'The US Will Lose War Regardless What it Does'
In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, American military historian
Gabriel Kolko argues that the situation in Iraq is worse than ever
and that the artificial nation, created after World War I, is
breaking up. The "surge," he says, is also failing.
SPIEGEL: The long awaited results of the "surge" are now in. Has the
surge succeeded? Is there reason for optimism in Iraq?
KOLKO: Both United States General David H. Petraeus and US Ambassador
Ryan C. Crocker will deliver "progress" reports to Congress on
Monday, but the skeptics far outnumber those who believe Bush's
strategy in Iraq is succeeding. They will say that Shiite attacks on
Sunnis in Baghdad have fallen but they will not add that Baghdad has
been largely purged in many areas of Sunni inhabitants and their
flight much earlier -- and not the increase in Americans -- is the
reason "success" can be reported to Congress. Indeed, most of the
administration's statistics have been met with a wave a skepticism.
The Iraq military but especially the political 'benchmarks' that this
administration thought so crucial -- and used to justify its 'surge'
of 28,500 additional troops -- have, in the opinion of Congress'
Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued at the end of
August, not been attained (there are now 168,000 American troops in
Iraq, plus roughly half as many civilians). In its unexpurgated,
original form, the GAO claimed that only three of the 18
Congressionally mandated "benchmarks" had been reached: violence was
as high as ever; reconstruction was plagued by corruption on both the
Iraqi and American sides; the Shiites and Sunnis were as disunited as
ever, murdering each other; crucial laws, especially on oil, have not
been enacted yet; and probably many political changes will never
occur, and the like. Of its nine security goals, only two had been
met. White House and Pentagon efforts to soften GAO criticisms failed.
SPIEGEL: Who has benefited from the mess?
KOLKO: The situation is worse than ever and the artificial nation --
created after World War I in a capricious manner -- is breaking up.
The surge, as one Iraqi is quoted, "is isolating areas from each
other ... and putting up permanent checkpoints. That is what I call a
failure." The civilian death toll last August was higher than in
February. Geopolitically, as Bush senior feared after the first Gulf
war in 1990-91, Iran is emerging more powerful than ever,
increasingly dominant in the region. The many official Israeli
warnings before the war that this would be the outcome of war against
Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein from power have come true.
SPIEGEL: How would you describe the situation of the Bush White House
today? What options does it have?
KOLKO: The Bush Administration suffers from a fatal dilemma. Its Iraq
adventure is getting steadily worse, the American people very likely
will vote the Republicans out of office because of it, and the war is
extremely expensive at a time that the economy is beginning to
present it with a major problem. The president's poll ratings are now
the worst since 2001. Only 33 percent of the American public approve
of his leadership and 58 percent want to decrease the number of
American troops immediately or quickly. Fifty-five percent want
legislation to set a withdrawal deadline. In Afghanistan, as well,
the war against the Taliban is going badly, and the Bush
Administration's dismal effort to use massive American military power
to remake the world in a vague, inconsistent way is failing. The US
has managed to increasingly alienate its former friends, who now fear
its confusion and unpredictability. Above all, the American public is
less ready than ever to tolerate Bush's idiosyncrasies.
SPIEGEL: What went wrong? Was the war doomed from the very beginning?
How can the US military and the US government which is spending $3
billion per week in Iraq be losing the war?
KOLKO: The US is losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the very
same reasons it lost all of its earlier conflicts. It has the
manpower and firepower advantage, as always, but these are ultimately
irrelevant in the medium- and long-run. They were irrelevant in many
contexts in which the US was not involved, and they explain the
outcome of many armed struggles over the past century regardless of
who was in them, for they are usually decided by the socio-economic
and political strength of the various sides -- China after 1947 and
Vietnam after 1972 are two examples but scarcely the only ones. Wars
are more determined by socio-economic and political factors than any
other, and this was true long before the US attempted to regulate the
world's affairs. Political conflicts are not solved by military
interventions, and that they are often incapable of being resolved by
political or peaceful means does not alter the fact that force is
dysfunctional. This is truer today than ever with the spread of
weapons technology. Washington refuses to heed this lesson of modern
history.
SPIEGEL: What is the position of the US military? Are its forces
united behind the war?
KOLKO: Some of the most acute criticisms made of the gross simplisms
which have guided interventionist policies were produced within the
American military, especially after the Vietnam experience
traumatized it. My history of the Vietnam War was purchased by many
base libraries, and the military journals treated it in detail and
very respectfully. The statement at the end of July by the new
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael G. Mullen,
that "no amount of troops in no amount of time will make much of a
difference" if Iraqi politics fails to change drastically reflects a
current of realism that has existed among military thinkers for some
decades (whether he acts on this assumption is another matter and
depends greatly on considerations outside of his control). But the
senior military remains extremely disunited on this war, and many
officers regard Gen. Petraeus -- the top military commander in Iraq
-- as a political opportunist who ultimately will do as Bush commands.
Admiral William J. Fallon, who commands American forces in the region
and is Petraeus' superior, is publicly skeptical of his endorsement
of the president's policies in Iraq. The Army, especially, does not
have the manpower for a protracted war and if the US maintains its
troop levels after spring 2008, it will face a crisis. It will have
to break its pledge not to leave soldiers in Iraq longer than 15
months, accelerate the use of National Guard units, and the like --
and it will lose the war regardless of what it does.
SPIEGEL: But if there are critical voices in the military, why are
they ignored?
KOLKO: Like the CIA, the military has some acute strategic thinkers
who have learned from bitter experiences. The analyses of the US
Army's Strategic Studies Institute -- to name one of many -- are
often very insightful and critical.
The problem, of course, is that few (if any) at the decisive levels
pay any attention to the critical ruminations that the military and
CIA consistently produce. There is no shortage of insight among US
official analysts -- the problem that policy is rarely formulated
with objective knowledge is a constraint on it. Ambitious people, who
exist in ample quantity, say what their superiors wish to hear and
rarely, if ever, contradict them. Former CIA head George Tenet is the
supreme example of that, and what the CIA emphasized for the
president or Donald Rumsfeld was essentially what they wanted to
hear. While he admits the CIA knew far less regarding Iraq than it
should have, Tenet's recent memoir is a good example of desire
leading reporting objectively. The men and women who rise to the top
are finely tuned to the relationship between ambition and readiness
to contradict their superiors with facts. The entire mess is Iraq, to
cite just one example, was predicted. If reason and clarity
prevailed, America's role in the world would be utterly different.
SPIEGEL: But what about the Iraqi security forces? Are they able to
take over from the Americans?
KOLKO: The Iraqi army and police that are to replace the Americans is
heavily infiltrated by Shiites loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr and others --
estimates vary, but at least a quarter is wholly unreliable. When
Paul Bremer was sent as proconsul to Iraq in May 2003, he decided
unilaterally to purge the military completely of Saddam's officers
and loyalists -- Bush still wanted, vaguely, to keep the existing
army intact -- but the task of reconstructing it proved far too
difficult for his successors. The American administration is now
using the very Sunni tribes that Saddam had worked with, mainly by
purchasing their loyalty. It is very significant that Bush during his
visit to Iraq a few days ago went to Anbar province rather than
Baghdad, reflecting the realization that Nouri al-Maliki's government
is no longer the chosen vehicle for attaining America's goals.
SPIEGEL: How does Washington plan to go about the business of ending
the war?
KOLKO: There is utter confusion in Washington about how to end this
morass. Goals are similar but the means to attain them are
increasingly changing, confused, and as victory becomes more elusive
so too does this administration look pathetic. The 'surge' in the
opinion of a majority of quite conservative Establishment foreign
policy experts (80 percent of whom had once served in government) was
failing; the administration's handling of the war, in their view, was
dismal. In fact, it is disastrous.
Interview conducted by John Goetz.
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