Last chance for Iraq? A symposium on the war.

No issue has so shaped America's recent politics or defined its present role in the world as the Iraq War. NR asked a symposium of military experts, geopolitical thinkers, Middle East scholars, and conservative writers the two paramount questions: Are we winning; and, if not, how can we? Here is what they had to say.

DAVID FRUM

THE U.S. HAS NOT YET LOST IN IRAQ, BUT IT IS ON THE VERGE OF losing at home. Public opinion has turned strongly against the war, driven both by a torrent of bad news over the past three years and, especially, by the explosion of sectarian violence in Baghdad this summer. What's most urgently needed now is a strategy to restore order and government authority in Baghdad. A visible success in Iraq's highly televised capital would in turn strengthen resolve at home.

Will 4,000 U.S. troops redeployed from elsewhere in Iraq suffice to do the job? I don't know anyone who thinks that they will. Not for the first time, we are left to wonder: Does the Bush administration truly believe Iraq is as important as it says it is?

If we are to believe the administration's words--if Iraq is truly the central front in the war on terror--then what's needed now is a reinforcement of enough U.S. troops to retake Baghdad sector by sector and block by block, as the French retook Algiers in 1959. The operation would have to be conducted sensitively, with Iraqi forces visibly in the lead. At the same time, the U.S. would have to undertake a much more serious effort to sever the connections between Iran and its proxies in Iraq: not only doing a better job sealing the border, although that is important, but also engaging in political action to remove pro-Iranian officials from Iraqi ministries and security services.

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A dramatic and visible success in the capital would restore morale in the U.S.--and enhance the credibility of the elected government in Iraq.

But make no mistake: A fight like that would represent a major escalation of the U.S. commitment to Iraq, a reversal of an 18-month-long policy of de-escalation and de-commitment. And if the Bush administration, for its own reasons, cannot or will not do what is now necessary to win--well then, it had better begin seriously contemplating a fallback position, a Plan B. As it is, the sacrifices of U.S. troops and the effusion of U.S. treasure are succeeding only in slowing the pace of U.S. failure.

Mr. Frum is the author (with Richard Perle) of An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror.

NEWT GINGRICH

TODAY, IRAQ IS CERTAINLY NOT WHERE, IN EARLY 2003, WE HAD hoped it would be. If the current violence, instability, and confusion are measured against the planning assumptions of that period, this campaign to create a free and stable Iraq is clearly failing. What is still neither understood nor accepted is that Iraq is only one campaign in an emerging Third World War. Iraq is to our generation what Guadalcanal and North Africa were in the Second World War--important, but part a much bigger picture.

In that context, we must "think and act anew" to deal effectively in the much larger global conflict against the forces of terrorism and dictatorial regimes. Within that framework, we need a new commitment to winning in Iraq as one of the key campaigns in winning the larger war. The first step is to face some hard truths about Iraq, so we can fix the problems for the wider war:

* Our enemies' communications campaign is radically better than our own and all of our efforts to improve have been trivial compared with our opponents' agility and pervasiveness.

* Our intelligence capabilities inside Iraq remain weak five years after 9/11.

* Our language capabilities remain minimal.

* Our civilian instruments of national power remain lethargic and expensive.

* We have failed to deliver on our promises to the people of Iraq.

* We remain confused about our goals. Senior leaders continue to use terms with neutral connotations ("civil war") or positive ones ("insurgency") to describe the actions of uncivilized, brutal killers who are trying to defeat a government for which 80 percent of the Iraqis voted.

America has historically adapted quickly to the realities of war, and we can again--but it requires frankness from our elected leaders. The American people will support what it takes to win if offered a coherent, grounded path toward victory. It starts by ending the failures they see every day in the news.

Mr. Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America.

MARK HELPRIN 

ALTHOUGH IN GUERRILLAWAR CONTROL OF TERRITORY GUARANTEES little, after three and a half years we are not even safe in the Green Zone. Our civil projects, ambitious and elementary alike, are rotting and abandoned. With his left hand, the enemy continues to inflict upon us the steady accumulation of almost 3,000 American dead, while with his right he fights a savage civil war that we cannot stop, and arms for conventional battles to come.

Our combat arms are demoralized, our downwardly adjusted recruitment goals often unmet, our staple military strengths diminished as we suppress and neglect funding and upkeep, and our allies are leaving from embarrassment that we should fail and proclaim success nonetheless. We have shifted from righteous self-defense, and with 130,000 soldiers and a lot of machines mean to convert a score of nations and 1.2 billion people to our way from theirs, the most stubborn, static, and fanatical in history. These are long sentences, but it has been a long war.

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What might we do now that the patient is nearly dead? Fear of Iran forces us to resist the division of Iraq even as it divides before our eyes, but the Persians have not moved west since ancient times. Long lines of supply, mountains, deserts, and the whole of the Arab world have and will prevent this: Our air power alone could stop the Iranian military from such an extension.

Thus we should let Iraq divide according to natural equilibrium as inevitably it will, remount our armies, and base them in the desert safe from insurgency and able to reach Baghdad, Damascus, and Riyadh quickly and in strength to liquidate regimes that will not otherwise be coerced to eliminate the terrorists within their borders. Such regimes are or would be police states that could and--because they live to rule--would do so were we to imperil their existence. It is what we should have done in the first place, although it is now very late in the game.

Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute and a visiting fellow of Hillsdale College, is the author, most recently, of the novel Freddy and Fredericka. His website is www.MarkHelprin.com.

LAWRENCE F. KAPLAN 

IT WOULD BE NICE TO ARGUE, AS MANY ARGUED PLAUSIBLY ABOUT Vietnam, that the war is being lost only on the home front. (I have little to say to anyone who still maintains we are winning in Iraq, other than to recommend that he have a look for himself.) It would not, however, be true. The war is being lost on the home front, but it is also being lost in Iraq. There, the Bush administration's self-defeating preoccupation with keeping troop levels to a paltry minimum has all but guaranteed defeat. The other side has had a say in all this too. Twenty years ago, Gabriel Kolko looked back at Vietnam and wrote, "The nature of South Vietnamese society was not incidental to the U.S. effort, but a critical factor, by itself sufficient to determine whether Washington's fate would be victory or defeat." I think this analysis applies equally to Iraq, where the particulars of Saddam-era Iraqi society can hardly be said to have furthered America's cause.

As to what strategy makes the most sense given all this, the minimum requirement for victory in Iraq (though not a guarantee of it)--adequate levels of manpower--is precisely the requirement that has been rejected by the administration and everyone else besides. Even at their present levels, however, U.S. troops are the only thing standing between what we see on our television sets today and butchery on a scale that would rival the worst of Saddam Hussein's depredations. This does not mean we should garrison Iraq in perpetuity. But it does mean staying until, at a minimum, the Iraqi army has the means to subdue forces unleashed by our own actions.

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That we have been reduced to hoping for something not worse than what went in Iraq before the war has profound ideological and geopolitical implications for the United States. But, having urged war on the basis of both, ideology and geopolitics no longer have the same meaning for me. What keeps me up at night, and what informs my conviction that we cannot simply abandon Iraq, are thoughts of Iraqi friends and the American soldiers risking everything in their name.

Mr. Kaplan is a senior editor at The New Republic.

ROBERT D. KAPLAN 

I SUPPORTED THE INVASION OF IRAQ AND ALSO WARNED OF CHAOS if we did not secure the country fast. Are we losing? Yes. In counterinsurgencies, homefront perceptions and a willingness to win are more important than in conventional infantry struggles. That's because little is obvious in an unconventional battlefield. Victory doesn't simply follow a column of troops marching toward an objective. The side that controls the narrative wins the war. In this war, the homefront perceives a quagmire, while both the Defense Department and Central Command do not convey the hunger to win that the insurgents do. It may be that political and institutional constraints are working against our top Army generals and the civilian defense leadership to put them in a truly awful position--but war, like life, is not fair.

A good case can be made for ramping up troop numbers dramatically. A good case can also be made for drastically reducing them, leaving behind a force of Marines and special-operations soldiers embedded in the Iraqi security services: a classic imperial model. Much weaker is the case for what we are doing presently: for example, robbing Mosul of troops in order to move a few thousand to Greater Baghdad. Mosul, though it has made significant progress since 2004, is by no means secure.

Deserting Vietnam by cutting aid to the South after our military gains between 1968 and 1972 did, in fact, have a very direct domino effect. The cost was paid by millions of lives in Ethiopia, Angola, and elsewhere. The effect of deserting Iraq could be worse. There are two choices: flood Greater Baghdad with troops and take on the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr; or accept a long, small war that, perhaps, we can win over time by getting Iraq out of the headlines and using a variety of methods to undermine Syria and Iran.

Mr. Kaplan, the author of Imperial Grunts, is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly.

MICHAEL LEDEEN

ARE WE WINNING? NO, IF BY "WINNING" YOU MEAN "ENSURING stability all over Iraq." There are many areas where things are getting worse. Yes, if you mean "expanding areas of stability." Many areas, Kurdistan above all, are quite peaceful. But the "no" part is more important than the "yes" part, because, in key areas such as Baghdad and Basra, things are alarmingly bad.

What to do? First, recognize that the Iraqi enterprise rested on a failure of strategic vision: It was never possible to secure Iraq so long as Iran and Syria were left free to wage terror war against us. Our military, and some Iraqi units, are terrific, but you can't win a regional war by playing defense in one place. It is, as I have said ad infinitum, a sucker's game. Ergo, work for regime change in Iran and Syria, the only way to win the war. Mostly this requires vigorous support of revolution, although we have waited too long and it is more difficult than it once was. If we continue to dither, we will soon face two terrible options: surrender or bomb.

Mr. Ledeen, author most recently of The War Against the Terror Masters, is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.

RALPH PETERS

THE REAL QUESTION ISN'T WHETHER AMERICA IS WINNING OR losing, but whether the Arabs are defeating themselves again. Will Iraq be yet another tragic Arab failure? Despite profound mistakes during the occupation--especially under the spectacularly inept L. Paul Bremer--we've done everything possible to give Iraq's Arabs, Sunni and Shia, the chance to build a humane, rule-of-law democracy. It is a chance no other power could or would have given them. But seizing that chance is up to them.

The Kurds are doing fine and deserve our continued support if Iraq decomposes. It's still too early to throw up our hands and walk away, but it's high time to consider outcomes short of our hopes and to formulate Plan B (and Plans C, D, E, etc.). Meanwhile, there's a simple test to decide whether we should remain in Iraq much longer: Will Iraqis fight for their own government? The foreign terrorists and home-grown insurgents and militiamen are willing to die for their beliefs. Without an equal strength of will and spirit of sacrifice in support of their elected government, the remaining Iraqis will undoubtedly suffer the rule of the true believers.

I'd give the Iraqis one more year to pull themselves together. If by the summer of 2007 they have not rallied to their government with sufficient commitment to defeat the state's enemies, it will be time for us to leave. While we should avoid any publicized timetables for withdrawal, behind closed doors we must make it clear to Iraq's leaders that, if they can't rise above their squabbling and corruption and seize this chance to build a decent state, we won't remain indefinitely. And we must put an ever-increasing load on Iraq's security forces to avoid exacerbating their current welfare-dependency mindset.

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Yes, it would be a painful loss were Iraq to fail. But beware linear thinking: A post-American-presence civil war in Iraq might not be the worst thing for our strategic purposes. It would rupture the current Iran-Syria alliance and increase our value to Iraq's worried neighbors--and it just might become al-Qaeda's Vietnam.

Mr. Peters is a retired U.S. Army officer and the author, most recently, of Never Quit the Fight.

MICHAEL RUBIN

THE U.S. IS LOSING IN IRAQ BECAUSE AMERICAN POLITICIANS AND the general public have not decided they want or need to win. Many congressmen look at Iraq through the lens of the 2006 election: They care neither how their words embolden the enemy nor how their grandstanding impacts Iraq. Meanwhile, many commentators have cast accuracy aside to cater to, and cash in on, public ennui.

Iraqis are now as pessimistic as they have ever been. Corruption and organized crime run rampant. True, some metrics are positive: Oil production is on the rebound, shops are opening, agricultural production is up, and defense-ministry forces are increasingly trained and competent. But the corrupt police are running rampant.

While U.S. diplomats have become masters of their cubicles, Iranians have become masters of Iraq. We hold sway over the Green Zone; they hold sway over the rest of the country. Their dominion includes, increasingly, Kurdistan. Why? Because they have provided overwhelming force, patronage, and staying power.

Militias exist to impose through force what they cannot win through the ballot box. Iran exerts its influence through militias, and the U.S. fails to counter them. Left alone, they metastasize. While USAID takes weeks to allocate a paperclip, and months more to study its impact, the militias create elaborate charities to establish themselves in society. Thus Iran is replicating the Hezbollah strategy. It is no accident that Iran's current ambassador to Iraq was formerly Tehran's liaison to the Lebanese terrorist group.

How to win? We're suckers if we trust Iran. In Iraq, we need to cut the supply lines to the militias, roll up Iranian intelligence, and replace Iranian charities with our own patronage. We've got to treat the commanders of Iran's revolutionary guard as the combatants they are. If imposing firm demands pushes Iran toward a fight, we cannot shrink from it. In the Middle East, projecting weakness leads to defeat. Unfortunately, the Rice State Department is all about weakness.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the editor of The Middle East Quarterly.

MARK STEYN

IF OUR OBJECT WAS MERELY TO TOPPLE A DICTATOR WHOSE continuation in office embodied pre-9/11 America's lack of will, then the war's already won. On the other hand, if the purpose was to demonstrate such strength of will as to deter future trouble-makers, then clearly Iraq's been a flop: Assad and the mullahs had far more sleepless nights in the spring of 2003 than they do today.

On the ground, America has allowed its enemies to subvert Iraq with impunity. My model here would be the so-called Confrontation in Indonesia 40 years ago, a conflict so obscure I'll bet most readers have never heard of it. The Indonesians were convinced that the British had set up the new Federation of Malaysia as a neo-colonial puppet regime and so sent "insurgents" across the borders to subvert it and foment coups, secessions, etc. British and Commonwealth forces decided to return the favor and sent troops on lethally effective raids into Indonesia, keeping Jakarta on the defensive and dramatically reducing the amount of mischief they were able to make. The Brits and Aussies and Malays won that one with barely a word of it making the papers. This is exactly what the Americans should be doing with Syria and Iran. Instead, we accept the same de facto one-way traffic flow as applies on the U.S.-Mexico border. This is one reason we wound up hunkered down in the Green Zone. In future, it should be the other fellow who has to have a Green Zone.

As it happens, Iraq will be mostly all right. In a macro-cynical sense, even the apparent strategic error of the war--the enhancement of Iranian prestige through local Shia proxies--is a plus in the long run: When the Tehran regime is gone, the Shia (both Arab and Persian) remain our best shot at a moderate democratic Islam.

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But if Iraq's significance to the U.S. was as a regional trailblazer, then we should rethink it in a regional context. For three years, we've been playing defense.

Mr. Steyn is the author of the forthcoming America Alone (Regnery).

BERNARD E. TRAINOR 

THE ADMINISTRATION'S YARDSTICK FOR SUCCESS IN IRAQ INCLUDES the following: a working and effective unity government; prevention of sectarian conflict; establishment of an effective military/police security force; minimization of the insurgency; restoration of public services; infrastructure reconstitution; integrity of borders; and prevention of external influence. To the degree these goals are met, U.S. forces can be reduced.

But they are not being met. Notwithstanding some relatively quiet sectors and Prime Minister Maliki's claim that Iraqi forces are prepared to take over security in most of the country, the overall situation is deteriorating.

The hoped-for unity government is fractured along ethnic and sectarian lines, with each group advancing its own agenda. Even in a bureaucratic sense it is not working. Corruption at all levels is endemic. Violence is at an all-time high and getting worse, with Iraqis being killed at the rate of 3,000 a month in the internecine war. The sectarian vigilantes and mafias are running wild. Iran clandestinely supports the Shiite militias. Expectations of success in the much-advertised program to restore security to Baghdad are questionable, given past failures. We have not mastered the insurgent way of war, and do not have enough troops in Iraq to "clear, hold, and build" in insurgent-dominated areas. Daily strikes against coalition forces have doubled since January. The Iraqi army remains pitiful, and the police are not only ineffective but untrustworthy. Efforts to put the country's economy in working order are crippled by insurgent attacks, looting, and corruption.

By just about every measure, our strategy is not succeeding. Common sense would dictate that we cut our losses and get out as soon as feasible, leaving the Iraqis to settle matters in their own way. But that would be taking a leap into the great and highly dangerous unknown, perhaps creating problems more vexing than those we currently face. Opponents of precipitous withdrawal raise "out of the frying pan, into the fire" scenarios--and they may be right. If so, staying the course and working for improvement is the only logical choice unless at some point the chaotic situation absolutely forecloses that option.

Lt. Gen. Trainor retired from the United States Marine Corps in 1985.