As usual, he gets it about right:
So the Americans are bowing out, having achieved few of the ambitious goals articulated in the heady aftermath of Baghdad’s fall. The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation, and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget.
Back in Iraq, meanwhile, nothing has been resolved and nothing settled. Round one of the Iraq war produced a great upheaval that round two served only to exacerbate. As the convoys of U.S. armored vehicles trundle south toward Kuwait and then home, they leave the stage set for round three.
Call this the War of Iraqi Self-Determination (2010–?). As the United States removes itself from the scene, Iraqis will avail themselves of the opportunity to decide their own fate, a process almost certain to be rife with ethnic, sectarian, and tribal bloodletting. What the outcome will be, no one can say with certainty, but it won’t be pretty.
One thing alone we can say with assurance:As far as Americans are concerned, Iraqis now own their war. “Like any sovereign, independent nation,” President Obama recently remarked, “Iraq is free to chart its own course.” The place may be a mess, but it’s their mess not ours. In this sense alone is the Iraq war “over.”
He concludes by saying that we leave Iraq, “having learned nothing.” Isn’t that right? If we had learned something, would we be continuing our folly in Afghanistan? And if we were capable of learning from wars, why did we enter Iraq with an unclear, always shifting mission, too few troops, and strange, unrealistic ideas of the influence of Iraq on our battle with Al Qaeda? Clearly, some lessons from Vietnam were either forgotten or were never learned in the first place.
Of course, this makes some war boosters uncomfortable, so we get this:
But honestly, does anyone out there see a U.S. administration ever embracing the kind of neo-isolationism that Bacevich is apparently demanding? And is it just me, or is he crankier than normal lately?
I don’t know if any administration will ever embrace neo-isolationism, but it’s worth trying. And after almost a decade of wasted lives and the amassing of more than a trillion dollars in debt, we should be pretty goddam cranky. (via)
aimai
What’s “crankier than normal” for a guy who lost his OWN CHILD in this misbegotten war? At least he has had the courage to turn his back on the mindless warmongering of his own party and the US and consider seriously an alternative to just killing foreigners for no particular reason.
aimai
bozack
This is certainly true, but it’s always worth stressing that it’s coming in the wake of the total absence of civil authority for years. Try doing that in DC, and see if you don’t get violence along ethnic lines after a few weeks or months, as people turn to any links they can to survive. That doesn’t mean that a race war in DC is inevitable; it means that destroying civil authority with no plan for restoring it leads to very bad things.
El Cid
Any foreign policy in which the US does not aim to impose its unjustifiable goals by violence and arm-twists other ‘allies’ into temporary coalitions is of course ‘isolationist’.
Chyron HR
No ground zero mosque! Kill the anchor babies! Second amendment solutions! Don’t retreat, RELOAD!
Oh, wait, he said Iraqis.
Zifnab
Translation: Smaller military budget.
I think that’s really the beginning and the end of it. We’ve got McDonald’s stretching from Beijing to Beirut. GM sells cars in every continent and Exxon drills for oil in every viable nation. We have ambassadors in every nation I can name, and most of those I can’t. We have military bases dating back to World War 2 that aren’t going anywhere. We are the greatest economic power in the world, we are the driving force behind free trade, we are the single biggest money lender and money borrower, and our crowning modern achievement – the Internet – literally links anyone with a modem and a computer to every other individual with a modem and computer across the entire face of the earth… But let’s not pull troops out of the Middle East or we’ll become “neo”-isolationist.
singfoom
I love how “not agreeing with a war of choice ” becomes “neo-isolationism”. It was all a big giant clusterfuck of a horrible mistake and it should be shouted from the rooftops and maybe, just maybe someday those responsible will be called to account.
ETA: Grammar, I haz it
cleek
i like how the notion of not getting involved in stupid pointless wars gets labeled with the cold-war era smear “neo-isolationist”.
some people just can’t stand the idea that killing brown people should be frowned upon. it hurts their little hearts.
doctorpsycho1960
Getting out of Iraq will not solve our problems or theirs, but it is the best thing we could do under the circumstances.
Comrade Jake
$1B per al-Qaeda member in Afghanistan.
We have long since lost any and all points of reference.
roshan
This is what Americans did to Iraq before invading in 2003.
Now, this is what happens after the troops left in 2010.
neill
Perhaps the title would be better for this post as:
“Bacevich Bitter that Obama Doesn’t Acknowledge that America War Machine Slams Pecker In Iraqi Car Door and Iraqis Drive Off with It”
or sumptin’…
bkny
‘cranky’ like women ‘on the rag’ or ‘cranky’ because his son was sacrificed for the oligarch?
Zifnab
@doctorpsycho1960:
Only in the same way that not picking at a scab won’t magically heal it.
satby
@aimai: That’s right. He lost his own son: imagine losing your child to Bush’s folly and seeing nothing of value come from that sacrifice.
El Cid
Staying in Iraq won’t solve our problems or theirs.
morzer
Speaking for myself:
Now, why does that sound familiar?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
What conservatives learned from Vietnam was that showing pictures of dead solders is no way to conduct a war, and that if we’d just clapped louder, we would have won it.
In Vietnam, we were attempting to prop up a failed model – colonialism – that we should have never gotten into in hte first place, but completely abandoned when the French left. I think Obama did learn a lesson from Vietnam, hence leaving Iraq when our interests no longer applied.
But we also need to make sure we don’t apply Vietnam when the analogy doesn’t make sense.
roshan
The costs of Iraq War.
– Total deaths: Between 110,663 and 119,380
– Coalition deaths: 4,712
– U.S. deaths: 4,394
– U.S. wounded: 31,768
– U.S. deaths as a percentage of coalition deaths: 93.25 percent
– Iraqi Security Force deaths: At least 9,451
– Total coalition and ISF deaths: At least 14,163
– Iraqi civilian deaths: Between 96,037 and 104,7542
– Non-Iraqi contractor deaths: At least 463
– Internally displaced persons: 2.6 million
– Refugees: 1.9 million
– Cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom: $748.2 billion
– Projected total cost of veterans’ health care and disability: $422 billion to $717 billion
cervantes
I’d be cranky as hell too if my own son had died for nothing.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Too late to edit, but
should read
singfoom
@roshan:
That so many died in a conflict that was of our choosing and that was completely unecessary is heart-rending. My heart goes out to the families of those soldiers who died and to those civilians in Iraq who were caught in this clusterfuck.
Let us also not forget the geopolitical/world standing cost to our country. The stain of torture/unlawful detention will take decades if not more to be washed away, and it’s most likely that the architects of those policies will never be held to account for their crimes against our nation.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
The test for whether or not we’ve learned anything isn’t how we wind up Afghanistan. It’s whether or not we do it again. I submit that we don’t really know yet whether or not America has learned anything from Iraq.
Suffern Ace
Could someone explain what is “Neo” about “Neo-Isolationism?” If we called it “Compassionate Isolationism” as opposed to the old “Xenophobic Isolationism” But what is “Neo” about the concept of not dragging our kids around the world to put “concerned American” stamps on everybody’s head?
frankdawg
Yeah, I lost my son there also . . . oh a guy that looks like my son came home so I guess in that way I am luckier than many but what is left of him is not my son. And I was against this thing from the start, saw the end pretty clearly. So as bitter as I am my guess is he is even more bitter and has every right to be.
The bastards that cheered this thing on had better pray every day that there is no Hell.
Martin
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN): We haven’t. When you have a policy of military preparation adequate to wage two simultaneous wars, you need to justify that from time to time in order to keep the pork flowing. We’ll know if we learned the lesson if we dial back the war machine policy to that of one conflict with a draft should a 2nd prove necessary. Call us when Congress approves something like that, because right now Congress seems intent on keeping military spending sky-high. I suspect the lesson has been learned the wrong way.
mistermix
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): It’s always tricky to use a Vietnam analogy, and I thought the post was already too long, but here’s where I see similarities:
1. Amorphous enemy fought by proxy, instead of a clear strategic objective.
In Vietnam, the enemy was communism. In Iraq, Al Qaeda. In both cases, we picked one of a number of places where the amorphous enemy was “hiding” and entered into a conflict.
2. Limited military commitment.
We weren’t willing to commit the number of troops or the materiel needed for the stated mission in either war.
3. Using the conflict as a political pawn at home.
Both wars were used to identify “real patriots”.
4. Undeclared war
No real declaration of war was passed by Congress for either war.
cleek
@Suffern Ace:
“neo-isolationism” was a cold-war term, used to describe people who wanted the US to stay out of other countries, as opposed to people who wanted to fight the Commies when they tried to take over those countries.
it’s isolationism in a specific context.
Punchy
TPM reporting another oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mecksyko.
terraformer
No lessons learned, but instead conceptions validated.
In this case, the conception was that you can gin up a rationale to keep funneling money to defense contractors and the greater military-industrial complex, and continue to do so as often as you want via manipulating justifications, with no consequences whatsoever to those who are doing the conceiving.
Blood, treasure, sweat, and tears. You and your friends get the treasure, and everyone else gets the blood, sweat, and tears.
Daddy-O
I know what will happen to Iraq eventually…
Partition.
Called it in 2002, right after I read about it on some dirty fucking hippie’s blog…
Ten years wasted. Lives, treasure and reputation. Gone. A heckuva job. And to think that some cretins want Bush to get some CREDIT for ANYTHING.
PeakVT
The United States leaves Iraq having learned nothing.
That’s groupthink for you. Facts don’t matter until the consensus fails catastrophically.
Daddy-O
@frankdawg: I hope he comes home eventually, and soon, frankdawg…
I used to watch Vietnam War movies with fascination; some of them are among the best movies ever made.
Now, I watch Iraq Invasion movies and all I feel is ANGRY.
Uloborus
Sigh. Do you think Bush has figured out yet that his legacy is going to be historians arguing about what his BIGGEST fuck-up was?
erlking
Seriously off topic but apparently another oil structure exploded in the Gulf of Mexico today.
Do you think we might ever have a serious conversation about getting off the oil tit?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@mistermix: People who start wars of choice definitely don’t want to “learn” from previous wars. The only solution to that is to prevent these people from getting into power in the first place.
(Swipe at Democratic voters) But that would require people to look at everything that a President does, rather than just what is talked about that day.
roshan
@Uloborus: Read for yourself in November.
Uloborus
@erlking:
We have had a serious conversation about it. The answer was ‘It’s not possible anytime soon, but expanded policies promoting other energy sources would be a damn good idea.’ Obama has been sprinkling those into just about everything he proposes, starting with the stimulus.
erlking
@Uloborus: When there’s a floor on the price of gasoline and the funds are dedicated to alternate energies then I’ll believe we’re serious about it. The rest is pissing into the wind.
catclub
@erlking:
So one team of Obama sabotage ninjas was not enough.
Uloborus
@erlking:\
So if your specific policy resolution isn’t enacted nothing else is legitimate? EESH.
Michael D.
Another oil rig just exploded in the Gulf.
Mike in NC
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Not to worry. When we invade Iran in 2014, none of these pesky mistakes will be repeated, and the war will pay for itself, and we’ll be greeted as liberators in the streets of Tehran. Also, too.
El Cid
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Killing 3.5 million people in Indochina and destroying rural Cambodia & its agriculture and thus paving the way for the Khmer Rouge’s backing by the peasantry was fighting with one arm tied behind our backs.
Linda Featheringill
@roshan:
Thank you for the summary of the costs of the war.
I chased down the report from American Progress and saved the link.
Useful information.
Maude
@frankdawg:
And I pray that there is a special place in hell for all of those that got us into the war.
A Vietnam vet I know was in that war and so was his brother. His mother told them that her sons went to war, but didn’t come back. He said he was so screwed up for a long time. He is now farming, is happily married and has found peace of mind. I hope peace comes to you and your son.
El Cid
@Michael D.: Man. I hope the government mobilizes quickly to approve more offshore drilling and lift all the oppressive regulations on this industry under assault.
catclub
@Linda Featheringill:
Those look like absolute lowball estimates of costs, civilian deaths, and refugees.
joe from Lowell
Being cranky isn’t an excuse to send your brain on a vacation.
Yes, mistermix, it is entirely possible to have learned lessons from Iraq and still consider it a bad thing for the Taliban to retake Afghanistan and invite bin Laden back in.
joe from Lowell
You know, I spent six years saying “But Saddam didn’t have anything to do with 9/11. Bin Ladin did, and he’s in Afghanistan/Pakistan.”
So did mistermix. The difference is, when I was saying it, it wasn’t just a cheap way to score a point in a debate.
ny nick
Most of the shi’ite politicians left in Iraq are Iranian proxies.
If Iran decides they want some to influence events in Iraq, they have the means and the network to create a lot of havoc. We would have invested a trillion dollars and caused the deaths of tens of thousands and all we accomplished could be the creation of a regional superpower run by a bunch of religous fanatics based in Tehran.
joe from Lowell
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I saw a very insightful comment once: Vietnam is to certain segments of the left what Munich is to neoconservatives.
Meaning, a useful historical example from which important lessons should be drawn, but which is constantly misused, misunderstood, and misapplied as some sort of universal answer to everything.
Uloborus
@joe from Lowell:
I agree, but I try not to get into it. I don’t see eye to eye with the people who are screamingly anti-war and will never approve of one ever… but god damn, do I have sympathy for the viewpoint, you know?
roshan
Anyone looking for lessons of Vietnam must watch Fog of War. It’s a documentary (104 mins), very effectively done in a Q&A format with the architect of that war, Robert McNamara. He was the Rumsfeldian figure who ran the Vietnam war with his charts and technical expertise. How the war ended everyone knows, but many times you wonder what went through the mind of a person so involved in directing such wars? The documentary tries to answer that question. Put the documentary on your weekend schedule. It’s a must watch.
El Cid
@joe from Lowell: That’s certainly true. And though I have a lot of opinions on Afghanistan, I don’t take Vietnam analogies lightly nor do I use them wrong. Maybe others do. Likewise some people reject Vietnam or other analogies when they are appropriate. Of course, analogies are analogies, not duplicates.
Amanda in the South Bay
@joe from Lowell:
And 9/11 is to certain people who want to invoke moral authority for indefinite war.
I think there must be diminishing returns to staying in Afghanistan-after a point, going after one person doesn’t matter because we are killing too many innocent people, the Army is getting run down, and we as a country are bankrupt.
mclaren
America learned nothing from the Philippine insurrection where we first started waterboarding prisoners, we learned nothing from WW I, we learned nothing from the Korean War, we learned nothing from Vietnam, we learned nothing from Lebanon, we learned nothing from Somalia.
Since America has decided to become the new Soviet Union complete with torture and assassination and universal wiretapping, we might as well sing our new theme song…in Russian!
(to the tune of “Frere Jacques”)
Ya ne zhnaiou
Ya na zhnaiou
koroscho!
Koroscho!
Ya na panemaiou
Ya na panemaiou
nichevo!
Nichevo!
wengler
Neo-Isolation = Meeting interesting people in foreign lands and NOT killing them.
For everyone beholden to labeling Bush a genius for changing tactics four years in, do you have any consideration for the policy alternative at the time? Leaving was an excellent option that was endorsed by the panel put together by Bush’s daddy to get his son’s ass out of the fire. Instead perhaps a thousand American lives and an uncountable number of Iraqi lives were snuffed out so the US could complete the ethnic genocide of Sunni Arabs in Baghdad. What a wonderful project to have been a part of.
Don’t you realize that THE SURGE was the best military strategy in the history of warfare? Ending the war in the capital by decisively throwing down with the Iranian-backed side was smart in so many ways. So many that it is hard to even think of one.
joe from Lowell
@El Cid:
I find Vietnam comparisons in Afghanistan risible, because our opponents there were backed by a global superpower, and had a nation-state’s military of their own. And because, as Vietnam War opponents frequently and correctly pointed out, nobody in Vietnam ever attacked the United States.
@Amanda in the South Bay:
I agree. For Bush, though, staying was the point. He thought that having yet another country that was politically and militarily dominated by the United States, and which had a lot of our troops stationed there, was a good thing in and of itself. Otherwise, he would have wrapped things up years ago.
The fact that we should have started leaving 7 years ago and been out at least 6 years ago, however, doesn’t mean we should just pull out now. I didn’t even support the invasion of Iraq, but taking two years to get us out was the right thing for Obama to do. You have to be responsible in how you end a war.
joe from Lowell
@Amanda in the South Bay:
And 9/11 is to certain people who want to invoke moral authority for indefinite war.
That’s not really a parallel to Munich and Vietnam. We are actually still dealing with the problem raised by 9/11. We actually have to talk about it as we establish and implement policy going forward because, unlike the Nazis or the Vietnam War, al Qaeda is an ongoing problem.
Nutella
The point of the Viet Nam analogy is that we tried then to invade a country far away with no defined goal and that was bound to be a terrible waste of lives, of money, and of reputation.
What can possibly be a good outcome of the invasion of a country far away? In a civil war you know who won by knowing who runs the government after the shooting stops. In a war against a neighboring country you know who won by knowing where the border is after the shooting stops.
How can you tell who won the wars in Viet Nam or Iraq or Afghanistan? Government change in the invaded country? No, that happened very early in those wars and the wars continued. What, then? What could ‘winning’ possibly be?
That’s the lesson of all of those wars that nobody seems to have learned: Invading a country far away can never end well.
The exception to this is an invasion whose goal is to drive out a previous invader: Driving the Axis out of France or the Iraqis out of Kuwait were specific goals that could be achieved.
Android 3008
@Zifnab: And the funny thing is that those companies are American in name only… Those McDonald’s spring up around the world? Franchises – locally owned and operated.
Hell, even stuff like Campbell’s Soup… sure, you can buy it in the Middle East and Europe… but it’ll be soup made in the Middle East or Europe… only the branding is American…
We tend to forget that publically-traded companies don’t really have nationalities… they can be funded by anyone… and that the nationality of their HQ is not relevant.
Android 3008
@joe from Lowell: Al Queda, as a foe of the US, is vastly, vastly overrated.
liberal
@joe from Lowell:
So? In the case of Afghanistan, our opponents there are backed by elements in the government of a neighboring state which happens to be nuclear armed.
James E. Powell
@El Cid:
The Very Serious People call it isolationist. On the talk shows and the campaign trail, it’s called weak.
In my life (b. 1955), every single target of US military attacks has been equated with Hitler. Every single person who has expressed opposition to these attacks, or even reluctance, has been equated with Chamberlain. It’s simple: if we do not always attack, some dictator will cause the next world war. So, every single attack is the right thing to do. Anyone opposing must be in favor of a dictator and the next world war.
liberal
@joe from Lowell:
No we’re not. We’re making it worse, by occupying Muslim nations, threatening Muslim nations, and tying our fate to Israel’s even when there’s no national interest in doing so.
liberal
@joe from Lowell:
If not now, when?
We’re not “out” of Iraq; we have 50,000+ troops there. Rather funny that someone who doesn’t like Vietnam analogies would be parroting Obama’s claim, given that we “didn’t” have any troops in Vietnam at certain points in the history of the conflict there, e.g. when we had tens of thousands of “advisers”.
Nonsense. Responsibility is not letting loose the dogs of war to begin with.
Johnny B
Isolationism served this country very well for most of its history. Isolationism can serve this country well again. Of course, that would mean ending the American Empire, and it is that, on both the right and left, that is so unsettling. Americans have grown up thinking they are meant to staddle the globe, and impose our will. The rest of the world is not quite so hot on the idea anymore. Stay tuned to find out how this conflict is resolved.
liberty60
I recall reading that after Vietnam, the military establishment went through a period of intense and amazingly honest (for a large bureacracy) self-scrutiny, and developed the COIN strategies that inform most of the general staff today.
I also recall that in the run-up to the Iraq war, it was Colin Powell and the military who were the most cool and cautious about the use of military force, famously saying “if you break it, you own it”.
It seems to me that it was/ is the civilian political leadership and punditry that is consistently the most bellicose, having the most absurdly grandiose faith in the power of military force.
For that reason alone, I would half-facetiously suggest that that the Presidency be limited to those who have earned a Purple Heart. Or having a child in a combat unit. Or hell, lets get old school and declare that any President who fails to win a war gets his fucking head chopped off.
Or maybe I am being shrill.
wengler
@ Johnny B
This country has never been isolationist. Other than a failed embargo on American goods against France and England imposed by Jefferson, this country has been heavily involved either in the creation of foreign markets for American goods when we had a productive manufacturing economy, or now access and control of resources as a tottering imperial economy reliant on foreign natural resources and foreign slave labor to run our consumer economy.
We won’t have a democratic form of governance until we dethrone the oligarchs. The millionaires and billionaires control this country and this country controls a fair part of the world. Political isolation doesn’t solve this problem. It just breaks the tendrils of our malformed economy and doesn’t give us the tools to restructure our trade relationships with the rest of the world. Really what we need is a resistance movement among the Asian worker slaves that make all our stuff from the mundane sweater to the cool smartphones.
Once that consumption chain is disrupted the haze might dissipate and people might consider issues that matter. Or maybe not.
Svensker
@Johnny B:
Yes. Isolationism doesn’t mean hiding your head under the pillows. It means not being the world’s policeman and not using crap phrases like “projecting power” “forward bases” “targeted bombing”, etc. It means minding your own business for the most part and being a responsible citizen in the world. We have no need of 600+ bases girdling the globe.
I would love to see our foreign policy be on a par with having small embassies in other countries with a minimal staff to process visas and arrange meetings with heads of state. Bring them all home. Just think of all the federal pension money we would save!
Amanda in the South Bay
@liberty60:
Hmm…wasn’t it the case that the military actually went the other way, completely forgot abotu COIN, and focused on the things its rather good at, like large scale conventional warfare? I thought standard military history was that the US Army got really, really allergic to COIN after Vietnam.
Which really isn’t a bad idea, an Army that’s not suited for COIN is less likely to be used by politicians of any political stripe for imperial meddling in other countries. Give me mach 3 bombers and pentomic divisions instead!
Chris Dowd
Yes- Neo Isolationism. What a strange concept. I think it is known in the rest of the world as a “Normal foreign policy”.
sneezy
@frankdawg:
You and your son have my deepest sympathy and condolences.
Sandman
@liberty60:
SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP
Would you like to know more?
(please remember to enclose a copy of your DD-214 along with your application for voter identification)