Tom Hayden on Obama's Speech

NO EXIT STRATEGY

TOM HAYDEN    September 11th, 2014

A disturbing omission in President Obama's Iraq War speech was its lack of an exit strategy. Instead, Officials predict a Mission lasting beyond Obama's second term.

So we are invited to submit our lives, fortunes and tarnished honor to the newest chapter of the "long war" envisioned by certain Pentagon planners as lasting 80 to 100 years over the "arc of the crisis" where both Islamic radicals and reservoirs of oil lie waiting. Instead, each administration escalates enough to avoid defeat and pass it along to its successor.

It's War on an installment plan.   Or, as former Obama adviser Bruce Riedel says, "Until we kill them, they're going to keep trying to kill us."

The current phase is not due to President Obama's "premature" withdrawal or to short sightedness by the anti-war movement. It's the consequence of the U.S. policy of abandoning the Sunni population of Iraq to a sectarian, oppressive Shiite regime in Baghdad, which we armed, funded and installed in power.

The Baghdad regime is an ally of Iran and a mortal enemy of the Sunnis, who previously were the Privileged class in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. It's no accident that the Shiites would take revenge against the Sunnis. The only question is why we maintained the illusions of "pluralism" and "democracy" while the ethnic cleansing of the Sunni population went on under our gaze.

The disenfranchisement of the Sunnis led to the sweeping military counterattack by the Islamic State and elements of Iraq's former Baath Party. They cannot be stopped by the Shiites even with U.S. air power.  Nor are they likely to be stopped by tinkering with Baghdad politics and rhetoric about token "inclusion."   Only a grant of virtual autonomy to the Sunnis, similar to the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan, will provide for the representation, security and power sharing that Sunnis need in a new confederated and pluralistic state.

The President's call for a unified Iraq may be too late, and requires drastic measures. Concessions will have to be provided to those Sunnis who want to preserve an Iraqi state and not be absorbed into a caliphate without borders. Otherwise, the future is one of a sectarian civil war in which the American people have no interest.

Syria has become a vast rear base for the insurgency in Iraq because of the Islamic State group's gains against the Alawite regime in Damascus. Obama is intervening in that sectarian War from the Air while scrambling to build up non-Islamic State militias on the ground.   His task in both countries is staggering, as in the nursery rhyme:   All the king's horses and all the king's men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.

The U.S. military intervention complicates the opportunity to confront the Islamic State at its most vulnerable political weak point: its preposterous claims of being the new center of the entire Islamic world. That claim of legitimacy is violently disputed among many Muslims and will surely lead to internal differences weakening the Islamic State from within. That's why the Islamic State wants the Americans to bomb and eventually invade in order to unite all Muslims against the "infidels."

Obama should accept the need for Congressional debate and Authorization. That is the only way the Public will be drawn into making choices.

Congress probably will green-light the War, but with important conditions:

1) a demand for an exit strategy with a timeline,

2) an estimate of the budgetary costs and Fiscal effects on Civilian programs,

3) a demand for support from a majority of Islamic countries,

4) enforcement of the Leahy Law barring U.S. assistance to any Military units committing Human Rights Violations, and

5) a statutory Ban on the use of American Combat units directly or indirectly.

At the risk of being contradictory, the President should repeat over and over that there is no military solution, and that we have no interest in a sectarian civil war.   He should avoid a credibility gap by drawing a red line against the further use of U.S. troops on the ground.   He should conduct Fair and aggressive Diplomacy through the United Nations, which will require accommodating the interests of Iran and Russian.

His comparisons to Somalia and Yemn suggest that Obama expects a low-visibility quagmire at little cost in American lives.   He also should remember how South Vietnam ended in total regime collapse amid Washington paralysis and historic Peace protests.

Obama is tragically wrong in asserting that America's domestic agenda can move forward despite U.S. involvement in multiple battlefields. The greatest tragedy of this conflict is that it will undermine "nation-building" at home.

Tom Hayden, who served in the California Legislature for nearly two decades, is the author of 20 books and an enduring progressive voice in politics.