Kissinger admits victory not possible in Iraq

By Michael J.W. Stickings

According to Henry Kissinger, in an interview today with the BBC as reported by the AP, victory in Iraq is impossible:

If you mean by “military victory” an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible.”

The problem is that “[a] dramatic collapse of Iraq — whatever we think about how the situation was created — would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region”. Therefore: “I think we have to redefine the course, but I don’t think that the alternative is between military victory, as defined previously, or total withdrawal.” His concrete proposals are to engage the U.N. Security Council and Iraq’s neighbours and to turn Iraq into a confederation of loosely autonomous regions.

As reported by the L.A. Times, Kissinger claims to be “a friend of the administration who thinks well of the president”. Which is enough to throw his credibility, such as he has much left regardless, into disrepute. However, what he is essentially saying here is that Bush’s misadventure in Iraq has been a failure. We know that already, but it’s nice to hear directly from Kissinger.

But then, if he’s right, how do you continue a military campaign when victory is no longer possible?

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On a related note, here's Josh Marshall (via Atrios) on Bush's comparison of Iraq to Vietnam -- in Vietnam:

Isn't this trip a really odd venue for the president to be arguing that staying the course basically forever is the only acceptable solution? Though it took a tragically long time, the US, for all the moonwalking, eventually decided to pull up stakes in Vietnam...

And yet here we have President Bush, stepping on to Vietnamese soil to further our rapprochement with Vietnam, and arguing, in so many words, that the lesson of Vietnam is that we should still be there blowing the place up thirty years later.

We're really deep into the primitive brainstem phase of our long national nightmare of presidential denial and mendacity on Iraq. Poetically, politically and intellectually it's appropriate that Henry Kissinger is now along for the ride.

Well put.