Ricks’ The Gamble Leaves Out Iraqis
When any book comes to be as highly praised as Thomas Ricks’ The Gamble, my natural instinct is to start looking for the flaws the praisers are leaving out. And Spencer Ackerman, while not denying the book’s virtues, delivers the goods in his review for The National:
We do not learn from The Gamble what the Iraqis – or any Iraqi factions – think of the surge. At the beginning of the book, Ricks prints an account of how an Iraqi witness to the 2005 Marine massacre in Haditha viewed the horror. An analogous Iraqi viewpoint might have complemented his description of an initiative known as “gated communities”, in which Petraeus’s subordinates built huge blast walls to separate Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad from Shiite ones. Petraeus meant the barriers to reduce sectarian violence, but Sunni residents of the Adhimiya neighbourhood protested loudly that the US was ghettoising Baghdad. Al Maliki publicly sided with the protesters, but the walls kept going up. Similarly, Odierno recognised that fighting in the “belts” around Baghdad was key to reducing violence inside the city (slyly, Ricks compares him to Saddam Hussein, who adopted a similar strategy). This peri-urban fighting was fierce and sustained, even if it helped protect the population from the insurgency. How did the Iraqis view this predicament? [...]
It’s possible that Ricks’s blindness to the SOFA reflects that of his sources. During the month when the SOFA was signed, Odierno tells him, “I would like to see a… force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000” in 2014 or 2015 – years after the SOFA mandates the US must leave. A discomfort with the prospect of US forces leaving Iraq permeates the quotes from Odierno’s deputies. “The American military is trying to persuade the American people that this is going to take a long time,” Odierno aide Maj James Powell says. Emma Sky, a British liberal who improbably serves as Odierno’s political adviser – and who took the job, she says, to see if the US could “exit with some dignity” – tells Ricks: “We have to buy time in the US to complete the mission.” There is no recognition evident in their quotes that it is the Iraqis, not the Americans, who ultimately decide when the mission is completed.
To lean a bit speculatively, but not too much I would say, I think we can conclude that the limits of Ricks’ perspective reflect the limited perspective of his sources—sources within the U.S. military. And that this, in turn, reflects the fairly inherent limits of an imperial enterprise. The American military forces charged with administering Iraq report to politicians in Washington, DC who report to voters and interest-groups scattered throughout the country. Whether or not one acknowledges Iraqi opinion to be, in some sense, the “center of gravity” of one’s counterinsurgency campaign the fact of the matter remains that one’s key bases of support are all back home. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid pose a much more credible threat to cut off your supply lines than does the insurgency. Naturally, then, the focus remains to a large extent on sentiment back home.
Meanwhile, for Iraq to be run decently, it’s really necessary that Iraq be run by people who are accountable to Iraqis. Which means that Iraq needs to not be run by foreigners. Which is precisely why Iraqis from across the spectrum were able to unite around the principle that the Americans have to go. And it appears that the new Obama administration recognizes that reality and is planning to leave. And thanks to the security gains associated with the surge, we’ll get to do so with our heads held much higher than they would have been had we started leaving in 2006. But the strategic, human, and material costs of dragging things out have been high and all the successes of the surge period didn’t change the fact that in the end we need to go.
19 Responses to “Ricks’ The Gamble Leaves Out Iraqis”
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March 9th, 2009 at 11:31 am
If the main justification of the surge was to provide breathing room for the Iraqi government to organize and make necessary political decisions and accommodations, it seems passingly odd that a history of the surge wouldn’t delve into how the Iraqi beneficiaries of it judge its success or failure. Unless the whole thing was a political hoax designed to help the electoral prospects of whoever the GOP Presidential nominee was, of course. That couldn’t be it, could it?
March 9th, 2009 at 11:33 am
And thanks to the security gains associated with the surge, we’ll get to do so with our heads held much higher than they would have been had we started leaving in 2006.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. As you say, a decent Iraqi politics can only come about when Iraqis are in charge of their destiny, and the presence of our occupying army makes that impossible, while driving Iraqis who might be working with their government to achieve a decent politics to, instead, set off bombs and shoot at that government’s personnel.
Had we begun an exit in 2006, we could have used the promise and reality of that withdrawal policy as a political tool, as we are doing now, and as our abandonment of the occupation efforts (as opposed to straightforward combat patrols) in al Qaeda-run Anbar Province did in 2006. Eliminating the anti-imperialist motivation for anti-government and anti-Shiite violence could have done a great deal to improve the situation in Iraq, even as a staged, responsible withdrawal would have allowed us to knock down the fires we lit (like the al Qaeda presence) on our way out.
Oh, well. Water under the bridge.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:34 am
I think they rolled Ricks (Ricks rolling?) anyway, he is proud that so many of those he interviewed wanted him to sign his other book “Fiasco”.
Maybe they assumed he would just believe what they said if they showered praise on his previous work.
In his television interviews he never mentions the SOFA or the Iraqis. Nice to know I wasn’t the only one who noticed, none of his interviewers did.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:35 am
http://books.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/02/27/the_ambivalence_at_the_core_of_my_book
Tom responds to these very points
March 9th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Please refrain from using the words “success” and “surge” in the same sentence. The whole thing was a scam, 2007 was the bloodiest year of the occupation, and the most of the so-called “benchmarks” were never met.
The appearance of security happened not because of political reconciliation, but because we put 100,000 insurgents on the payroll and Moqtada al-Sadr declared a truce to wait for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Somehow I doubt that Ricks was “blind to SOFA” as if the SOFA had very much importance beyond Iraqi politics.
By this I mean that for Americans it simply enshrines, with caveats wide as the barn door, the draw down of our “combat” forces.
This was never in doubt no matter who was elected last year and from stateside the Iraqi SOFA debate seemed much more about Iraqi politics than getting us gone. Their version of “Dear god make me saintly but just not yet”.
And must we go on fighting “The Surge: Did It Work?”
Almost everyone but the extremes seem to agree that it has been a limited success with the right extreme refusing to admit, because of what it says about the limits of American power, those shortcomings and the left extreme refusing, because they opposed it from the beginning, to admit of any success at all.
Matt is right that the surge provides a fig leaf for US withdrawal.
That does not belie the most damning criticism of the surge, that it was a fig leaf bought at a too high price in blood and treasure.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
JT: What caveats do you mean? “Combat troops” is a meaningless distinction to be sure. But the 2011 total removal deadline seems pretty solid. It could be ignored or amended, but I’m not aware of any mechanism for doing so within the agreement short of a new agreement.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
And thanks to the security gains associated with the surge, we’ll get to do so with our heads held much higher than they would have been had we started leaving in 2006. But the strategic, human, and material costs of dragging things out have been high and all the successes of the surge period didn’t change the fact that in the end we need to go.
=============================================================
Who wrote this? Couldn’t be M Yglesias could it?
March 9th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
The appearance of security happened not because of political reconciliation, but because we put 100,000 insurgents on the payroll and Moqtada al-Sadr declared a truce to wait for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Appearance or reality? Again, I predict Sadr will be dead shortly after the withdrawl. Probably on orders from Maliki. Either that or he’ll run to Iran.
The two big open questions for me are 1) will things fall apart in Iraq after we leave? 2) will Obama’s “three pillars” of government intervention be enough to turn the corner (combined with foreign governments’ inverventions, if they’re big enough)?
Also, a lot (most?) of the grunts in the insurgency were doing it for the money not anti-imperialism. That’s why paying them off worked. What’s needed is to bring those doing the paying into politics and out of war.
What will doves do if things fall apart in Iraq? They’ll ignore it.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Pedro,
Assuming that Maliki or his backers in SCIRI/Dawa manage to eliminate Sadr, they will have eliminated the only nationalist, anti-Iranian force among the Shiites.
While its true that Sadr has been forced by circumstance to dally with Iran, historically, the SCIRI/Dawa movement was created by Iran as a kind of ‘Iraqi opposition to Saddam Hussein’ during the Iran-Iraq War. Throughout the entire Saddam Hussein period, the movements were based in Iran, trained by Iran, funded by Iran, ideologically complementary with Iran and infiltratred by Iranians.
As far as Maliki & Co are concerned, Americans are merely fools outliving their usefulness.
As for putting the 100,000 insurgents on the payroll. Here’s how they see it: They won. Now you pay. It’s called tribute.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
The most likely outcome of American departure will be a de facto Iranian axis. Trade agreements with Iran, Iranian investment, peace and friendship treaties, etc., and a reliance by Iraq on Iranian military power – particularly against the Kurds and Sunni Arabs.
You can also expect the Kurds to get squashed. The equation is simple enough. The Turks hate them, the Iranians aren’t happy with them, and the Baghdad government wants all the power. They’re not going to put up with the Kurds little ‘pretend state.’
Eventually, there’ll be some rapprochement with the Sunni tribal leaders and Baathist remnants.
Once that’s all settled out – Iran will have a land bridge to Syria, and Iranian allies will over over the rest of the middle east. The Saudi’s will roll over, and the Persian Gulf will be… Persian.
What will the hawks do? Piss and moan and point fingers. But they’re the idiots who gave the game away.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Hi Greg… It has always been the underlying assumption that withdrawal levels and dates are dependent upon security for both Iraqis and Americans, subject to amendment as deemed necessary, and only the more extreme elements in both nations would argue otherwise.
That strikes me as barn door wide.
I also expect us to learn that the US will have permanent bases, called otherwise of course, in Iraq for the indefinite future though perhaps they will only be “Iraqi” bases meant to support large American strike forces.
This is what Odierno believes the US needs and I’m betting Gates as well.
We no longer hear much of the call for US forces to leave Saudi Arabia. Why is this? I’d bet because a withdrawal is already agreed using Iraqi bases as a replacement.
In short all parties from Malaki to Gates to Obama have recognized that a US force of >50K will remain for the indefinite future and as long as they are not seen as favoring any one major Iraqi faction even Sadr will be happy with a discreet off the streets presence.
Short a major Islamist revolution in Iraq full American withdrawal is something for our children.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
As far as I’ve been able to gather, there is far, far less than meets the eye to Ricks’ claims. I haven’t read the book, so maybe I’m missing something, but I read Ricks’ interview with Amazon.com and came away puzzled at just what all the sound and fury is over.
It seems almost like a bait and switch job. There is much buzz about a book purportedly dealing with surprising, counterintuitive success in Iraq belying the conventional wisdom. But there really isn’t any “there” there.
Step 1 in the bait and switch is redefining what “The Surge” is. When Bush proposed his escalation, the argument was all about whether or not we should be putting 30,000 extra troops in Iraq. That is what we on the left opposed: more troops in Iraq.
But what Ricks and others are doing now is conflating the surge with a contemporaty change towards more sensitive counterinsurgency tactics. Nobody was against using smarter counterinsurgency tactics and talking to people in neighborhoods rather than breaking heads. Couldn’t they have talked to people in neighborhoods with the men they already had?
Step 2 in the bait and switch — and this is really the crucial step — is conceding all of the counterarguments against the surge but then going on as if they were minor details. So Ricks concedes that the ethnic cleansing in Baghdad was already over before the surge. And Ricks concedes that putting the Sunnis on the U.S. payroll stopped them from attacking us. Finally, Ricks admits right up front that the surge utterly failed to accomplish its intended goal — the strategic objective of political reconciliation.
Well damn, Tom. That doesn’t leave much for the surge to take credit for, does it? Not much at all.
The bottom line, apparently, is that Ricks has written a book about the history of the surge and Ricks thinks we need to stay in Iraq — and those two facts have almost nothing to do with each other.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Skeptic:
Assuming that Maliki or his backers in SCIRI/Dawa manage to eliminate Sadr, they will have eliminated the only nationalist, anti-Iranian force among the Shiites.
Haha. We’ll see how it plays out, but you have a much more romantic view of Sadr than he deserves. The US had to talk Maliki into a truce with Sadr.
While its true that Sadr has been forced by circumstance to dally with Iran, historically, the SCIRI/Dawa movement was created by Iran as a kind of ‘Iraqi opposition to Saddam Hussein’ during the Iran-Iraq War. Throughout the entire Saddam Hussein period, the movements were based in Iran, trained by Iran, funded by Iran, ideologically complementary with Iran and infiltratred by Iranians.
The Shia anti-Saddam forces were “forced by circumstances” – as you say about Sadr – to work with Iran. And they are a lot less beholden to Iran then you suggest, but of course they want good relations with a powerful neighbor.
As far as Maliki & Co are concerned, Americans are merely fools outliving their usefulness.
Maliki does have balls, I’ll give him that. Of his own volition he went after Sadr and rogue elements in the south last year. When they did, the Iraqi government was very surprised to find how much Iran had infilitrated the south. In other words Iran overplayed its hand. But can you blame them for trying? Minority Sunni/Saddam-run Iraq started a catastrophic war with Iran.
As for putting the 100,000 insurgents on the payroll. Here’s how they see it: They won. Now you pay. It’s called tribute.
No they just wanna get paid. It’s not ideological. They just want nice TVs and dvd players and cell phone, you know, goods from the global marketplace. (I read one story about how this one roadside bombmakers’ favorite movie was Titanic and his favorite scene is when Leo sinks below the water while Kate Winslet floats on the wreckage).
Will be interesting to see what happens after we pull out. Again if it falls apart with the Saudis coming in on the Sunni side and Iran coming in on the Shia’s side and Turkey going after the Kurds, etc., I predict the doves will ignore it.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Skeptic:
You can also expect the Kurds to get squashed. The equation is simple enough. The Turks hate them, the Iranians aren’t happy with them, and the Baghdad government wants all the power. They’re not going to put up with the Kurds little ‘pretend state.’
Are you just trolling? Or just a bitter peacenik?
You haven’t been paying attention, Turkey has made great strides.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/world/europe/09turkey.html
about free speech and the Armenian genocide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/world/europe/22turkey.html
“Turkish Premier Reaches Out in an Important Kurdish City”
This is the same Turkish premier who recently freaked out on Shimon Peres about the Gaza slaughter. Your attitude towards the Kurds reminds me of the Zionists’ attitude towards the Palestinians.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
The insurgents who got paid are mostly Sunni. They are not happy with the Maliki government, even if a certain percentage of them are being integrated into the Iraqi security forces. This has yet to finish playing out.
As for the Kurds, the Turks will never accept the Kurds owning the Kirkuk oil revenues, and neither will the Shia and Sunni Arabs running the country.
The ONLY leverage the Kurds have is that without them, Maliki wouldn’t have a functioning government. But that won’t last forever. Sooner or later the central government will start a civil war with the Kurds for control of Kirkuk oil.
And that’s going to screw Israel, who have been helping the Kurds since 2003, because they want to get an oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa.
And that’s the LAST thing the Iraqis and the Iranians are going to allow.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
JT: Thanks for the reply!
Given how close the SOFA fight was, I tend to think any extension amendment is going to be a tough fight to pass through the Iraqi Parliament. Could be the removal from major cities is enough to ameliorate the unpopularity enough to allow us to stay longer. However, I’m assuming that there will still be some fighting which I think will limit our ability to keep a low profile.
March 24th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
The REAL successes in Iraq , Ricks will never bring up , the ability of the U.S. & the U.K. to buy up Iraqi banks , thanks to Bremmer , they can now be 100 % foreign owned, as well as telecommunication industries being gobbled up , sewage , water , Monsanto forcing seeds upon Iraqis .
The Washington Post has had a long history working with the CIA and promoting U.S. foreign policy and this propagandist Ricks is doing the same , parroting goals of the Occupation for Iraq and Afghanistan and manufacturing consent for the escalation of U.S. military in Afghanistan and when you hear crap like the U.S. doesn’t want to be seen as an occupation force ” , when they are , it shows there will say anything to create a false reality , they aRE occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and the civilians there see that .
So the U.S. bought off some Sunnis , so what , tactically it might makes sense , but in context of the larger picture , it means the U.S. will do whatever it takes , to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan .
Then he parrots the need for more troops in Afghanistan ,” we want to get more troops in the country ” ” to work with Iraqi police ” , and not mentioning the civilian populations of both countries want U.S. military out .
Ever changing tactics for a permanent occupation and don’t think Obama isnt for it , on 60 minutes he openly said , ” we need troops in Iraq , to protect out interests ” and we know whose those are , JP Morgan contracts , Chevron contracts etc. etc. and the military bases , that aint going anywhere people , stop dreaming , Obama excepted the program probably before the election , that the U.S. wants permanent bases in the region to project power and gain control over the regions assets and do you really think a skinny politician with a jump shot , is going to change all those grand and bloody plans , lol . He’s an Imperialists too , willing to walk all over middle eastern people .
March 27th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
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