How badly will success in Iraq hurt the Democrats?

Great Debates
41

The answer to the OP’s question is, “It depends.” First, obviously on whether success in Iraq actually occurs. Second, assuming success does occur, it depends on when the success occurs. Only if success in Iraq is superbly timed would the Democrats be badly hurt.

For purposes of American politics, “success in Iraq” requires two accomplishments. 1) The withdrawal of the bulk of American troops, followed by 2) the survival of the elected Iraqi government, or at least some Iraqi government not dominated by the insurgents (a military coup installing a junta or Musharraf-type dictator would meet with indifference from most of the American electorate, for example). Accomplisment 1 is easy, of course. It’s accomplishment 2 that’s tricky. If the U.S. administration believed the elected Iraqi government had as much as a 75% chance of surviving without U.S. military support, the main body of troops would already be coming home.

The worst-case “success in Iraq” scenario for the Democrats would be if Bush withdraws 100,000+ soldiers over the August to October period, 2008, and (1) the Iraqi government does not immediately collapse into a pile of rubble, and (2) any insurgent offensive that ensues in the wake of the withdrawal is weak enough that it does not cause the public to anticipate the imminent downfall of the Iraqi government. In that scenario, just about any Republican candidate would be very likely to win the White House, and the Republicans would have a decent chance to take both houses of Congress back.

Even in the worst case scenario, the Democrats would not sustain much long-term damage. Contrary to the OP’s supposition, the Democrats are not significantly “invested in defeat,” because they are hardly invested in foreign policy at all; the party’s chief investment is in popular domestic issues. After the euphoria of victory wore off, the Republican party would still be deeply divided over fiscal responsibility and immigration. Terrorist attacks against U.S. allies and citizens abroad would continue. The Democrats would come back strong in 2010.

Any other timing of a success in Iraq would hardly hurt the Democratic party, and might even help it. Suppose, for instance, that the picture in Iraq were as rosy as the OP paints it. Contrary to appearances, suppose that the insurgency is now impotent, stability is returning, and thus the bulk of OIF forces withdraw in March and April. The clear beneficiary is Hillary Clinton, who voted for war and has consistently maintained that troops must remain in Iraq until “mission accomplished” can be declared. Barack Obama, who voted against the war and favored prompt withdrawal, loses his already slender chances. By November, the rush of euphoria has subsided and the main issues in the electorate’s mind are gas prices, health care, and immigration (remember that the Conservatives got voted out on bread-and-butter issues only months after Churchill won World War II, and Bush’s war record does not compare favorably to Churchill’s). Clinton’s nomination does have the effect of uniting the GOP, as the various factions will paper over all their differences in order to defeat the Queen of the Damned. Clinton might win, she might lose, but the Iraq war would play little part other than to secure her nomination.

But by far the least unlikely “success in Iraq” scenario would occur two to ten years down the road, because an independently viable Iraqi security force and a stable Iraqi government are almost certainly not going to emerge before that time. And success during that time frame is more likely to help the Democrats than the Republicans, because, absent an early success in Iraq, there is an excellent chance that a Democrat will be president for the next eight years. Rightly or wrongly, the Democrats would then be credited for turning a failed foreign policy around.

Of course, “success in Iraq” in any time frame is still unlikely. The surge has indeed temporarily reduced violence, but the insurgency remains active and reconciliation in the Iraqi government is as distant as ever. It was known from the start that the surge could not be sustained without a massive increase in Army personnel strength (read: conscription), and now force levels are inevitably being reduced. The return to pre-surge troop strength will probably result in a return to pre-surge violence.

The main point of the success-in-Iraq blather is to prepare the Republican party-in-the-electorate for next October’s story: that we were just on the verge of success in Iraq before those terrorist-loving scum, the Democrats, stabbed us in the back by ending the surge, just when it was working so well. That also is the point of the fatuous calls to “make the surge permanent,” so the Democrats can be blamed for failing to do so.

42

But the reason the US invaded Iraq was based on fabricated intelligence or no intelligence, whatever is more palatable. The containment policy was working; Saddam was not a threat to the United States. The corporate war machine is the only group that actually benefited from the Iraq War: Titan, Blackwater USA, Halliburton, CACI, et al. The Iraqi people are now living with cholera and civil war while the US has gained nothing but debt and a seriously troubled economy.

If there was a miracle and a democratic government was successful in Iraq, allowing the Iraqi people to rebuild and the US troops and private contractors to come home, the Republicans would still have to count on voters with a short memory.

43

Hypothetically, if the current and future U.S. administrations never gain such confidence in the Baghdad government’s ability to stand on its own what do you think will happen to that main body?

Given the American people’s shocking ignorance of basic facts and timelines which had happened only years earlier and which should have been quite memorable given the circumstances, isn’t this a fairly safe bet?

Tagos:

The opinion polls of the Iraqi people themselves are interesting and have been used before on this board by myself and others in various threads over the years and I thank you for linking to the newer ones (last ones I saw were from July). But ultimately, not unlike views from American citizens in similar polls on various issues, they’re basically meaningless when it comes to the decision making process, unless they get really loud about it.

Speaking of re-election and military success, I still find it kinda odd that George H.W. Bush didn’t get re-elected. I understand why, but it’s still surprising, given the Gulf War. He orchestrated the largest U.S. military victory since Korea and he got other people to pay for it. Caesar doesn’t tend to get snubbed.

44

I think it’s become pretty clear that if success is achieved in Iraq, by whatever yardstick you’re willing to use, it will be in spite of rather than inspired by the current administration.

Not only is that convenient for the Democrats, it happens to be true.

45

Touche. :wink: People are ill informed because the mass media fails to report the news and the government fails to address the basic needs of the vast majority of Americans.

Desert Storm was successful in pushing Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait; however, it didn’t topple Saddam’s regime or effectively undercut the Republican Guard, Saddam’s core power. Instead, the H.W. Bush administration encouraged Iraqi uprising against Saddam with no US support. The intact Republican Guard turned its might against the Iraqi uprising, killing tens of thousands of Shiites and Kurds. The first Iraq War was a strategic defeat for the United States and outraged the Muslim world.

46

I think you have missed the point of the war.

47

Well, sure, but it also led to Kurd Gassing - which was such a perfect excuse for Gulf War Two: Electric Boogaloo.

-Joe

48

Thank you, Danimal, for your answer to the question I posed in the OP. In retrospect, I should have added the word “perceived” in front of success. So much of this thread has been devoted to the denial of any progress at all because that is what fits the ideological template.
We will never know why the Iraq War was started. Most people will cling to the theories that bring them the most ideological comfort. Facts that are favorable to their position are played up, facts that are not are ignored or denied.

I am not a blind supporter of the Iraq War or GWB. However, I don’t happen to believe that the war was started to inflate Halliburton’s stock price. I also think that there were not enough troops put on the ground after the initial military success. I don’t think the Iraqi Army should have been disbanded. I think that there should be more pressure, public and private, for a longer term political solution.

My point is…what’s done is done. It is what it is. And I was curious what the rest of you thought about the political implications of the recent positive effects of “the surge”. But most of you don’t seem capable of rendering an opinion without jumping through the same old tired hoops of how much of a mistake the war was, any “success” has to be measured against pre-war statistics, and so on.

Things are improving in Iraq because of the surge. The Democrats were against the surge. Will they suffer political consequences because of that? That was my question.

49

Is this one of those ‘known unknowns’ Rumsfeld used to go on about? For a trillion buck debacle like this, I’d be willing to have the FBI conduct a little waterboarding on the folks that started it. No torture mind you, just a little fear and pain to help them finally give us the fucking truth. America deserves that.

50

I think that’s rather a defeatist position to take. We may not know at present all the issues that influenced the decision to invade, but we have some evidence about pre-invasion discussions and strategizing, and it seems likely that more information will be forthcoming in future years, as political insiders continue to reveal details. Even an administration as notoriously secretive and non-transparent as the present one probably cannot realistically expect to successfully hide for all time a secret as big as that.

This sounds as though nobody but you is allowed to express an opinion on what constitutes “success” (or even “perceived success”) in Iraq.

You want to be able to state categorically that things in Iraq are “improving”, but not have other posters debate what “improvement” really means in this situation. You apparently would like to be able to dismiss that issue as just an “old tired hoop”.

Tough. If you want to claim that things are meaningfully better in Iraq because of the surge, you’re going to have to face up to other people questioning that claim.

Well, I think we can all agree that they will suffer as much as Republican political propaganda can manage to make them suffer. Whether the Republicans are really in a strong position to criticize other people’s predictive abilities about the situation in Iraq is another question.

51

If you were simply going to ignore other analyses, why bother posting in a public Forum?

I made no re-hash of the lies used to allow us to invade Iraq. I pointed out the specific reasons that the perception of any success in the surge requires one to ignore actual events on the ground, today. We are playing Whack-A-Mole, with the insurgents abandoning any location we saturate with troops only to pop up in regions with fewer troops on the ground. The reduction in civilian casualties can be directly linked to the (fear- and often force-inspired) relocation of Sunnis and Shi’a into walled enclaves that are at risk for obliteration by their neighbors as soon as the U.S. pulls out. al-Maliki is giving signals that can legitinately be interpreted as a declaration of oppression, (if not actual genocide) as soon as he no longer has to be concerned with U.S. “interference” in day-to-day activities. And the impending Iraqi civil war will include nearly as much Shi’a on Shi’a mayhem as Shi’a on Sunni murder when we pull out.

52

It started because the people running America wanted a war. The other reasons, really, are just details; that fact alone is enough to put us in the category of the bad guy. And bring into question whether success in Iraq is desirable in the first place. Assuming that we can even define success.

Something that might impress apologists for the war, but no one else. The Iraqis do care that we attacked them without cause, and they will act on it. Saying “Hey, what’s done is done” won’t convince a single Iraqi that Americans are any less deserving of death for what we have done; rather the opposite. “What’s done is done” is one of the least convincing excuses I can think of.

Judging from the responses, that we don’t believe in them, or that they don’t matter, and are temporary at best.

:rolleyes: And how ELSE would you measure it ? Making a disaster get worse slightly more slowly isn’t a success.

According to you.

53

But, things are not improving, because of the surge or for any other reason.

54

Then that main body will stay in Iraq for quite some time. Not forever; eventually the global situation will become threatening enough that we can no longer afford to have our entire army in Iraq, recovering from deployment, or preparing to deploy. At that time, we will withdraw and let the chips fall where they may. I can only speculate when that time will come, but it probably won’t be more than fifteen years. Future threats to Taiwan or South Korea are the most obvious candidates to force our withdrawal from Iraq.

The original point of the war was to disarm Saddam Hussein of chemical weapons that, as it turned out, he did not have. The point of the war now is to save the prestige and electability of the people running it, which requires withdrawal without collapse.

If you are suggesting that the point of the war is to control Iraq’s oil by military force, and that therefore the troops are never to come home, I disagree. Continued U.S. presence in Iraq, and the resulting violence and U.S. casualties, threaten U.S. politicians’ re-election chances, and thus it is very much in their interest to bring the U.S. presence to an end, so long as a pro-American government, elected or not, survives. So long as a pro-American government remains in power, we can negotiate access to the oil in the same way we have in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, etc., and a career-destroying blame game called “Who Lost Iraq?” can be avoided.

55

Evil

Problem is, you’re extapolating a trajectory, here, you’re assuming a trend which may, or may not, be valid. If this *mirabile dictu * is a direct result of the surge one is reasonable in assuming that it is dependent upon the surge. A surge we are advised cannot be maintained. Regardless of its result (or lack thereof, or any conceivable combination), the surge is temporary, it will cease. And relatively soon.

We were assured that the surge would instill calm, and permit reconciliation that was stalled by precisely the factors that the surge corrected. Once the surge permitted the required “breathing room”, political reconciliation would proceed, etc. and we could get the fuck out of Baghdodge.

But it hasn’t. Not gotten any worse, but that hardly matters, it hasn’t gotten any better, and that does matter, bigtime and downtown. It appears that Iraq is devolving into a patchwork of enclaves, each under the protection/jurisdiction of confederated militias. As ethnic cleansing proceeds, localized sectarian violence decreases, the targets have skeedaddled. The patient is no longer getting worse, his condition has stabilized with extreme prejudice. Run down the curtain, joined the Choir Invisible, this is an ex-Iraq.

If this is success, well, far fucking out. But the goalposts have been moved so many times and the bar lowered, that your great-grandmother could punch a field goal, drunk and blindfolded.

56

In fairness to the original author of the surge concept, Frederick Kagan, his original plan called for 80,000 additional troops to sweep through areas of violence, neutralizing the fighters, then leaving behind “holding” forces. In typical American business mangement fashion, the administration decided that 80,000 extra troops would not be feasible, arbitrarily set the number at 20,000, then decided that the 20,000 could be composed, in large part, of troops already deployed.

I have no idea whether Kagan’s 80,000 additional troops would have successfully suppressed multiple insurgencies plus Shi’a infighting plus al Qaida disruption, but by doing it on the cheap, the administration pretty well doomed the effort. (I realize that asking for an additional 80,000 troops would have been a non-starter running up to or in the wake of the 2006 elections, but if they could not find the resources for that plan, the administration should have looked for another plan. (Maybe the ghost of Senator Aiken could have provided some counsel.)

57

I posted the info to show that the axiom of the OP is false. Things are not getting better by the only metric that counts. What the people of Iraq think, feel and experience. So long as they think things are getting worse etc etc there is no ‘breathing space’ for reconciliation.

The OP, as usual, has knelt and gulped down whatever shit Bush has to squirt out.

58

No, not that so much. Owing to divisions within the executive from the start of the Bush Admin, the war actually had several and mutually incompatible aims, all of them different from and largely incompatible with, or at least irrelevant to, the stated aims. But one of those aims was to establish Iraq as a “coaling station,” a permanent base for the projection of U.S. military power throughout the MENA as needed – the role the Philippines once played for us in Asia and the South Pacific. That was why the Bush Admin wanted to build all those “enduring bases” in Iraq, which I believe Congress has since scotched; but don’t count on the idea to die entirely as it deserves to die until W is out of office.

59

The latest Pew poll says Americans think the situation on the ground in Iraq is improving, but are essentially unchanged in their desire to bring the troops home.

I think that answers the OP quite well.

And from earlier this month, Pew finds: Public Dissatisfied with Democratic Leaders, But Still Happy They Won.

60

Dunno. Who doesn’t want the troops to come home? I certainly do, and I’d bet that’s the one thing we’d agree on.

It’s the conditions that will permit them to do so that we disagree on.