The linchpin of the plan of the realpolitik wing of the Democratic Party (whose voice is represented here by Michael O'Hanlon and James Steinberg), as well as the Republican Party, is "Iraq's main police and army formations." The best and brightest of that wing have nothing to say about whether and how Washington can create Iraqi police and army capable of and (at great personal costs to themselves) willing to fight for the Shia notables and clerics of the United Iraqi Alliance, Washington's current preferred choice for reshaping Iraq in Washington's image. The Shiite notables and clerics themselves, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, know very well that, considerable as the influence of some of them may be, they do not command the level of allegiance among Iraqis necessary for them to create (on their own or with American financial assistance alone) the Iraqi army and police loyal to them and large enough to defeat Iraqi resistance fighters, hold Moktada al-Sadr's forces at bay, and keep aspirations of Kurds (who have their own militias) in check. Therefore, it is essentially up to Washington to fund, train, equip, and supervise the Iraqi army and police, which cannot but undercut the authority of the institutions as well as the government they are ostensibly serving in the eyes of not only the Iraqi populace but also Iraqi army soldiers and police men themselves (a real blow to their morale and discipline).
The question of legitimacy aside, how is Washington doing in its struggle to establish the Iraqi version of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam?
<blockquote>Fewer than 30 percent of the 136,000 Iraqi security forces whom the Pentagon has said were trained and equipped are fully capable of conducting a broad range of independent missions in Iraq, and Iraqi Army units are suffering severe troop shortages, two top Pentagon officials told a Senate panel on Thursday.
General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that only about 40,000 of Iraq's security forces "can go anywhere and do anything," but he said that the remaining troops could also be useful.
He also said that American military commanders now suspected that the 79,000 Iraqi police officers and other Iraqi Ministry forces on official government rolls might not be as capable as Iraqi officials have asserted.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told senators that Iraqi Army units had absentee rates of up to 40 percent at any given time because many new Iraqi soldiers had failed to return to duty after going home on leave.
At the hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, read an e-mail message from a Marine colonel who said Iraqi commanders in his area inflated their official troop levels and pocketed the extra budgeted monies. In one Iraq unit of 134 soldiers that the colonel noted, she said, 37 troops returned after being paid and going on leave.
"It's a different culture and it's difficult for us to understand," Myers said when asked to explain the problems, saying that the various Iraqi security units had different training standards and that Collins's example of corrupt Iraqi conduct was not widespread.
Taken together, however, the information at the hearing revealed new details of problems plaguing the fledgling Iraqi security forces and underscored the immense challenge the Bush administration faces in helping to whip the Iraqis into fighting form to secure their own country and allow the 150,000 U.S. forces there to leave eventually. (Eric Schmitt, "Iraq Security Forces Only 30% Trained," New York Times/International Herald Tribune, <http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/02/03/news/military.html>, February 4, 2005)</blockquote>
Fred Kaplan suspects worse.
<blockquote>Deeply buried in the Bush administration's 97-page supplemental budget request for $81.9 billion ($75 billion of it for the Pentagon), mainly to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is one sentence that expresses-more succinctly and shockingly than any official statement to date-just how little progress we've made toward making Iraq a stable nation.
It's there in the section dealing with the $5.7 billion requested for the "Iraq Security Force Fund," which notes that the interim Iraqi government, with assistance from coalition nations, has already created a security force of 90 battalions, but then adds:
<blockquote>All but one of these 90 battalions, however, are lightly equipped and armed, and have very limited mobility and sustainment capabilities.</blockquote>
In other words, 89 of Iraq's 90 battalions essentially cannot fight. (Fred Kaplan, "Supplemental Insecurity," <http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2113575&fr=nl&>, February 15, 2005)</blockquote>
In any event, any plan that argues that Washington should first create the Iraqi army and police capable of propping up the government of Washington's choice and then leave is essentially a recipe for staying in Iraq indefinitely (until forced out by Iraqis themselves, that is).
Why does realpolitik become unhinged from reality? That is because the plan supposedly based on realpolitik is still "a strategy _for success_" (emphasis added, James Steinberg and Michael O'Hanlon, "Departure Does Not Mean Defeat," Financial Times, February 22 2005). Unless and until things get so bad that Washington is ready to withdraw troops, _knowing_ that its departure will be perceived as defeat by all thinking persons in the world (except perhaps to the right wing of the power elite and viewers addicted to Fox News fantasy), it won't quit Iraq. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>