Lost in Iraq

On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter appeared on CNN’s State of the Union during which he reflected on the performance of the Iraqi Security Forces in the recent battle for Ramadi. “What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight,” he said. “They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight.” It was a stunning admission. The United States has been retraining and reequipping the Iraqi military (again) since last summer and its ignominious performance in Mosul, Tikrit, and every place in between. The defeat in Ramadi and Secretary Carter’s blunt assessment suggests that the Obama administration’s return on investment is close to nil. It is extraordinarily worrisome because the White House’s entire strategy is based on providing local actors, primarily the Iraqi Security Forces, the means to “degrade and defeat” the self-proclaimed Islamic State instead of deploying American soldiers to do the job. The secretary’s statement was particularly surprising since Secretary of State John Kerry assured the press a few days earlier that the Islamic State’s grip on Ramadi would be temporary, while the White House called it a “tactical setback.” Perhaps Carter was responding to the Iraqis who blamed Washington for the defeat. Or maybe he knows better than anyone what is what in Iraq, and when the inevitable accounting is done, Carter and the Pentagon do not want to take the blame for who lost Iraq (again). The most straightforward explanation for the administration’s mixed signals, however, is this: No one really knows or understands what is happening in Iraq.

This is all terribly disconcerting given the $2.5 trillion the United States has spent in Iraq as well as the political pressure to deploy more American forces—on top of the three thousand already there—to rescue Baghdad. It is unlikely that the American people will support such a move, but what about an additional five thousand advisors, and then in another six to eight months three thousand more, and when the Iraqis are still having a hard time perhaps another five thousand will be the “game changer”? There are influential people already arguing for an increased American commitment. It is a fair argument to make. Iraq was held together in 2006 and 2007 through the combination of American arms and money. Maybe “Surge 2.0” or “Grandsons of Iraq” would work. Then again as the Turks say, “You cannot bathe in the same bath water twice.”

So what to think about Iraq?

There is a lot of breathless commentary about Iraq mostly because the people on television or the people who write columns are surfing the news cycles. If they had some perspective, they might recognize that the battles for Ramadi and Baiji are moments in a longer process that has been playing out for some time in which Iraq is coming apart. We are lost in Iraq because Iraq—no matter what the outcome of the struggle with the Islamic State may be—is itself lost.