Time for a National Debate on Plan B

ALI AL-SAADI/AFP/Getty ImagesNext steps: The United States needs to decide on a Plan B before the Iraq conflict passes it by.

President George W. Bush recently announced a controversial plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. Even as Congress heatedly debates the merits of the surge, it is not too soon to plan what to do if it fails. Americans must begin a national debate now about Plan B. Failure to do so might result in de facto support for genocidal violence, with the added risk that Iraqs neighbors could escalate their own role in the conflict.

There are no good options for addressing Iraqs ongoing civil war, only three bad ones: Maintain a neutral stance and attempt to use a mix of coercion and security to facilitate national reconciliation; take sides; or let the conflict burn itself out. The presidents new plancall it Plan Aembraces the first option. But if beefing up the U.S. troop presence in Baghdad and Anbar province fails to limit the violence by this summer, the United States could find itself forced to choose between two competing visions of Plan B: taking sides or getting out.

The first option calls on the United States to take sides in Iraqs ethnic and sectarian conflict. It is sometimes referred to as the 80 percent solution, because it sides with the majority Shiites and Kurds in their attempts to bring Sunni insurgents to heel. Neoconservatives and administration hawks who support this strategy say it will produce undeniable facts on the ground for the Sunni minority. For the Sunnis must come to know that they will lose everything if they dont abandon violence as their principal political tool, wrote Reuel Marc Gerecht, a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, in The Wall Street Journal. Even some realist critics of the administration have suggested this alternative. Since no American gesture of inclusion and pacification can propitiate the recalcitrant Sunni minority, its time to side with the elected Shiite government, argued Nikolas Gvosdev, editor of The National Interest, and Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a recent Financial Times editorial.

Implementing this strategy would probably entail abandoning strenuous efforts at national reconciliation, drawing down U.S. troops to a sustainable level, and leaving those remaining to advise, train, and support the Shiite- and Kurd-dominated Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). A smaller number of dedicated U.S. Special Forces would focus on raids against high-value Sunni targets, especially elements of al Qaeda in Iraq. The United States would seek to balance support for the Shiites in Iraq with a confrontational stance toward Shiite Iran in the hopes of maintaining regional cooperation from moderate Sunni Arab states like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt.

Taking sides was one of the alternatives considered by the Bush administration, according to media reports, and it may represent the administrations current Plan B if the surge fails. It would also sit well with most Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish politicians, who believe the main security challenge in Iraq is not their own militias, but the Sunni insurgency.

Many Democrats will coalesce around a different Plan B: getting out. Fueled by rising public discontent over the war and a looming presidential election, they seem poised to embrace calls for an orderly withdrawal of most U.S. combat forces over the next 12 to 18 months, combined with other steps to manage the consequences of disengagement. Most Democrats believe that victory, at least in the presidents grandiose terms, is a pipe dream. Instead, Washington should shift its objectives to managing and mitigating the worst humanitarian and geopolitical fallout from continued violence in Iraq.

U.S. troops would redeploy out of the line of fire, leaving the civil war to largely burn itself out. At the same time, the United States would try to lessen civilian suffering through targeted economic aid, peacefully relocating civilian populations into defensible enclaves and protecting refugees (perhaps in support of a Bosnia-style de facto partition), and helping the thousands of Iraqis who collaborated with the U.S. occupation and seek to flee their country before the death squads come for them. By engaging all of Iraqs neighbors, including Iran and Syria, the United States would seek to prevent Iraqs civil war from becoming a regional conflagration.

These two possible Plan Bs have different strategic and moral implications. From a national security perspective, taking sides might give the United States at least some influence over events and the policies pursued by the Iraqi government, help prevent the establishment of an al Qaeda safe haven, and deter outside states from intervening out of fear that they would come into conflict with U.S. troops. Staying in the fight might also help maintain U.S. credibility by avoiding the perception that the United States yet again abandoned its Iraqi alliesprincipally the Shiites and Kurdsor retreated in the face of jihadi attacks.

Taking sides might actually be the most moral option too. Whether U.S. forces stay or go, the Shiite and Kurd-dominated ISF are likely to go after certain segments of the Sunni population aligned with the insurgency. And, as the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq concludes, in the wake of a rapid withdrawal, the ISF would be unlikely to survive as a non-sectarian national institution. In this context, embedding U.S. forces with Iraqis and attempting to professionalize the ISF, rather than withdrawing altogether, might be the only way to minimize atrocities.

On the other hand, an orderly withdrawal has its advantages. Taking sides would keep both U.S. troops and credibility mired in Iraq. It would make it more difficult to marshal significant forces and political capital to address other pressing challenges like Afghanistan and Iran. And if, in taking sides, the administration fully embraces the logic of the 80 percent solution, it risks U.S. complicity in a final solution for the 5 million Sunnis in Iraq. Beyond the obvious moral implications here, empowering the Shiite majority and its efforts to crush Iraqi Sunnis might cause the fragile coalition of Sunni Arab states Washington is currently stitching together to fly apart. Moreover, as the declassified 2006 NIE on terrorism recognized, the perception of the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq feeds the anti-Americanism that drives jihadi recruitment around the world. It might therefore be preferable to withdraw U.S. support from the Iraqi government altogether rather than risk being a party to genocidal violence and the spark for a regionwide sectarian war and greater terrorism worldwide.

Given the strategic and moral stakes, we should hope that President Bushs new plan indeed spurs important Iraqi political changesa new oil law, a rollback of de-Baathification, local elections that empower Sunnis, demobilization of militias, etc.that produce genuine national reconciliation. But we should not count on it. Instead of fixating on the pros and cons of the surge (which, for all intents and purposes, is a done deal), the U.S. public and Congress should be thoroughly analyzing the options for Plan B while there is still time for reasonable debate. Discussion needs to start now, not six or nine months from now. If it doesnt, the likely result will either be another fait accompli by the Bush administration that puts in place its preferred Plan B if the surge fails, or a rushed withdrawal driven more by domestic politics in the United States than its geopolitical interests and humanitarian obligations in Iraq.