Stephen Biddle probably isn’t a household name, but he’s a pretty serious player on foreign policy. Biddle is not only a senior defense policy analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, but he’s also served as an advisor to Gen. David Petraeus.
In an important Washington Post op-ed, Biddle argues that lawmakers should stop looking for some kind of compromise, ISG-inspired, Plan-B policy in Iraq. He’s noticed several Republican senators who say they no longer back the president’s failed approach, but they don’t like the Dems’ policy either, and so they want something that resembles a middle ground. Biddle explains that it doesn’t exist.
If the surge is unacceptable, the better option is to cut our losses and withdraw altogether. In fact, the substantive case for either extreme — surge or outright withdrawal — is stronger than for any policy between. The surge is a long-shot gamble. But middle-ground options leave us with the worst of both worlds: continuing casualties but even less chance of stability in exchange. Moderation and centrism are normally the right instincts in American politics, and many lawmakers in both parties desperately want to find a workable middle ground on Iraq. But while the politics are right, the military logic is not.
As Yglesias put it, “Withdrawing tens of thousands of Americans is only going to leave the tens of thousands who remain in a more dangerous and fundamentally untenable position. If we want to withdraw troops — and we should — we need to get essentially all the way out.”
