LIVING WITH WAR
On March 26, 1968, Lyndon Johnson met in the Cabinet Room at the White House with a group of elder statesmen and retired generals known collectively as the Wise Men. He wanted their advice on what to do in Vietnam. They were the architects of American foreign policy in the Cold War, and they included Democrats and Republicans. Johnson had sought their counsel before, and they had always told him that he should stand firm. But Clark Clifford, who had recently replaced Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense, found that this time, two months after the Tet Offensive, with public confidence beginning to break, most of the Wise Men, including Dean Acheson and McGeorge Bundy, both anti-Communist hawks, had changed their minds. They told Johnson that the war could not be won in the time that American opinion would permit him, and that the United States should begin to disengage from Vietnam. Five days later, Johnson announced a restriction on bombing in North Vietnam and his own withdrawal from the Presidential race.
If there are any Wise Men available in the spring of 2006, what should they tell President Bush to do in Iraq? And, if they told him, would he listen? The government is in a strange and prolonged state of paralysis. Many officials in the Administration now admit, privately, and after years of willful blindness, that the war, in which almost twenty-four hundred Americans have died, and whose cumulative cost will reach $320 billion this year, is going badly and shows no prospect of a quick turnaround. Asked why the President doesn’t take this or that step to try to salvage what will become his legacy—fire his Secretary of Defense, for example—they drop their heads, as if to say: We know, he should, but it’s not going to happen. At the same time, they can’t quite bring themselves to abandon hope for a miracle.
Last week, hope took the unlikely shape of a hard-line Shiite politician named Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who was finally named Prime Minister of the permanent government in Baghdad, more than four months after it was elected. He is a compromise candidate among Iraq’s warring groups, which include two opposing factions within what is still called the Shiite alliance. If he inspires any confidence here, it is because no one knows anything about him. The idea is that Iraq, which an Iraqi official recently described as “a country near death,” will somehow begin to consolidate around the government of Prime Minister Maliki, and the violence will somehow begin to subside. As a strategy, this amounts to muddling through the rest of the Bush Presidency, without being forced to admit defeat, until January of 2009, when the war will become a new President’s problem.
Since the end of the Cold War, the role of the foreign-policy establishment has been killed off by the nasty partisanship that now infects every aspect of Washington politics. In mid-March, Congress announced the formation of an Iraq Study Group to analyze the state of the war and advise the President about the way forward. Perhaps because the very idea of a bipartisan foreign policy no longer exists, the group seems to have been chosen for its political constituencies rather than for its informed and independent judgment. It’s hard to imagine the likes of Rudolph Giuliani, Chuck Robb, Vernon Jordan, and Sandra Day O’Connor marching into the Cabinet Room to tell the President that his Iraq policy has failed and that he needs a new one, along with new people to implement it.
But what if they do? This is not a President who places his faith in the wisdom of men. When thirteen former Secretaries of State and Defense were summoned to the White House in January, Bush gave them all of ten minutes to air their views. Last week, in California, he described his policymaking process in unmistakably clear terms. “I base a lot of my foreign-policy decisions on some things that I think are true,” he said. “One, I believe there’s an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody’s soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.” It seems that unless God himself gains entry to the West Wing and informs the President that the Iraqis’ desire to be free is not the issue, a grandiose theology will continue to doom America and Iraq to a bloody stalemate.
One alternative was recently offered by Senator John Kerry. Speaking in Boston on the thirty-fifth anniversary of his Senate testimony as a Vietnam veteran, Kerry delivered an indictment of the Bush-Cheney doctrine, with its cult of secrecy and its contempt for traditional American liberties, that was far more devastating than anything he could bring himself to say during the 2004 campaign. Having found his voice, Kerry abruptly concluded the speech with a new war policy: immediate withdrawal if Iraq doesn’t form “an effective unity government” by May 15th; withdrawal by the end of the year if it does. But abandoning Iraq in an exasperated rush will leave ordinary Iraqis far more vulnerable to the murderous conduct of the militias and the insurgents than they are now. As Sunnis, Shiites, and, possibly, Kurds finally face off without an American buffer, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey could be drawn into a wider war that could further destabilize the region and create large safe zones for jihadis.
The choice in Iraq should not be between the Administration’s failed eschatology and the growing eagerness of most politicians to be rid of the problem. Both moral obligation and self-interest require that Americans accept the consequences of the war and, if the Administration will not, imagine new ways to resolve it. Leslie Gelb and Senator Joseph Biden, in an Op-Ed they have written for the Times, propose that the United States, with the involvement of Iraq’s neighbors, broker a political deal among the country’s three main groups, based on terms set down in Iraq’s new constitution: a division into three autonomous regions, a weak federal capital in Baghdad, and a fair share of the oil revenue for the Sunnis. The premise is that if the Iraqis are to have a chance of living together in the future, they need a period of separation now. This is, admittedly, the logic of desperation, raising a thousand questions and provoking as many vexing problems. Nor is it entirely a new idea. But, after three years of war and a chronic inability of leaders in both countries to think beyond next month, a fundamental change of policy deserves to be taken seriously. If there are no more Wise Men in Washington, can there at least be wisdom? — George Packer
On March 26, 1968, Lyndon Johnson met in the Cabinet Room at the White House with a group of elder statesmen and retired generals known collectively as the Wise Men. He wanted their advice on what to do in Vietnam. They were the architects of American foreign policy in the Cold War, and they included Democrats and Republicans. Johnson had sought their counsel before, and they had always told him that he should stand firm. But Clark Clifford, who had recently replaced Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense, found that this time, two months after the Tet Offensive, with public confidence beginning to break, most of the Wise Men, including Dean Acheson and McGeorge Bundy, both anti-Communist hawks, had changed their minds. They told Johnson that the war could not be won in the time that American opinion would permit him, and that the United States should begin to disengage from Vietnam. Five days later, Johnson announced a restriction on bombing in North Vietnam and his own withdrawal from the Presidential race.
If there are any Wise Men available in the spring of 2006, what should they tell President Bush to do in Iraq? And, if they told him, would he listen? The government is in a strange and prolonged state of paralysis. Many officials in the Administration now admit, privately, and after years of willful blindness, that the war, in which almost twenty-four hundred Americans have died, and whose cumulative cost will reach $320 billion this year, is going badly and shows no prospect of a quick turnaround. Asked why the President doesn’t take this or that step to try to salvage what will become his legacy—fire his Secretary of Defense, for example—they drop their heads, as if to say: We know, he should, but it’s not going to happen. At the same time, they can’t quite bring themselves to abandon hope for a miracle.
Last week, hope took the unlikely shape of a hard-line Shiite politician named Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who was finally named Prime Minister of the permanent government in Baghdad, more than four months after it was elected. He is a compromise candidate among Iraq’s warring groups, which include two opposing factions within what is still called the Shiite alliance. If he inspires any confidence here, it is because no one knows anything about him. The idea is that Iraq, which an Iraqi official recently described as “a country near death,” will somehow begin to consolidate around the government of Prime Minister Maliki, and the violence will somehow begin to subside. As a strategy, this amounts to muddling through the rest of the Bush Presidency, without being forced to admit defeat, until January of 2009, when the war will become a new President’s problem.
Since the end of the Cold War, the role of the foreign-policy establishment has been killed off by the nasty partisanship that now infects every aspect of Washington politics. In mid-March, Congress announced the formation of an Iraq Study Group to analyze the state of the war and advise the President about the way forward. Perhaps because the very idea of a bipartisan foreign policy no longer exists, the group seems to have been chosen for its political constituencies rather than for its informed and independent judgment. It’s hard to imagine the likes of Rudolph Giuliani, Chuck Robb, Vernon Jordan, and Sandra Day O’Connor marching into the Cabinet Room to tell the President that his Iraq policy has failed and that he needs a new one, along with new people to implement it.
But what if they do? This is not a President who places his faith in the wisdom of men. When thirteen former Secretaries of State and Defense were summoned to the White House in January, Bush gave them all of ten minutes to air their views. Last week, in California, he described his policymaking process in unmistakably clear terms. “I base a lot of my foreign-policy decisions on some things that I think are true,” he said. “One, I believe there’s an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody’s soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.” It seems that unless God himself gains entry to the West Wing and informs the President that the Iraqis’ desire to be free is not the issue, a grandiose theology will continue to doom America and Iraq to a bloody stalemate.
One alternative was recently offered by Senator John Kerry. Speaking in Boston on the thirty-fifth anniversary of his Senate testimony as a Vietnam veteran, Kerry delivered an indictment of the Bush-Cheney doctrine, with its cult of secrecy and its contempt for traditional American liberties, that was far more devastating than anything he could bring himself to say during the 2004 campaign. Having found his voice, Kerry abruptly concluded the speech with a new war policy: immediate withdrawal if Iraq doesn’t form “an effective unity government” by May 15th; withdrawal by the end of the year if it does. But abandoning Iraq in an exasperated rush will leave ordinary Iraqis far more vulnerable to the murderous conduct of the militias and the insurgents than they are now. As Sunnis, Shiites, and, possibly, Kurds finally face off without an American buffer, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey could be drawn into a wider war that could further destabilize the region and create large safe zones for jihadis.
The choice in Iraq should not be between the Administration’s failed eschatology and the growing eagerness of most politicians to be rid of the problem. Both moral obligation and self-interest require that Americans accept the consequences of the war and, if the Administration will not, imagine new ways to resolve it. Leslie Gelb and Senator Joseph Biden, in an Op-Ed they have written for the Times, propose that the United States, with the involvement of Iraq’s neighbors, broker a political deal among the country’s three main groups, based on terms set down in Iraq’s new constitution: a division into three autonomous regions, a weak federal capital in Baghdad, and a fair share of the oil revenue for the Sunnis. The premise is that if the Iraqis are to have a chance of living together in the future, they need a period of separation now. This is, admittedly, the logic of desperation, raising a thousand questions and provoking as many vexing problems. Nor is it entirely a new idea. But, after three years of war and a chronic inability of leaders in both countries to think beyond next month, a fundamental change of policy deserves to be taken seriously. If there are no more Wise Men in Washington, can there at least be wisdom? — George Packer
posted by D @ 7:40 AM
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