Blog roll addition: Marc Lynch

There's a great discussion up on the Foreign Policy blog of Tom Ricks' new book: the Gamble.  Everyone seems agreed that it's a good book and I tend to find Ricks reporting quite useful.  That said, I quite disagree with his conclusions.  Happily, Marc Lynch is way ahead of me and challenges Ricks directly on two vital points.

First is the near-complete absence of the Status of Forces Agreement, which Iraqis call the Withdrawal Agreement. The SOFA sets an end-date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, at December 31, 2011... Ricks may feel that the United States will ignore these requirements, or that the Iraqis don't really mean it, or that they are a bad idea. But he makes no argument one way or the other, instead acting as if it simply doesn't exist. To the extent that this reflects the mindset among his key informants, that's a problem...

Second is the near-complete absence of Iraqis. In 325 pages of text, I could find only ten pages which quoted an Iraqi of any description, and only two unmediated by an American military official.

Here's Ricks's response where he forthrightly addresses the points:

1. On the Status of Forces Agreement, I just don't think it is that meaningful.

As I watched it come together in Baghdad, it appeared to me to simply be a way of taking the American military presence off the table as a divisive issue in Iraqi politics. That is, it was much more about 2009 than about 2011. So I make less of it than others do. I might be wrong...

2. On the absence of Iraqi voices, Lynch's criticism again is correct.

I was aware of this lack, painfully so, but decided against trying to paper it over with some desultory interviews. I don't speak Arabic and I am not an expert on Iraq, so I think I would have done of mediocre job of trying to figure out the Iraqi side of the story. What I know a lot about is the U.S. military. I even speak some of its dialects... The absence of Iraqis in my book is especially significant because Iraqi solutions will be the key to the end of this story. That is, Iraqis will make the decisions that determine how this all ends.

I take this to mean that Ricks thinks the SOFA was a successful con-job by American and perhaps also by Iraqi politicians.  Perhaps it is, but Ricks never explains how he thinks we can pull this stunt in perpetuity. 

There's an old adage on strategy cited here by Gen. Franks: "In any war plan the enemy gets a vote."  Modifying it slightly, in any occupation, the populace gets a vote.  If that vote doesn't come in the form of democracy it can still come in the form of support for insurgency or counter-insurgency.  I don't see how it is possible to form any conclusion about what we should do in Iraq without taking into account the views of the Iraqi people.  I mean this in a realist sense, not a liberal sense.  We may be able to stay in Iraq in perpetuity but if we do so without popular support the Iraqi people can extract a heavy price. 

To be clear, I am not saying that I'm a regional expert or an expert on the conflict.  Ricks certainly knows it orders of magnitude better than I.  He is an excellent writer and as his responses show above a self-aware and an honest one.  I think his reaching a conclusion about staying without grappling with Iraqi popular opinion is probably attributable to status quo bias.  In someways leaving Iraqi can be literally unthinkable in much the same way that I'm sure leaving Vietnam was unthinkable.  Giving up control can be a very difficult step to take until one is pushed.

Since I am not a regional expert, let me recommend someone who is: check out Marc Lynch on the foreign policy blog.