Make It Open-Ended
Victory Doesn’t Always Arrive On Schedule
By Mark I Posted in Featured Stories | War — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
In thinking ahead to President Bush’s announcement of his “new Iraq strategy,” I find it difficult to come up with words that I would like to hear. It is far easier for me to think in terms of what I don’t want the president to say. Perhaps this is a sign of the evolution in expectations that I have undergone with respect to this president. Or, it could just be my inner pessimist coming out. But I have a bad feeling that, owing to the political circumstances in which he finds himself and to sheer fatigue, the president will announce a plan that will not go as far as he might like toward securing victory in Iraq. It is with that thought in mind that two words keep popping into my head. They are the words that I fear, if President Bush utters them this week, he will close the door on the United States earning a demonstrable victory in Iraq.
The words are: temporary and training.
Read on...
The military has spent the better part of the last two years training Iraqi forces, both military and civilian. The current estimate is somewhere north of 250,000 trained Iraqis are under arms and actively engaged in defending their country. For the most part, they are doing an acceptable job. Large swaths of the country: the Kurdish, north; the Shiite south; and the southeastern suburbs of Baghdad are relatively pacified. Yet still, the capital remains unsecured. Is this from a lack of trained forces in the capital? No, I believe that Baghdad remains unsecured because it is not in the interest of any of the major factional players for it to be secured.
Sunnis radicals want the United States to leave. Chaos in Baghdad feeds the impression that the entire Iraq adventure was a misbegotten affair in which there is no hope for victory and from which there is no escape. Shiite radicals want to establish an Islamic theocracy inside Iraq on the Iranian model. Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army thrive on violence perpetrated by Sunnis on poor Shiites in and around the capital. The violence gives both sects their reason for existence and acts as a handy propaganda tool with which to enlist more poor young men to carry the battle to the other side in the name of revenge. The goal of forcing the United States out of Iraq is more important to the Sunnis right now than stability and a peaceful, if wary, coexistence with the Shiite majority. Al-Sadr’s ego is more important right now than democracy. No amount of training is going to overcome the will of those in power to maintain the status quo so as to bring about their desired outcome.
The United States will never be able to claim a meaningful victory in Iraq if it views its commitment there as temporary. When the Israelis unilaterally withdrew from southern Lebanon, after an occupation of some 20 years, Hezbollah declared a victory. They viewed their continued existence as a triumph. The United States’ enemies in Iraq will likewise declare victory whenever we leave, so long as they remain organized in some fashion. It will not matter if our forces remain in Iraq for 6 months, or sixty years. Therefore, all notions of a temporary presence in Iraq should be abandoned if the goal is to win. Rather, the rules of engagement must be changed so our forces can achieve the victory that is so desperately necessary.
First off, the president needs to make it clear to the elected leaders of Iraq, that the United States has no intention of leaving their country until a functioning and stable democracy that is not a threat to her friends and interests is established there. To that end, the president needs to declare that any faction, sect, political party, politician, militia, or fighter that stands in the way of that goal is an enemy of the United States. That includes the Prime Minister, cabinet officials, members of Parliament, and clerics. Next, the strategy should begin by pacifying Baghdad with all available force. Seasoned troops should be moved into the capital from relatively calm areas of the country with the newer troops replacing them. If need be, the city should be locked down and neighborhood-to-neighborhood cordons and patrols established. Iraqi troops can participate in these, but they cannot lead them. This effort must be seen as a United States initiative if it is to achieve the desired result. Once Baghdad has been brought under control, the rest of the Sunni triangle and al-Anbar province can be addressed. These areas will be easier to subdue once the inevitability of the Iraqi government’s success becomes clear to the general population.
The president is under tremendous pressure from within and without of his Administration to draw the Iraq war to a close. Unfortunately, victory does not always arrive on schedule. The president has been determined and even dogged in his assertion that victory is absolutely the only acceptable outcome for the United States in Iraq. If he has not wavered from that goal, he will not seek the political cover that accepting a lesser outcome will bring. He will make clear, this week, that the United States is not temporarily in Iraq to train an army and a police force. He will instead serve notice that our troops are there for the long run to train our enemies in the cost of crossing the United States.