Escalation

I'd like to write more about this, but as you can tell I've been pressed for time this week, so here’s the short version. It's fashionable right now, among opiners I respect and some I don't, to favor an escalation in Iraq (and yes, "escalation" is the appropriate term to use for adding tens of thousands of troops in an effort to salvage a quagmire, though temporal and hope-based euphemisms like "securing Baghdad" and "stabilizing the situation for the next few months" make that reality a bit more palatable). William Stuntz writes that an extra 30,000 troops "would make a large difference," and 20,000-50,000 seems to be the range that those in favor of escalation think would prove decisive.

But we know now that before the war, our military, diplomatic, and intelligence communities determined together that it would take 400,000 troops to have any chance of success, and that even that force level would not preclude the possibility of Iraq devolving into chaos. (The wire report is here, and the recently-released documents in the National Security Archive are here.) That was the best estimate in 1999, when Iraq was "stable." Anyone advocating another 30,000-50,000 troops (after which we'd still have less than 200,000 troops in theater) needs to explain why Iraq is far "easier" now --after three years of a low-grade civil war -- than it would have been in 1999. I haven't seen that explanation yet.

One other point I haven't seen mentioned is what the Iraqi people (remember them?) actually want. Without exception, every opinion poll I've seen shows that most Iraqis (Sunni and Shia alike, with the Kurds the exception of course) want us to leave and believe that our presence causes much of the violence. Here's a poll from September showing that over half of all Iraqis believe firm U.S. deadlines would strengthen Iraq's government. It also shows that a majority supports attacks on U.S. troops. A tad significant and worth considering, isn’t it? As for Americans, the midterm elections indicated what they think about the war, and they justifiably expect the Democrats they voted for to take action. Anyone advocating escalation needs to explain why the wishes of most Iraqis and Americans should be ignored or why the public's support (both here and there) isn’t necessary for that escalation to be successful.

I'm all for "winning" -- whatever that means today, or next week. What I'm not in favor of is "next six months are crucial" can-kicking for the next few years, benchmark-lacking open-ended mission creep, we’ll-know-victory-when-we-see-it fuzziness, or the perverse logic of "making sure that the troops who have already died did not do so in vain" via more death. We’ve had three years of all that, and a generation ago we learned what the endgame looks like.