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MAY. 11, 2004:
WHAT NEXT IN IRAQ
What now? War is a time of intense mood swings – and the moods have been swinging fast over the past two weeks. Some prominent supporters of the Iraq campaign have sunk into uncertainty and even gloom (see eg Andrew Sullivan). And prominent people – including for example Jessica Matthews of the Carnegie Institute for International Peace – have begun to advocate immediate and unconditional withdrawal. Most mainstream Democrats by contrast have settled for scoring partisan points against President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld. But for those who remember why the US took its fight to terror to Baghdad, a couple of sustaining thoughts in a dark time. 1) The war on terror was and is and will remain hard. We all said that at the beginning of the war – but words are easy to say. To win it, American institutions will have to be ready to learn and keep learning, adapt and keep adapting. From the abuses of Abu Ghraib, there are many valuable lessons to take. It seems to me for example that Max Boot argues correctly that the US Army needs a large permanent military police corps within the regular army. Prison guarding is not unskilled work, not in a war zone anyway. 2) Abu Ghraib is interpreted by some as evidence that Donald Rumsfeld’s original strategy--go in fast, go in light--was wrong; that it would have been better to go in with closer to 400,000 troops or something like it, as some generals argued beforehand. That strikes me as perverse. Isn’t the truer lesson of Abu Ghraib that Rumsfeld was right--and that we should have stuck to his original plan to let Iraqis keep order in their own country? Those of us who championed Ahmed Chalabi did so not because we thought of him as an unflawed character, but because we thought that the Iraqi National Congress was the group most capable of rapidly recruiting and deploying an effective and decent Iraqi indigenous force. Many people have ridiculed that concept – but I notice that the ridiculers are now proposing to do just the same thing, only using former Republican Guard generals rather than Iraqi democrats. Bad choice. 3) The most urgent task ahead for the United States is not the punishment of the offending soldiers of Abu Ghraib, important as that task is, but taking immediate steps to demonstrate to Iraqis that the US does not intend to colonize or occupy the country. Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan recommend that the US commit now to accelerating the date of Iraq’s elections to September 30. As they point out, this will a) send the right message to Iraq; b) minimize the UN’s ability to do damage in Iraq – since it will cut Lakhdar Brahimi’s mandate to just 90 days; c) offer a useful non-military role in Iraq to allies like Germany who wish to help but not to fight; and d) transform the nature of the combat in Iraq. Early elections will make clear that those who have taken up arms are really fighting--not the Americans and the Coalition--but popular government in Iraq. 4) The US should pay generous compensation to those abused in Abu Ghraib. Money cannot cure the sting of dishonor and humiliation--but nothing says “sorry” quite like a thick brick of cash. I wouldn’t worry overmuch whether those who were abused were “innocent” or “guilty.” Even if “guilty” they were not leaders--those characters were incarcerated elsewhere. There are going to be mass releases from Abu Ghraib soon, and their story will have a very different meaning if they return home with something in their hands. 5) At the same time, the US must resume the offensive against organized
resistance in Iraq. The atrocity against the four Americans murdered in
Fallujah continues unavenged--a very dangerous omission, and more
dangerous than ever at this moment when Washington is broadcasting its
uncertainty to a watching world. |
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