Levin and benchmarks.
I planned my paean to Carl Levin at a good time -- right before his (politically) well-timed document dump (nice props from NYT to the effectiveness of Harry Reid's closed Senate session in getting the pre-war intelligence scandal back onto the front page). I watched a bit of Levin on CNN today, and he was just great: very tough, very clear, very appealing. He got himself attacked in the Weekly Standard and defended by Spencer Ackerman on TNR's blog. All in a good day's work.
Meanwhile, politics aside, Ivo Daalder and Kevin Drum debate the merits of Levin's "benchmark strategy" for Iraq withdrawal, which the senator laid out in the Washington Post today and on the Senate floor a couple of weeks ago. Here, my cheerleading fades a bit. Levin writes:
I believe that if the Iraqis fail to reach a political solution by the end of the year we must consider a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces. This does not mean setting a date now for departure. It simply means conveying clearly and forcefully to Iraqis that the presence of our forces is not indefinite and that our staying there requires them to come together politically, since Iraqi unity offers the only hope of defeating the insurgency.
The problem Kevin, and some of Daalder's commentators at TPMCafe, cite with regard to Levin's plan, is that the benchmarks -- begin withdrawing if the Iraqis don't get their political act together by specified dates -- might in fact backfire; rather than making it easier for the government to push and coddle the various factions into line to meet the benchmarks, the prospect of the occupation forces leaving might generate indifference among some groups (like the Kurds) while provoking other groups (mainly but not exclusively the Sunni insurgent groups), to work even harder to derail the process. Since 82% of Iraqi citizens polled recently want to see Western forces out (at least hypothetically), it might also create the opporutunity for a populist anti-West, anti-Jafaari message, and the political leverage that entails, among clerics like al-Sistani or al-Sadr.
Actually, you can take this argument further. In avocating a negociated withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, Spencer Ackerman argued earlier this year that doing so would offer the chance for a major propaganda coup among Iraqi democrats, by demonstrating that the elected Iraqi government could negociate and achieve the removal of the infidel occupiers from Iraq, something the violent Sunni resistence could not do. The benchmark strategy is the exact opposite of this idea. The departure of the occupying force would be contigent on the Iraqi democrats failing. Getting rid of the Americans would represent a victory of anarchy, violent resistence and the war of attrition over political concensus and the national voice. Worse, it could be spun that way regardless of the political circumstances under which the Americans eventually start to withdraw.
That means the moral impetus of Levin's strategy is contingent on his being right that the threat of withdrawal will do more to induce the various factions to get in line than to stir some of the more agnostic ones to balk at further political compromise. But Levin's proposal does have two redeeming features. One is the flip-side of the problem cited above: it's a relatively honest program. Withdrawal, under Levin's plan, represents failure: failure of the Americans to have done something worthwhile in the Middle East and failure of the Iraqis to create a workable federal state for themselves at American behest. That makes it hard to spin as "mission accomplished" among American hawks, and therefore more likely to solidify the national belief that the war was a mistake and that nothing like it --that is, a preemptive, unilateral attack on a non-genocidal rogue regime -- should be attempted again. Second, it's a more flexible approach than the unconditional withdrawal. What constitutes success at reaching a political "benchmark" is technically open to modification and interpretation in a way a timetable, which is just a promise to withdraw specific numbers of troops on specific dates, is not.
I think Daalder is right when he asserts that Levin has been more correct about the war than most people in Washington for a very long time and deserves to be taken seriously. I also think that a middle ground between just giving up on Iraq and vowing to stay indefinitely is probably called for -- a way of testing and making people think about what post-occupation Iraq will look like. But when you get down to it, all the options are still horrible. Right now I'm not entirely sure (despite what I wrote Saturday) that Levin's plan is the lesser of the various evils this war has wrought.
Meanwhile, politics aside, Ivo Daalder and Kevin Drum debate the merits of Levin's "benchmark strategy" for Iraq withdrawal, which the senator laid out in the Washington Post today and on the Senate floor a couple of weeks ago. Here, my cheerleading fades a bit. Levin writes:
I believe that if the Iraqis fail to reach a political solution by the end of the year we must consider a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces. This does not mean setting a date now for departure. It simply means conveying clearly and forcefully to Iraqis that the presence of our forces is not indefinite and that our staying there requires them to come together politically, since Iraqi unity offers the only hope of defeating the insurgency.
The problem Kevin, and some of Daalder's commentators at TPMCafe, cite with regard to Levin's plan, is that the benchmarks -- begin withdrawing if the Iraqis don't get their political act together by specified dates -- might in fact backfire; rather than making it easier for the government to push and coddle the various factions into line to meet the benchmarks, the prospect of the occupation forces leaving might generate indifference among some groups (like the Kurds) while provoking other groups (mainly but not exclusively the Sunni insurgent groups), to work even harder to derail the process. Since 82% of Iraqi citizens polled recently want to see Western forces out (at least hypothetically), it might also create the opporutunity for a populist anti-West, anti-Jafaari message, and the political leverage that entails, among clerics like al-Sistani or al-Sadr.
Actually, you can take this argument further. In avocating a negociated withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, Spencer Ackerman argued earlier this year that doing so would offer the chance for a major propaganda coup among Iraqi democrats, by demonstrating that the elected Iraqi government could negociate and achieve the removal of the infidel occupiers from Iraq, something the violent Sunni resistence could not do. The benchmark strategy is the exact opposite of this idea. The departure of the occupying force would be contigent on the Iraqi democrats failing. Getting rid of the Americans would represent a victory of anarchy, violent resistence and the war of attrition over political concensus and the national voice. Worse, it could be spun that way regardless of the political circumstances under which the Americans eventually start to withdraw.
That means the moral impetus of Levin's strategy is contingent on his being right that the threat of withdrawal will do more to induce the various factions to get in line than to stir some of the more agnostic ones to balk at further political compromise. But Levin's proposal does have two redeeming features. One is the flip-side of the problem cited above: it's a relatively honest program. Withdrawal, under Levin's plan, represents failure: failure of the Americans to have done something worthwhile in the Middle East and failure of the Iraqis to create a workable federal state for themselves at American behest. That makes it hard to spin as "mission accomplished" among American hawks, and therefore more likely to solidify the national belief that the war was a mistake and that nothing like it --that is, a preemptive, unilateral attack on a non-genocidal rogue regime -- should be attempted again. Second, it's a more flexible approach than the unconditional withdrawal. What constitutes success at reaching a political "benchmark" is technically open to modification and interpretation in a way a timetable, which is just a promise to withdraw specific numbers of troops on specific dates, is not.
I think Daalder is right when he asserts that Levin has been more correct about the war than most people in Washington for a very long time and deserves to be taken seriously. I also think that a middle ground between just giving up on Iraq and vowing to stay indefinitely is probably called for -- a way of testing and making people think about what post-occupation Iraq will look like. But when you get down to it, all the options are still horrible. Right now I'm not entirely sure (despite what I wrote Saturday) that Levin's plan is the lesser of the various evils this war has wrought.
1 Comments:
One thing that I just realized about our dilemma in Iraq: we have no one to negotiate with. Without a clearly defined enemy, we are faced with either success or failure. I think Carl Levin (go Carl!) is making a great attempt at finessing that problem.
Post a Comment
<< Home