Unqualified Offerings

Further quick thoughts on the Krepinevich article reviewed last night.

1. Krepinevich’s end aim is - enduring bases! He slips in a mention that the grand coalition of Iraqis he envisions forging would be glad to keep about “20,000″ US troops around on a permanent basis after the insurgency is throttled to help defend the place from aggression by Iran and Syria. In the real world what this means is, among other things, the US would attempt to build its coalition out of Iraqi elements amenable to a permanent US presence - that becomes a requirement for membership.

2. As Col. Lang notes in his favorable gloss on the record of the oil spot strategy in Vietnam, it would entail mobilizing the civilian bureaucracy to a degree that Krepinevich downplays - massive USAID presence; probably other agencies as well. You can’t stop-loss those people or threaten them with an IRR callup. Simple careerism might get you a decent number of volunteers if the security in the “spots” were genuine security, but Lang makes it clear that oil-spottery is a massive combined military-civilian undertaking.

3. Krepinevich betrays no indication of having looked at the other side of the chess board. If he has asked himself, If I were one of the insurgent factions and wanted to thwart this plan, how would I do it? he or his editors kept it out of the article.

4. Finally, oil-spottery seems to be simply one of a class of approaches that Ayatollah Sistani preempted when he insisted on early direct elections and the US agreed. Krepinevich suggests that only secure regions would have elections during the course of his war, and only for local offices for most of that time. It amounts to direct colonial rule.

If you were determined to “win,” or at least keep at it, the Krepinevich plan may be inferior to the Administration’s own “stay-the-courseism.” There is a very narrow window opening for a sort of not as bad as it could be outcome to the existing process. In the rosy scenario, the Sunni leadership throws its energy into blocking the draft constitution at the ballot box and wins. New, reasonably secure elections in December lead to a parliament with reasonable Sunni representation and an understanding that the Kurds and Shiites need to take greater account of Sunni wishes if they want to get on with looting the treasury and veiling their women. The foreign jihadis become a distraction to the Sunni leadership’s real priority of getting a place at the feed trough. Everybody goes home happy, except for the barbers, the girls and people who like to have a good time on Saturday night.

For a little while. Odds: low. Odds compared to the oil-spot strategy. Not so bad.