August 22, 2005

IN IRAQ THE HANDWRITING IS ON THE WALL--OR SHOULD BE

Look, let’s face it. Much of the United States force will be leaving Iraq next year. The handwriting is on the wall, the scent is in the air, the feeling is in our bones—more than half of our troops will be out of Iraq by election day of 2006.

Of course the President and his minions have to go through this elaborate minuet of qualifications—if this or when that—and reassurances that we won’t quit until the job is done.

Well, hell, the job is done. It was mostly done after we rolled into Baghdad, a month after the war started. And completely done when we killed Saddam’s unbalanced sons and captured the pathetic, grizzled old man. Because by then we had achieved the regime change that was necessary to rid the Middle East of the threat of starting another world war by lobbing chemical or biological weapons into Israel or yet another neighbor (after he had already done so against Iran and Kuwait); or selling such weapons to terrorists; or becoming a nuclear rogue state, like Iran or North Korea, down the road—such dangers were past for the near future.

The icing on this pre-emptive war cake is the considerable sum of unintended consequences which have come to pass since the war started: Pakistan is now an important ally of the US and a catcher of important terrorists; Libya has given up its nuclear program; Egypt now is expecting its first contested election for president; Syria no longer occupies Lebanon. All as a result of America’s pre-emptive military activities in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We need do nothing else than what we have already done to feel a sense of historical accomplishment and a realistic protection of our nations interests.

The Bush exit policy from Iraq is misguided because it is defined by factors over which our government has little or no control—a recipe for quagmire pudding—such as creating a defense force which is highly enough motivated to protect the new Iraqi government and its laws; such as getting all the different factions in Iraqi politics to agree to something that none of them wants; and eliciting compromises for the sake of the greater good from people who do not understand the mechanism of political compromise, having known only “all or nothing” for fourteen centuries.

A more appropriate exit strategy would be one which is defined in terms of our own needs and factors which we can control. In such a case we would withdraw our troops at any date that would be convenient for us and our interests.

In fact it might be in our interests to leave a small force in the non-Arab part of Iraq—the mountains of Kurdistan perhaps—for the purpose of Special Operations and Intelligence, and to project a military presence in an unstable part of the world that says “we are here to protect our interests, so don’t screw around with us.”

Today’s exit policy remains uninformed by the realities of culture and human nature. The policy still has as its dominant vision, unrealistic as it may be, that Iraq can be made into western-like unified nation with a strong central government. And it is to that strong central government that the newly minted Iraqi army is to pledge its allegiance and the lives of its men.

It is easy to understand, given these chimeric visions, why it is so difficult to develop an Iraqi army that will stand and face a determined enemy.

Our soldiers fight for their country because there is a country to fight for—it has a history, an accepted set of values, a set of beloved icons, and, most important, their homes and loved ones.

There is, of course, nothing of the sort to inspire Iraqi soldiers. There are no symbols of unity or recent history except Saddam, no leaders who are accepted and beloved by all the people of Iraq. Why should Iraqi soldiers feel like sacrificing their lives for meaningless abstractions like “democracy” and “rule of law.” It is only the wildest optimism and childish hope to think that a large component of the Iraqi Army will stand up against a determined enemy for any length of time without the American Army backing them up, or without their officers threatening to shoot them if they try to desert.
If our war planners can give up their ideological fantasies and accept the realities of human nature, they would see that Iraqis will fight for something they understand and love—their families, loved ones, communities, villages, tribal leaders, even their god. Instead of fearing local militias, the US should cherish, train, support, and equip them, even though they represent a tendency in the direction of a weak central government for Iraq.

Such militias will learn to fight quickly and effectively if they are protecting what they care about.