NIEs and Presidential Blind Spots

The Geek has been reading NIEs and SNIE's (pronounced "knees" and "sneeze") for beaucoup years. Most have been classified "Burn Before Reading"

OK. That's not true. The documents have only been at the "Top Secret" or "Secret" level, but for all the good most did they might as well have been burned before anyone read them.

National Intelligence Estimates and Special National Intelligence Estimates are supposed to present the best consensual analysis of the US intelligence community. Very often this has meant that the final document is a collection of conflicting points of view sometimes homogenized into a blandly Delphic form that balances every "on this hand" with an equal and opposing "but on the other."

As guidance for decision makers, many of the knees and sneeze I have read are as useful as holding a pool cue while wearing boxing gloves. This is background for the Geek's less than enthusiastic opening of the latest NIE on Iraq.

The reading rapidly dispelled the anxiety. In comparison to the majority I have waded through with much eye-rolling and head-shaking, this NIE is clear, concise, and cogently presented. The number of "yes-but's" is low. (The cynic always resident in the Geek's brain has to wonder if the number of contradictions and demurrers is artificially low since the document was going to go public now and not twenty some years from now after some poor historian has waded through all the Freedom of Information Act morass.)

The main thrusts of the knee are quite unsurprising. Even so lowly a figure as the Geek has posted on them in past weeks.

On the one hand, the surge has had some real, albeit slight, payoffs in improving the security situation in Iraq. In parallel is the completely unshocking conclusion that a premature, or overly large draw down in US forces will undo the gains to date.

Good so far. Now for the big Yes-But.

On the other hand, the Iraqi government is incompetent, inept, and internally fissioned to a dangerous degree. There has been no significant progress in the improvement of the government's capacity to govern and none can be expected in the near-term.

The second major analytical thrust will give fuel to those who feel (the Geek used the emotional term intentionally as most critics seem to feel rather than think, reason, conclude or assess) that the US effort in Iraq has either already failed or is doomed to fail. Be that as it may, there is no surprise in the conclusion. Anyone who is reasonably well oriented as to time and place has been aware for months that the current Iraqi government is a government in name only. It lacks both existential and functional legitimacy and shows no immediate prospects of gaining either.

That's bad. Very bad. Worse, there is little the US can do about the situation. The Iraqi politicians have proven themselves impervious to appeals, immune to threats, and indifferent to persuasion. The Iraqi people are too busy trying to stay alive while caught in the crossfire or too preoccupied with the details of daily life in a place without ready access to many of the necessities of life to seek a change.

There's the dilemma for We the People. Part of our effort to clean up the mess we made in the spring of 2003 is working, not well, but nonetheless working. The other part, the portion that is more important over the years to come, is not.

In the past fifty years or so, ever since knees and sneeze became an integral part of the information flow to senior decision makers, presidents (and others) have seized upon those pronouncements which they wanted to read and ignored those which ran counter to desires. Since this knee is open all of us, Wallahs in Congress, Experts in Academia, Ideologues in the Media, even We the People, can read those parts of the document we want to see and ignore the rest.

The Geek hopes that at least some of We the People will not be as tunnel visioned as, say, Lyndon Johnson, who ignored the sneeze that said bombing North Vietnam wasn't working. The Geek hopes that at least some of the Wallahs in Congress will be more historically minded and able to accept that political effectiveness, political cohesion between cultural rivals with decades of bad feelings to set aside, can not occur in a few months or even a few years.

The political problems in Iraq are not susceptible to an easy solution. Further, the solution can not be imposed from outside. Whether the ultimate solution is one of further integration or complete separatism under some sort of loose federation is not for the Geek or anyone outside of Iraq to say. Neither can the Geek nor anyone dictate how much time the Iraqis must spend on the task.

All that the Geek can say, on the basis of history, is that governments don't spring into full, effective existence during the chaos of internal war.

The US can and has been doing something about the war. Our efforts along with those of the improving but far from good-for-go Iraqi forces have been lowering the noise level across the country. The first real steps have been taken up the long, steep mountain of success, or not-losing the war.

You want a fearless prediction?

OK. The Geek will edge out on the limb. Given the current indicators (efforts of Sunni tribals against al-Qaeda, number of dimes dropped on insurgents by citizens, patterns of refugee flows, number of counterproductive insurgent killings of civilians), the Geek predicts that twelve months hence the stability level will be such that most US combat troops can be withdrawn. Twelve months from now, the situation will be such that the Iraqis can demand and get the government of their choice.

We've spent four and a half years trying to clean up after ourselves. Is one more year too much to spend?

No.

And, that's the big message of this week's knee