When is the American public going to realize that our continued presence in Iraq is not really about winning a war but rather taming a revolution that we ourselves unleashed?  When you invade a country, seize its capital, depose its leader, disband its army, and throw its bureaucratic elite out of work, you have in essence imposed a revolution on that country.  That’s precisely what we did in 2003 as we tried naively and ineptly to remake Iraq as a democracy, or at least a simulacrum of democracy.  This new Iraq, allied of course with the U.S., was supposed to give a voice to the common people, serving as a beacon of freedom to other states in the Middle East.  Or so it was pitched by those who subscribed to neo-con visions of the unqualified benevolence and irresistible potency of American military power.

We won the military part easily enough.  We overthrew Saddam and got rid of his WMD, if only from our somewhat feverish and overworked imaginations.  But as we attempted to remake Iraq in our image, we unleashed a revolution – a fact we still haven’t fully owned up to.  And the result has been disaster.

Compounding the disaster was our insistence on viewing Iraq as a “war,” as yet another front in the global fight against terror.  Such a template was as misleading as it was limiting.  The framework of war answered questions even before they were asked, as well as sidelining other questions and concerns.  When you viewed Iraq as a war within a war, a knee-jerk response was to insist we must “win” it, for there’s no substitute for victory in an existential war on terror.  In a similar vein, many Americans further believed that if the Iraq “war” was truly the central battlefront in the war on terror, we had to be prepared and willing to restrict criticism of our government so as to avoid giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The Need for a Different Template

But what if Iraq is not a war?  What if we use a different template?  Let’s eschew the war rhetoric and instead consider Iraq as a country in the throes of a profound revolution that we helped to manufacture.  And if for the moment you accept that template, you may arrive at different answers about the proper role of our military in Iraq, both now and in the future.

Of course, you’d never even consider this template if you listened only to the simplistic, solipsistic, and soporific presidential “debates.”  For John McCain, Iraq was all about staying the course to American victory (the criteria of which he wasn’t asked to define) while achieving “peace with honor.”  His goal was to redeem the sacrifices of American troops (Iraqi sacrifices were ignored).

For Barack Obama, Iraq was all about pulling out (most) U.S. troops, following a seemingly prudent timeline of sixteen months (which some are already saying is not prudent enough).  Stressing that American taxpayers were generously contributing $10 billion a month to rebuild Iraq, while a seemingly ungrateful Iraqi government piled up scores of billions in oil-related profits, Obama called for shifting the war’s burden to the Iraqis as U.S. forces withdrew.

The Anatomy of Iraq’s Revolution

But we must not view Iraq as being synonymous with a “war” we must either “win” or at least end.  Iraq is in the middle of a political and social revolution that we started.  Post-Saddam Iraq has already endured its “regime change” phase (2003-04) and its “reign of terror” phase (2004-07), where hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died and millions more became refugees.  It is now apparently in its “Thermidorean” phase (2007-08), a relaxation in violence partly attributable to the U.S. military-led “surge” but in fact due more to Iraqi exhaustion after four years of bloodletting.

What will 2009-10 bring to revolutionary Iraq?  A new strong man, a further reduction in violence, another reign of terror?  It’s likely to bring a lot more trouble if we continue to think of Iraq merely as a “war” in which we must prevail instead of a revolution whose resolution lies largely outside of our control.

The big question in the immediate future is whether rival Iraqi factions are truly set on achieving a modus vivendi for sharing power, or whether they are simply biding time, waiting for the U.S. military to leave before embarking again on another revolutionary reign of terror.

We are no longer, if we ever were, disinterested power brokers.  We may, however, be able to mitigate an inadvertent relapse into revolutionary bloodletting.  One worrisome scenario envisioned by an Army officer intimately involved in Iraqi politics posited client-based groups and parties, and even large tribes becoming embroiled in a localized conflict in the future that flares into general engagement, with Iran playing the role of provocateur and spoiler.  Under such a scenario, our role would be to serve as a stabilizing counterweight, supporting a legitimate Iraqi government in its efforts to avoid a resurgence of revolutionary bloodletting abetted by Iran.

Solving Iraq’s Rubik’s Cube

Colin Powell’s so-called “Pottery Barn” doctrine – “You break it, you bought it” – at least had the virtue of recognizing that we did indeed break Iraq.  Like it or not, the U.S. has a moral obligation to help stabilize and restore the country.  Here the surge of 2007 has helped, yet even General Petraeus admits that today’s relative calm is both “fragile” and “reversible.”  A U.S. Army battalion commander told me two weeks ago that Iraq remains “a Rubik’s cube of cross cutting rivalries and vengeances.”

How do we solve this revolutionary Rubik’s cube?  This officer remained guardedly optimistic.  “Although the cynical will scoff,” he admitted, “there are[,] no-kidding[,] Iraqi patriots who want to reinvest in the country.  The Iraqi security forces are getting better. We went through a period of shedding opportunists and incompetents and a simultaneous time of leaders lining their own pockets with seed corn/priming water before they became conditioned to confidence in the future and could lower corruption and graft.”  How do we empower these patriots – the future rebuilders and peacemakers of Iraq?

Our military has learned the hard way that Iraq resists simple solutions.  And that’s because Iraq is experiencing a revolution every bit as unsettling as our own revolutions, whether we choose the year 1777 or 1863.

Humility needs to replace hubris: We must recognize that “victory” in the Iraqi revolution is ultimately in their hands, not ours.  And we must admit the limits of U.S. military power to facilitate a solution.   It’s been said you can do anything with a bayonet but sit on it – and the Iraqis no longer wish to sit on our bayonets as they work through their problems.

If, despite our collective efforts to head it off, revolutionary unrest surges again in Iraq, are we honest enough to admit our culpability as well as the limits of our own power to remake the world?  Or will we once again play the blame game and demand, “Who lost Iraq,” even though it was we who started the revolution?

Just before I retired from the Air Force in 2005, I shared a few words of goodbye with an Iraqi-American officer in my unit.  After consenting to exchanging kisses with him (a sign of affection and honor in Iraqi culture, and the first time I’ve kissed a scraggly cheek since I was a kid), he left me with an optimistic message.  I don’t recall his exact words, but the gist of it was that although things in Iraq looked dire, ordinary, decent Iraqis would soon come to the fore and renew the country of his birth.

His guarded optimism reminded me that there is hope for Iraq, and it resides in the Iraqi people themselves.  And as we withdraw our combat forces, let us do whatever we can to empower peace-loving Iraqis to win back their country from revolutionaries intoxicated by bloodlust – especially those we ourselves helped to create and empower.