Andrew J. Bacevich on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan

Andrew J. Bacevich was an early and prominent critic of the war in Iraq. A graduate of West Point, a Vietnam veteran, and a conservative Catholic, Bacevich has argued in a number of widely read essays and op-eds that the invasion of Iraq was illicit and imprudent and is deflecting attention from the larger fight against terrorism. Bacevich is a professor of international relations at Boston University. He has written several books; his last, The New American Militarism, is an account of the role of the military in American culture. Last May, Bacevich’s son, also named Andrew Bacevich, was killed in action in Iraq. The younger Bacevich, a First Lieutenant in the army, was 27. I spoke with Andrew Bacevich by telephone; our conversation has been edited and condensed.

Your lecture at UCSB is titled “Iraq-Managing the Consequences of Failure,” and you recently wrote in the Washington Post that at best the “surge” has created a stalemate. Why isn’t the surge the success it has been touted as by members of the Bush administration, and very prominently at the moment, by John McCain? The purpose of the surge, as it was explained by its architects, was to create the opportunity for Iraqis to negotiate some kind of political reconciliation that would bring the conflict to an end. It is certainly true that the surge reduced the occurrence of violence in Iraq. But it has not brought about that political reconciliation. Iraq has become a dependency of the United States, rather than a sovereign nation able to manage its own affairs.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been talking about a “pause” in the surge. What do you think we should do in Iraq? My view is that the war is militarily un-winnable, and to continue to pay something in the order of about $2 billion to $3 billion a week to continue to lose 30 to 40 American lives a month is a bad investment. It’s a misuse of our resources, resources that ought to be used elsewhere-for example, Afghanistan. I think we ought to end U.S. combat involvement in Iraq [and] we ought to get serious about putting together a coalition of nations who share a common interest in ensuring that the fate of Iraq doesn’t pull the rest of the region down behind it. It seems to me that almost everybody in the region, including the Iranians, have a common interest in stability.