Bush Iraqi Gamble
by Donald Devine

With no good options facing him, President George W. Bush has taken a big gamble with his new Iraq policy. With Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, looking for a fight, and the majority of Americans thinking the war lost, he could not add more military forces through the appropriations process. So the president could only squeeze 21,500 more soldiers by posting those in Iraq and on the way to longer tours of duty.

Supporters of more troops to win the war in Iraq such as Frederick Kagan claimed that 50,000 more troops were needed to guarantee success. The very pro-war Wall Street Journal editors wrote in supporting the president’s new plan that they were concerned whether the addition of only 600-1,000 new forces to each Baghdad district “is enough to do the job.” This is the gamble--that stability in Iraq can be accomplished on the cheap because given the domestic U.S. political realities it is not possible to surge by more than 22,000.

There is much to admire about the president’s new approach. He took full responsibility for the lack of recent progress. His White House, generally loath to directly confront mistakes, went to the highly unusual length for any administration of providing a chart presenting both the previous key assumptions about the war and the new ones, highlighting past errors in thinking. The new assumptions are clearly superior even to one who warned against an involvement that included nation-building because it would bog down in ethnic conflict. Rather than aiming at democracy or freedom in Iraq, the more achievable goal of order and stability are now settled American policy.

Still, the addition of so few troops is problematical. The president’s plan would raise the force level to only 153,000, below the highpoint of 165,000 in December 2005 when that higher number was insufficient. President Bush has liberalized the rules of engagement, presumably to be less sensitive to concerns about collateral damage to civilians, and that might make a difference in effectiveness. On the other hand, even the Journal editors had earlier acknowledged that the previous Donald Rumsfeld strategy of a “light footprint” and sensitivity to such damage had been “right for most of the country.” Its abandonment in Baghdad and Anbar could have negative repercussions there too as collateral damage increases.

The biggest part of the gamble might end up being the president’s overriding the recommendations of his top uniformed military advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After previously having maintained that a president should follow military advice from his top generals, he was careful in his speech to the nation to say that they have “reviewed” the plan to assure it “addresses these mistakes” of past policy and “they report that it does.” He did not say the Chiefs supported the new approach, and they do not.

From the very beginning, the generals have planned a quick turning of authority to Iraqis and a fast exit; but increasingly idealistic goals set by the political leaders and the State Department did not allow it. The original plan was to withdraw within six months. That was clear from interviews with the military leaders when I visited in November 2003. Later, the idea was changed to stay and help the Iraqis draft and ratify a constitution and elect new leaders--and the exit was extended twelve months. A year later, it was moved again to the end of 2006, now to ensure the Iraqi army was fully self-sustaining before exit. But the 2006 election changed the military thinking too as things began to remind them of Vietnam’s endless changing goalposts and troop increases, including Gen. Creighton Abrams increase of 200,000—not increasing troops to that level but bringing in that many more. Increasing by a mere one-tenth of that level did not seem like a winning way.

The now outgoing Central Commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, told Congress two months ago that more troops were not the answer for Iraq. He specifically said that he had met personally with all of the commanders in the field and all agreed that more soldiers would not help. An anonymous “Army officer who recently commanded a brigade in Baghdad” told the Washington Post bluntly, “The plan will fail.” The “surge” in forces was too small and it did not accord with Iraqi politics because Prime Minister Nouri “Maliki must protect [Moqtada] al-Sadr,” who heads the largest, most aggressive and anti-U.S. Shiite militia but holds 30 seats supporting Maliki’s coalition government.

Each of the Shiite, Kurd and Sunni factions still believe they can prevail at least in slightly larger homelands and have no reason to be reasonable. Based on efforts in Yugoslavia and Lebanon the State Department types think any decent order would take six to 12 years to impose. The generals want none of this. While supporting an increase in troops, cracking down on death squads and ethnic militia, and imprisoning more insurgents, hawks Bing West and Elliot Cohen put the real problem facing the president well. “The paradox of American strategy in Iraq is this: President Bush can achieve success only by threatening to do something he is morally opposed to doing—leaving swiftly and risking chaotic civil strife. If the president showed the same iron will toward Mr. Maliki that he does toward Congress and public opinion, Mr. Maliki would blink first.”

Perhaps; but everyone knows Mr. Bush will not budge. His plan could work but it is a long-shot gamble against expert advice that even the president admits will result in more U.S. and Iraqi casualties and no guarantee of success.

Donald Devine, the editor of Conservative Battleline Online, was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 and is the director of the Federalist Leadership Center at Bellevue University.