Looking For Excuses To Stay

By Cernig

Brian Katulis, writing for the Wonk Room today, has a look at the big gap in "conditional engagement" arguments on the US occupation of Iraq. Such arguments are advanced, in various forms, by everyone from the Bush administration to the McCain campaign to the coterie of "realist" centrist hawks.  Katulis specifically adresses a new paper by the Center for a New American Security - which is led by folk like Michele Flournoy, Madeliene Albright, Richard Armitage and John Podesta - but all such plans share a common problem.

The fundamental problem with the conditional engagement strategy is that it fails to clearly define — in precise terms — when the Iraq mission would be accomplished, and when U.S. troops could depart ... [That failure] places the strategy in the same space as the current Bush administration policy - supported by most conservatives - a “conditions based” drawdown of troops where the conditions are never really defined beyond vague terms like “accommodation” and “sustainable security.”

Two key questions conditional engagement fails to answer are:

- What kind of Iraq does the conditional engagement strategy envision as an end state?

- What are the likely costs - in terms of financial resources, personnel, and time - for pursuing those goals in Iraq?

... This shortcoming — failing to precisely define “success” or the desired outcomes of continued engagement — whether conditional or unconditional — makes this the latest in a long list of Iraq strategies merely looking for excuses to stay. The difference here, of course, is that conditional engagement is being presented as a “responsible” exit strategy, with all of the requisite criticisms aimed at positioning it away from the current one.

Or, as Juan Cole recently put it: "The only way to get out of Iraq is to get out of Iraq."