Withdrawal is not defeat

By James P. Rubin

LONDON:

The idea of fighting a war on behalf of U.S. credibility hasn't been debated since the height of the Vietnam War. Yet that is precisely what some Iraq war supporters are now advocating.

They say the surge is the only acceptable path in Iraq and call it a crucial test of U.S. credibility, especially in the eyes of Al Qaeda and the Iranian government. To them, beginning a withdrawal and redeployment of American forces would constitute a defeat that will undermine U.S. power in the region and the wider world.

This argument is as wrong-headed today as it was 35 years ago. No responsible opponent of the president's surge strategy is proposing immediate and full withdrawal or suggesting that it would be fine to have Iraqis cling to evacuating American helicopters. Iraq is not Vietnam. And American policy in Iraq, under Democrats or Republicans, will never involve the scrambled departure and subsequent defeat we saw in South Vietnam.

If there is an appropriate analogy, Baghdad is more like Beirut, marked as it is by civil war, terrorism, crime, tribal and clan disputes and more. In the fog of the Iraq war, though, one thing has become clear: The American people have decided that the cost in lives and treasure of establishing a stable democratic government there is too high.

Last November's election and the realities on the ground in Iraq have brought us to a point where the more extreme goals of President George W. Bush's policy are simply unattainable. This war is not a simple win-lose proposition. There need be no defeat. American forces overthrew a dangerous regime and have given the Iraqi people an opportunity to build a representative government.

Surge supporters need to recognize political reality. The question is not whether America will begin a withdrawal of its forces from Iraq. The question is how soon that redeployment will begin and how it is conducted.

Yes, a withdrawal will mean that Iraq will not be the democratic magnet for the Middle East that Bush hoped. And the road to peace between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem will not go through Baghdad as Condoleezza Rice kept telling us back in March 2003.

That kind of outcome in Iraq would have required a different policy from the beginning. Allies would have had to be enlisted rather than alienated. Many more troops would have had to be deployed. A realistic plan for post-Saddam Iraq would have been necessary. And nation-building would have had to be embraced as national policy rather than hidden in the budget.

But just because an optimistic scenario is no longer possible doesn't mean defeat is the only alternative. Indeed, war supporters are creating a self-fulfilling policy. By describing anything less than the surge as losing, they are painting American policy into a corner.

Instead of urging an unrealistic policy, we should be preparing for a sustainable and responsible redeployment of American forces to a more limited role in Iraq and the region. That means a much smaller force designed to support and train Iraqi forces, to conduct counterterrorism missions and to contain a possible wider war.

War supporters say that a withdrawal will strengthen Al Qaeda, eliminate our leverage against Iran, and weaken America. They have it backwards. Al Qaeda gains supporters with our continued presence in the midst of Iraq's civil war. Withdrawal will eliminate Osama bin Ladin's most effective recruiting tool.

As for Iran, it is true that the war in Iraq will not serve as a warning to the Iranian regime, or initiate the fall of other authoritarian governments in the region. But that can't be fixed at this late date.

What can be fixed is the damage the Iraq war is doing to the American military. Repairing that damage through redeployment and renewal is the best way to create a U.S. military posture able to bolster diplomacy with Iran. Keeping so much of our force structure bogged down in the chaos of Iraq is hardly the way to deter Tehran.

Even after a withdrawal from Iraq, America will still be the world's only superpower, with the most powerful military, the largest and most vibrant economy, and the most admired political system. And with wise leadership, it can earn back the respect and support it has lost in recent years.

Vietnam analogies won't help us with the hard decisions needed in Iraq. For the only thing the two wars have in common is the incompetence and hubris of the U.S. decision-makers concerned. And just as patriotism is said to be the last refuge of a scoundrel, so credibility should be recognized as the last argument of a failed policy.

James P. Rubin, world affairs commentator at SKY News, was assistant U.S. secretary of state from 1997-2000.