SIX-POINT PLAN

Yesterday, in his weekly radio address to the nation, the President challenged those who oppose his new “surge” strategy for Iraq to offer a different plan. Okay, Mr. President, here is an alternative plan. It may not be perfect, but it sure beats yours.

1. Stop yakking about victory. By viewing the struggle in such classic terms, you and others who have disagreed with you but still speak in your language, such as Senator John McCain, are striving for an impossible goal. In your speech the other night, you finally acknowledged that, even if your proposed strategy is followed, the struggle in Iraq will not end in “victory” in the sense of signing surrender documents on the deck of a battleship. Yet you still set up victory as the goal.

2. Similarly, stop yakking about the only alternative to victory as being defeat and some sort of great Middle Eastern catastrophe. The Middle East is going to be a mess for decades if not generations. But it could be a controlled mess. The challenge is to prevent the level of chaos from rising too high.

3. Stop shifting the blame to the Iraqis. We are trying to impose a complex, sophisticated form of governance on a politically backward people. Chiding them for not “stepping up” is more a comment on our naiveté than on their abilities.

4. Stop trying to preserve the nation of Iraq. Ninety years ago—a mere hiccup in human history—there was no nation of Iraq. Iraq is the home of three distinct peoples: Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. Maybe we can find a way to hold them together under one sovereign entity, and maybe we can’t. But our focus ought to be on building from the bottom up rather than imposing a national government from the top down. Concentrate on forming three sub-governments, and if they eventually are able to come together, fine. If they can’t achieve a sort of federalism, it is not a catastrophe. And how come Joe Biden is the only U.S. national figure that shows awareness of Iraqi history?

5. Stop making the false argument that a “defeat” in Iraq will result in a safe haven for terrorists. First, as noted above, just as we will not achieve a classic “victory” in Iraq, so we will not also suffer a classic “defeat,” unless we insist on defining the outcome as such. Second, if even what results becomes a Taliban-like rogue state that has to be thrashed periodically, okay. We will still be fighting on their ground rather than ours.

6. Learn from those who oppose us. They practice subtly and nuance. We are the proverbial bull in the China shop, aggressively threatening, thrashing around, smashing everything within reach, creating an image of gross incompetence. Whatever happened to Teddy Roosevelt’s “speak softly and carry a big stick?”