I am discussing Iraq at several forums during the next four weeks, first tomorrow evening at an event in New York City and then at an event at Cato on Thursday, September 20th. The Cato event will also feature RAND’s James Dobbins, who has a piece in the current issue of Foreign Affairs; Marc Lynch, a political science professor at George Washington University and the author of the popular Abu Aardvark blog; and Clifford May, President of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. 

I am grateful to all of these participants, but particularly to Mr. May. It has become difficult to attract pro-war partisans to public events. Most prefer to speak to friendly audiences, surrounded on the stage by other war supporters. But public forums that allow for an open debate are essential to discussing the lessons to take away from Iraq. Those of us who advised against going to war believe themselves to be vindicated, although I take absolutely no pleasure in the harm that has come to my country. It is a tragedy, and I wish desperately that my warnings had proved unfounded.

Meanwhile, the advocates for war with Iraq have much to answer for. They have responded, so far, by explaining for why the war did not go as they planned.

They told us that our troops would be greeted as liberators. They told us that reports of sectarianism were grossly overstated and that there would be no civil war. They told us that Iran and Syria would be weakened by the toppling of Saddam. They told us that the war would not be costly, and that Iraqi oil revenues might even cover the costs. None of those predictions proved accurate.

The advocates for war told us that a congenital liar and a convicted crook, a man who had fled Iraq in the late 1950s while still in his teens, should become the leader of Iraq. Ahmed Chalabi proved so unpopular among Iraqis that his party won less than one half of one percent of the vote in the December 2005 elections, not enough support to win even a single seat in Parliament.

The pro-war partisans told us that there were weapons of mass destruction, even that they knew where they were. But David Kay (who argued for war in the fall of 2002), and later Charles Duelfer concluded, that there were no weapons.

Now many of the same pro-war partisans are telling us that the surge is working, and that we must give it more time. This at a time when nearly six in ten Americans favor withdrawing troops from Iraq within a year. If the public will prevails, and pro-withdrawal politicians are elevated to high(er) office on a “withdraw from Iraq” platform, the stage will have been set for the invocation of the infamous “stab in the back” theory.

First floated in Germany after World War I by those (including, but not limited to, the Nazis) who contended that the nation was on the verge of victory but for nefarious elements at home, a variation on this theme surfaced after Vietnam. This American version of the stab in the back theory holds that the war in Southeast Asia would have been won if not for the interference of namby-pamby anti-war types and their willing accomplices in the liberal press.

Which brings us back to Iraq. Is the surge succeeding? Not on the grounds that the president stipulated when he put forward the mission in January 2007. The surge, he said, was intended to improve security that would, in turn, facilitate political reconciliation. But the Iraqi government has achieved none of its political benchmarks. This bleak news was reinforced by the GAO study leaked last week.

Meanwhile, the statistics put forward by the Associated Press over a week ago, challenge the claims that the overall security situation has improved.

The AP story from August 25th began with the following:

This year’s U.S. troop buildup has succeeded in bringing violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago.

Some of the recent bloodshed appears the result of militant fighters drifting into parts of northern Iraq, where they have fled after U.S.-led offensives. Baghdad, however, still accounts for slightly more than half of all war-related killings _ the same percentage as a year ago…

These findings are consistent with a McClatchy news service story from a few weeks earlier, which similarly called into question the military’s claims:

[W]hile top U.S. officials insist that 50 percent of the capital is now under effective U.S. or government control, compared with 8 percent in February, statistics indicate that the improvement in violence is at best mixed.

U.S. officials say the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi capital is down 50 percent. But U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don’t support the claim.

When Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker come to town next week, they should be pressed to clarify their numbers purporting to show progress against these figures showing more of the same. It will be hard to sell the stab-in-the-back theory in a few years if the core premise — the surge was succeeding — proves to be false.

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