Editor's Note:

This is the fifth in a series of SUSRIS "Items of Interest" providing transcripts from the recent Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) Capitol Hill conference series panel on the Future of the Middle East: Implications for the United States. The panel featured five distinguished specialists on Middle East affairs, introduced by MEPC President Chas W. Freeman, Jr. The first four parts were provided separately and are posted on SUSRIS.org. 

The Future of the Middle East: Strategic Implications for the United States
Middle East Policy Council Capitol Hill Conference Series on U.S. Middle East Policy

Moderator/Discussant
Chas W. Freeman, Jr., President, Middle East Policy Council
Speakers:
F. Gregory Gause, Political Science Professor, University Of Vermont
Fareed Mohamedi, Partner, Head Of Markets And Country Strategies And Practice, PFC Energy
Afshin Molavi, Fellow, New America Foundation
Wayne White, Former Deputy Director, Near East And South Asia Office, INR, State Department
Anthony Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair In Strategy, CSIS

Wayne White
Former Deputy Director, Near East And South Asia Office, INR, State Department

Ambassador Freeman: We turn now to Wayne White who is going to talk about Iraq.

Mr. White: I'm going to have to break with this optimistic theme that's been prevailing through [the presentations of Afshin and Fareed], and take us in another direction. 

Back in April I did a week of seminars for Army ROTC award winners about to be commissioned 2nd lieutenants from around the country at the Virginia Military Institute, about 40 or 50 miles up the road from Virginia Tech. This year's seminar began two days after the Virginia Tech massacres and I remember driving down the Shenandoah Valley on the way from Pennsylvania to VMI seeing weeping parents headed to Virginia Tech and hearing all of the national mourning. I heard President Bush's speech as I was driving down there and sensed the real shock in this country over the killings. 

The next day, two days after the massacre, my seminar opened. In that one day, almost 200 Iraqis were killed in suicide attacks -- in one day, over six Virginia Techs. One fundamental basis of grief counseling is to tell someone who is intimately involved with a certain event that it was a one in ten million occurrence. It will never happen again. Unfortunately, we can't tell that to Iraqis. After enduring six Virginia Techs, the next day they endured three more, and on, and on, and on. The fact is that we have perhaps 15 to 20 million Iraqis who either are now refugees outside or displaced inside their country -- or they're living in areas that are still very, very high risk in terms of violence. I can assure you that all are in need of grief counseling which they will probably never receive.

The bottom line I'm driving at here just to set the tone of this presentation, is that in all respects - put aside casualties, metrics, and all of that - we're dealing with a very traumatized, shattered, and embittered society. Building anything in this environment is going to be terribly difficult. Only people who have visited Iraq can appreciate the sheer destruction that has taking place in the country, all the way down to the continued looting of Iraq's heritage at scores of historic sites throughout the country. 

One of the big questions is, of course, right now can the Maliki government get its act together? The government of Prime Minister Alawi didn't. The government of Prime Minister Jaafari didn't. And we have to point out that like his predecessors, he presides over a government in a shambles. There is a thick overlay of Shi'a militia influence, separatist and insular Kurdish governance in the North. There are local governments in large areas that are disconnected from Baghdad, and tremendous corruption - even more so than under sanctions before. There should be no great expectations that Maliki or the Iraqi parliament can get their act together or implement some of the sound policies or measures that they've been asked to produce in response to tremendous pressure from Washington. 

In fact, just as my favorite scene in David Lean's 1962 Oscar-winning classic, Lawrence of Arabia showed. You have the famous tribal sheik played by Anthony Quinn, who's told that Aqaba must be taken -- who's going to take it?  The Arabs.  Question: who are the Arabs?  All I know are tribes. So what we're confronted with often are Iraqi politicians who beat their breast in public about the Iraqi cause, and the Iraqi this, and the Iraqi that, and then they go back in their smoke-filled rooms and act as Shi'a, act as Sunni, act as people who relate more to their own tribes or cities than they do to the central government. Iraqi identity at the present time is very much challenged inside of Iraq, part of a greater problem. 

Turning to the current surge, it should come as no surprise it has been slower than hoped in producing results, and results that are generally uneven or far less complete at this stage. I was asked to draw up a surge proposal for the Iraq Study Group, as one of its experts, linked to a full withdrawal starting one year after the surge if the surge was not successful. That surge plan called for a minimum of 64,000 or more troops. That would give us, quote, unquote - 

Ambassador Freeman: By which you meant combat troops, not logistical support troops. 

Mr. White: Combat troops and additional training personnel.  And we still rated that - I coordinated this with someone who was in - working with our military out in Baghdad. I gave it a substantially less than a 50/50 chance of success, and at great cost in American lives and treasure. So you can imagine what I think of a surge originally proposed at 21,500 and now just under 30,000. I don't think it has much of a chance for success at all. 

And regarding the surge, there are surprises that should be no surprises at this point. Every single time there has been a major effort to stabilize the greater Baghdad area, the insurgents have cleverly shifted much of their activity to areas North and South of the capital, primarily to the North. Another non-surprise is the disappointing performance on the part of Iraqi security forces. Yes, as always they're doing a bit better than before, but far below expectations. And their main problem isn't training. It's far deeper. It's something we've discussed before on the political side. It's loyalty - very basic loyalty. 

First, who can expect Iraqi soldiers to police or to lay down their lives for an iffy government sheltered under American protection in the Green Zone, with very little authority extending beyond? Many soldiers have much older, more dominant loyalties in any case, whether their ethno-sectarian communities, even militias or Kurdish Peshmerga. And these soldiers often speak openly about such alternative loyalties. And who can blame them? In the chaos that is present-day Iraq, they need an anchor in their own personal world, and one they can truly rely on. And that is not yet the government in Baghdad. 

Meanwhile, here in the States, domestic poll numbers make the issue of whether we will depart within the next two years moot. At least I think so. In fact, the more the formulation of a clear exit strategy is postponed, the greater risk of a less gradual and orderly departure down the road. Indeed, the good news from al Anbar about Sunni Arabs and insurgents finally going after al Qaeda in Iraq elements and other Jihadists in their midst must not be taken as meaning we should stay. It should be rather a very timely gift with respect to our ability to conduct a more orderly and peaceful withdrawal. In this, I'm very encouraged. But every strategy - I emphasize - at this stage must be an exit strategy, and we must make that clear to all concerned inside and outside Iraq. 

If Sunni Arabs ever manage to deal a serious blow to the Jihadists in their midst, the next option on their agenda would likely be ending the occupation - in other words turning against us once again. And something should be made crystal clear: critics of the war and declining American domestic support for it that I've already mentioned are not to blame for the failures in Iraq. Four years of failure on the ground in Iraq, and efforts to cover up the full extent of that failure, are responsible for the declining support here at home. Let's not put the cart before the horse. 

Another common theme is that those advocating withdrawal just don't understand the serious consequences of doing so. Unfortunately most of us old Middle East hands understand all too well some of the consequences. But many critics of the critics are making a potentially even more dangerously assumption. Given the way things have been going, we could remain three, four, or who knows how many more years in Iraq, losing as many as several thousand more dead, many thousands more terribly maimed, spending $400 to $500 billion more dollars, and still incur those same consequences after leaving. 

Some might say leaving is the worst possible option with respect to the current situation in Iraq. But to paraphrase Churchill's statement about democracy - his famous comment that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others - I posit that withdrawal from Iraq is the worst possible option, except for all the others. Thank you. 

Ambassador Freeman: Thank you very much. We will, I think, have to come back to this question of what happens if the American people do pull the plug on this adventure, as I believe they are steeling themselves to do, quite regardless of the consequences in Iraq and for the region. What happens in Iraq and in the region thereafter? And we also need to contemplate, I think, what happens in the United States politically, thereafter. 

There's been much made of the analogy of Vietnam. I think the correct analogy is the Soviet experience in Afghanistan or the French experience in Algeria. And I can already see people preparing the case for the theory that we would have won had the Left not stabbed the enterprise in the back. This war, in other words, in addition to diminishing our influence globally, and shattering it in the region, has the potential to be the most divisive event in our history. I am not encouraged in this regard, I must say, as we turn to our military expert on the panel, by the fact that professional military men have found it necessary to break with those under whose civilian authority they previously served uncomplainingly to voice criticism of policy. On the one hand, one can have respect for their courage in criticizing the commander-in-chief. On the other hand, the implications of a military that feels free to break with its civilian commander are not pleasant to contemplate. 

Source: MEPC.org

[Presentations by other speakers provided separately via email and on www.SUSRIS.org ]