Despite my reticence to do so, I have decided to join the growing cacophony of voices clamoring to be heard on the subject of Iraq prior to the President’s fast-approaching announcement of a shift in strategy. But before I do, allow me one last literary indulgence as I once again attempt to reduce an enormously complex and incomprehensibly challenging situation into an overly simplistic (and, I hope, somewhat apt) metaphor.
Imagine that we live in an autocratic police state. One day, on suspicion that you are in possession of contraband, the police come to your door. After repeatedly asking you to produce the nonexistent contraband, the police barge in, brutalize your family, destroy all of your possessions, and set a fire in one of your rooms. After all this is done, the police realize that they have made a mistake and that there is no contraband. So, after kicking things around for a little bit longer, they turn around and leave. As the last police officer reaches the door, he turns to you and says, “It’s your house. It’s time you take responsibility for cleaning this mess up.” This is what some are touting as the appropriate course of action in Iraq. After buckling beneath the weight of the administration’s fear mongering and authorizing the invasion of Iraq in the first place, many in Congress are now trying to absolve themselves of the debt they now owe to Iraq and its people. So while good answers are awfully hard to come by at the moment, there are few answers worse or less responsible then the call for immediate withdrawal, redeployment, or whatever euphemism one chooses to substitute for “hasty retreat.”
So, since I am obviously not advocating that we leave the Iraqis to the wolves that we’ve shepherded in through their front door, many have asked what I would do. While I cannot claim to have the depth of knowledge (or the number of recommendations) that the Iraq Study Group cultivated over the past several months, there are still a few things that I think should be salient features of our new policy in Iraq. So, at the risk of appearing to be an armchair general, here they are.
We need more troops. Let’s face it: The troops that we have in Iraq right now, while sufficient to destroy any single target or to overcome any enemy on the field of battle, are not sufficient to root out an indigenous insurgency, prevent an influx of foreign jihadis, or put the brakes on an increasingly vicious sectarian civil war. Further, simply training Iraqi troops to replace our own is not a solution; it’s part of the problem. We are training and arming militants so that they may fight our own forces and terrorize the local population. The only sense of security average Iraqis feel is when American troops are present and when they stick around for a while.
Disarm the Iraqis. That’s right. Iraqis with guns doesn’t seem like such a great idea. Because of our misplaced sensitivity to the extreme affinity for firearms in Arab cultures, we have allowed countless weapons to circulate unchecked through the entire nation. We have further exacerbated the problem by intentionally issuing weapons to trainees of questionable loyalty; the Pentagon has even admitted to having lost several thousand weapons ranging from small arms to RPG launchers. Once a massive surge of American troops exerts its presence in Baghdad and other troubled areas, a door-to-door sweep needs to be conducted to remove all firearms from the population until further notice. While this is certainly an abridgement of the Iraqis’ rights, it is necessary if we are to create security. Which brings me to my next point:
Roll back democracy. We need to cast off, once and for all, the lie that we went into Iraq to liberate its people and to foster democracy. How so many came to believe this canard is beyond me. But now that it has been exposed, we should promptly discard it. Democracy needs to be a distant second to security for a nation that has never known freedom to begin with. In a country as torn apart and fractious as Iraq, democracy tends to accomplish one thing only: the election of extremists. This principle can be seen at work in Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian territories and in similar results in elections throughout much of the world. In Iraq, it has given rise to a powerful parliamentary bloc led by the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and to de facto immunity for Sadr’s brutal Mahdi Army militia. If Iraq’s “democratic” institutions are disbanded, we can act unhindered against the “politicians” who lead the militias that have been so much of the problem. This will, unfortunately, require a US provisional government be put back in place, but it will certainly be better than the alternative.
Go to war against the militias. Since the militias, terrorists, and insurgents will be the only Iraqis who are still presumably armed, and since they will be all too willing to use their arms against our troops and against Iraqi civilians, they will represent an obvious target in America’s revitalized campaign. Acting to disable and decapitate the Mahdi Army and the Iranian backed Badr Brigade will be essential. Such a tactic will not only help to alleviate some of the nightmare the Iraqis currently suffer through day in and day out, but will also give our troops a measurable benchmark to work toward. Our military is extremely good at accomplishing well-defined, finite goals, but not necessarily great at muddling through protracted and vague “stay the course” missions. The more such benchmarks we have, the more we will accomplish.
Talk to the neighbors. Though it’s been said a million times (and denigrated just as often), we need to have diplomatic relations with other nations in the region, regardless of ideology, including Iran and Syria. It is not the job of the US government to grant legitimacy to the regimes of sovereign nations. The people of those countries have, by election or inaction, already done so. That being said, we can despise, disagree with, and denounce those regimes all we want…but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have discourse. Admittedly, I don’t see any pleasant (or even necessarily acceptable) way to entice the region’s other powers into helping to rein in the problems in Iraq. But for the long term, this will be an essential element to any intellectually honest and forward looking American grand strategy for the Middle East (and elsewhere, for that matter). This will probably not bear immediate fruit in Iraq, but if we want to encourage stability (and eventually democracy) in the region, we stand a better chance of doing so through dialogue than with diatribe.
This list is obviously neither fully comprehensive nor easily palatable. But from a purely pragmatic perspective, it seems to me to be a short list of essential components to any workable, responsible strategy in Iraq. And while it seems quite doubtful, we’ll find out shortly whether the President agrees.