The Charge of Ethnic Cleansing in Iraq

This entry updates my morning post on Stephen Biddle, Michael O'Hanlon, and Kenneth Pollack's new article at Foreign Affairs, "Standing Down as Iraq Stands Up."

As noted, the piece isn't all that impressive. Most of the analysis seems somewhat behind the curve of events, and the conclusion's basically the authors' attempt to curry favor within the Democratic foreign policy establishment by re-floating the "Bush lied" meme on the origins of the deployment.

Well, the antiwar bloggers aren't too happy no matter what the motives. Indeed, this liberal warhawk-neocon triumvirate is being attacked just like the old days, although not just as war cheerleaders for the GOP's "imperialist project," but as enablers of American war crimes in Iraq to boot!

The meme's getting a lot of play, but Spencer Ackerman's attack is the most vociferous:

Matt Yglesias is on vacation until his new ThinkProgress blog launches August 11. But he IMs to ensure I don't miss this argument in the new Steve Biddle/Mike O'Hanlon/Ken Pollack Iraq piece in Foreign Affairs:

It is worth noting that separation resulting from sectarian cleansing was not the chief cause of the reduction in violence, as some have claimed. Much of Iraq remains intermingled but increasingly peaceful. And whereas a cleansing argument implies that casualties should have gone down in Baghdad, for example, as mixed neighborhoods were cleansed, casualties actually went up consistently during the sectarian warfare of 2006. Cleansing may have reduced the violence somewhat in some places, but it was not the main cause.

I had to reread this to make sure I didn't misunderstand. Ethnic cleansing is a violent process of extirpating members of a rival ethnicity or sect. If the ethnic cleansing occurred in 2006, of course casualties went up consistently. This argument makes no sense.

But there's actually a broader point to make. Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. The U.S. quite rightly intervened in the Balkans in the 1990s to stop it. The horrors of ethnic cleansing are unfathomable to those who haven't experienced them. What you really, really shouldn't do is treat other people's ethnic cleansing as a debaters' point. It's perverse, isn't it, the way that ethnic cleansing that occurred during a U.S. occupation can be treated so nonchalantly by Washington polemicists.

I'd be remiss not to send a quick message to Yglesias: Dude, take some time off. You're going to be swamped with that new, nasty gig at Think Progress. (a move which may "raise the IQ at the Atlantic").

But back to the debate at hand!

Actually, it's not illogical for deaths from sectarian violence to have dropped if the term "cleansing" is recognized in its very common usage as a broad shorthand for the consolidation of ethnic neighborhoods and the internal displacement of populations from their homes. Iraq's ethnic cleansing has not generally been seen as genocidal. Indeed, surge proponents using this shorthand terminology have been savagely attacked for allegedly seeking to minimize the refugee tragedy of "millions of Iraqis" being "robbed" of their homes.

The fact is that the antiwar hordes have never accepted the COIN strategy of President George Bush and General David Petraeus. The victory of the beefed-up troop contingents along with the tactical adjustments on the ground have long been slandered as an alleged "false narrative" of success. Just over a week ago some of the most implacable Bush-bashers on the left smeared success under the surge as a myth, while others have said that it's "worked tactically, but hasn't succeeded strategically, at least not yet."

Yet now, with all the mainstream political actors accepting the new realities of Iraq - including both John McCain and Barack Obama - most of the antiwar contingents are seeking to push the war debate past the question of victory to that of culpability in alleged American atrocities.

This all ties into the big push on the left for "accountability" of the Bush administration foreign policy decisions, such as the treatment of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, as well as the domestic surveillance operations and the question of telecom immunity.

Ideally, for war opponents, Bush administration "criminals" would be prosecuted for war crimes under a Barack Obama administration come January 2009. What's most likely to happen, in the advent of an Obama regimes, is that Congress would establish a "commission on torture" to investigate alleged wrong-doing under the Bush-Cheney years. Yet, the recent hard-left uproar over Obama-advisor Cass Sunstein's recent dismissal of war crimes prosecutions indicates that the antiwar forces want a bit more than "truth and reconcilliation."

Thus, today's uproar over the Biddle, O'Hanlon, and Pollack essay can be seen as building more war crimes charges against the administration.

The whole thing may well end up being a bunch of sound and fury, signifying nothing, especially as Barack Obama's been dropping in the polls like an anchor.

On the other hand, the war crimes push is an international movement, and U.S. bloggers like Ackerman, Ezra Klein, and the crew at Newshoggers - with no substantive loyalty to the principle of American sovereignty - would like nothing more than the establishment of a universal jurisdiction of vengeance and star chamber prosecutions of Bush's neo-imperialist cabal next year.