A Bad Article : Let Me Count the Ways

Bill Kristol's latest screed against Rumsfeld really has nothing to do with the man. I guess Kristol just doesn’t like his manner. But that aside, his criticism is really one that should be addressed to the entire Bush administration. Since 9/11, the Bush explanation of the war has be one against Al Qaeda and other offshoots of what the CIA has taken to calling the “Sunni Islamist jihad.” Once that enemy has been identified, then the entire approach of the war is to obtain cooperation from friendly governments to crush the terrorists through police and counterinsurgency measures. Much of the argument about the word “war” is really an argument solely over whether terrorists will simply be killed, or whether they should be put on trial. Kristol may want to bash Rumsfeld over the phrase the “struggle against violent extremism.” The reality is that the belief this war is a war against private groups, not sovereigns states, is shared by everyone from the President on down. If Kristol has a problem maybe he should write a screed against Steven Hadley.

Kristol’s other complaint is Rumsfeld doesn’t care about winning in Iraq. This slander is really a difference of opinion that has been in place since 9/11. There would be no Iraq war without Rumsfeld, because he was always concerned that Iraq was the real force behind anti-U.S. terrorism (as I believe it was). However, Rumsfeld thought it was a mistake (rightly) to try to make Iraq a U.S. possession after the fall of Saddam. He and Wolfowitz always wanted to empower the opposition to form an interim government, followed by a quick U.S. departure. As Angelo Codevilla has noted many times, we can only changes regimes by supporting a regime’s extant internal enemies, whoever these people happen to be. Therefore, the only approach that made sense was to arm the Kurds and Shiites and let them do whatever they believed necessary to win and impose order. Certainly, such an approach would have resulted in the New York Times denouncing “right wing death squads” as they had in Central America in the 1980s. But America would have been spared the casualties incurred in the ongoing insurgency.

The question is: is America really capable of producing a better outcome than simply letting the Iraqis sort out their differences, even upon the pain of civil war, and is this better outcome worth the costs? If you really do believe our enemy in the GWOT is the “Sunni Islamist jihad,” why would you care if Dawa and SCIRI militias destroyed Zarqawi’s support base? This sort of cold realism is certainly contrary to Bush’s democratic idealism. But is it wrong?