IRAQ NEWS, THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 2003 I. GEORGE WILL, GETTING IRAQIS TO TAKE OVER, WASH POST, AUG 27 II. RICHARD PERLE, HAND OVER POWER TO IRAQIS ASAP, REUTERS, AUG 27 III. JAY NORDLINGER, HATING CHALABI, NRO AUG 28
George Will, in a column yesterday arguing the need to rapidly build up Iraqi forces, noted one important reason why that process has been so slow: the opposition of the CIA and State Department to the war itself and their hostility "to what they called 'externals,' meaning Iraqi exiles. This hostility expressed a perverse premise: Those who remained in Iraq under Hussein were somehow morally superior to those who went into exile to work for liberation." Richard Perle, in an interview with Le Figaro, reported by Reuters yesterday, expressed much the same view, "Of course, we haven't done everything right. . . . Mistakes have been made and there will be others. Our principal mistake, in my opinion, was that we didn't manage to work closely with the Iraqis before the war, so that there was an Iraqi opposition capable of taking charge immediately," Jay Nordlinger, managing editor of the National Review, in today's NRO, wrote, "One of the vexations and heartaches of the last year or so has been the media's hatred - that's the word for it: hatred - of Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader - former exile leader, I should say - who is working to give his country a future. This is obviously the man most prepared to provide leadership, yet the media pour disdain on him, in imitation of the State Department and the CIA." Nordlinger specifically took issue with a recent Newsweek report (which very much reflected Will's point), "[I]t is the policy of President Bush and . . . Condoleezza Rice that Chalabi's leadership ambitions be given no greater weight than those of rival contenders, including some who stuck it out inside Iraq during the decades of Saddam Hussein's rule." Nordlinger protested, "That is a despicable shot. As I've said before, what would these people have had Chalabi do? Remain in fascist, Baathist Iraq to be imprisoned and killed? What good would that have done his countrymen? And do we hold it against de Gaulle that he was abroad when France was staffed by Nazis?" "Iraq News" was recently considering this question: Why could the US work so easily with the Afghan resistance to the Taliban, but has such difficulty working with the Iraqi resistance to Saddam? At least part of the answer lies with the "Arabists," who staff most of the bureaucratic positions dealing with the Middle East. Long ago, in the 1970s, Henry Kissinger took the Arab-Israeli conflict out of their hands, and it never really went back to them, but they were left with the rest of the Middle East. The Arabists reflect the views of Arab governments (overwhelmingly Sunni and all unelected), so they reach at any argument to discredit: 1) an Iraqi government that would reflect the composition of the Iraqi population (overwhelmingly NOT Sunni Arab); and 2) an Iraqi government that would reflect popular aspirations significantly more than do existing Arab governments. It used to be that the pro-Israeli types working on the Middle East would counter the Arabists, and to some extent that has happened on Iraq, but much less so than before. As far as "Iraq News" can understand, that is ultimately a reflection of perspectives within Israel. When Itzhak Rabin was prime minister, he very deliberately kicked Iraq off the agenda (in the belief that Saddam was defeated and sanctions took care of whatever threat remained) and for nearly a decade, Israelis paid minimal attention to Iraq. Of course, the war with Iraq changed that significantly, but it is difficult to make up for a lost decade and accumulated misunderstandings. I. GEORGE WILL, GETTING IRAQIS TO TAKE OVER The Washington Post Getting Iraqis to Take Over By George F. Will Wednesday, August 27, 2003 It is sad yet stirring to say. With a realist's melancholy sense of the human cost of things, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is saying it: Part of the good news out of Iraq -- good news obscured by recent bad news, and sometimes mistaken for unalloyed bad news -- is that the deaths, including of 62 Americans, caused by hostile action in Iraq since major combat operations ended include the deaths of almost 50 Iraqis. They died, Wolfowitz says, as exemplary pioneers of Iraq's progress up from tyranny, while working with coalition forces to secure public order and create civil society. Wolfowitz says such casualties are plain, and stirring, evidence of -- and an unavoidable consequence of -- a desirable development; the slowly growing willingness and capacity of Iraqis to take responsibility for their nation's recovery. The capture last week of "Chemical Ali," Saddam Hussein's cousin, suggests that U.S. commanders in Iraq are receiving intelligence from Iraqis willing to take risky initiatives for a better tomorrow. All this is pertinent to the boiling debate in Washington -- Wolfowitz insists that it is much more a debate here than in Baghdad -- about whether the United States needs more troops in Iraq. He says the real need is for more Iraqi-staffed instruments of social control -- troops and police. Hence plans to send 28,000 Iraqis to Hungary for police training. When some persons in or close to the administration argue that U.S. forces in Iraq are sufficient, they really seem to be arguing that existing forces should have been sufficient. They mean the forces there now would be sufficient, if . . . If, in the run-up to war, the CIA and State Department had been less opposed to the war, and less hostile to what they called "externals," meaning Iraqi exiles. This hostility expressed a perverse premise: Those who remained in Iraq under Hussein were somehow morally superior to those who went into exile to work for liberation. Absent hostility toward "externals," more Iraqis competent to work on public safety and civil administration would have arrived immediately behind coalition troops. If the CIA had more accurately anticipated the continued opposition of Baathist remnants and had been less optimistic about the postwar performance of the Iraqi police, the problems faced now might have been substantially reduced. If Saddam Hussein's army had stood and fought instead of melting away, more of the bitter-end resisters of the occupation would have been killed. Yes, and as the old saying goes, "If 'ifs' and 'buts' were candies and nuts, we'd all have a wonderful Christmas." The stark fact is that U.S. forces around the world are stretched thin by today's tempo of operations. What U.S. forces in Iraq need most are Iraqi forces to free U.S. forces to do what they are trained to do and do superbly. Wolfowitz says that when U.S. soldiers guarding a hospital are killed by a hand grenade dropped from that building, one question is: Why are Americans being used to guard buildings? He has a robust -- even Rumsfeldian -- dislike of "highly trained American soldiers doing stationary guard duty." The proper use of U.S. troops is, he says, not to guard pipelines but to use "actionable intelligence and pursue killers." Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, referring to Gen. John Abizaid, commander of the forces in Iraq, says, "If he wants more troops, he can have more troops." Often when asked if he needs more, Abizaid has said, "There's a lot of things that we need." But he also says: The number of "boots per square inch" is not the issue. The issue is intelligence that maximizes the efficacy of the troops there. Furthermore, Abizaid says, "There's a downside where you increase your lines of communication, you increase . . . the energy that you have to expend just to guard yourself." Still, the elemental problem is that decades of Baathist rule crippled Iraq's infrastructure -- Myers visited a Baghdad hospital unimproved in a half-century -- and reduced Iraq's population to a dust of individuals, unpracticed in individual initiative and social cooperation. Abizaid briskly defines the modest, nuts-and-bolts but potentially momentous development that must happen soon: "We've got to do a lot more to bring an Iraqi face" -- beyond the nearly 60,000 Iraqis already under arms in reconstituted security forces -- "to the security establishments throughout Iraq very quickly." As Wolfowitz says, the basic U.S. strategy is to "get us into the background before we become the issue." II. RICHARD PERLE, HAND OVER POWER TO IRAQIS ASAP Perle Cites Errors in Iraq, Urges Power Transfer Wed August 27, 2003 PARIS (Reuters) - Richard Perle, a leading Pentagon adviser and architect of the U.S. war to topple Saddam Hussein, said the United States had made mistakes in Iraq and that power should be handed over to the Iraqis as fast as possible. In an interview with the Le Figaro daily newspaper to be published Thursday, Perle defended the U.S.-led war in Iraq and restated his belief that France had been wrong to lead international opposition to the conflict. "Of course, we haven't done everything right," said Perle, according to the French text of the interview. "Mistakes have been made and there will be others. "Our principal mistake, in my opinion, was that we didn't manage to work closely with the Iraqis before the war, so that there was an Iraqi opposition capable of taking charge immediately," he said. "Today, the answer is to hand over power to the Iraqis as soon as possible," he added. Perle resigned in March as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board over alleged conflicts of interest, but remains an influential figure in neo-conservative circles. He also renewed criticism of President Jacques Chirac's refusal to back the war. Chirac wanted more time for U.N. inspectors to search for any banned weapons. The United States and Britain said Saddam had deliberately foiled the inspections and failed to provide evidence that it had scrapped its chemical, biological and nuclear programs. "You have to understand that since September 11, the United States cannot allow the most terrible weapons in the world to be in the hands of the worst regimes in the world," Perle told Le Figaro, referring to the 2001 hijacked airliner attacks on U.S. landmarks that killed some 3,000 people. Washington and London used the weapons charge, dismissed by Iraq as a pretext to wage war, to justify military intervention against Saddam. To date, no such weapons have been found. III. JAY NORDLINGER, HATING CHALABI National Review Online by Jay Nordlinger, National Review Managing Editor August 28, 2003, 9:00 a.m. Hating Chalabi, being charmed by "Fidel," celebrating a glorious couple - and more One of the vexations and heartaches of the last year or so has been the media's hatred - that's the word for it: hatred - of Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader - former exile leader, I should say - who is working to give his country a future. This is obviously the man most prepared to provide leadership, yet the media pour disdain on him, in imitation of the State Department and the CIA. You see, Chalabi is known as the Defense Department's man - Rummy's man, Wolfowitz's man - and anything DoD related is anathema to many people: at State as much as on the op-ed page of the New York Times (is there a difference?). In truth, Chalabi is no one's man but his own. Those who know him, and have dealt with him, vouch for his independence and determination, no matter what else they may think of him. I was reminded of the Chalabi Issue when perusing Newsweek (which is a useful thing to do now and then, provided your stomach is strong enough). As I saw it, the magazine was trying to score a point against Chalabi because he met in Tehran with government officials there. Chalabi assured the Iranians that, as far as he was concerned, post-Saddam Iraq would not become a base of operations against Iran, or against any other neighbors. This is of some concern to the wicked regime of the mullahs, because Iraq made war against them, for many years. (Alas, at the end of it, both Saddam and the mullahs were still standing.) Chalabi was perfectly right to speak as he did - Realpolitik and all that. Okay, now get this: Newsweek's report ended, "[I]t is the policy of President Bush and . . . Condoleezza Rice that Chalabi's leadership ambitions be given no greater weight than those of rival contenders, including some who stuck it out inside Iraq during the decades of Saddam Hussein's rule." That is a despicable shot. As I've said before, what would these people have had Chalabi do? Remain in fascist, Baathist Iraq to be imprisoned and killed? What good would that have done his countrymen? And do we hold it against de Gaulle that he was abroad when France was staffed by Nazis? (No, we hold other things against him.) This piece was signed by Mark Hosenball. I wonder what danger he has faced in his own life. I doubt he has the standing to scoff at Ahmad Chalabi, who has lived a life more perilous than anyone should have to endure. Hosenball - or his editor or whoever wrote those words - implied that Chalabi was some kind of coward for failing to "stick it out." Shame, shame. . . .
