<< Part of the justification for not empowering the [Iraqi] militias has been that this will give them or the factions they represent "unfair" advantages for future elections and governments. To insist on such purity is to fiddle while Baghdad burns.>>
The Washington Post Time for Tough Tactics By Jim Hoagland Sunday, November 9, 2003 Iraq's killers have learned to exploit the zone of confusion that now lies between the Bush administration's urgent goals in Iraq and its lofty ideals in the Middle East. The assassins seek to turn President Bush's declarations of goodwill for the region against him and the still-strangely unfocused U.S. campaign to break the costly insurgency in Iraq's Sunni heartland. The administration risks making the perfect the enemy of the good. Taking their cue from the president's vows to make Iraq a catalyst for a democratic, peaceful Middle East, U.S. civilians and commanders are hesitating to adjust well-intentioned policies that inadvertently help the killers operate with little fear of being caught and punished. Six months after the end of "major combat operations," U.S. policy in Iraq is a medley of counterinsurgency, nation-building and regional political modeling. This fluctuating mix of priorities has led to a dispersal of American resources and attention in an environment where there is neither peace nor a conventional war in which U.S. strength can be brought to bear with full force. Between May 1 and Nov. 6, 140 American soldiers died from hostile fire in Iraq. Juxtapose against that grim statistic this number: 0. That is the total of legally sanctioned executions or lengthy prison sentences announced for anyone aiding, planning or carrying out these attacks. Those arrested in American roundups disappear from public view. While there may be rough battlefield justice in U.S. operations, there is no visible retribution against Saddam Hussein's dead-enders or foreign jihadists for Iraqi civilians to see and to take into account. There is instead the appearance of a cat-and-mouse game in which American troops, who know little of local conditions, personalities and languages, stumble endlessly down blind alleys or into ambushes. To change this, the occupation authorities should immediately empower Iraqi militias and other local security forces to help hunt down and deal with the ex-Baathists who form the core of the insurgency. This is the quickest and most effective way to cut the American casualty toll. It comes with risks, but those risks are less than the ones Americans already run. Iraqis are likely to be more capable of finding and dealing with local terror networks quickly than are American troops, at least as they are currently configured. Unfortunately, the militias are also likely to be more ruthless. It will require a strong U.S. hand to prevent revenge from overtaking justice as the driving force in militia action. What no longer makes any sense is to allow the security response to be inhibited by textbook notions about democracy or by illusions about the nature of the enemy in Iraq. Part of the justification for not empowering the militias has been that this will give them or the factions they represent "unfair" advantages for future elections and governments. To insist on such purity is to fiddle while Baghdad burns. Paul Bremer, Bush's special representative in Iraq, is concerned that the current Governing Council -- which he constructed to reflect in detail the country's ethnic and tribal balances -- still does not give adequate political weight to the Sunni minority that controls the region around Baghdad. He is reluctant to cede significant political authority until that problem is fixed, presumably through free and fair elections. Military commanders such as Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command, also worry that the struggle cannot be won without "winning the Sunnis." But for the Sunni areas that seem to have willingly become the sea in which the insurgent fish swim, democracy is a code word for domination by the country's Shiite majority. The Sunnis fear that democratic elections would enable the Shiites to do unto them as they did unto the Shiites under their co-religionist, the dictator Saddam Hussein. The United States has failed thus far to develop a strategy that convinces them otherwise and splits the Sunni population from the killers based among them. The Sunnis still respond to the efforts to construct a fair and free political system in Iraq with the age-old question: What's in it for us? Emphasizing the wonders of democracy will have much less immediate effect on them than will emphasizing the price they will have to pay for continuing to let the killer fish swim in their midst. The Baathists have not yet accepted that they have lost power forever. Forcefully convincing them that they are wrong is the first urgent step toward democracy in the Middle East. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
