[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: A No-Win Situation

Tue Aug 31 11:33:45 PDT 2004

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by michael at intrafi.com.

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A No-Win Situation

August 31, 2004
 By PAUL KRUGMAN 

"Everyone wants to go to Baghdad; real men want to go to
Tehran." That was the attitude in Washington two years ago,
when Ahmad Chalabi was assuring everyone that Iraqis would
greet us with flowers. More recently, some of us had a
different slogan: "Everyone worries about Najaf; people who
are really paying attention worry about Ramadi." 

Ever since the uprising in April, the Iraqi town of Falluja
has in effect been a small, nasty Islamic republic. But
what about the rest of the Sunni triangle? 

Last month a Knight-Ridder report suggested that U.S.
forces were effectively ceding many urban areas to
insurgents. Last Sunday The Times confirmed that while the
world's attention was focused on Najaf, western Iraq fell
firmly under rebel control. Representatives of the
U.S.-installed government have been intimidated,
assassinated or executed. 

Other towns, like Samarra, have also fallen to insurgents.
Attacks on oil pipelines are proliferating. And we're still
playing whack-a-mole with Moktada al-Sadr: his Mahdi Army
has left Najaf, but remains in control of Sadr City, with
its two million people. The Christian Science Monitor
reports that "interviews in Baghdad suggest that Sadr is
walking away from the standoff with a widening base and
supporters who are more militant than before." 

For a long time, anyone suggesting analogies with Vietnam
was ridiculed. But Iraq optimists have, by my count,
already declared victory three times. First there was
"Mission Accomplished" - followed by an escalating
insurgency. Then there was the capture of Saddam - followed
by April's bloody uprising. Finally there was the furtive
transfer of formal sovereignty to Ayad Allawi, with
implausible claims that this showed progress - a fantasy
exploded by the guns of August. 

Now, serious security analysts have begun to admit that the
goal of a democratic, pro-American Iraq has receded out of
reach. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies - no peacenik - writes that "there is
little prospect for peace and stability in Iraq before late
2005, if then." 

Mr. Cordesman still thinks (or thought a few weeks ago)
that the odds of success in Iraq are "at least even," but
by success he means the creation of a government that "is
almost certain to be more inclusive of Ba'ath, hard-line
religious, and divisive ethnic/sectarian movements than the
West would like." And just in case, he urges the U.S. to
prepare "a contingency plan for failure." 

Fred Kaplan of Slate is even more pessimistic. "This is a
terribly grim thing to say," he wrote recently, "but there
might be no solution to the problem of Iraq" - no way to
produce "a stable, secure, let alone democratic regime. And
there's no way we can just pull out without plunging the
country, the region, and possibly beyond into still deeper
disaster." Deeper disaster? Yes: people who worried about
Ramadi are now worrying about Pakistan. 

So what's the answer? Here's one thought: much of U.S.
policy in Iraq - delaying elections, trying to come up with
a formula that blocks simple majority rule, trying to
install first Mr. Chalabi, then Mr. Allawi, as strongman -
can be seen as a persistent effort to avoid giving Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani his natural dominant role. But
recent events in Najaf have demonstrated both the cleric's
awesome influence and the limits of American power. Isn't
it time to realize that we could do a lot worse than Mr.
Sistani, and give him pretty much whatever he wants? 

Here's another thought. President Bush says that the
troubles in Iraq are the result of unanticipated
"catastrophic success." But that catastrophe was predicted
by many experts. Mr. Cordesman says their warnings were
ignored because we have "the weakest and most ineffective
National Security Council in post-war American history,"
giving control to "a small group of neoconservative
ideologues" who "shaped a war without any realistic
understanding or plans for shaping a peace." 

Yesterday Mr. Bush, who took a "winning the war on terror"
bus tour just a few months ago, conceded that "I don't
think you can win" the war on terror. But he hasn't changed
the national security adviser, nor has he dismissed even
one of the ideologues who got us into this no-win
situation. Rather than concede that he made mistakes, he's
sticking with people who will, if they get the chance, lead
us into two, three, many quagmires. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/31/opinion/31krugman.html?ex=1094977225&ei=1&en=7e84deb0911250d3

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