Centerfield

Who else remembers being skeptical when we chose not to squish these guys?

Me. I thought at the time that we should have knocked off Sadr when he played rebellious warlord, but Sistani begged us not to. Yet that Sadr has become (or rather, is still) a problem doesn't mean the decision was wrong. It means that we're facing a different set of consequences. Something for the armchair generals to think about--simplicity is the refuge of idiots.

BTW, at this point the Iraqis are in charge of over 70% of the "battle space" in the country, and almost all the serious violence is confined to Baghdad itself, and Anbar province. AQ in Anbar is a joint problem but mostly under our area of responsibility, Baghdad requires Maliki to get off his ass and address the problem. We can't do that for him, just lend support. Killing Sadr at this point could be a really dumb thing to do for the same reasons that it might have been a dumb thing to do three years ago--someone with a better grip on current intel would have to address that.

In any case, many of the "Sadrite" Shia militia factions are no longer listening to Sadr or under his control, if they ever really were. And at least a few are taking their orders from Tehran. Maliki's facing his own house revolt, and may not be PM much longer if he doesn't get on the ball. There's a large faction in the parliamentary congress that are ready and able to force a vote of no confidence on him.

Posted by: Tully at December 19, 2006 11:39 AM

What Tully said. Had we opposed Sistani on this issue, we could have wound up with more violence, sooner. The thing with predictions is that they cover all bases. If we had declared war on al-Sadr, and that led to Shi'ite revolt and refusal to participate in the electoral process, then you would be posting about how "lots of folks had foresight" on THAT result.

Posted by: PatHMV at December 19, 2006 12:25 PM

Yet that Sadr has become (or rather, is still) a problem doesn't mean the decision was wrong. It means that we're facing a different set of consequences. Something for the armchair generals to think about--simplicity is the refuge of idiots.

True, what may have been wise then may not be wise now.

I'd like to also point out that "squish" need not mean kill. Quashing methods include detaining, arresting, jailing. It's a shame we didn't nip this in the bud before these guys grew and diversified, but it is what it is.

It's good if most of the conflict is constrained to Baghdad and Anbar, at least compared to being nationwide. This accords with reports that the biggest fraction of refugees flowing to Syria and Jordan are from Baghdad. Of course, Baghdad, while only a single city, is Iraq's most populous city, holding about 5.6 of the roughly 26 million Iraqis, or nearly a quarter of them. So a very substantial portion of Iraqis is subject to the threat of imminent and unpredictable violence. That can't be sugar-coated. (not that you were!)

Posted by: bk at December 19, 2006 12:31 PM

Pat, Tully said he thought we ought to have squished him long ago. !?!???????

The thing with predictions is that they cover all bases.

Don't I ever get a single break here? Would it really and truly kill you to acknowledge that even if the decision may have been defensible in some respects at the time, it doesn't appear to have worked out so well? Does support for the goal of democratizing Iraq mean that you are congenitally required to object to any criticism of past decisions as, say, merely armchair quarterbacking, or 20/20 hindsight?

I mean sure, failure to go along with Sistani might have had negative side effects. Cheerfully acknowledged that we will never know now. Still, it's difficult to imagine that it could have worked out much worse than letting Al-Sadr's influence and support continue to grow.

I seem to recall that many shi'ites sat out the first round of elections even with Al-Sadr's "support" and that some but not all of those folks regretted doing so. So what positive effect did allowing Al-Sadr to be a "stakeholder" really have? I really must winder! We've had plenty of reason from the get-go to question whether Al-Sadr would be a political actor in any sort of good faith. If tsuch folks aren't going to be actors in good faith, what worth is there in interaction? This is the very same argument that critics of the ISG report are employing against working with Iran and Syria!

I'm not congenitally against the insights offered by realpolitik, but lets both you and I try to do better than adopt those arguments only when they are convenient.

Posted by: bk at December 19, 2006 12:49 PM

Boy, this nation-building is a hard job. Reminds me of parenting teens only with big guns and roadside bombs.

Posted by: c3 at December 19, 2006 12:51 PM

Brian, your comments were not limited to acknowledging, with the full benefit of hindsight, that this decision didn't work out well. You said "we talked ourselves into something stupid". You also specifically suggested that your judgment of the stupidity was not just based on hindsight, by pointing out that "lots of folks" had foresight about this.

Your imagination about the possible ill effects of undermining Sistani at a critical moment a couple of years ago is, frankly, pretty weak. I can easily imagine things being much, much worse than they are now, so I am much less comfortable than you are in making sweeping judgments about what we "ought" to have done.

As for Tully's statement, it is possible (and frankly easy, you should try it some time) to both think that a different decision should have been made AND YET to also agree that the decision you promoted at the time also had a chance to work out very badly. What is silly is continuing to assume that the path not taken would have inevitably resulted in a better outcome than the path taken, when all paths available are rocky and uncertain.

Noting that a decision didn't turn out very well is fine in the context of learning and figuring out what to do next time. But in order to assign blame ("something stupid") and fault those making difficult decisions in a difficult time, one really must show pretty conclusively that the other options realistically available would have worked much better than the one taken. In the context of Iraq, most decisions will have negative consequences at one level or another.

Posted by: PatHMV at December 19, 2006 01:15 PM

But in order to assign blame ("something stupid") and fault those making difficult decisions in a difficult time, one really must show pretty conclusively that the other options realistically available would have worked much better than the one taken.

That would be nice if it weren't so often so impossible. We can never know for sure the results of the road not taken, and I accept that. What I don't accept is the leap to the notion that it means we really ought not to criticize, just because we lack extremely conclusive proof.

I've already conceded that undermining Sistani might have led to worse results than allowing Al-Sadr to continue to, frankly, foment rebellion. At the same time, I am stressing that its extremely difficult for me to imagine what those worse results might have been.

I believed at the time that it was a stupid move to let Al-Sadr keep and grow his operating space. The decision has not worked out well. Was it a difficult decision? Presumedly, if you give the decision makers some benefit of the doubt, but it was never in my mind a very difficult decision.

That's sort of a conundrum for me. After all, how do you reconcile a general willingness to give people in tight spots the benefit of the doubt (which I think I'm pretty good at, at least speaking comparatively) with an overwhelming sense that they are making a huge mistake that will inevitably come back to haunt? In such circumstances, I tend to speak what my gut says. That's what I'm doing here.

Will we ever know if it would have worked out better had we squashed Al-Sadr and tried to armtwist Sistani into a sort of grumbling neutrality on such actions? Nope.

IMO, the decision to eschew the squishing of Al-sadr was a situation where we let realpolitk considerations get in the way of more obvious principles that had to do with having the courage of our political convictions. That makes it especially peculiar coming from an admin assumed to be run by principled neocons who knew exactly who the enemies of freedom were.

So yeah, I consider it to be a pretty obvious lapse in judgement and a stupid one. I thought it then. I think it now. If you want to consider it to be a defensible decision, albeit one that didn't turn out well, I think we can agree to disagree, amigo. Obviously niether you nor I nor any of the folks in charge has a crystal ball.

Posted by: bk at December 19, 2006 03:13 PM

It was a defensible decision. Had it been made the other way, that would ALSO have been a defensible decision. Had it been made the way I preferred at the time (LITERALLY squishing Sadr dead while he was politically justifying said squishing with his pocket rebellion) we would not be facing the exact same problems today. No, we'd be facing different problems! :-0

But there's no way to know if that would be for better or for worse. Just that it would have been somewhat different. Either way we went (assuming it was an either/or) it would still have been based on "realpolitik" considerations. All that changes in making the decision differently is the subjective and predictive weighting of the factors involved in the political calculus of the decision. (And since I'm using a calculus metaphor, remember that even when the factors are weighted exactly the same there can be multiple solutions of equal validity, depending on the construction and form of the equation.)

In either case, it's a safe bet that the Iranians would still be backing rogue Iraqi Shia militias right now, and that there would still be ugly sectarian violence in Baghdad.

Posted by: Tully at December 19, 2006 06:21 PM

But there's no way to know if that would be for better or for worse.

That is the fairest statement of them all.

Had we opposed Sistani on this issue, we could have wound up with more violence, sooner.

When I read this Pat, I honestly considered what would have been the better situation, more violence sooner or drawn out violence with not much end it sight over a three year period? I am not sure. What exactly would have more violence sooner have lead to, and can you say absolutely that is the case?

The three of you have way more knowledge about this than I do; however, Brian is touching on something that I think is a bigger issue in that American Foreign Policy often seems to aim at accomplishing short term objectives without consideration of a long term strategic vision. In fact, I would argue that it is that sort of approach that has landed us in the situation we are in since September 11th. I think the difference with this issue is that everyone agrees that in the long term Al Sadr has become a problem, but the question is whether or not that makes the short term decisions not to "squish" him right or wrong. I agree with Tully in that we will probably never know. The bigger picture debate here, I believe, is doese this approach to foreign policy make sense in the first place? It is a debate worth having.

Your imagination about the possible ill effects of undermining Sistani at a critical moment a couple of years ago is, frankly, pretty weak.

One man's imagination is another man's analysis. I guess what I would wonder is are we only supposed to make short term decisions based on facts that are available at the time? In that case we can open the whole can of worms regarding whether or not we should even be in Iraq. I understand the limits of the comment section of a blog, but Brian is right, it wasn't as if there were not really smart people waving gigantic red flags at the time regarding Al Sadr. At least, that is how I remember it.

Posted by: Mathew at December 19, 2006 07:30 PM

Mathew, I agree that American foreign policy is far too short term in nature, generally. A result of the average American's short attention span. But I don't know that supporting Sistani's desire regarding al Sadr at the time is evidence of that at all.

Want the dangers of short term thinking? Look at the many screaming voices opposing "stay the course". Tully and I and others have constantly pointed out that Iraq will not become a stable democracy over night, and that the simple fact that it is not a stable, functioning democracy yet is not proof that the war was a mistake, or that our strategy was a mistake.

Sistani is THE ultimate leader of the Shi'ites in Iraq. That doesn't mean he is all powerful; he is the top leader in part no doubt because of his political skills and bowing to strong desires of other leaders when they are inevitable. It appears that Sistani himself genuinely wants a stable Iraq which is led by a secular government. As the key Shi'ite leader, he is most knowledgeable about the internal Shi'ite politics. If (and I'm not saying this is so, just if) our people talked with Sistani about al Sadr, and Sistani said that tolerating al Sadr 2 years ago was the best course of action, should we not follow that advice? For all we know, Sistani told us that if we tried to squish al Sadr, we would lose, and al Sadr would only gain in strength, either as a living leader or as a martyr avenged by hundreds of thousands of Shi'ites.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have squished al Sadr. I'm just saying that it's far from clear that doing so would have had better results than the path we did follow. Because of that, I think it is inappropriate and foolish to label the choice we did make as "stupid", and that it should have been obvious to anybody at the time that squishing al Sadr was the only rational choice.

That's the difference between analyzing decisions to learn from them and simply assigning blame.

Posted by: PatHMV at December 19, 2006 08:19 PM

And at any rate, you can't cast blame without actually conducting the analysis of what the alternative scenarios might be. If you want to say "we should have done X, not Y", you need to actually discuss why option X would not have resulted in bad results. I'm not quibbling over the "burden of proof", but saying that some actual analysis needs to be done before making the bald assertion.

Posted by: PatHMV at December 19, 2006 08:28 PM

You guys make cogent points. As I said, I feel a real tension between wanting to give the benefit of the doubt to people making decisions under difficult circumstances and the very strong gut instinct of mine from the get-go that there was no worth to tolerating Al-Sadr, that he'd be a negative de-stabilizing influence.

Anytime folks are in a spot where the available choices are all flawed and you have to pick the least bad, there are inevitably subjective evaluations to be made, and that usually makes whatever decision is made "defensible." So I guess Iagree that the decision is defensible, as Pat and Tully have made decent defense. But ultimately I'm sticking to my guns...I thought it was a colossally stupid mistake then, and I still think so now. Every fiber of my being says so.

My instinct is that you don't nurse vipers, you crush their skulls. IMO, we had to have talked ourselves into believing either that Al-Sadr wasn't really a truly poisonous viper(that he could become a genuine political stakeholder occasionally acting in good faith for reasons of political power), or that we could control him. I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Maybe 3 years from now Al-Sadr will be the one signing a lasting peace agreement. I'm not holding my breath that Al-Sadr's career has an Arafat arc, but Arafat is proof that weird and twisted things can happen.

So maybe history shows that you can finesse this sometimes, and wait for the more opportune moment. We probably don't have the amount of data that shows how often such a path works out. Again, I know what my guts says. Of course, gut instinct can be wrong, but my experience is that your first choice is usually the right one unless you are talking about random outcomes. That's really the most depressing thought, one I hate to entertain, that the Middle East is so volatile and chaotic that the outcome of any given strategy is virtually random, and all we can do is pray that sooner or later everyone will get lucky.

Posted by: bk at December 20, 2006 09:23 AM

Fair points, Brian. To really evaluate the decisions, of course, we'd have to be privy to all the knowledge those decision makers had. If Sistani said "if you squash al-Sadr, I'll deliver a speech calling on all Shi'ites to revolt against the American oppressors", then the decision to leave al Sadr alone would be a good one. If, on the other hand, Sistani said "I'd rather you not squash al-Sadr, as it will make my politics more difficult, and at any rate *I* certainly can't be seen to have permitted the move", then maybe there were things we could have done differently.

Posted by: PatHMV at December 20, 2006 09:42 AM

Absolutely. We don't know the details that allow us to approach any sort of realpolitk certainty. I do feel I have to mention that if Sistani had made those sorts of threats, we likely would have wanted to remind him that there was still room on that squish list. :-) [I know, pretty untenable.]

Compromises do need to be made in such difficult circumstances. We want the various stakeholder groups to feel that they are going to get the seat at the table they deserve. But when it comes to the actual person sitting in the seat, that's where the problems begin. Realistically speaking,, we are almost always going to have to accept self-interested power brokers who will act in good faith only because it suits their interests, and who you suspect may well double-cross you some day.

Then there are those young, aggressive types who feel that they are bulletproof and can constantly talk out of both sides of their mouths and who may be actively undermining the process even as they pretend to be participating. With Al-Sadr, I just got the vibe that no matter what he might say, he was 100% against whatever we were trying to achieve.

Posted by: bk at December 20, 2006 11:31 AM

Top Shiite Cleric Is Said to Favor a Coalition for Iraq

The political process enters a new phase

Talks under way to replace Iraq PM

Heh.

Posted by: Tully at December 20, 2006 12:11 PM

I can easily imagine circumstances where, even if we knew at the time that al Sadr would never behave properly, listening to al Sistani and not squashing al Sadr would have been the appropriate thing to do. It may be that the wave of Shi'ite violence perpetrated by as Sadr's militias was necessary for the ordinary Iraqis Shi'ites, and other political leaders, to see for themselves the danger as Sadr poses, and that such enlightment through actual experience was necessary before they would be willing to accept difficult changes.

Posted by: PatHMV at December 20, 2006 12:59 PM

So, given the inf0rmation that bk has, he feels that not killing al-Sadr was a stupid move. But Pat thinks bk doesn't have enough inf0rmation to be sure of it.

Do you guys think I could write executive summaries for a living?

Posted by: WHQ at December 20, 2006 02:35 PM

It's good work if you can get it, WHQ.

BTW, the links Tully provides are all good, and deserve a thread of their own. Seems to me there is an awful lot going on behind the scenes of daily violence that is of enough importance that it ought to be covered.

The implication I am getting, if I may exectively summarize, is that the current plan involves adding some more troops in Baghdad as part of a short term push where we/iraqi political forces replace the prime minister (is that the title?) with someone more willing to actively confront insurgent forces, with the tacit blessing of Sistani, who is staying out of the limelight and speaking vaguely, the better to cover his hind quarters should it not work.

Hopefully it's not too late. It srikes me as suddenly being a very, very, fluid situation as people are feverishly transferring their eggs between moving baskets.

Posted by: bk at December 20, 2006 03:27 PM

The only thing I'm going to add here is that the decision not to PUC Muqtada al-Sadr was made echelons below the political leadership in Washington. Without naming names, it was a US Army general officer who made the decision not to arrest and detain Muqtada back in 2003-- when we probably could have gotten away with it with much less consequence than later (or especially now). And he did so against the recommendation of his subordinate brigade commander (a colonel) who sought approval to do that, ironically on the recommendation of one of Muqtada's family members.

If the White House has been true to its word that they stay out of the way and let the Generals fight the War in Iraq (which, in my experience, has generally seemed to be the case), then one can see the scenario where the General said "We don't want to PUC him" and the White House- trusting his judgment- went along with it. Whether it was the right decision or the wrong one isn't for me to decide, but it was a decision that had nothing to do with the politicians in Washington.

Posted by: Bobby at December 20, 2006 04:39 PM

we sould have never been there in the first place, especially with Bush and the rest of the incompetent warmongers runing things. Every thing else is detail.

Posted by: Jakester at December 26, 2006 09:47 PM