WGBH News: Moulton Aims to Spur Iraq Thinking

By: David Bernstein

Public discussion of America’s role in Iraq, to the extent there is any, has hardly been edifying. In fact, it’s barely been tethered to reality. Hillary Clinton, during the recent prime-time NBC forum on foreign policy, pledged that “we’re not going to put ground troops in Iraq ever again”—a vow seemingly at odds with the presence of some 5,000 U.S. troops there now, albeit technically in non-combat roles, not to mention requests from military leaders for hundreds more. Donald Trump, the same evening, called for militarily seizing Iraq’s oil fields, in the face of international law and logistical reality.

As for the current president; well, to hear Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton tell it, the Barack Obama administration has been muddling along without a defined political strategy for Iraq’s future. That clear plan is needed, Moulton has argued, to provide the context for making decisions about our military involvement.

Moulton, a veteran who served in Iraq, and who now sits of the House Armed Services Committee, has visited Iraq three times since taking office less than two years ago.

Giving up, finally, on hearing a strategic plan from the administration, Moulton offered his own last week, in a speech at the United States Institute of Peace.

“I’ve been banging on the doors of the administration, asking them to put forward a strategy,” Moulton told me in a telephone interview.

Moulton also expresses disappointment in the absence of a strategic plan for Iraq from Clinton, who he has endorsed, though he told me that he has confidence that Clinton herself, as well as those advising her, understand the approach needed going forward.

And if either Obama or Clinton were annoyed with the brash freshman congressman, for putting forward his own plan to highlight their lack of one, they haven’t shown it.

“I have not had one phone call with blowback” from the speech, he said. “I would tell you if I had.”

In fact, he says, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright—a strong supporter and confidant of Clinton’s—called him with praise two days after he gave the speech.

“She said she loved it, and wants to show it to people,” he said.

Moulton’s four-part plan focuses on defining what a stable Iraq should look like, and outlining the steps toward that. It suggests that America commit to more military support, but condition that support on the Iraqi government’s progress on political reforms.

What’s striking is how many of the issues raised by Moulton are familiar from debates over the course of the 13-year U.S. entanglement in Iraq. Those include whether to keep Iraq whole or partition it; central versus local control of provinces; effects of de-Ba’athification of the government; rooting out corruption; revenue-sharing between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government; lack of a memorandum of understanding governing U.S. involvement; and countering Iran’s influence.

All have proved easier to identify than to solve—or to keep from recurring.

A growing isolationist strain of thinking, seemingly embraced by Trump, would have the U.S. leave all that to the Iraqis. Other critics argue that the complexities of the war against ISIS make it impractical, or foolhardy, to invest so much energy into a long-term strategic plan for Iraq.

“Some people will say you can’t have an Iraq plan without a Syria plan,” Moulton conceded. “But you have to start somewhere.”

You can read the full article here.