The withdrawal of US forces would allow Iraq's predominantly Arab Shiites and Sunnis to find common interest in opposing their two more classical historical adversaries: Kurds and Persians. The longer the US and Britain stay, the more they facilitate a shift away from the identity that long unified Iraq to the religious identity that is tearing it apart and facilitating its manipulation by Iran. ...
The idea of victory versus failure is really a false dichotomy, however. The real choice for US and British policymakers is between the more costly failure that will obtain from current policy and the less costly failure that might obtain from a well-thought-out and well-executed withdrawal.
Wow, as a bonus, we must betray the Kurds, our most reliable ally inside Iraq, to get the good 'ol days when Sunnis gassed Kurds. I'm not totally clear on how the Sunnis allied with the Shias against this historical adversary since the Sunnis were busy bulldozing Shias into mass graves, too. But hey, maybe she's talking about the happy days of the Iran-Iraq War when Shias, Kurds, and Sunnis battled Persians for eight long years. No matter. Under Saddam, Iraqis were unified under the identity of Saddam's subjects who did as they were told. Good times. Good times ... That's what we should aim for, apparently. But I digress.
The idea of victory versus failure is the very essence of war. So the real choice is whether we win or lose the war in Iraq. A well-thought-out retreat will bring defeat no matter how well executed. So much in Toft's article just shouts idiocy that I held on to this article for a while, waiting for the energy to dissect the logic. The failure to recognize victory as the only real goal worthy of spending lives and treasure is the most obvious flaw.
Then I realized that the biggest flaw flows from two assumptions that are also her essential conclusion. Toft, you see, fails to see that despite her impeccable logic that proves Iraq must fail and we must lose, we are in fact actually defeating the Sunni and Shia enemies inside Iraq. And Toft fails to see that Iraq actually is a functioning, albeit fragile and struggling, democracy that needs our help. Maliki has, in fact, faced the Shia threats in Basra and Sadr City as well as the Sunni threat in Mosul, cementing his leadership position:
America is very close to succeeding in Iraq. The "near-strategic defeat" of al Qaeda in Iraq described by CIA Director Michael Hayden last month in the Washington Post has been followed by the victory of the Iraqi government's security forces over illegal Shiite militias, including Iranian-backed Special Groups. The enemies of Iraq and America now cling desperately to their last bastions, while the political process builds momentum.
We've chosen victory. And we are achieving it. So I don't actually even need to wade into her circular logic that starts with assuming we must lose and then concludes we must lose! Only the convoluted logic of our over-educated class can nullify what we our military personnel are achieving on the ground. And God help us all, I can't rule that out.
How a professor of public policy can miss a policy designed to achieve victory is beyond me. Since when did the Kennedy School become Teddy's and not John's?
