Where's The Strategy?

Michael Rubin, of AEI and the Middle East Quarterly, has an important piece in today's Wall Street Journal. (subscription required) Rubin draws parallels between Iran's strategy for Lebanon from the early 1980's onward to Iran's strategy for today's Iraq. The analogy reveals some important trends and developments inside Iraq that have gone largely unanswered by the Bush administration. So much so that Rubin writes, "the White House has lost focus."

Rubin writes,

While journalists concentrate on the daily blood, Iraqis describe a larger pattern which U.S. officials have failed to acknowledge let alone address: Step-by-step, Iranian authorities are replicating in Iraq the strategy which allowed Hezbollah to take over southern Lebanon in the 1980s. The playbook -- military, economic and information operation -- is almost identical.

He points to plenty of examples covering the gamut from terrorist-style assymetric warfare to economic influence to information warfare. IED's that kill American troops and Iraqi civilians every day have taken on a progessively more Hezbollah-inspired design. Iran has a long-term strategy for building influence through mullah-friendly militias, whereas the U.S. prefers short-term peace. Iranian cash solves everyday problems for Iraqi civilians (food, clothing, etc.) while a State Department representative stubbornly declares, "We don't believe in bags of money in the middle of the night like [the Iranians] do."

Rubin does not print a pretty picture.

For a while now I have wondered what the administration's strategy was for dealing with Iran's interference in Iraq. Bit and pieces of what we can only hope is a real strategy have trickled out here and there, but I am afraid that Rubin is correct when he writes:

Tehran has a formula for success in Iraq; Washington does not. Victory will require U.S. diplomats to recognize that any successful policy must include strategies not only to promote U.S. and Iraqi interests, but also to derail our adversaries' strategy. Iran's methods are clear. Less clear is U.S. resolve. The stakes in Iraq are high, and one side is playing for keeps. Are we?

Some readers are going to write to me saying that I am echoing the defeatism of so many others. That is not the case. I don't think that all hope is lost in Iraq. Far from it. The situation on the ground right now is a mixed bag, however. But when we look at the facts on the ground, as best as we can see them, we see a comprehensive Iranian strategy for victory. As Rubin correctly notes, we do not see a comprehensive counter-strategy coming out of the Bush administration.

On a side note: In discussing Iran's influence via Hezbollah Rubin notes, "The idea that Shiites do not arm Sunnis is taken far more seriously in Langley than in Lebanon." If you have been reading my work, then you know I am very critical of the U.S. intelligence community's penchant for drawing firm ideological boxes around various groups in the Middle East. Just as ideological differences do not preclude Shiite-Sunni cooperation in Lebanon or elsewhere, they didn't preclude cooperation between a certain secular Baathist regime and a certain Sunni Islamist terrorist group either.