Fareed Zakaria on Iraq: Then and Now

Fareed Zakaria is one of the most well-connected and influential foreign policy pundits writing today. He's at the top of the heap of international relations insiders; and as editor of Newsweek International, and the host of his own foreign affairs show on CNN, Zakaria's at the center of popular commentary on world politics and American foreign policy.

I've admired his urbane style for some time, but in 2006, as he became major critic of the Bush administration in Iraq, I frankly refused to take him seriously anymore. He seemed something of a fair-weather commentator, frankly (and that's putting it nicely.)

Anyway, in November 2006, at the peak of American difficuties in Iraq, Zakaria published an article on the "drawdown option" in Iraq, "Rethinking Iraq: The Way Forward." The piece essentially became a liberal template for a U.S. withdrawal from the theater:

In point of fact—and it is a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless—America is not winning in Iraq, which means that it is losing. Iraq has fallen apart both as a nation and as a state. Its capital and lands containing almost 50 percent ofthe population remain deeply insecure and plagued by rising internal divisions. Much of the south, which is somewhat stable, is subject to gangsterish, theocratic and thoroughly corrupt local governments. To recognize this reality does not mean that there is no hope for the years to come. There is—but hope is not a policy.

The piece is a bit disingenous. Zakaria writes, on the one hand, that the U.S. should not "pack up and go home." And then on the other, he offers a "drawdown" so drastic as to be tantamount to the premature "Iraqization" of the conflict:

To preserve these interests, the United States should begin drawing down its troop levels, starting in January 2007. In one year, we should shrink from the current 144,000 to a total of 60,000 soldiers, some 44,000 of them stationed in four superbases outside Baghdad, Balad, Mosul and Nasi-riya. This would provide a rapid-reaction force that could intervene to secure any of the core interests of the United States when they are threatened. To preserve the basic security of Iraq and prevent anarchy, U.S. troops must also act as the spine of the new Iraqi Army and police force. American advisers should massively expand their current roles in both organizations, going from the current level of 4,000 Americans to at least 16,000, embedding an American platoon (30 to 40 men) in virtually every Iraqi fighting battalion (600 men).

Interestingly, January 2007 is precisely when the U.S. began sending MORE troops to supplement a change in strategy toward forward counterinsurgency. Had the the U.S. gone with the "drawdown option" at the time, with just 44,000 troops in the cities that saw some of the worst fighting early in the post-major operations insurgency phase, the U.S. most assuredly would have been defeated.

Now, remember all the leftists who decry neocons who face no penalties for getting things wrong?

Well, don't hold your breath on these folks coming out against Fareed Zakaria, and his new piece, "Victory in Iraq: How we got here is a matter for history. But the democratic ideal is still within reach":

When the surge was announced in January 2007, I was somewhat cautious about it. I believed that more troops and a proper counterinsurgency strategy would certainly improve the security situation—I had advocated more troops from the start of the occupation—but I believed that the fundamental problem in Iraq was political discord among the country's three main sects and ethnic groups. The surge, in my view, would alleviate those tensions but also postpone the need for a solution. Only a political agreement among these groups could reach one.

I was wrong in some ways. First, the surge turned out to be a more sophisticated strategy—encompassing political outreach to the Sunnis—than I had imagined. Second, the success of the surge empowered the Baghdad government, brought Sunni rebels out from hiding and thus broke the dynamic of the civil war. Sunni militants have now been identified, their biometric data have been collected and their groups are being monitored. They cannot easily go back to jihad. The Shiite ruling elites, secure in their hold on the country, have less to gain by ethnic cleansing and militia rule. An adviser to surge commander Gen. David Petraeus told the reporter Nir Rosen that the civil war in Iraq would end when the Sunnis knew that they'd lost and the Shiites knew that they'd won. Both now seem to be true.

Ah, only wrong in "some ways." I guess if we're charitable.

Of course, Zakaria's as influential as he's ever been, although his boss, Newsweek Magazine, could be well on its final legs. And CNN's not doing so hot in the ratings on top of that. So who knows how long GPS will hang around.

When Zakaria wrote in 2006 that we ought to consider the "drawdown option," it was indeed a dark period for America's campaign in Iraq. I never lost sight of the rightness of our project, and I certainly didn't advocate pulling out the troops. The Bush administration turned things around in one of the greatest military comebacks in all of U.S. history. For all of G.W.'s flaws, he'll have my endless gratitude for seeing the war through. That will be his greatest legacy, and his historical legacy will rise on that fact.