Out? Not So Fast. Our Military Bases in Iraq Are Essential

[Note: First published on September 22, 2004 as WHY WE ARE IN IRAQ : Military Bases Are A Requirement, Democracy is Merely an Elective. Only the names have changed. The songs remain the same.]

"Did you ever get the feeling that you wanted to go?
And still get the feeling that you wanted to stay?"
-- Jimmy Durante

Resolved: To safeguard the personal and economic wellbeing of the civilized world in the 21st century, it is essential for the United States to control Iraq for strategic and tactical military purposes alone.

Let's take a step back from our always entertaining electoral circus to cast a cold eye on what needs to be done in Iraq beyond November and far beyond 2005. Don't watch the hand waving the magic wand around, watch the hand held behind the back. It holds what is going to be pulled out of the hat.

Instead of spending untold hours listening to this or that speech from the two sides of the American coin, it's more instructive to take down an atlas, turn to a spread displaying the middle-east and meditate on what needs to be done to control that section of the world.

And while you're at it here's a couple of things you can forget about:

• 1) Democracy in Iraq at all costs.
Forget that "We" are in Iraq to bring the blessings of "democracy" to the people. It would be a nice gift to instill "democracy" in an Islamic state of the middle-east. We will spend a lot of money trying to achieve this. We will be sincere in our desire for it to be born. It will make our task easier in the short and long term. But "democracy" is not strictly necessary for the current strategic interests of the United States in the region.

• 2) Troops home "sooner" or "later."
Forget the idea that our troops are coming home any time soon. We are going to be in Iraq for the long haul. The only question is "how many troops will be stationed there?"

That answer turns on the general approach to fighting the war. That current strategy and tactics employed in Iraq are being driven by political needs in the United States is an obvious statement. Our current restrained approach will not, nor is it designed to, continue long past November 2 of this year. If you would have fewer casualties, the best way to achieve this is to reduce your enemy's soldiers wholesale.

This is not to say that the current politically-determined military actions in Iraq are wrong. Just the opposite. Too much is at stake in Iraq to be undone by the victory of a faction of the American political class that has shown it cannot be trusted with the strategic needs of the nation in the coming decades. To defeat the dedicated enemies of the United States abroad, it is also necessary to defeat a mistaken political culture at home.

Many things are said during an election, but the truth seldom on the list. That's axiomatic. The goal is to win and the prize is power. Victory and power are two elements that readily combine into molecules of falsity and misdirection in electoral politics.

Of late, the largest dust cloud of lies cast into what passes for "public discourse" concerns two different ways of hinting towards the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. Even when we know in our bones that we are in a long war, Americans of all political leanings still like to hear that it is going to be a short one. And both parties are happy to oblige our needs.

If we listen to the subtext of John Kerry we assume, from his statements, semaphores and metaphors, that the troops will be coming home "soon" after his election; i.e. within the year.

If we listen to the subtext being generated by the same mechanisms within President's camp, we might think that the troops are coming home "later," but certainly after just one more year.

In the first instance, we are being led to believe that our troops will be out of Iraq in 2005. In the second, we probably think they will be out in 2006, probably on the early side.

Both these signals are pure noise.

American forces will be in Iraq five years from now, more likely ten, probably 20, depending on how that part of the world shakes out and what sort of attacks it will be able to mount outside its core at targets in the Western nations. We will not remain in Iraq for "democracy" (Although we will spend treasure and lives to try and create one.), nor will we be there for the "benefit" of the Iraqi people (Although overall they will reap benefits in terms of treasure and improved lives.). We will remain in Iraq for one concrete reason alone: We need to have military bases there.

In this increasing conflict between Islamic fundamentalism and the civilized world, it is an absolute military necessity that America have a robust network of bases located at the center of mass of the Islamic world. If you clear you mind of either wishing for a lasting peace or hoping for an early victory, and simply look at the map of the Middle East you will know the road ahead is long, brutal and filled with hard choices.

If you can assume a military cast of mind, ask yourself, "What must we do to prevail in a war that is global but centered in the Middle East, and can possibly last for 20 years?" One of the most immediate answers is that you need to control significant amounts of real estate at the core of the struggle.Given the nature of the war, nothing else will answer across a long struggle. It is close to a certainty that this answer first appeared in the minds of professional military men around noon on September 11, 2001.

To the question of which nation a military mind would choose to conquer in the Middle East, Iraq is the only one that answers. Following the capture of Afghanistan, the map together with tactical realities dictates that Iraq be conquered by, and remain under the control of, the United States into the indefinite future for five core reasons:

• 1) The conquest of Iraq could be easily achieved.

No American military professional likes a costly victory. Iraq in 2002 was, by any measure, the country that could be taken with the smallest cost in American and civilian lives. Of the rotten apples in the bin, it had the deepest rot in all aspects of its military and political structures. Given the long history of defiance against the United Nations, it was also possible to bring other countries into the effort, as was done.

Saudi Arabia was, and is, an ostensible ally. It is also, given the House of Saud's global influence, currently untouchable in political terms. Positioning to Saudi Arabia's flank was, however, desirable. Syria, essentially landlocked and not really much of a prize in terms of resources, was clearly not worth the candle. You could conquer Syria, but if you did, what would you have? Nothing significant in either strategic or political terms. And you risked an alliance between Saddam and Iran -- an updated Hitler-Stalin pact.

Iran was (and daily becomes) a tougher nut to crack and would have been, absent a change in the general American approach to war, a long struggle that still would have left Iraq in play. And neither Syria, Saudi Arabia, nor Iran possessed the key resource of the region -- of which more below.

• 2) Iraq is the "high ground" of the middle-east.

Iraq borders Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran -- the centers of our enemy's military, financial and demographic strength. Our present advantage of being able to strike in any direction at any time with sufficient stores of supplies and munitions on hand, requires that these core states place themselves on permanent alert and in a defensive posture. This draws down the resources that can be used to create mischief elsewhere. In the event of a full-scale struggle in that region, land air bases that sortie in many directions at once, including the ability to land and refuel and rearm in Isreal is a trump card. Large concentrations of armor on the ground also add to the force that can be rapidly brought to bear.

In addition, control of Iraq compels hostile elements to move trained forces into the killing zones of Iraq to deny the United States a fait accompli. While our losses in Iraq have not been insignificant, the loses of our enemies exceeds ours by many orders of magnitude. The only hope for victory by our enemies is through a political attrition within the United States. The real attrition on the ground runs against him as long as he sends more forces to the fight. That rate of attrition will only increase with the coming end of the "patty-cake" phase on the part of American forces. This will become more brutally apparent after the November elections, or a second strike on US home soil, whichever comes first. In the event of the latter, the civilian populations of these countries will also come under attack as the United States shifts fully out of the current moderate war posture.

• 3) Control of Iraq completes the encirclement of Iran.

With fortified US bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkey, Iran is bracketed and can, if necessary, be taken out of play as a military threat if not a political one. Iran knows this which is why it is so desperate to bring its atomic weapons on line. They will, alas, not avail Iran, but are the only option open to that government short of capitulation. That this fact is tending towards a tragic end is clear.

• 4) Control of Iraq permits protection and control the Saudi oil fields without being "in" Saudi Arabia.

Regardless of the evil nature of the House of Saud, it does not threaten the world with incipient economic disaster. An Islamic fundamentalist government would be a very different animal. With no connections to the West and yearning for a 9th century way of life, such a government would have both the power and the will to plunge the world into an extended economic depression that would make the Great Depression look like roughing it for a weekend in a national park.

Much like nuclear weapons, it has been so long since the world has had a sustained and devastating economic collapse, there is little cultural memory of how grisly such a situation can become. Like nuclear weapons detonated in the atmosphere, we do not need a live demo of such a world-wide collapse in order jog our memory.

Reducing our need for oil is a nice goal, but it will also take the better part of 20 years if it was launched today. Oil reduction is not a strategic possibility in the short term.

While it may be too late to prop up the House of Saud, the world will need be able to control and maintain the oil fields should that government be overthrown. The only means by which this can be done is through a rapid and decisive military response into Saudi Arabia. A period of three to six months for a buildup of men, munitions, and supplies to do this will be unacceptable and disastrous. The Saudi oil fields need to be secured within two weeks. The only power capable of this is the United States military and that only if it is already supplied, on the ground, and able to respond.

• 5) Control of Iraq is not about the oil, it's about the water.

To be able to alter and control the facts on the ground in the Middle East across a ten to twenty year period, Iraq is essential in a way that again becomes obvious from merely looking at the map of the country. It was popular among the Left to say, in the buildup to the war, that "It's About the Oil." As is often the case, they were wrong. Oil is an important resource in Iraq but it is not the most important resource that Iraq controls.

What Iraq has that Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia do not is not oil, but fresh water. In fact, Iraq has almost all of the fresh water in the region. It is water that determines life in the Middle East and there's not a lot of it. The two largest rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, flow down the core of Iraq before bending towards Iran to share those waters briefly with Iran before meeting the ocean. No other country gets so much of a taste unless Iraq agrees. Iran has little fresh water as does Syria. Saudi Arabia has almost none. It is one thing to control oil fields. The wealth from that resource can buy desalination plants that give your expanding population the water to survive. If the oil tap is cut off, the economies of the west would begin to wither and die within three months. Cut off water and populations begin to die within three days.

Given these five reasons derived from the facts on the ground in late 2004, it would be suicidal for the United States to withdraw militarily from Iraq for at least ten years and probably 20. The level of forces needed to maintain control can fluctuate as the situation dictates, but the presence of significant forces is a necessity.

This is not to say that the United States will not withdraw, but only to underscore the price of such foolishness. The United States has, through bad politics, misdirection and clouded thinking, made monstrous errors of judgment in the past and is certainly capable of doing so in the future. It is only to say that should we, through a posturing for mere political power at home, cede military control of Iraq and hence the Middle East before the matter of Islamic fundamentalism is settled, and the Islamic cultures fully assimilated into the 21st century, departure early would only require our subsequent return. And that return will be far more bloody and necessary than anything seen to date in what is still a brush-fire war.

Posted by Vanderleun at October 7, 2007 12:00 PM