[lbo-talk] Zakaria: Iraqification: A Losing Strategy

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Tue Nov 4 18:00:39 PST 2003


[Apropos Vietnam . . . ]

[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



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