Iraq

For all its problems, Iraq is probably an easier fix than Afghanistan, so I’ll tackle it first. While it seems that we are on the verge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, there is a glimmer of hope that we are about to turn a corner there. From record turnouts in national elections to fractures between foreign jihadists and their fellow Iraqi insurgents, we may be closer to success than the media has been reporting. And it has little to do with the surges so unpalatable to an increasing number of the American public.

Iraq is really three nations in one: Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish. Throughout its history, however, it has been ruled by Mongols, Persians, Ottomans, and ultimately the British before Iraq was granted independence in 1932. The Ottomans and the British governed the three regions through a semi-autonomous system, with Baghdad as an administrative capital. Under the Hashemite monarchy and the Baath party, Iraq has been ruled by a strong single-ruler system governing Iraq as a whole rather than three regions.

I personally do not think we should have invaded Iraq in 2003 in the first place. While Operations NORTHERN and SOUTHERN WATCH were an expensive means to contain Saddam’s Iraq, the price tag for those operations pale in comparison to the price of IRAQI FREEDOM and its aftermath. During the military buildup before the impending invasion, I thought it was just American saber rattling taken to the next level. The case for war laid down by the previous administration was specious at best and I was shocked that so many of the American public and members of both political parties quickly fell into line.

Then when we invaded, we used a much smaller force than during the first Gulf War, a result of the defense restructuring and force downsizing following the demise of the Soviet Union. Gen. Shinseki was castigated over how many troops would be required for post-conflict reconstruction; the previous administration did not believe that it would take far more troops to pacify the country than the number used to topple Saddam’s regime in the first place. Successful peacekeeping operations in Kosovo has shown that the required number of post-conflict troops should be one soldier for every 100 citizens; for Iraq, that would mean a force level of roughly 280,000 troops – the number that cost Gen. Shinseki his job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That number should have given us pause before hostilities began, because it is a force we can no longer afford to muster for foreign peacekeeping operations.

But that is water under the bridge now. We’re there, we broke the nation, and we really can’t leave until Iraq is better off than when we arrived. But I think a solution is closer in hand than most people think. And it doesn’t require hundreds of thousands of troops to accomplish. Sometimes the best weapons don’t have bullets; popular support, legitimacy, security, a vibrant economy, diverse political participation, and restored hope are better weapons than military force.

Iraq’s government is currently not ready to go it alone. Our forces need to provide basic services – security and essential infrastructure such as power and water – while nurturing an organic ability for the Iraqis to take over. We’re well on that road now, but we need to let Iraqis do more of the work. No amount of US door kicking is ever going to realize peace in Iraq; for that matter, Iraqis kicking down the wrong doors will spell trouble for its fledgling government’s legitimacy in the eyes of its people.

Our military must unite with other American government agencies, allied nations, and non-governmental groups to train the Iraqis from everything from military units, police forces, judicial courts, penal facilities, government institutions, and economic markets. The less we do, the better. It is better to let them do something badly than for us to do it for them.

The critical test of the Iraqi government is the ability to guarantee the security of the population. The Iraqi government must effectively fight insurrection while at the same time protect the population; excessive application of force may cause civilian losses and undermine security. Restraint and good intelligence are keys to success. Legitimacy for the government will come through reform and strong institutions, leading to increased loyalty and a larger pool from which to glean intelligence about the insurgency. Furthermore, isolating the insurgency from its source of support, whether internal or external, will shorten its life. Eventually, the majority of the population will see the insurgents as outlaws or outsiders, allowing the police to better handle them as criminals.

In the end, we’ll have to go back to what worked before we arrived. We need to install a strong ruler who can unify the people as the Baaths or the Hashemite monarchy did, or we need to soft-partition the nation as the Ottomans and the British did. We would grant the Kurdish north, the Sunni middle, and the Shiite south semi-autonomous status with a loose administrative capital district in Baghdad. Oil revenues would have to be shared among all three provinces to encourage a peaceful co-existence rather than continued ethnic bloodshed. There is so much hate between the disparate groups that it may be the best solution. The strong ruler option is largely improbable. Any ruler we put in power would never have legitimacy and a self-appointed strong ruler would only emerge after considerable strife among the factions and in the end, probably wouldn’t be much of a friend to America.

Whatever we do, we must leave behind a stable government. If we can further drive a wedge between the former Baathists and the foreign jihadists in the insurgency, we’ll have a better shot. The Baathists are Iraqi nationalists who want a return to power while the jihadists want to create an unstable country that will provide sanctuary to terrorism, spread their ideology of extremism, and give rise to a new Islamic caliphate.

Iraq will probably never be the success we had with the reconstruction of Germany and Japan following World War II. But as long as it can justly rule its citizens and live peacefully with its neighbors, we will win a lasting peace, even if they do not like us in the long run. We can afford to do no less.