Gallows humor

President Obama has had a rough few months. As the global economy continues its slide, what the crisis means for global trade and financial regulation will dominate discussions in London on Thursday. Rightfully so. After the economy, North Korea's impending missile launch and Afghanistan's gradual decline into disarray dominate any foreign policy discussions. With so much on his plate, not to mention health care reforms and an understaffed Administration, Iraq has fallen by the wayside. The President has admitted as much.

But lest we forget how perilous the gains we've made in Iraq are, Tom Ricks is happy to remind us:

The Maliki government is putting the screws to the Awakening movement (for those who just arrived, that's a mainly Sunni group of about 100,000 people, many of them former insurgents, who in late 2006 and 2007 arrived at ceasefires with the U.S. military presence in Iraq). The American plan was to integrate 20,000 members...into Iraqi security forces, and help the rest find other work...But the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government never really like the idea. Indeed, the first deals were cut by U.S. officials behind the back of the Iraqi government...I think Maliki's gambit is to crack down on the Sunnis while American forces are still available in sufficient numbers to back him up. This is turning into a test of strength, Sunni vs. Shiite.

Sound familiar? 

The President may be better served to focus on actually shoring up our international standing, rather than just paying lip service to the notion while using our current crisis environment to push big government, domestic programs that most independent voters hoped he would avoid.

Rule of who?

No one seems to know what to make of the Blackwater case. Charges against the contractors, who turned themselves in, have been filed in Utah based on their role in the deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad back in September 2007. The 6 men are the first to be charged under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act; 5 of the 6 have pled not guilty.

Thankfully under this law they can be tried for their crimes here in the US, because Lord knows they will never be extradited to Iraq. But would they be able to at least get a fair trial there? The answer to that question depends on whether Iraq functions under the rule of law. If the rule of law is defined by a functioning judiciary, then the country passes, but just barely. The US has sunk a LOT of money into rebuilding the courts (as it has in Afghanistan as well), but the problem is that the staff are underpaid, and sad to say, often corrupt.

Rebuilding a judicial system from the ground up is no small feat, but it is vital to any successful nation building operation. Just as important as the police force, the legal system must be able to handle not only the large number of cases, but do so in a fair manner. It may not be a realistic way of testing the system, but it would tell us more about the capabilities of the Iraqi judicial system more than any of the High Court's reviews of oil contracts or parliamentary actions.

Prosthetics and Foreign Policy

Ok, so this is a few months old but still amazing:

That's right, the monkey controlled a robotic arm with its mind! Then, if you combine it with a jet pack...

...you could put together quite the little techno-monkey mercenary army! (Monkey mercenaries are actually not new; Morocco sent the United States 2,000 monkeys to act as mine sweepers in Iraq back in 2003.) But aside from an army of flying monkeys, to be dispatched by the Wicked Witch of the West, prosthetics technology is making important advances these days. The monkey controlled the robotic arm through about one hundred electrodes placed directly into his motor cortex, which is responsible for physical motions. Amazingly, primate brains have enough plasticity to learn how to control a whole new arm.

Looking back through history, the First World War was an impetus and a catalyst for major advances in neuroscience. A large number of young soldiers returned home from the horrors of trench warfare with very localized brain injuries from shrapnel wounds. (What does what in the brain is often deduced from what happens when something is missing or wounded.) In our own time, over 30,000 American soldiers have been wounded in Iraq by official tallies. One of the least discussed costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are limb amputations, but this will also be a catalyst for many new medical advances, such as the first successful hand transplant.

War is a terrible, terrible thing, but then again necessity is the mother of invention. No matter what your thoughts on the man, let's hope that part of Bush's foreign policy legacy is a number of important medical advances to care for wounded coalition members and Iraqi and Afghan civilians. Machine-brain interface prosthetics and transplants seem like as good a place to start as any.

Raid Syria? Actually, that's a terrible idea.

The implications of the US military strike into Syria are manifold. Counterinsurgency 101 tells you to eliminate all insurgent safe havens, but there will be serious negative consequences that might outweigh playing Al-Qaeda whac-a-mole in Syria.

But first, it is confusing as to who actually ordered the strike into Syria. It would appear that the White House has delegated the responsibility for ordering strikes into insurgent sanctuaries to the military commander of Central Command, David Petraeus.

Wow.

We take from Clausewitz that war is merely the continuation of politics by other means, but is it acceptable to give the Pentagon the ultimately political choice of when to potentially start a war? Clausewitz, and I say a definite no- even though Petraeus is a pretty good guy. And there could also be confusion as to who even ordered this particular attack. This is also a tad worrisome.

Syria is granting insurgents and terrorists safe haven in their countryside, as I discussed in the previous post, and this was getting on Iraq and the US’s nerves. But perhaps who ever thought it would be a good idea to conduct a US raid in Syria was banking on Syria’s response to be similar to Israel’s bombing of their suspected nuclear reactor last fall? (Which was rather muted at the time.) But Israel bombed a remote region that was closed off to the Syrian public, and the US sent ‘copters in the middle of the day near a pretty large town. It is hard to just write that off… It might be a little more expensive in the short run than a quick helicopter trip into Syria, but I would advocate that Iraqi and US forces man the border and we work towards getting the Syrian police to roll up the undesirables that might run amok along the Euphrates. Violations of sovereignty tend to upset people.

Most Syrians desperately would like to be free from Iran’s sphere of influence and rejoin the international community sans sanctions. Anyone who has taken an Iranian-made taxi in Damascus will sympathize. The Syrian government had recently been making overtures towards the west, but this raid is likely to set that back a quite a ways.

Finally, one must wonder what this will do to the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) negotiations back in Baghdad. Iraqis want the US military out of Iraq, and since it is a now a democracy (that’s a good thing, right?), the government needs to respond. The raid into Syria has thrown yet another wrench in the equation. And I’ll bet that it’s a pretty big wrench.

Hot potato

I know I'm not the only one dismayed by the lack of coverage Iraq has been given in the media and the presidential campaign. With rising inflation, unemployment, and a seemingly never ending fall in the housing market, it is no surprise that the economy has become issue #1 in this race. These are real and legitimate domestic problems, and Afghanistan may pose a bigger threat to the overall security of the US, but let's not forget the US government spends $720 million a day in Iraq. The war should be a central concern of our national consciousness and it's not. When news that the US will hand over security in Anbar to Iraqi forces is on page 14 of the NY Times and barely mentioned throughout the blogosphere, it is obvious how far our foray into Iraq has slipped from the political dialogue.

But, whenever politicians do talk about Iraq some sort of unspoken consensus emerges. With a timetable agreed to by pretty much everyone, there is no longer a real discussion of whether this is the right path for Iraq (or what will follow). With developments like this handover slowly occurring, is Iraq really a stable and peaceful democracy?

In a word, no. BUT, if the Iraqi government is reaching oil deals, maintaining security, and on the path to elections have we done our job in Iraq? That's a bit of a loaded question since we never really had a defined goal. Iraq is certainly not stable nor peaceful but is on the road there. More important than transitional takeovers and timetables is the manner our exit is executed and the legacy we leave behind.

Just keep in mind that Anbar is where the Sunni Awakening started...

An Afghan dilemma

Given this election has placed a prime focus on foreign policy, it is no surprise that each candidate is dedicating alot of oratory to Afghanistan. But it is certainly troubling that they are both getting it so wrong. McCain and Obama are not the only ones misinterpreting the situation and drawing inaccurate comparisons: Patrick Fitzgerald at FP Passport says...

With the surge's success in bringing military (but not political) stability to Iraq, the spike of violence in Afghanistan led to calls for a similar surge there...[and] it's clear that more troops alone aren't going to solve the problem (emphasis mine).

Though Fitzgerald correctly calls for other means of aid, the analysis is problematic not only because it calls for more troops but because it is rooted in the same incorrect assumption that most politicians are making: namely, associating the recent decline in Iraqi violence with the surge alone. What everyone seems to be forgetting is that the surge followed the Sunni Awakening. To credit the surge for the lull in violence after 80,000 insurgents essentially switched sides is not only naive but irresponsible. How many times must we be reminded...Correlation is not causation!

If people were drawing the correct comparisons and actually learning any lessons from Iraq, then Afghanistan might also be on a slow but steady path to peace. But instead of engaging insurgent groups in a dialogue and drawing extremists into the political fold, US officials and Patrick Fitzgerald are calling for more troops. Given President Karzai's recent rhetoric, Afghanistan needs a reduction in troops (and an increase in clandestine intelligence and special forces) if America is to maintain any type of support from the Afghan public. If the US can couple such a drawdown with greater support for political participation and development then we just might have a recipe for success.

Alas, no one is saying anything to that effect. In the words of Brad DeLong: why, oh why, can't we have a better press corps?

Don't call it a comeback...

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army, plans to transform his militia into a "social services organization". The US Army and other influential Iraq policy wonks are greeting the news with cautious optimisim. Such a wait and see attitude seems understandable, but given Sadr's adherence to previous cease-fire agreements, I would prefer to see the Iraqi government fork over some of their $79 billion surplus and bring Sadr and his followers into the political process.

As I've mentioned before (and so has RAND), counter-terrorism (and by extension in Iraq, state-building) requires that citizens trust their government: this is done by strengthening civic institutions. If you're of the mindset that economic growth is more important (and I understand this logic) I would argue that foreign investment and private enterprise will not grow in Iraq until the political process yields some semblance of stability in the country. Such a double-edged sword is difficult to handle. Sadr represents an opportunity for the US to pass the buck and allows Iraqis a chance to prove the merits of their burgeoning polticial system.

Sadr is a smart man. He has weathered various changes in opinion and strategy in Iraq and managed to stay relevant. There is no doubt in my mind this is his first step into the political arena. Given his influence, and the stalled provincial elections, we should encourage such a move. While it may irk hard-liners and military types, bringing former militants into the fold is the best way to pacify a country and encourage democratic growth. There is precedent for succcess (Nepal, Northern Ireland) and we should encourage unifying elements that the surge has quieted but also fragmented. Speeches seem to unify people better than guns.