Rural Ruminations

[Originally published in the Rutland Herald.]

America is fighting two mutually contradictory battles in Iraq. We are fighting against an Iraqi insurgency that wants us out of Iraq, and we are fighting against al-Qaida in Iraq which wants us to stay because they came there after our invasion to kill our troops and foment chaos and that can only be continued if we stay. That alone is a pretty good reason for us to get out.

The Bush White House, Sen. John McCain, the prospective Republican presidential nominee, and other supporters of the administration’s Iraq policy have identified our goal in Iraq as “victory.” “Victory” is defined as the defeat of terrorism and the insurgency; the creation of a peaceful, united, stable, democratic and secure state; the evolution of Iraq as a partner in U.S. foreign policy goals on terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and weapons proliferation; and as an economic and political example to the region of all that is good about democracy.

A policy of promoting regional stability would be far better. Our military approach to both Iraqi terrorism and its insurgency will bring only further instability. Real stabilization will necessarily involve seeking a viable political solution for Iraq, requiring the participation of the neighborhood in the process. The neighborhood does not seek a regional conflict, yet as long as we are involved militarily there, we are so totally bereft of diplomatic power that none of those neighbors will participate with us in seeking and implementing the kind of solution that will be acceptable to all concerned. Our departure from Iraq, however, is the only course that can provide an opportunity for such a solution, as well as an opportunity to seek solutions to other Middle East problems.

Anyone who accepts the likelihood that not even a militarily successful surge will bring a voluntary resolution of Iraq’s internal sectarian and ethnic issues, will understand that the same civil conflicts that the surge is successfully suppressing today will simply wait until we have departed Iraq and then come to the forefront again. These animosities are so ancient, so ingrained, that they have not disappeared over the centuries and will not for centuries to come. Whether we leave now or in 10 years, the same potential for conflict will be there.

The Bush administration has spoken often of the coming “long war” against terrorism. As long as we continue with their tactics, which rely first and foremost on the neocons’ beloved application of military instead of diplomatic power, it will indeed be a long war – perhaps decades long.

Our pursuit of “victory,” as defined above, through the “surge” has brought us three new realities: We cannot totally prevent the chaos and killing regardless of how successful the surge proves to be; we have lost all of our diplomatic flexibility (we are essentially alone in this struggle and will remain so as long as we remain in Iraq); and the primary beneficiaries of our policy are, and will continue to be, Iran and al-Qaida.

The “surge” currently under way, however militarily successful, is unlikely to lead to political stability and far more likely to cause further destabilization. As integral parts of our surge policy, we tacitly acknowledge and support a level of autonomy for the Kurds which will likely lead ultimately to conflict between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen in the north. Further, we are supporting all sides in the ongoing low-key civil war. We are arming Sunni tribal militias in the Awakening program, but neglect to employ them as promised, leaving a group of battle-hardened fighters whom we have armed and who are not only angry the Shia and the Kurds, but at us as well. Meanwhile, we ignore southern Iraq where Shia militia battle over oil and power and where competing Shia groups are so fractious that they can’t even carry out elections within their own sect!

The policies that make the surge militarily successful weaken us in our struggle with terrorism. Historically, when terrorist movements are left to run their course they tend to last around a dozen years. The good news about them is that, unlike insurgencies, which rarely lose, terrorism never seems to win. Terrorism is a short-term, dramatically violent irritant. It has never warranted having a war declared on it.

Unfortunately, in our struggle with al-Qaida, we are proceeding precisely as bin Laden would have wished. He must daily thank Allah for the ongoing U.S. policy against him, because, without our invasion and occupation, al-Qaida was in the process of deterioration. It is now reinvigorated.

We have made Israel and any other regional government not favored by al-Qaida more vulnerable by enabling the battlefield training of additional cadres, some of which will head south toward Palestine when Iraq is over. Others may look more closely at Saudi Arabia and Egypt or at the Muslim regions of the old USSR. Wherever they go, they represent a destabilizing factor.

Terrorist organizations cannot survive unless local populations support them. In Iraq, a recent focus of al-Qaida in Iraq has been to foment secular and ethnic chaos by purposefully killing Shia and pinning it on Sunnis or Kurds – or any permutation of that theme. The Iraqis are acutely aware of this. The minute we leave Iraq, the Iraqis will turn on this al-Qaida faction as the Sunnis have already begun to do in Anbar province.

Even more profoundly, however, we have changed the dynamic of the Arab/Persian rivalry for primacy in the Gulf in favor of Iran by removing the two most viable counterbalances to Iran, the Taliban and Iraq. Iran is now a real regional player to our detriment. We have taken the lid off the Sunni-Shia schism leading to secular strife in Iraq. But, the worst consequence of this invasion has been that we have seriously strained our old international friendships and alliances, particularly and most importantly, the Atlantic Alliance. Our invasion of Iraq is so strongly disapproved of by our former allies that they are unwilling to help us deal with our Middle East issues at a time when we simply cannot cope on our own.

So, we have no diplomatic flexibility in Iraq. We are essentially alone in this struggle and will remain so as long as we remain in Iraq. The only way to gain the flexibility that will enable us to at least set new goals and pursue them is to withdraw from Iraq. Until we do withdraw, our only influence on the region will be limited by our military power which already is seriously strained. If we listen to our own generals, our ability to wage ground warfare is already seriously threatened by the demands on our troops in Iraq.

Finally, anti-Americanism is on the rise everywhere. We are viewed as hypocritical by most of Islam and much of the world. Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, waterboarding, renditions, the CIA gulag and the abrogation of civil rights at home are but a few of the irritants. Furthermore, the anti-American pot will surely be kept boiling by press coverage of the coming military tribunals at Guantanamo.

The neighborhood really does not want a regional conflict. As soon as we are out of Iraq, America should gain the potential to become a convening authority for a regional discussion on Iraq’s future. As long as we are in Iraq militarily, lacking any sort of diplomatic influence, we will not be allowed to play that role.

The Koran provides a complete blueprint for a life which is very different from a life led under democracy. Many if not most observant Muslims find no reason to seek changes in their way of life. In the interim, we might do well to replace “democratization” with “self-determination,” a term which has fallen into disuse under the Bush administration. Why indeed should people not have the right to choose their own form of government, whether “democratic” or not? Forcefully “spreading democracy” exacerbates Muslim concerns about a new crusade. If Muslims are ultimately to turn toward democracy, it will not be because it was forced on them, it will be because they see some real advantage in that form of government.

We will do far better to once again become a “shining city on the hill.” That will require that we give up all those activities instituted in response to Sept. 11, which have diminished us in the eyes of the world. The United States once more has to be a country worth emulating and that means restoring America to its pre-Sept. 11 world reputation.

Any new policy for dealing with Iraq, the Middle East, Islam or terrorism needs to start with the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, a complete change in our goals and tactics in the Middle East, the rebuilding of broken bridges to our old allies and the renunciation of our policy of pre-emptive unilateralism. Only then will we be able to begin to identify strategies and achieve goals that are in our national interest in the region.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Eastern and Western Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston.

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[Originally published in the Rutland Herald.]

The recent crossborder Turkish attacks on Kurdish (PKK) rebels in Northern Iraq provide stark proof that the Bush Administration’s foreign policy is based on its own ideology rather than on any imperatives presented by the objective facts that exist on the ground in Kurdish Iraq.

Many past administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have made foreign policy decisions not only on the basis of the objective facts in the area under consideration, but rather on the basis of their domestic political needs or their own ideology. It is difficult, however, to recall an administration that has so blatantly ignored objective realities as this one.

There is a long U.S. history of diplomatic, academic, commercial, journalistic and intelligence involvement in the Middle East. America has been engaged in that part of the world throughout its history, starting with the Barbary Pirates in the 18th Century. In today’s world, we have been heavily involved since the end of the Second World War, the creation of Israel, and the exponential increase of the importance of oil to the world economy. In that time, America has developed a cadre of citizens who really are expert in matters concerning the Middle East.

It is not a recent phenomenon that there are fundamental conflicts between Shia and Sunni, between Kurd and Turk, between Arab and Persian (Iranian), between Iraq and Iran, between the Taliban and Iraq. Some of those conflicts have been going on for millennia, some for centuries, the rest for decades. In fact, virtually all of them are well known to a broad swath of American experts and all of them strongly influenced American policy in the Middle East until the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Under the Bush Senior, we saw the most recent example of area knowledge and understanding of the complicated crosscurrents and nuances of the Middle East helping us avoid a catastrophe. He stuck to his guns in early 1991 by not continuing on to Baghdad and in the process avoided all the problems that beset us today in the area.

Careful reading of the reasons why we did not go on to Baghdad under Bush Senior provides a primer on realities in the Middle East.

At the time, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said, “So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him (Saddam) from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we’d achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.”

Those problems were well known to American experts at the time and even better known on the eve of the U.S. invasion of lraq in 2003.

They represent the crux of the problems we now face. They were simply ignored by the Bush administration. All the bad things that have happened were predictable and predicted: The Sunni/Shia carnage in Iraq was and remains part of the 15-century-old schism between those two branches of Islam and remains at the heart of the intractable struggle between them for the control of Iraq.

The meddling of Iran (Persia) was inevitable. Iran is a country that has sought hegemony over the Persian Gulf since it was lost by them to the Arab Caliphate in the 7th Century. The rebirth of this quest was enabled by the U.S. invasion and the rise of the power of Iraqi Shia who are their co-religionists and whose increasing influence in Iraq blunted the power of one of their major competitors for Gulf hegemony — Iraq.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq removed two major Iranian competitors in the region, Taliban-governed Afghanistan and Saddam’s Iraq, with whom they had fought an eight-year war. That, in turn, diminished the power and influence of the Gulf Arabs, including Saudi Arabia and made Iranian Gulf hegemony more likely.

The increasing independence of Iraqi Kurdistan brought on by our invasion and Saddam’s downfall virtually guaranteed conflict between the Turkey and the Kurds who have millions of Kurdish brethren living as second-class citizens in Turkey.

Some governmental and nongovernmental experts predicted all of these consequences of our Invasion. The problem is that the Administration did not listen to them. In fact, those critics of the Bush policy were shouted down, belittled, humiliated and attacked as “unpatriotic” by the Administration.

So, we are in this Middle East mess not because of a failure of intelligence and expertise, but because of the Bush Administration’s refusal to listen to the voices of the many real experts on the area. America can do better.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the Counterterrorism Staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

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[Originally published in The Valley News.]

There are really only two options for America in Iraq. One is to “stay the course.” The other is to “cut and run.”  That stark choice stems from the fact that Iraq has never existed as a real country.

It is often stated that if the United States were to cut and run, the “country” would devolve into civil war.  That statement is quite true.  It’s also true that no matter when we leave, Iraq will devolve into civil war.  Our continued presence in Iraq will stifle, but will never end the longtime animosities that exist within that “country.”

The rationale for staying in Iraq is that the U.S. military surge, which does seem to be working, will give the Sunnis, Shia and Kurds time to settle their differences, create a harmonious government and find a way to establish and maintain the peace.  That is the bet on which the Bush administration is laying all its coin, including the most important American treasure, the well being of U.S. soldiers.

Anyone who has even the slightest understanding of Iraq knows that the three main groups are unlikely to settle their differences. They have no reason to. Each seeks power at the expense of the others. Each has demands that the others will not meet. None is prepared to compromise.  There will be no magical transformation of Iraq into a “democratic, Muslim state.”  Worse than that, the odds of today’s Iraq ever becoming a real country are nil.

After the Mongol invasion of Mesopotamia (roughly the geographic area now called Iraq) in the 13^th century, order was maintained by a series of repressive foreign rulers.  A military coup in 1958 brought the first homegrown but still repressive, Iraqi rulers, and in 1968 the Arab Socialist (Bath) Party took over and controlled the country, still repressively, until the U.S. invasion in 2003. Throughout its history, order has been maintained by repressive governments — strictly by coercion and intimidation and often by terror.

This has been particularly true in the past century because leaders had to deal with the animosities between the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds.  Left to their own devices, they would have taken each other on in a heartbeat.  However, as long as America stays in Iraq, our presence will mitigate the conflict that is part of the historical fabric of life there. We are today’s purveyor of repressive order.  We forcefully intervene to try to keep that order.

When America leaves an Iraq in which ethnic and religious differences are unsettled, more conflict will come. It doesn’t really matter how long we wait to leave.  There is sure to be major loss of life. Iraq’s neighbors will get involved. Iran will support the Shia, Saudi Arabia and others will support the Sunnis.  God knows what will happen to the Kurds!  having already attacked the PKK, the Turks may well invade Iran’s Kurdish region.  Whatever finally happens there, It is unlikely that any one of the three entities will prevail at the expense of the others. Their foreign sponsors and enemies won’t permit that. Remember, neither side prevailed in the recent Iran-Iraq war.

Ultimately, the conflict will run out of steam and the antagonists will then, and only then, sort out their differences and reach some sort of settlement. It’s possible that such a settlement could be reached before the needed catalyst.  But that miracle can only happen with urging from the United States, something the Bush administration is clearly disinclined to do.

One can speculate endlessly on what such a solution would look like. It would almost certainly result in some sort of partition of what is today Iraq. It is equally certain not to be democratic and, given the IMPACTS of the U.S. invasion, it probably will be anti-American.  Certainly, the longer we stay, the worse it will get. Wishful thinking will not alter that reality.

As sad and as horrible as it is to say, unless suppressed by a strong internal power such as Saddam Hussein, or by external power like the United States, conflict between the three major groups in today’s Iraq is inevitable and will remain so for years if not decades to come.  The argument that we must maintain a military presence in Iraq until there is a “political solution” is absolutely absurd. If a solution is ever to come, which is highly unlikely, it will come only when there is no other alternative available.  Until that time, the only contribution provided by the American troops is that they represent precisely such an alternative to a real solution.

So, the choice is starkly simple.  Since the result is bound to be the same at virtually every point in the future, should we wait it out, or should we consider an early exit?

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[Originally published in The Valley News.]

It is inconceivable that the president and his advisers have not reached the logical conclusion that their grandiose plans for lraq are unattainable. No serious expert on, or student of, this Iraq adventure—with the exception of those who are ideologically committed to the president’s goals—could conclude that there is any hope of political victory. At best, Iraq will become some sort of loose confederation.

It’s time to view the administration’s current Iraq policy, as well as its goals at home, very differently. Their new strategic goal must be to share responsibility for the Iraq disaster with the Democrats—or, better yet, to make them totally responsible for the disaster in the public eye.

Today’s Bush’s tactic consists of the militarily successful “surge” followed by the concerted effort now under way to convince Americans to wait, once again, for the surge to be followed by Iraqi political reconciliation—which is unlikely ever to come. “Wait” is the operative word. This policy is based on one simple premise: Bush simply is not prepared to see an “unsuccessful” conclusion of his Iraq adventure during his presidency. To do so would be an admission that the administration has no way to “succeed.” That is an unacceptable admission to a president who is inordinately concerned with his image and his legacy. This is all about presidential ego. So, he will do anything and everything to hand an unresolved Iraq over to his successor. Then the results will be the Democrats fault.

There are some Republicans in Washington who have openly stated their disagreement with Bush’s Iraq policy. There are undoubtedly others who also disagree with it but have not so declared.  It also seems likely that if that war persists until the November ‘08 elections, other Republicans will sign on against the Bush strategy. Why, then, would any congressional Republicans go along with this incredibly self-serving and dangerous Bush policy? Their only way out of the Iraq mess may be to hang it on the Democrats.

If this new Bush policy works and if Congressional Republicans hang tough and support the president, they may hope they will be able to land the entire mess in the lap of a new Democrat president.

Without support from Republicans in Congress, the Democrats do not have the votes to alter the Bush policy. President Bush is veto-proof. Despite that, the Democrats, probably in an attempt to prove to their constituents that they heard them in the last election, have refused to compromise on any issue.

Largely as a result of the Democrats’ political posturing, absolutely nothing has been accomplished, permitting Bush to push the process forward toward the desk of the next president. In the meantime, the war goes on with all the expenditures of American treasure.

The Democrats are faced with two options, both bad. They can refuse to fund the war, which would be political disaster, since that would leave our troops in limbo and would allow Republicans to claim the Democrats are unable or unwilling to deal with terrorism.

Alternatively, they can do nothing and see the war turned over to the next president—very likely to be a Democrat. And that is precisely the corner into which the Republicans are trying (so far, successfully) to paint the Democrats.

The Iraq war will very likely be judged America’s worst foreign policy disaster. In the beginning, it looked as if it would only take the Republicans down with it. But more and more, it looks as if it will be a disaster for the Democrats and our next, probably Democratic, president as well.

And that is almost certainly the Bush plan: Don’t perish alone on Iraq, take the Democrats down with you. If this proves to be the case, the Democrats will become victims of an incredibly cunning, underhanded, Machiavellian, Republican ploy that may serve the president’s interests and possibly Republican interests, but not those of the Republic.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in Europe and the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

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[Originally published in the Rutland Herald.]

The goal of the Bush administration for the ongoing “surge” in Iraq, as far as it can be ascertained, seems to be to bring an absence of violent, physical conflict to Iraq which would in turn permit political reconciliation.

Iraq has never been a viable country in any accepted sense of the word. It was created between 1921-1926 by the British to suit their own political needs in the area. Since then the “country” has been kept together by a succession of repressive regimes, ending with Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party rule from 1958 until our 2003 invasion.

It is likely that the “surge” currently under way will dampen the violence in Iraq. We have entered into relationships against al-Qaida with Sunnis in Anbar and Diala provinces. In return for training and financial support, the militias in those areas have joined us in the struggle with al-Qaida in Iraq. Those two provinces have become relatively peaceful.

Actually, this makes all the sense in the world since it was inevitable that Iraqis would come to view al-Qaida in Iraq as a hostile, foreign, fundamentalist organization that shares no goals with the secular Iraqi Sunnis. Incidentally, this shreds the Bush administration’s repeated assertions that if we leave before “succeeding,” Iraq will turn into a terrorist base for attacks against the U.S. That is patently untrue.

With help from those Sunnis, we apparently have narrowed al-Qaida’s options. When attacked in the past, al-Qaida would simply move to a safe area. Now when we attack them in one place with more troops, they have few if any options on places to hide. It looks as if we may be on the way to reducing al-Qaida-sponsored violence in the Sunni areas. Clearly, this is good.

However, the real problem lies with the Iraqis. It has been said over and over by every pundit and military expert in the U.S. that there will be no successful conclusion to our adventure in Iraq until the Iraqis reach peaceful agreement on sharing wealth, power and responsibility.

The Iraqis have shown no inclination to fulfill this, our goal, for them. Quite the contrary, none of the participants appears to have any desire to make a “new Iraq” work. Having had virtual autonomy since the 1991 Gulf War, the Kurds would like to be left alone in northern Iraq. They now want the oil in the north as well as Kirkuk, the largest city in the north.

The Shia, as the largest ethnic and religious component in Iraq, would like to maintain control of the southern oil fields and, in addition, control the entire country. They have absolutely no desire to share any of this with the Sunnis, under whose hostile and repressive thumb they existed for decades, or with the Kurds.

The Sunnis, having run Iraq since 1963, think they should still be in charge. They are so deluded about their past power that many of them honestly believe that they are the majority group in Iraq. Unfortunately for them, they are the smallest group in Iraq, have no oil to speak of on their own turf and are roundly despised by Kurds and Shia alike for their 40-year-long murderous rule of the country.

In short, there is no reason for any one of the three groups to want to share anything with the others. And these are the folks that the Bush administration is counting on to find a political solution to Iraq’s problems, which would enable us to withdraw from the country.

There is no viable central government in Iraq today. There is only a power void created by the disinclination of the Sunnis, Shia and Kurds to solve their political problems. In fact, the Sunnis have just withdrawn from the so-called central government, making political consensus even less likely.

We have compounded the problem by entering into local agreements supporting Sunnis against al-Qaida. Even though that may be in our best interest in the struggle with al-Qaida, it certainly will do nothing but make Iraqi political reconciliation more difficult. The Shia, who are suspicious of our ultimate intentions and probably anticipating a more open civil war, are upset that we are, in effect, training, arming and financing their Sunni enemies.

However resoundingly successful the “surge” turns out to be in terms of calming violence in Iraq, it will be meaningless in the face of the disinclination and inability of the three warring factions to reach a viable consensus.

The likelihood of an amicable solution to internal Iraqi political problems, which would enable us to declare success and withdraw under the conditions already established by the Bush administration, is infinitesimally small.

Why should the U.S. use its precious treasure to support a process that has little if any chance of success?

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Lebanon and Iran and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston.

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[Originally published in The Valley News.]

Most Americans honestly believe that given sufficient effort, they can solve any problem. They are usually right. Unfortunately, the problem we have in Iraq is almost certainly one of those that, despite our best efforts, is unlikely to have a decent solution.

The Bush administration, supported by less than a third of the U.S. population, says we can “win” in Iraq, and that in order to do so, we have to go ahead with the planned “surge” of additional troops. At the other end of the spectrum are those who say we should get out immediately. Either of those two extreme positions could ultimately prove to be the best course of action, but embracing either one of those options now makes no sense. Only through a careful, public examination of the advantages and disadvantages of those two extremes are we likely to reach any kind of truth about what we should do.

The claimed advantages of the stay-and-win strategy are that as long as we stay, we will: have some military control over events in Iraq; prevent a regional war among the neighbors; fight the terrorists in Iraq rather than at home; retain hope of installing democracy in Iraq; prevent al-Qaida from setting up training camps in Iraq.

Those who want us to get out now claim that: there is no military solution for Iraq; we will save precious lives and resources; we cannot export democracy; our presence in Iraq is what galvanizes local and international terrorism against us; we will regain world respect and our old allies.

How do these statements stack up with realities on the ground in Iraq?

First, there is absolutely no available evidence that our departure from Iraq will empower al-Qaida to strike America again. Even with all the help our invasion of Iraq has given our enemies, they have not yet been able to hit us a second time at home. They will do this when and if they are able. The further allegation is that they will set up training camps in Iraq if we leave. They already have, directly under our noses!

Furthermore, the secular Sunnis, who have nothing in common with theocratic al-Qaida except for a shared hatred for America’s presence in Iraq, will surely close those facilities when we withdraw from their country. The presence of American troops is the only glue that holds them together.

In terms of al-Qaida’s ability to train new jihadists, our departure from Iraq will make that training less practical, less realistic. What we really have done in Iraq and continue to do as long as we are there is give the terrorists a target-rich training environment for rookie jihadists, with live American targets, as well as a level and scope of advertising for further recruitment that al-Qaida could not otherwise match.

The fact that there are conversations going on throughout the Middle East among countries traditionally at odds shows pretty clearly that all those countries have their own reasons not to want to have a regional conflict. The apocalyptic view of a regional war may not be an accurate prediction for the future.

Pandering to the anti-war, left-wing of their party, the Democrats’ attempt to force withdrawal of our troops by 2008 is political grandstanding that will lead nowhere. Withdrawing troops without first arranging for and participating in regional talks designed to mitigate regional conflict would be a major error. Democrats can continue to try to humiliate the president and the Republicans by establishing a date certain for withdrawal, or they can do whatever is practically possible to bring our disastrous Iraq adventure to an end. Given the political realities that exist in the Senate and with a presidential veto virtually guaranteed, it seems likely that the president’s policy will prevail until he leaves office, or until the Democrats stop playing politics and find a viable plan. That will need Republican congressional support.

We need a practical approach from the Democrats that recognizes the political realities they are facing. They should be pushing for a series of timed benchmarks, including: dates for establishing regional talks; tangible evidence of the diminution of sectarian violence; evidence that Iraqis are taking over tasks now performed by Americans; and a political agreement among Iraqi factions on the future of their country.

That is where the Democrats might better put their efforts and hope to pick up the necessary Republican support. Those benchmarks would measure the success or failure of the surge policy. They would have to be successfully met for the administration to keep the battle going. Without benchmarks, we will stay in Iraq for a very long time, or at least until the next elections. With benchmarks, we have some hope of achieving a measure of success in stabilizing Iraq, even if we don’t achieve victory in terms of meeting our original goals. If the benchmarks aren’t met, we will get out.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Lebanon, Iran and Europe and as chief of counterterrorism in Langley. He lives in Williston, Vt.

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[Originally published in The Valley News.]

Supporters of President Bush’s proposal for a “surge” in troops to be deployed to Iraq are guilty of one really shoddy tactic in the current debate. Having themselves been unable to find an alternative other than a continuation of the old policy, which is precisely what the “surge” is, they now challenge all those who disagree with the policy to find an acceptable alternative — on their behalf.

If they were really serious about “winning” in Iraq, they would use a force of hundreds of thousands of men, as was recommended before the war by our military leadership. According to many military experts, anything much short of that had then and has now little chance of pacifying the country. But that was never a rational approach to Iraq. Perhaps if it had been properly considered at the onset, it might have stopped the invasion before it started. Troop levels fall in the same category as the lack of adequate and appropriate arms for our troops — armored Humvees and body armor, for example. In short, we went to war with what we had, to use the formulation of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and it was simply inadequate for the long haul.

So they blame the current policy impasse on the Democrats’ inability to come up with a viable new plan, when the entire mess clearly results from their own invasion.

Not that the Democrats are covering themselves in glory. Those Democrat legislators who fell for the Bush rationalization for the Iraq invasion and voted to enable it are, quite frankly, morally and politically compromised on this issue. Except for those few who have repudiated their own votes, they have lost their standing and credibility. And most aren’t contributing to the policy debate much anyway; they’re just carping incessantly and unconstructively against the president’s policy.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has repudiated the only way out of this mess — a plan that curiously is not being actively pushed by the Democrats. Iraq is not a country and never has been, unless that status was imposed on its inhabitants by force of arms — a la Saddam Hussein. Its logical and natural condition, even more so after Saddam’s departure, is to be divided into three pieces — Kurdish, Shia and Sunni.

If you look carefully at the Shia-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and its approach to today’s miserable realities in Iraq, it’s clear it is interested first and foremost in pursuing sectarian goals and not in any greater Iraqi good. It has consistently blocked or resisted U.S. attempts to shut down the Mahdi army, the militia operating under the control of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. It has not made any attempt to redress Sunni concerns about the Iraqi constitution. It is interested primarily in having the Iraq army take on only Sunni insurgents. The Shia government wants an Iraq on its terms.

Since the invasion, the Sunnis, although they appear recently to have realized their error, have simply not participated in the national government in any meaningful way. They have done much to keep the sectarian pot boiling through their alliance with al-Qaida and through suicide bombings and other acts of violence.

The Kurds in the north are content to run their own virtual nation. They seem far more interested in assuring that when Iraq falls apart, they will maintain their independence and get northern oil and the cities that go with it.

And that’s the blueprint. No one in Iraq seems to want to lay down arms and negotiate to become a real country. When the vast majority of the citizens of Iraq put their own ethnic and religious interests first, partition is the logical answer to their problem. It really doesn’t matter what we want to happen. What matters is only what they want, and, at best, that would appear to be some sort of confederation, the primary glue for which would be the sharing of the national wealth — oil.

On the positive side, al-Qaida would not survive in a divided Iraq. Only America’s presence keeps the secular Sunnis and fundamentalist al-Qaida on the same page. Once the Americans have departed, the Sunnis will be done with al-Qaida.

However, the three-state solution does have its own built-in problems. Partly because of their concerns about Shia Iran’s incipient domination of the region, the Sunnis in the neighborhood (Saudis, Kuwaitis, Jordanians, etc.) do not want to see an Iraq dominated by Shias. Because the Turks preside over a large, unhappy minority of Kurds in their own country, they are extremely nervous about the creation of a Kurdish state on their southern flank. Because the Iranians seek increased power in the region, they are likely to support the Shias in Iraq to advance their regional goals.

These are potential, not actual, problems. None of those neighbors wants the kind of civil or regional war that supporters of Bush policy constantly and apocalyptically predict. None of them can afford it. Each neighbor has its own reasons to want to stop the problem before it begins. The only way they can get there is through negotiations. Such talks will not take place without American leadership. As long as we reject such talks, there will be no peace.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in the Middle East, East and West Europe and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

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[Originally published in The Valley News.]

The Iraq Study Group’s report has made it quite clear that we are unlikely to find a way out of the Iraq quagmire that will satisfy the architects of our invasion. Even though researched and written by bipartisan subgroups, the conclusions and recommendations of the ISG paper have been attacked robustly, mostly by the far right and the Neocons, who clearly see some benefit in not changing course in Iraq — perhaps because they conceived, approved, promoted, sold and implemented it.

President Bush told us that he would carefully consider all the report’s recommendations, while acknowledging for the first time that we need to change course. Yet it would appear that he is still married to the amorphous concept of “winning.” In that context, he has said that the Iraqi security forces need to “stand up” and that the Iraqis need to accept responsibility for their own welfare. That is quite true, but in today’s Iraq, it probably represents a catalyst to more civil war rather than a path toward the kind of democratic state that might alter the region.

It is an unfortunate fact, one highlighted by the ISG report, that there is no silver bullet for Iraq. In fact, there is no viable option available to Bush other than getting out of Iraq with the goal of minimizing the damage inflicted on us and on our interests. Every other option has a string of disadvantages sufficient to warrant its rejection. The president is talking about a surge in troop levels while the Pentagon initially said that wouldn’t work. He talks of “standing up” the Iraqi army and police to provide security, but those organizations are riven with secular and ethnic divisions, making them unusable in resolving the ongoing civil war. The Jordanians, who have been training Iraqi police and troops, have been afraid to provide them with live ammunition for target practice, fearing they would shoot each other!

Bush finds himself in an untenable position. As a result of the Republican losses in the November elections, he now admits he needs to change our policy. Yet, if he chooses any new policy that leads anywhere other than to total victory, he will be conceding that the old policies were wrong and unworkable. Taken to its logical conclusion, he would be admitting that we never should have invaded Iraq in the first place and he is constitutionally incapable of doing that.

The new policy in Iraq will not be new, but rather a desperate attempt to vindicate the old, unworkable policy. We are gambling our resources, our troops and our military establishment to justify a failed policy. However much Bush wishes to avoid the process of admitting he is clinging to a failed policy, he has to realize that he is working in the aftermath of the November elections, which were essentially a referendum that rejected his Iraq policy and lost his party control of both the House and the Senate. One suspects that the postponement of his announcement of a “new plan” until January is the result of his inability to find a viable course of action.

So he hopes to find an answer, but wishing won’t make it so, not even for a president. The situation in Iraq is intractable. It almost certainly will play out according to some mysterious and unpredictable indigenous process over which he has no control. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the United States will benefit in any way at its conclusion. Not only is our simple presence in Iraq causing immeasurable harm there, it is doing us great damage in our struggle with terrorism and in our relationships throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world. We are losing friends and gaining enemies.

Our departure will cause major problems in Iraq and perhaps in the Middle East, but those will be national and regional problems best addressed by Iraq and its neighbors. Sadly, our presence there is the primary impediment to a real solution.

To continue this adventure — and continue accepting our mounting human, political and financial losses — is the height of folly.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in the Middle East, East and West Europe and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

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