudi Arabia, Jordan to - and even Syria if Syrians will listen to the Saudi Arabians which is a distinct possibility to put pressure on the Sunnis to be willing to lay down their arms if they get a reasonable set of compromises from the Shi'ites and to have an international settlement that guarantees non-intervention from outside in terms of military force but in fact will reach agreement to help to track down the al Qaeda remnants and eliminate that threat from the region. Thank you.
(Applause.)
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you very much. I think this has been very rich discussion.
We turn now to the question-comment period. Those of you have been here before know that you have to raise your hand. I will note you down and the old-timers have already started doing that. You'll have to give me time to note you down. Just hang on for now, but I will call on you pretty much in the order which I observed your intervention.
I think Gareth has made a couple of very important points. One, the insurgency, meaning the resistance to occupation in Iraq has to a great extent been eclipsed by struggles among Iraqis based on the constitutional order that the elections decreed. I am struck by the fact that no one has mentioned the pernicious word, "elections." After all, the United States devoted considerable effort to the negotiation of a constitutional framework, which was then endorsed by a majority (sort of) through an election. And everyone is in effect asserting that this result is unjust, unstable, and must be set aside by some process or other yet to be determined. I just want to note that this will not be ideologically easy for many Americans, given the sacred character with which we imbue electoral results, unless the Supreme Court has to intervene and set them aside.
Second, the problem that Gareth is describing is a classic problem of majority rule. Majorities can oppress minorities. The question is can a majority which now has the power of the gun through its militias and army be persuaded to give the minorities the breathing room and the secure rights that they require to feel secure.
And finally, Gareth has very correctly, to my mind, pointed again to the fears of neighbors and to their possible desire to cut their losses in Iraq as a possible point of leverage for producing both an internal settlement and guaranteeing it.
Now we have had a lot of common points in all of these presentations. But I think a close examination of the plans, if you listened carefully as I did to what everybody said, will disclose that in fact there were some fairly significant differences of emphasis. And I think these will all come out in this discussion period.
I am going to call on you, sir, to please identify yourself, and then you, and let's see, then you - wait, wait, wait. Go ahead, please.
Q: Jeff Steinberg, editor with Executive Intelligence Review.
I am very impressed by the perspective that has been presented by the panelists, but I have a question about the timetable, whether it's mid- or late 2007 that sort of settles an objective for departure date. The schedule for regime change in the United States is January 2009. And since my general sense is that the neo-conservative crowd that brought us into this mess are the utopians and we are on the realists.
I would like to get an appraisal from the panelists about whether you see any indication that the administration at the policymaking level, namely somewhere between Bush and Cheney's office - (inaudible, technical difficulties) - at this point to recognize the reality of the failure of the policy and whether or not there is a sense that any of these ideas really stand a chance of being seriously taken up and implemented before the next presidential election cycle.
MR. FREEMAN: I imagine everyone will want to comment on this - (laughter) - but, Larry, I am going to ask you to start.
MR. KORB: Well, I think you're going to see some withdrawals this year driven more by the elections coming up as well as the condition of the Army because most of the generals are telling Rumsfeld, if he is listening, that in fact a third of fourth deployment is really going to cause you an awful lot of retention problems. Your retention overall is held up on a macro level. You are not retaining people at the right time in their careers or the right specialties but that will really I think Barry McCaffrey basically said the wheels will come off.
And you can't - you got to - you can't use as many Guard and Reserve as you did before to maintain this level because you're running up the two-year limit for deploying them, and the last thing the administration wants is a debate in Congress about extending the limit on the Guard and Reserve. So I think you will see significant withdrawals by the administration who can claim, well, the Iraqis are standing up, okay, in terms of their, you know, their capabilities.
My guess is that by the end of this we will be below 100,000 troops in Iraq, and by the end of 2007 be below, be no more than 50,000 troops there.
MR. FREEMAN: And by 2008, November? (Laughter.)
MR. KORB: Still about 50,000. Yeah, I think you will still - yeah, I think you will still have there and I think that this way they can, you know, basically - you know, you'll have 300,000 Iraqi troops on the books anyway. You know, by then, I don't know if anybody can understand the - you know, the readiness system, you know, C-1, C-2, C-3, C-4. I think that is basically what will happen.
MR. POSEN: I think one of the strange things about all of this is that I think there are many people in the Bush administration now who share the diagnosis, maybe not at the very top, but many of them share the diagnosis. A lot of diagnosis comes from the military, and many of them share Larry's diagnosis with the Army: The ground forces can only take so much. But I think they still cling to the belief that something good can be pulled out of this. And I think they have a - and I think they also - just, if you look at the country, just been forward in the country, it's hard to believe they don't intend to stay. It's just hard to believe. So - and they have reasons to want to stay beyond sort of just stabilizing Iraq. In domestic political reasons, they don't want to be the agents of a - being responsible for the catastrophe because there is other things they want to do in the region. They like having the bases, they like having the access, they like being able to squeeze the Iranian.
So it think that their theory now is try - is that they think that they can harvest 50 or 60 or 70 percent of the good things that Larry and I and others think that you get from a disengagement by essentially - in some sense disengaging internally and hiding their hand a little bit and lying low and staying in their bases. And my guess is, you know, based on some newspaper reports, they also have a theory that maybe one push in areas that are more visible to the media can produce the appearance of more progress, at least in those places that are visible in the media like Baghdad.
So - you know, there have been reports in the last few days that they are thinking about a big push in Baghdad as being, you know, at the end of the summer at some point. It all sounds quite reasonable. I don't think that it's going to work very well, but, you know, that is what I think they are going to try and the hope that is going to work. I can't sit here and tell you that it is not going to work in some sense, which is to say, you know, get Iraq from mainly page one, some days not even page one, some days its own section at the back of the paper down to some section at the bottom of the last page in the back of the paper and I think that would be fine with them.
MR. FREEMAN: Gareth?
MR. PORTER: No, this administration will not embrace any serious effort towards a diplomatic solution. And I think that the likelihood is, the greater likelihood is that there will be developments within Iraq, which would force our hand, that is to say a conflagration in the Baghdad area, which either engages U.S. forces willy-nilly somehow in a civil war and creates a new dynamic which I keep trying to remind people in my writing that the Shi'ites ultimately hold the high cards in the Baghdad area because of their ability to put hundreds of thousands of people into the streets.
And, you know, I think that one way or another, the greater likelihood is that this conflict will end not through a conscious act of vision and diplomacy on the part of the United States but rather through the dynamics of this horrible bloody conflict within Iraq.
MR. FREEMAN: Tom? Pull the microphone over.
MR. MATTAIR: I think even last summer Khalilzad outlined the intention to withdraw from urban areas and to deploy to bases, and that could be conceivably the first step of drawing down some of these troops. But I think it was Barry who just mentioned there is talk about some kind of thrust in Baghdad. Now, just imagine what that would be like. It might involve street-to-street fighting. Our forces have already suffered heavier casualties in March and April than any time since last October. The casualtiesgoing up.
And, you know, another plan that has been mentioned, not here today, but Wesley Clark, Wesley has a withdrawal plan in which he talked about withdrawing forces to bases, but then says that there ought to be a reserve ready to be, to go into a city such as Baghdad or Basra if there is trouble, if there is trouble. (Laughter.) I mean, there is going to be trouble. So is he going to withdraw the forces and then send the forces back in? That is the problem we have.
MR. FREEMAN: I would just note before we turn to the next question that one implication of a force draw-down is greater use of air power, and air power is pretty indiscriminate in terms of what it does to people in urban areas. It is not a particularly good instrument of warfare against guerillas. In fact, quite the contrary; it tends to marshall public support behind those guerillas because of the large number of civilian casualties that it inevitably entails. So there is a dilemma here for military planners, which can't be overlooked.
Yes, sir.
Q: My name is Carl Osgood, also with the Executive Intelligence Review.
If we assume then - and following up to the previous question, if we assume that there is not going to be a serious policy change between now and January of 2009, will the options, various options that you all have laid out still be viable in 2009, or will we have to completely rethink again the situation as to how a new administration will deal with the situation then.
MR. POSEN: I think you have an excellent question and I don't have a good answer. I think it is a really excellent question. Well that is going to depend on how they can make it look, right. You know, I think Gareth mentioned the possibility that there are events that could happen in Iraq that can foil this strategy, and partisans of staying usually try and say that all of the uncertainty is on the side of those who argue you want to get out, and if there is no uncertainty there is no probability working against you for staying in, but periodically I draw up a list of nightmares that arise from staying in and periodically my nightmares come true. (Laughter.)
So, I mean, just imagine. I actually am not sure quite what they have planned for Baghdad. It looks quite like Tom suggested. But if you can't straighten out the Iraqi internal security forces, the police, national police, and you go into the street fight with the Iraqi national police know as we do that - (inaudible) - in Baghdad is somebody disguised as Iraqi National Police core; he is Iraqi National Police, commits something that looks a little bit by - (inaudible) - you are going to - there is a risk right there that you are going to be caught on film some time in the next couple of years as you draw down or rely more on Iraqi forces. That is actually bringing Iraqi forces into a situation where they do things that are not very pretty. Then you have to start explaining that and it's not going to happen (just once ?).
So this is just one plausible nightmare. There is another one, which is if you look at this provincial reconstruction team report that they did at the end of January, I mean, one of the things that is quite clear is that Basra is gone. Basra is now an arena for conflict between two Shi'ite factions, but we don't really control it; the Brits don't really control it, and they are fighting the Brits apparently for fun or to make a point. They like to kill a Brit every now and then. Iranian presence is very great. That situation is quite unstable and unstable in a way that if it blows up in your face in a more obvious way, how are you going to explain it to the American people, and that these guys that so substantially are your pals are waging their own bloody civil war and insurgency in Basra, which by the way is along your line of communication from Kuwait.
So in the process of them trying to do these things over the next 18 months or two years if you get themselves to the elections, it is not like they control the horizontal and vertical. I mean, their notion is that they do and somehow they have so much power that they can roll with the punches, but that is not obvious. So a lot depends on how things go in the next couple of years. If their strategy works, then people like us are not going to have much of an argument to make, and if the Democrats inherit the White House, they are going to inherit Iraq, and they are going to inherit 43,000 people there, and they are not going to pull them out because it's going to look safer for domestic politics to leave them in than it is to take them out.
I don't think it's going to go so swimmingly, and if it doesn't go so swimmingly that these ideas that we are kicking around are going to stay alive.
MR. FREEMAN: Larry, and then Gareth, and then Tom.
MR. KORB: One of the things that I think is very important is we do not have any control over the events. And, you know, right now the only thing keeping, for example, a full-scale civil war between the Shi'as and the Sunnis is the Ayatollah Sistani. What do you think would happen if somebody were to assassinate him? Then Americans would be caught - you know, they would be killing Shi'ites because all hell would break loose. We would be killing Shi'ites and we theoretically went in there to - you know, to liberate. And I think that is something to keep in mind.
But I agree with Barry. I mean, you bring 50,000 troops in 2009. John McCain if he gets elected will say, well, I would have fought it differently; I would have sent more troops but it's too late now, and if the Democrats win, they will say, well, we'll, you know, just stay there, and you know, hope - you know, kind of hope for the - you know, hope for the - hope for the best or we'll stay as long as they want. I mean - (inaudible) - Brodginski had an interesting idea. He said we ought to - when the new government gets established, we ought to ask them to tell us to leave; you don't do it, you know, openly but if they say leave, we say, okay, we have fulfilled our responsibility.
MR. FREEMAN: Gareth?
MR. PORTER: Well, I think the point is very well taken, that, you know, we don't know what the situation is going to look like two years from now. And I would just emphasize how rapidly the situation has changed in a year. And this is going to continue. We don't know whether there is going to be a structure of conflicts, you know, two years from now that still lends itself to talking about international settlement. It is just impossible to say. I would just emphasize the unknowability of - the rapidity of change and the un-knowability of what the situation is going to look like.
MR. FREEMAN: Tom?
MR. MATTAIR: Right, well, the other panelists have talked about the possibility of deterioration inside Iraq and the other consideration would be what is going to happen in terms of relations between the United States and Iran during this time because there are other issues on that bilateral agenda. And is it going to be possible, is it going to be possible to ellicit any kind of cooperation from them, and what is going to happen between Iran and the GGC states during this period of time? Are these two forces going to be getting more deeply into Iraq and have more difficulty cooperating with us?
MR. FREEMAN: Before we turn to the question, I will simply note that every year for the past five years I have been honored by a request from the National Council for U.S.-Arab relations to address their annual conference at a time of day when the only people in the audience are the cripples and those who are desperately hanging around for a drink. (Laughter.) But the quality of my audience notwithstanding, each year I have prepared a set of remarks which was pessimistic, And each year I have been troubled by the pessimism that I find in myself. And each year I have read what I wrote the year before and found myself to have been widely optimistic in retrospect. (Laughter.)
So it is a useful caution to note that things in Iraq as well as around Iraq and with Iran and between countries of the region are not necessarily evolving in positive directions.
Q: Thanks. I am Bob Dreyfuss. I write for Rolling Stone Magazine and some others. And sometimes I outdo Chas in pessimism I think, so -
MR. FREEMAN: (Inaudible.)
Q: I have two quick questions. One is, Larry, I wanted you to talk a little bit about the reaction among the Democrats to your proposal. I am probably one of the only people in the world who actually sat down and read the entire 143-page Democratic national security strategy or whatever the heck it was that came out a couple of weeks ago. And I think it had about four lines on Iraq in it and most of them echoed the Bush administration pretty much.
So I hope you could give a little bit of an extended roof on how the Democrats have responded to this and why it seems to difficult for them to seize the day in terms of taking up the call for a new direction in Iraq.
Then my second question unrelated to that is President Mubarak recently made a comment that the Shi'ites pay attention and obey Iran across the board. And there have been lots of talk from the Arabs about a Shi'ite - (inaudible, technical difficulty) - and so forth, and we could catalog a whole list of comments from the two King Abdullahs and others.
So I wonder if there is any sense from the panel - and maybe, Chas., you can comment on this too, whether the Arab states are trying to talk sense to the United States about this or whether they are just, you know, I don't know, given up hope of trying to have any impact on the way U.S. policy is being made.
MR. FREEMAN: Very good. Larry, do you want to start. And I think -
MR. KORB: Recently I hear that the difference between the Democrats and Republicans is the Democrats don't know how to win elections and the Republicans don't know how to govern. And, you know, I think, you know, my personal view, since where I work is mostly Democrats and we see a lot of them, is they do not want to get out on the limb and, quote, unquote, "seem to be soft on defense." They also I think a lot of them know that they told it incorrectly to allow Bush to go to war. So they really don't want to go back on that.
And then the final thing is they know if they come out with a specific plan like ours, for example, they will be put on the defensive by people who have objections to, you know, some part of it, and their thing from a political point of view - and I mean, it's easy for us think-tank people or academics to criticize but we don't have to run for public office, okay, and they do not want to be - their feeling is Bush made this mess; let him figure out how to get out of it because if we offer alternatives then we get put on the defensive.
So I mean, I think after we put out our plan, Senator Feinstein sent it around, you know, Howard Dean, you know, endorsed it but you didn't see a great many, you know, members of the party coming forward. You had Kerry and Levin who are basically saying if they don't shape up, we should get out, you know, where ours is kind of the opposite - or give them the incentive, you know, to shape up. So, I mean, that is basically what has - the way that they have done it.
And it's interesting you mentioned that the democratic strategy only mentions Iraq, like, four times. The quadrennial defense review doesn't even mention Iraq. It's almost like Iraq didn't happen. You know, this is kind of a sideline on, you know, Rumsfeld is going to transform the military; we are going to worry about China, okay. It's kind of a bizarre situation.
MR. FREEMAN: Gareth?
MR. PORTER: Just on the other question - are we finished with this one?
MR. FREEMAN: Well, I thought you might want to defend the Democrats - (laughter) - but go ahead.
MR. PORTER: Well, I'm happy that Bob Dreyfuss has asked this question because it gives me a chance to say something that I didn't have time to get into, which is, in term of the Arab states view of negotiating a settlement of the Iraq conflict, first of all, you know, they do talk about the Shi'ite crescents and, you know, the United States is playing into the hands of the Iranians and so forth. And I would take that with some salt at least because along side that, it's clear that the Arab states do want to be engaged in the negotiations. That means obviously cooperating with Iran on a settlement. And there is no question that they are prepared to do that.
They are realists. They understand that a settlement will only come about by the cooperation of the Iranians as well as the internal parties within Iraq, both Shi'ites and Sunnis and Kurds, as well as the Arab states are playing their role. But both sides are going to have to play a role in sort of calming their clients and allies within Iraq.
You know, it's worth recalling that the Arab League sponsored the Cairo - I know you covered this; you are very well aware of it - the Cairo conference last November and played a very interesting role of mediating between Sunni and Shi'ites political representatives. Now the problem of course was that the Sunni insurgents were forbidden from participating in it, and that in a way limited the significance of it, and it didn't lead to anything more. But it does show first of all that they are willing and able to work in a mediating role between Sunnis and Shi'ites, and that they are clearly eager to try to contribute to a settlement.
So there is no question that, you know, the rhetoric about the threat of Iran in the region - (audio break, tape change) -
MR. FREEMAN: On my recent travels in the region, I heard complaints from the Gulf Arabs that the United States had proposed a dialogue with Iran, which clearly recognized Iranian interests in Iraq but had engaged in no such dialogue with them, thus implicitly denying the validity of their interests in a fellow Arab country. And second, there is a very large sense in the region that the leaders there on many occasions advised our government, our leaders, not to do what they did, and we went ahead anyway, and therefore it's somewhat futile to raise these matters with Americans, who are deaf to the interests of others or impervious to foreign advice.
There is a corollary to this, which is a sense that, well, you made your bed, you must lie in it. But when pressed, people admit that their own interests are very much engaged and that they're essentially waiting for an American lead. They're waiting to be asked to help to produce a responsible American extrication of the United States from the dilemmas that we have impaled ourselves upon. So they're much like the Democrats in that respect, I suppose.
I do want to note finally, on the subject of the Democrats, that - or the Hill generally, not just Democrats - that we depend - the Middle East Policy Council depends on sponsors, members of Congress, to authorize our use of hearing rooms and meeting rooms in the office buildings and in the Capitol. It was particularly difficult to find anyone who was willing to authorize this discussion. The discussion we had two weeks ago, as I indicated, on whether we should be considering how to reestablish investment in trade relations with the Arab world in fact proved impossible to find a sponsor. And the reason was, exactly as has been stated, that everyone wants to be to the right of the president on national security issues, even when there are no real national security issues at stake. And so on the Dubai Ports Authority issue and the fallout from that, where the United States did grave damage to our economic interests without in any way enhancing our security, people run for cover. And when you propose to them, well, if you don't want to talk about that, why don't we talk about responsible ways of handling ourselves in Iraq and eventually leaving it, their reaction is, well, that's even worse politically. So "profiles in courage" have yet to be written for this particular Congress in that regard. (Laughter.)
Did you want to say something, Tom?
MR. MATTAIR: Well, just one point, and that is I think the Sunni Arab states around Iraq probably have the most to gain from regional cooperation and should, and evidently are, willing to engage in that, but I think Iran has the most to give because of its assets in Iraq. And so the question is, does Iran want to give?
MR. FREEMAN: And perhaps we should ask.
John?
Q: Oh, picking up on one of your last phrases, Chas., about how some think a withdrawal would be even worse than the difficulty of staying, if maybe Larry and Barry could address this, but anyone else chime in: How do you really see pulling off retention of 50,000 U.S. forces at any point in Iraq with Iran as a factor, given how this revolution in Iran came about in terms of our particular military and strategic relationship with Iran? The numbers, even at 50,000, push in the direction of being almost double what we've had in Germany, what we've had in South Korea or Japan. And there are only two countries in the world that speak German officially, two that speak Korean, one that speaks Japanese. There are 22 that speak Arabic. And it's also key to 57 countries that are Islamic. So I find it hard to see it operationally and logistically possible, let alone politically possible.
MR. FREEMAN: Let me add an addendum to that question for comment, and that is because John Duke Anthony has raised a very important point, and that is that the American - I think this was alluded to by several of you as you spoke - the American presence in Iraq is a major irritant and cause of deterioration in our relations with the Islamic world generally. It has become a major issue, not just in our relations with the Arab world but more widely, and therefore it's not just a question of what might happen vis-à-vis Iran; it's the continuing cost of the 50,000 that I think John is raising. And I don't know - Larry, would you like to lead on this?
MR. KORB: Was your point, John, that 50,000 is too many or not enough or -
Q: I can't see Iran going along with really any significant presence.
MR. FREEMAN: So you're predicting a direct Iranian challenge at some point to the presence there.
Q: That, plus it looks awfully much like a British protectorate revisited.
MR. FREEMAN: Compassionate colonialism.
(Laughter.)
Q: (Off mike.)
MR. KORB: Well, we don't urge that, but we were asked what we thought the administration would do, and, you know, I think that they probably will get it down to somewhere around 50,000 for the next administration to take over. And as Tom pointed out, a lot is going to depend on our relations with Iran. I mean, you know, given if some of the stories we read in the paper about planned nuclear strikes and - that could obviously change the dynamic.
Now, in terms - you know, I wouldn't leave the 50,000 there, okay? I would - obviously in our plan, you're going to have the Marines guarding the gates of the embassies. You're going to, I think, be able to have some Special Forces work with the Iraqis, but that will not be known. I mean, one of the interesting things I saw in the Army websites is the Army has 240,000 troops in 120 countries, so I asked for a list; I can't get one. You know, so obviously we have a lot of troops - a lot of troops where they're not known.
I do think it's important for us to keep military power in the region. The Kuwaitis seem to be receptive of us being there. We have, as we saw when the Dubai Ports thing came up, we have, you know, facilities there. We've got the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and you can have a carrier battle group - you know, during the Cold War we always kept them over the horizon. One of my jobs when I was in the Pentagon was when we established a central command, they wanted it over there, and we tried and nobody wanted to put it there. That's why it's still in Tampa, Florida. We do have facilities in Qatar. We have a long runway there. So I think we have enough power in the region to take care of what Barry defined as our interests there - you know, the oil and power.
But, no, just for the reasons you said, I would not leave any troops in Iraq because it does have the semblance of colonialism and it will continue, I think, to cause us problems.
MR. FREEMAN: Barry?
MR. POSEN: Well, I agree with - I guess I agree with Larry, but I wouldn't assume that they can't make it happen or that - I guess from the earlier question, that a future administration wouldn't find it in its interest to continue to make it happen as opposed to just - (inaudible). Yes, it looks bad to have 50,000 troops camped in an Arab country, but the administration will have a story to tell. I mean, most of the Arab countries are Sunni Arab countries and in some sense our forces are going to be there to keep this civil conflict from going too far. So we can portray ourselves in some sense as the defenders of the Sunni Arabs, which would be a smart way for us to portray ourselves outside, and if that has some reality, you might be able to disarm some of the opposition in the rest of the Arab world.
And the Iranians will have the same choice to make every single day that they have to make today, which is do they want to try and stick enough pins in us that the bleeding causes us to leak and then leave, while at the same time having to worry that one pin will strike a nerve and we'll do the thing we've been daydreaming about, which is have a big war with them. So how are the Iranians going to calculate? And I'm guessing that their calculation will be keep the violence against us on the low end, right - you know, make them uncomfortable but not impossible; not do the big things that look like they're aiming to eject us because that puts a political knife in our hands. You can't be sure - at least until the Bush administration leaves - that we would not use that knife. And I wouldn't even be too sure that alternative administrations wouldn't use that knife because, you know, my read on the Iran discussion is that there's plenty of people on both sides of the aisle that would be happy to have that war.
MR. FREEMAN: Tom?
MR. MATTAIR: These troops remaining in Iraq, I think the poll data show that - and Chas. referred to anti-Americanism - I don't know if he used that term, but anti-Americanism is very, very strong in the Arab and Islamic world, and it's because of specific policies such as our presence in Iraq. So for the Sunni Arab governments, they have to contemplate the mood of their own populations, which would not be very favorable. And then, if there were inadvertent escalation between these remaining troops in Iraq after a U.S. military strike on Iran, that would create an even bigger problem for these Sunni Arab governments because as I see it they've got three concerns. The first is terrorism, the second is Iran, and the third is a U.S. strike on Iran, because Iran has all kinds of capabilities to retaliate, not only in Iraq but all the way down the Gulf - anti-ship missiles, mines, and midget submarines that can release divers who can strap explosives to oil rigs, and all kinds of bad things. The U.S. military is superior and it would deal with overt actions of Iranian retaliation, but Iran has covert capabilities as well. That is why the GCC states do not want the United States to resolve these issues by using force.
MR. FREEMAN: I want to make two very brief comments. One, just a reminder that it was the failure of the United States to do what we had pledged to do and to withdraw our forces from Saudi Arabia after the end of the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait that gave Osama bin Laden the arguments that he used very successfully to build a base of support, not just in the region but in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, there is a cost to the governments in the region of cooperation with the United States when it takes the form of a resident American troop presence. Over-the-horizon is a better solution and it needs to be thought about seriously.
Second, I simply want to note that in any conflict with Iran, the first and most likely outcome, aside from the panic of insurance companies, which will shut down shipping to the Gulf, from which about 40 percent, I think, of the world's oil derives, is a mining of the Straits of Hormuz. And as far as I know, in all of our efforts to transform the military, we are not building mine sweepers. So we have a strait that is 24 miles or so across at its narrowest point, 32 across in general, quite accessible to land-based missile interjection - the Iranians apparently possessing a locally produced version of the Shkval, which is a Soviet underwater missile that is quite difficult to counter.
If we like oil at $73.50 a barrel, which is where it closed yesterday, we will love it at $250 a barrel, which is where it would be headed under such circumstances. So there are many reasons to expect that rational minds would pause before launching at attack on Iran.
Q: Yes, Paul Sullivan, National Defense University. We're focusing on the military, but there are other people in the country now - USAID, contractors, NGOs, PRTs and others. What happens to them during the withdrawal and after? What follow-up will be required after the withdrawal happens? And also, there is a discussion about internationalizing the problem. How much success would we expect for the people in the region and others to walk into this hornet's nest?
MR. FREEMAN: It's really picky of you to raise things like that. (Laughter.) Who wants to address that?
MR. KORB: Well, fools walk in where angels fear to tread. Look, obviously over the next two years under our plan we should be training more Iraqi security forces. As I understand it, the Bush administration is not putting any more money into reconstruction, so we'll just sort of finish up the projects that we're doing.
In terms of the countries of the world, none of them want an Iraq that becomes a haven for al Qaeda. I mean, that would be threatening to Iran. As was pointed out by people like Tom here on the panel, the Sunnis do not want to see this get out of hand either. So I think they all have a vested interest in having a stable Iraq, and we'll have military power in the region to prevent it from getting out of hand.
In terms of if you have a successful Dayton-type conference where - and I love Barry's idea about the oil-for-food model. I mean, I think that's a terrific -
MR. POSEN: Somebody called it oil for peace, so I explained it to them.
MR. KORB: Okay, oil for peace, I think that's a terrific idea. That should create a reasonably stable environment. But obviously if it falls apart, then your NGOs and these people have to get out, as they've done in other places, in Africa for example.
MR. FREEMAN: We had a collapse of Provide Comfort, which was the operation in northern Iraq, which was completely anticipatable but which was never planned for. It involved the emergency evacuation of some 8,000 employees and associates of the Central Intelligence Agency, plus NGOs. The one thing in our really extraordinarily competent professional military system that we do extremely badly is to deal with the sort of issue that Paul Sullivan has just raised, that is how do you deal with the civilian infrastructure that accompanies the military into a combat zone, that supports it - the NGOs, the civilian workers and the like? You may think this is absurd, but I was ambassador in Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and there were some marvelous examples of these sorts of disconnects. At a time when the military were all running around wearing chemical gear and gas masks, there were no such things available for the American ambassador and the embassy staff - (laughter) - because there is no fund-cite on the State Department side to buy such things.
When all of the military were vaccinated against anthrax, no civilians, whether they were defense workers or government employees other than the active uniformed military, were eligible for such vaccinations. I'm not sorry I didn't get one, but I'm just saying that we don't know how to manage the sort of issue Paul has mentioned, and it is something, given the possibility we might have to carry out a somewhat precipitous withdrawal from Iraq under some circumstances, that we should be planning. I don't know, Larry, if you want to disagree with me about that.
MR. KORB: No, I agree. I mean, I think - you know, if you read Dana Priest's book about the powers of what we know called "The Combat Commands" - what we used to call the CINCs - one of the reasons they'd go in there is because they have the resources, and the other parts of the governments do not. I mean, if you take a look at the defense budget, it's 20 times as big as the State Department budget, so -
MR. FREEMAN: Then it isn't even the full universe of our defense spending, which is about 720 billion when you add in supplementals, the Veterans Administration, and Department of Energy nuclear weapons, and all the other things that are kept outside the nominal defense budget.
Gareth?
MR. PORTER: Just very quickly, I mean, one piece of this question, which is a very big one, of course, is the civilian contractors who carry out security functions in Iraq, which constitute this huge, you know, unregulated paramilitary force that appears, from all the evidence that we have, to be completely out of control and really needs to be subject to an international agreement, which I think it's fair to say will be that these people have to clear out lock, stock and barrel from Iraq.
MR. KORB: I'd make one point. At the end of whatever this - we need a status of forces agreement with Iraq for whatever forces we leave there when they have a government, as well as setting up the rules for these private contractors, which if you saw the testimony of General Schoomaker the other day, there are almost 60,000 of them there now. I had thought about 20,000, but it's close to 60,000.
MR. FREEMAN: That's quite an evacuation plan that is required.
Andy?
Q: Andy Constanzas (sp), independent consultant. My question stems from the need to protect our troops as soon as possible, also from the fact that we should take the Arab culture under consideration. I speak from the background of having grown up in an Arab country, educated in an Arab country, and work most of my life in an Arab country, and I learned that you should never push an Arab. He's worse than a banker. (Laughter.) He wants to have the impression that he is the one making these decisions on selections. And also they're extremely suspicious, particularly foreigners, let alone also from each other.
So with that under consideration, I'm not an expert but I'm wondering, what would happen if our troops withdrew into protected enclaves - probably also protecting the oil facilities and so forth - and would be available as needed? In my simple mind it might end up into something like an Irish standoff of Catholics killing Protestants for 25 years. So what? I don't think that that spread out to other countries and I don't think it's going to spread out to the Arab countries. Thank you.
MR. FREEMAN: Tom, would you like to comment on that as a -
MR. MATTAIR: Well, I think any - if I understood the question correctly, I think any troops or any civilians from any of these nonprofit and NGOs are vulnerable if they remain. Anybody is vulnerable.
MR. FREEMAN: Larry?
MR. KORB: Well, I think our plan in terms of leaving them in the region is not much different. You want to put them in enclaves, you know, in Iraq. And to a certain extent, we're already doing that. I mean, there was an attempt to hold down casualties, which kept dropping for five months - and then of course it's flared up again - by letting the Iraqi security forces take more of the lead and keep our troops in these protected green zones or whatever you might want to call them. And I think that was the strategy of the administration is go into a place like Talafar, do what our troops needed to do, leave, and let the Iraqi security forces stay there and pull them back. So in a sense we're talking about the same thing. You know, the American troops are in the region and they're needing to go back; then they can do that.
MR. FREEMAN: I think the issue is the one that Barry posed in his presentation, and that is that foreign intervention, whether for peacekeeping purposes or pacification or occupation, as in this case, inevitably becomes part of a strategic landscape within which the contending parties operate. They therefore maneuver around the foreign presence. They use it for concealment to make their own maneuvering more effective. They invoke foreign intervention when they can to augment their own power. They use and they abuse the foreign intervention, and the fact that the foreigners are there means that they don't have to make choices that they otherwise would have to do. They're able, in effect, to avoid choices.
And so you can have peacekeeping forces - perhaps the best example is Cyprus - peacekeeping forces which are so effective that they deprive the parties to the conflict of any incentive to make peace. And so merely withdrawing to enclaves doesn't really address the Iraqi political kaleidoscope, to my mind, in a way that produces a resolution.
Yes, Tom?
MR. MATTAIR: Well, if the question was about physical vulnerability - I think it was in January of this year insurgents penetrated the green zone and got onto the grounds of the main police academy on the Ministry of Interior property and killed about 36 police cadets who were graduating. This is inside the green zone.
MR. FREEMAN: Yes, please, Barry.
MR. POSEN: Actually, I'd like to be pretty honest about what my expectations are here on this disengagement business, and I don't think it's a good idea to be particularly rosy about what the place is going to look like the day after the last American armored vehicle rolls out of the country. I'm guessing that most of the people who are in the assistance business are going to find it in their interest to leave. I've not been to Iraq; I'll be completely honest, right, but I follow it pretty closely and I follow the statements and the experiences of people who are there, and it's a hell of a dangerous place for a person who doesn't have a military unit taking care of them.
So my guess is that only the most intrepid people who do this, who have been doing it in lots of places and this is their thing, the rock they've decided to carry in their life, and people who have gotten to know a certain set of locals and really trust them, or people who for some reason believe that the local Iraqi security forces are unusually good or unusually reliable, those people are going to stay, but much of this infrastructure is going when we go, and if we're not ready to see that and accept it, then I don't suggest people follow my strategy because they're going to say, oh, no, we didn't know it was going to be so awful. There is going to be some tough times in Iraq the day after we leave, and if you're not prepared to see it and if you're not prepared to explain to the American people when it happens that we counted on this, that in some sense the Iraqis need this, right, for themselves to sort out their power and their will and to come to an accommodation that's their accommodation and not the one that we invented or imposed, then don't follow my strategy; just stay, right, and pay that cost. Just stay.
MR. FREEMAN: Gareth, you -
MR. PORTER: Well, I would just say - you know, I would say the opposite - just go - instead of saying, you know, let's have this carefully calibrated plan for two years or a year and half or whatever. The United States should either help make peace in Iraq or just go. The only reason for the United States to have any presence in Iraq today is to contribute to trying to make peace in that country. What else is there to justify an American presence today? I mean, this could lead into a discussion of why we're still killing Sunnis - why the U.S. military is still going out on operations to kill Sunnis. There is absolutely no reason for it, there is no rationale anymore, but it's still going on.
Q: Hello, I'm Skip Conover, and I produce a current affairs program on Muslim television in the United States called "Words Matter." I have a website, wordsmatter.tv, so I want to thank Mr. Korb for the plug earlier.
I have two comments and sort of questions - one to Mr. Porter. I thought you were going to get to this in terms of an international conference, but what - I don't believe we have until 2009. I think that there are problems in the Middle East that are way beyond Iraq, and that we do need to get out, and so why not the solution to create an international force of Muslim - because I agree with Chas. that Americans and non-Muslims in Iraq is a huge irritant, and it's a huge irritant throughout the Middle East, not only in Iraq - but why can't we get out by engaging the four largest, by population, Muslim countries in the world - India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan - to lead an international force to replace us. And the reason I don't suggest an Arab force is because there are so many inter-family, inter-tribe fights going on in the Arab world that it would be very difficult to control an Arab force, but the Arabs could be involved if it was led by Muslim forces from these other four countries, and maybe others. So why can't we withdraw and be replaced by that, and why can't that be done sooner than the end of 2007?
My other issue is that we're ignoring the hippopotamus in the closet here, which is what we have done in Iraq as we have created a live fire exercise for our real enemy, which is al Qaeda. And I served 23 years in the Marine Corps, and I can tell you that a live fire exercise is the top training exercise that you do. And we have an enemy that doesn't care about their casualty rates, and what we're creating in Iraq is a cadre of junkyard dog fighters who can cause all kinds of trouble in the Middle East. And so our problem is not Iraq and what Iraq is going to look like next year; our problem is what is the Middle East going to look like five years from now? And as long as we keep Iraq going with - (inaudible) - we are creating for ourselves a cadre of junkyard dog fighters.
Last week one of the national news magazines carried an article in which it said, here are six scenarios that will cause oil prices to go up. Number one, which will - (inaudible) - number two was the fall of the Saudi royal family, and my great fear is metaphorically described by the story of the 47 maruni (ph). Now I'll sit down. Thank you.
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you, Skip. You raise two very important points. In any plan for dealing with withdrawal from Iraq, there are residual functions that have to be performed, and who would perform those I think is a very important question. And second, you raise the issue of Iraq as a training ground and recruitment source for really increasingly formidable urban warriors. I don't know who wishes to lead. Go ahead, Tom.
MR. MATTAIR: These two authors have talked about Special Forces that would continue to deal with that issue. And I think one of the good things about Larry's proposal is that he's talking about shifting forces to places like Afghanistan and home so that we can deal with al Qaeda, because al Qaeda, you were right, is the major problem, and Iraq had nothing to do with that; it just makes it worse.
MR. KORB: It's interesting, the British ambassador to Italy, giving what he thought was an off-the-record discussion - because if you've been in government you know there's really nothing - but, you know, he said, our invasion of Iraq was the best recruiting tool that al Qaeda ever had. So not only we recruit; we're training them. And I think that's why you have to look at the unintended consequences, or you should have looked at those before you went in, and I don't think - I find it very hard to find any realistic person who thinks we're not in a worse position now than we were before we went into Iraq. And I think the question is how do we recover from that, and that's why I think you've got to begin to get out of Iraq because until you do - now, it's interesting, on the al Qaeda website that the Norwegians brought to our attention, they said that they thought they could tie us down in Afghanistan, but we used the local people there and everything like that so we didn't get tied down. They're thrilled we're tied down in Iraq because it helps them.
And one final thing, I think there's a big difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. When we went to Afghanistan, we didn't tell the countries in the surrounding region, look, we're going to come in here, get rid of the Taliban, and we're going to have Jeffersonian democracy and all you guys are going to be gone, okay? That's why we got cooperation. Now we're saying we're in Iraq now; we're going to put a government and it's going to undermine all you people; you know, you're going to be changed and everything, so why would they cooperate with us? And I think once we renounce that goal of transforming the Middle East, we may be able to get some cooperation from the other countries.
MR. FREEMAN: Gareth?
MR. PORTER: If I were the Democratic Party grandees I would be -
MR. FREEMAN: I thought you were.
(Laughter.)
MR. PORTER: No, no, not really. I would be ginning up a strategy and making this public, getting it out as quickly as possible, a strategy that is based on really dealing effectively with al Qaeda in Iraq and in the surrounding countries, which would be based on reaching a peace agreement with the Sunnis as the first priority because the Sunnis are the forces - political military forces who are best able to expel - kill, capture, expel the al Qaeda bases from Iraq.
And as we know, I mean, over the past year the conflicts between the Sunni insurgents of various stripes and al Qaeda have multiplied and become deeper. We ought to be taking advantage of that. We're not, even though the administration, in its own inimitable way, tries to capitalize on it in the media by saying, oh, this is a great victory for us somehow. In fact, it is a factor that they have not really capitalized on and they should be.
MR. FREEMAN: Barry?
MR. POSEN: I appreciate those remarks. I mean, I've argued this to others for a long time, although not exactly with your colorful turn of phrase. I think I've called it a Darwinian school for terrorism. I think I like yours better and I may steal it with a footnote. I mean, there's a lot of layers to that question, though. You know, it remains a puzzle to me how it is - it's not a gigantic number of foreign fighters who get into Iraq, but it remains a puzzle to me that the flow is relatively continuous, and some of the -
Q: (Off mike.)
MR. POSEN: Yeah, some of the people who get in there, they come from countries that are friends of ours, ostensibly, and countries who have problems with these sorts of folks. Now, I have this sneaking suspicion that they've made a calculation that this is a nice safety valve for them. I mean, these elements get to Iraq and we get to kill them for them, right? And I have this, again, working hypothesis that maybe if we weren't there doing their killing for them, they'd be a little more careful about letting them go there in the first place because they wouldn't be sure that more wouldn't get training and come home - although not as good of training as they get an in aggressor exercise against the Marines.
Now, I'm skeptical of the Islamic peacekeepers because we don't have a peace to keep, and peacekeeping requires the conflict in some sense to be ripe.
Q: Well, we're not keeping the peace now so we might as well let somebody else -
MR. POSEN: No, no, I credit your characterization of the situation. I'm just saying that I don't think we're going to get others to want to send their troops in there to engage in this kind of omni-directional brawl that we're sort of in at this moment.
Q: Well, India would like to have a lot of oil
MR. POSEN: I'm sorry?
Q: India would like to have a lot of oil
MR. FREEMAN: I think the key point really here is - Barry is making a very fundamental point, and that is nobody is stupid enough to go in there to replace us under current circumstances - (laughter) - whatever motivations they may have, and the only manner in which your very sensible suggestion of an Islamic conference operation, or something of this sort, makes sense is if there is both an internal settlement of some kind and external guarantees of it, and the conditions are therefore set for the replacement of whatever residual training and other security role U.S. forces might otherwise have to play. The removal of the United States under those circumstances, and our replacement by a predominantly Muslim or maybe exclusively Muslim force would indeed remove some of the main negative international effects of this exercise.
I want to say also, with respect to terrorism, that there are many examples of successful management of terrorist problems in history. The British have provided us with several in Malaysia and in Ireland. And I think Saudi Arabia is now providing us with yet another example of success. And what these successes have in common, what these successful campaigns have in common is a predominantly non-military approach. That is, in the first instance you discredit the ideology of your opponent, which the Saudis are doing by removing extremists from the pulpits in the mosques, and by discrediting those who preach extremism. Second, you co-opt - you cause a defection of those who would otherwise go on to train in places like Iraq and become a serious threat. And you do this either with rewards of a financial nature or with amnesty programs and the like, which they're doing. And third, anybody who is left who is a real problem, you kill.
We're very good on the last point and no good at the first two. And we really ought to look at Iraq with the lessons of history and current experience in the region in mind. If we cannot address the ideological issue, if we're unable to find a way to make peace with our enemies, if we're left only able to kill them, then we will generate more enemies, for the reasons that Barry and others mentioned earlier.
John?
Q: John Duke Anthony again. Can we come back to the question I think Barry was the only one to focus on, two kinds of oil turmoil and that other kind that he was referring to. Set the military aspect of it aside for the moment, and we focus on that more than other issues, and we come back to a goal of some of those who brought us this situation. A play that has been scripted has not yet been acted, and this is who, what, why and how are going to end up with the lion's share of access to influence over Iraq's oil resources. We have helped to rejigger, reconfigure a constitution that now makes it possible that the north and the south can give new concessions to anyone they choose. So there's a blocking aspect to this in terms of Russia wanting it. Russia has passed concessions with sovereign signatures on it. We have nothing. France has, too. We have nothing in that regard. And I think China - correct me if I'm wrong - has at least initialed some agreements, and we don't even have that. So can we revisit the energy aspect of it there as to the implications of staying or withdrawing for the energy aspect of our foreign policy?
MR.FREEMAN: Barry, it was your idea.
MR. POSEN: I opened the door. I opened the door. I have to confess, I hadn't really thought about the question of who gets what. I know that there's a lot of enthusiasm among - is it wrong to use the word "Kurdophiles" about the Norwegian concessions in northern Kurdistan up near the Turkish border, and the idea that this is going to be some kind of salvation. My guess is that the in the first instance a lot of this is going to be in the background because it's not going to be very safe to invest in Iraq. Those concessions I think are not going to be worth that much for a while, even in the south. But in the long term, you just have a good question and I really don't have an answer. Maybe you have one.
Q: Just a refinement of it -
MR. FREEMAN: Could you go to the microphone, John?
Q: Just to follow up in a refinement on it, those who pulled hardest to overturn the doctrine of dual containment, this is rather transparent. It had to be overthrown and the regimes had to be changed if indeed were to have significant access and a more atmospherically favorable climate for investment, and the moment being propitious for the American access to these two countries that are bountiful in both oil and gas, but dual containment was an obstacle. Getting rid of dual containment implicitly required regime change. We've done it in one and we've rejiggered the constitution, and we're still thinking about it in the case of the other one.
MR. FREEMAN: I'll venture an answer to your question.
I think it's interesting that neither the infantile left nor the predatory right seem to be represented on this panel and no one has been th |
