"A Long-Shot Gamble"

From Fred Kaplan's Slate column today on "What Congress needs to ask Petraeus and Crocker":

Stephen Biddle, a military analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, is a key proponent of the patchwork-quilt strategy. But even he emphasizes that the idea would be a political nonstarter if it resulted in a lot more American deaths. The American public, he said in a phone interview, will support overseas deployments of troops-even for many years-as long as not many get killed. For instance, 64,000 U.S. troops are still in Germany, 60 years after the end of World War II and 16 years after the end of the Cold War. American soldiers have been keeping the peace in Bosnia now for more than a decade since the defeat of Slobodan Milosevic. In both operations, virtually no American soldiers have died as a result of hostile fire. (Biddle is a member of Petraeus' advisory panel, but he emphasized that his views here are entirely his own.)

Biddle also said (again, expressing his personal view) that the strategy in Iraq would require the presence of roughly 100,000 American troops for 20 years-and that, even so, it would be a "long-shot gamble."

A lot is being made of this quote, and as you can see above it is the only direct quote Kaplan produces. Biddle has argued against taking a middle path in Iraq, advocating either a push for victory or a complete withdrawal. So while Kaplan quotes him as saying that this is a "long-shot gamble," it's worth noting that Biddle thinks this is a gamble we should take. It's also worth asking what exactly Biddle is talking about, since Kaplan offers no real context. I called Biddle and he explained that in order to achieve success, what he defines as "stability in the absence of large-scale violence," the United States will need to maintain in Iraq "a credible force for a generation...until new leaders emerge." This would be a peacekeeping force of roughly 100,000--Biddle said more would be preferable but unsustainable given the current end-strength of the U.S. military--which would be taking almost no casualties.

The point of the force would be keep in check "a collection of very unstable rivalries with a capacity to open up violence." "There will be spoilers," he said, but by replicating the bottom-up success in Anbar, he does believe that success is possible. But he points to the short-term goal of achieving a nationwide ceasefire as the major hurdle to success--if that is achieved, than maintaining an effective American deterrent to renewed violence becomes a much more reasonable proposition. Kaplan makes it seem as though there is some dissonance between Biddle's position and what he expects Petraeus to report to Congress, but I don't see it. Maybe Petraeus would quibble with this or that point, but Biddle and Petraeus seem to be pretty much in line: both support the surge as a means to achieving a reduction in violence, both expect a drawdown if that is achieved (maybe to 100,000 troops?) and both expect that American forces will have to stay there for a long time to keep the peace. Do folks really believe that Petraeus will be saying something different--or that he will be lying if he does? Apparently some do--they're wrong.

Also, as an aside, Kaplan writes:

It means that military progress is being made in the fight against al-Qaida in Mesopotamia and related jihadist movements, especially in Anbar province but also in such other erstwhile strongholds as Baqubah, Ramadi, and a few neighborhoods around Baghdad.

And later,