White House Strategy for Victory

As you may have heard, President Bush has put out "Our National Strategy for Victory", or more precisely, an outline of one. Obviously, this will be the topic of several posts here . Before I get going, you might want to read it in its entirety at http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_strategy_nov2005.html

When reading the outline, one is immediately struck by the rhetorical qualities of the document. The opening heading of the executive summary is "OUR NATIONAL STRATEGY FOR VICTORY IN IRAQ:Helping the Iraqi People Defeat the Terrorists and Build an Inclusive Democratic State" This is a sterling example of "bottom line up front" writing or, as a cycnic might label it, "main talking point up front". As a political communication, the outline appears, on first reading, to be first rate.

However, there is as much meat as spin in the outline and so we have a lot of things to chew on. The document lays out a definition of success, a definition of the enemy and a three pronged strategy (Political, Military, and Economic) for achieving success. Most importently, it lists the assumptions upon which the strategy is based. All of this is great grist for the intellectual mill.

But leavinf that aside for the moment, there are a couple points to make (or carp on). The first is the document's assertion that "No war has ever been won on a timetable and neither will this one." I find this interesting in light of the fact that, among scholars of military strategy, the US is considered to be more prone then most to pursue planned strategies with timetables. A good example would be the Second World War in which the US constantly agitated for a planned strategy in Europe (as opposed to the UK's desire for a more opportunistic strategy) and actually set a firm deadline for victory against Japan (i.e., one year after Germany's surrender). However, these same scholars usually portrayed the American prediliction for timetables as something of a weakness, so we should keep an open mind on this.

Another phrase in the document that raises an eyebrow is this one: "It is not realistic to expect a fully functioning democracy, able to defeat its enemies and peacefully reconcile generational grievances, to be in place less than three years after Saddam was finally removed from power. " What strikes me about this passage is that it is exactly the sort of thing that someone like Lawrence Eagleberger might have said when cautioning against the war before it began. At this point, it reads as a sad self-indictment of postwar planning, or the lack of it. But that horse left the barn three years ago. [While I'm closing doors on an empty barn, the document's description of what will happen if we "fail" (i.e., "Iraq would become a safe haven from which terrorists could plan attacks against America, American interests abroad, and our allies") gives lie to the asertion that the US is safer from terrorists now then it was before the war. ]

With these quibbles aside, the thing that strikes me most is that this strategy is being enunciated about 18 months too late. On first reading, the strategy might have made the US position more clear to the world, and would have made it easier to enlist foreign support for at least the political and economic components. Furthermore, though it rejects rigid timetables, the document provides the most explicit official discussion to date of the conditions under which the US will leave Iraq. This is something that would have been useful for maintaining support for the occupation in the US, Iraq, and overseas.

Of course there are a myriad of reasons why it wasn't produced earlier. The situation on the ground wasn't as clear 18 months ago and US public support for the war was high enough that the "Stay the course" rhetoric was sufficient and more politic. And, of course there was the looming election that would have subjected such a document to charges of partisanship. All of this adds up to the banal conclusion that war and politics are tricky things.