General Odom and the Hard Truth of Iraq

I have enormous respect for General Odom. I met him when he was campaigning on behalf of Howard Dean. He’s enormously learned in military, diplomatic, and strategic intelligence matters. I read several of his books, and have followed his work ever since. I was pleased to see him publish the following op-ed in the WaPo this Sunday. The thinking in this op-ed didn’t spring from Odom’s head like Athena: he’s been thinking through the strategic moves that Iraq necessitates for some time now. Some further articles that you might be interested in by General Odom are "How to Cut and Run" and "Know When to Fold ‘Em" written earlier this year and late last year. I think Odom’s writings are so important to re-framing the debate on Iraq, that I reproduce his WaPo op-ed here in its entirety:

Victory Is Not an Option
The Mission Can’t Be Accomplished  —  It’s Time for a New Strategy

By William E. Odom
Sunday, February 11, 2007

The
new National Intelligence Estimate (full text pdf) on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf
that separates President Bush’s illusions from the realities of the
war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal
democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that
has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the
NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a
declaration of defeat.

Its gloomy implications — hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its
impact — put the intelligence community and the American public on the
same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in Iraq last
year and turned the Republicans out of control of Congress to wake it
up. But a majority of its members are still asleep, or only half-awake
to their new writ to end the war soon.

Perhaps this is not
surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure, and our
politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibility
for anything resembling those un-American outcomes. So they beat around
the bush, wringing hands and debating "nonbinding resolutions" that
oppose the president’s plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in
Iraq.

For the moment, the collision of the public’s clarity of
mind, the president’s relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress’s
anxiety has paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing
the mirage of democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran.
But this is not inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to
quit the game of "who gets the blame" could begin to alter American
strategy in ways that will vastly improve the prospects of a more
stable Middle East.

No task is more important to the well-being
of the United States. We face great peril in that troubled region, and
improving our prospects will be difficult. First of all, it will
require, from Congress at least, public acknowledgment that the
president’s policy is based on illusions, not realities. There never
has been any right way to invade and transform Iraq. Most Americans
need no further convincing, but two truths ought to put the matter
beyond question:

First, the assumption that the United States
could create a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just
about everything known by professional students of the topic. Of the
more than 40 democracies created since World War II, fewer than 10 can
be considered truly "constitutional" — meaning that their domestic
order is protected by a broadly accepted rule of law, and has survived
for at least a generation. None is a country with Arabic and Muslim
political cultures. None has deep sectarian and ethnic fissures like
those in Iraq.

Strangely, American political scientists whose
business it is to know these things have been irresponsibly quiet. In
the lead-up to the March 2003 invasion, neoconservative agitators
shouted insults at anyone who dared to mention the many findings of
academic research on how democracies evolve. They also ignored our own
struggles over two centuries to create the democracy Americans enjoy
today. Somehow Iraqis are now expected to create a constitutional order
in a country with no conditions favoring it.

This is not to say
that Arabs cannot become liberal democrats. When they immigrate to the
United States, many do so quickly. But it is to say that Arab
countries, as well as a large majority of all countries, find creating
a stable constitutional democracy beyond their capacities.

Second,
to expect any Iraqi leader who can hold his country together to be
pro-American, or to share American goals, is to abandon common sense.
It took the United States more than a century to get over its hostility
toward British occupation. (In 1914, a majority of the public favored
supporting Germany against Britain.) Every month of the U.S.
occupation, polls have recorded Iraqis’ rising animosity toward the
United States. Even supporters of an American military presence say
that it is acceptable temporarily and only to prevent either of the
warring sides in Iraq from winning. Today the Iraqi government survives
only because its senior members and their families live within the
heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and military
command.

As Congress awakens to these realities — and a few
members have bravely pointed them out — will it act on them? Not
necessarily. Too many lawmakers have fallen for the myths that are
invoked to try to sell the president’s new war aims. Let us consider
the most pernicious of them.

1) We must continue the war to prevent the terrible aftermath that will occur if our forces are withdrawn soon.
Reflect on the double-think of this formulation. We are now fighting to
prevent what our invasion made inevitable! Undoubtedly we will leave a
mess — the mess we created, which has become worse each year we have
remained. Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but
in the next breath express fear that quitting it will leave a blood
bath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a "failed state," or some other
horror. But this "aftermath" is already upon us; a prolonged U.S.
occupation cannot prevent what already exists.

2) We must continue the war to prevent Iran’s influence from growing in Iraq.
This is another absurd notion. One of the president’s initial war aims,
the creation of a democracy in Iraq, ensured increased Iranian
influence, both in Iraq and the region. Electoral democracy,
predictably, would put Shiite groups in power — groups supported by
Iran since Saddam Hussein repressed them in 1991. Why are so many
members of Congress swallowing the claim that prolonging the war is now
supposed to prevent precisely what starting the war inexorably and
predictably caused? Fear that Congress will confront this contradiction
helps explain the administration and neocon drumbeat we now hear for
expanding the war to Iran.

Here we see shades of the
Nixon-Kissinger strategy in Vietnam: widen the war into Cambodia and
Laos. Only this time, the adverse consequences would be far greater.
Iran’s ability to hurt U.S. forces in Iraq are not trivial. And the
anti-American backlash in the region would be larger, and have more
lasting consequences.

3) We must prevent the emergence of a new haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq.
But it was the U.S. invasion that opened Iraq’s doors to al-Qaeda. The
longer U.S. forces have remained there, the stronger al-Qaeda has
become. Yet its strength within the Kurdish and Shiite areas is
trivial. After a U.S. withdrawal, it will probably play a continuing
role in helping the Sunni groups against the Shiites and the Kurds.
Whether such foreign elements could remain or thrive in Iraq after the
resolution of civil war is open to question. Meanwhile, continuing the
war will not push al-Qaeda outside Iraq. On the contrary, the American
presence is the glue that holds al-Qaeda there now.

4) We must continue to fight in order to "support the troops."
This argument effectively paralyzes almost all members of Congress.
Lawmakers proclaim in grave tones a litany of problems in Iraq
sufficient to justify a rapid pullout. Then they reject that logical
conclusion, insisting we cannot do so because we must support the
troops. Has anybody asked the troops?

During their first tours,
most may well have favored "staying the course" — whatever that meant
to them — but now in their second, third and fourth tours, many are
changing their minds. We see evidence of that in the many news stories
about unhappy troops being sent back to Iraq. Veterans groups are
beginning to make public the case for bringing them home. Soldiers and
officers in Iraq are speaking out critically to reporters on the ground.

But
the strangest aspect of this rationale for continuing the war is the
implication that the troops are somehow responsible for deciding to
continue the president’s course. That political and moral
responsibility belongs to the president, not the troops. Did not
President Harry S. Truman make it clear that "the buck stops" in the
Oval Office? If the president keeps dodging it, where does it stop?
With Congress?

Embracing the four myths gives Congress excuses
not to exercise its power of the purse to end the war and open the way
for a strategy that might actually bear fruit.

The first and most
critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our
losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the
pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take
away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our
pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate
with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third,
we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually
destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to
prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the
hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" — all undermine
the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth,
we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily
a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they
enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a
"tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory."
That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the
region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs
of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want
predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they
now have.

Realigning our diplomacy and military capabilities to
achieve order will hugely reduce the numbers of our enemies and gain us
new and important allies. This cannot happen, however, until our forces
are moving out of Iraq. Why should Iran negotiate to relieve our pain
as long as we are increasing its influence in Iraq and beyond?
Withdrawal will awaken most leaders in the region to their own need for
U.S.-led diplomacy to stabilize their neighborhood.

If Bush truly
wanted to rescue something of his historical legacy, he would seize the
initiative to implement this kind of strategy. He would eventually be
held up as a leader capable of reversing direction by turning an
imminent, tragic defeat into strategic recovery.

If he stays on
his present course, he will leave Congress the opportunity to earn the
credit for such a turnaround. It is already too late to wait for some
presidential candidate for 2008 to retrieve the situation. If Congress
cannot act, it, too, will live in infamy.

William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general, was head
of Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under
Ronald Reagan. He served on the National Security Council staff under
Jimmy Carter. A West Point graduate with a PhD from Columbia, Odom
teaches at Yale and is a fellow of the Hudson Institute.