[This guy is block-headedly wrong about the correct solution -- that all we need is more of what we're doing now -- but completely right about why Iraqification won't be it. If he went back and read his last paragraph, he would realize the necessary first step to any solution is creating an authority with political legitimacy. And for that, what is needed is an immediate election for a provisional government; the IGC is a complete failure.]
Iraqification: Losing Strategy
By Fareed Zakaria
Tuesday, November 4, 2003; Page A25
Iraq, everyone agrees, is not Vietnam. In Vietnam the United States
lost dozens of troops for every one it is losing in Iraq. The Viet
Cong guerrillas had broad popular support. They were being supplied by
great powers. And so on. But there is one sense in which the analogy
might hold. Frustrated by the lack of quick progress on the ground and
fading political support at home, Washington is now latching on to the
idea that a quick transfer of power to local troops and politicians
would make things better. Or at any rate, it would lower American
casualties. It was called Vietnamization; today it's called
Iraqification. And then as now, it is less a winning strategy than an
exit strategy.
Everyone seems to be in favor of Iraqification. The president has
urged an accelerated training schedule for the Iraqi army. Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says that more Iraqi troops, and not
Americans, would be the best answer to his problems. Members of
Congress from both parties cheer the idea, as do most columnists. On
the political side, the administration has speeded up its timetable to
transfer power. Where once it spoke of a three-year process of
constitution-writing and institution-building, now it wants to hold
elections and turn things over in 18 months at most. American troops
would number fewer than 100,000 by next summer, and fewer than 50,000
by 2005. Even the French love the new, improved schedule. What could
possibly be wrong with it?
This new impulse has less to do with Iraqi democracy than with
American democracy. The president wants to show, in time for his
reelection, that Iraqis are governing their affairs and Americans are
coming home. But it might not work out that way.
Putting more Iraqi soldiers and police on the ground makes sense. By
taking care of routine policing and security, they will free the U.S.
Army to conduct raids, pursue leads and fight the guerrillas. But the
desperation to move faster and faster is going to have bad results.
Accelerating the training schedule (which has already been accelerated
twice before) will only produce an ineffective Iraqi army and police
force. Does anyone think that such a ragtag military could beat the
insurgency where American troops are failing?
When we speak of sending "Iraqis" on raids into the Sunni Triangle,
who would these soldiers be? Sunnis? They might not want to hunt down
Baathists, or might easily be bought off. Shiites and Kurds? That
would galvanize the Sunni populations in support of the guerrillas. If
the goal is to stabilize Iraq, fomenting intergroup violence might not
be the best path.
If the American footprint is reduced, it will not make the guerrillas
stop fighting. ("Hey, Saddam, we've scared the Americans back into
their compounds. Let's ease up now and give them a break.") On the
contrary, the rebels will step up their attacks on the Iraqi army and
local politicians, whom they already accuse of being collaborators.
Iraqification could easily produce more chaos, not less.
The idea of a quick transfer of political power is even more
dangerous. The Iraqi state has gone from decades of Stalinism to total
collapse. And there is no popular national political party or movement
to hand power to. A quick transfer of authority to a weak central
government would only encourage the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds
to retain de facto autonomy in their regions and fragment the country.
For the neoconservatives in the Pentagon, a quick transfer fulfills a
pet obsession, installing in power the Iraqi exiles led by Ahmad
Chalabi. Last week the Philadelphia Inquirer quoted a senior
administration official as saying, "There are some civilians at the
Pentagon who've decided that we should turn this over to someone else
and get out as fast as possible." But every indication we have is that
the exiles do not have broad popular support.
There are no shortcuts out. Iraq is America's problem. It could have
been otherwise, but in the weeks after the war the administration,
drunk with victory, refused to share power with the world. Now there
can be only one goal: success. The first task of winning the peace in
Iraq is winning the war -- which is still being waged in the Sunni
heartland. And winning it might take more troops, or different kinds
of troops (send back the Marines). It might take a mixture of military
force and bribes -- to win over some Sunni leaders. But whatever it
takes, the United States must do it. Talk about a drawdown of troops
sends exactly the wrong message to the guerrillas. In the words of one
North Vietnamese general, "We knew that if we waited, one day the
Americans would have to go home."
"The central problem in Vietnam," says Brookings's Kenneth Pollack,
"was that we had a corrupt and ineffective local government that did
not inspire either the allegiance or the confidence of the Vietnamese
people. Whatever happened militarily became secondary to this
fundamental political reality." We don't have that problem in Iraq.
But a hasty Iraqification will almost certainly produce it.
The writer is editor of Newsweek International and a columnist for
Newsweek. His e-mail address is comments at fareedzakaria.com.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company