The Way out of Iraq
I’ve been itching to write this article for years, but I struggled
with what to say. Now the thoughts are coming to me loud and clear.
Here it is.
America has almost universally accepted that the occupation of Iraq
initiated in 2003 has been a failure, at least on the count of maintaining order and setting up a peaceful democratic regime. Many people from left
to right have finally jumped on the bandwagon of anti-war sentiment
after having supported the war at the outset. These people are
pathetic- politicians like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, pundits like
George F. Will and William F. Buckley, entertainers like David Letterman, and countless journalists of all
stripes find it easy to snipe at the conduct of the war now that it is
clearly a loss. What they are saying is, "the war was a good idea to
begin with, but the administration has been so incompetent in handling
it, it became a mistake." Well, they haven’t done much as Senators or
pundits or clowns or journalists to offer a better way to execute the war, except
calling for the firing of Rumsfeld. You can’t have it both ways- you
can’t say, "I support a disastrous incursion into a foreign country,
but only if we do a good job of it." For that reason, I will probably never
vote for Clinton or Kerry in another presidential election. I have more
respect for John McCain, who was a supporter of the war from the
beginning but has been begging for more troops. Although I’m sure a
larger force alone wouldn’t have solved the problems either, he at least proposes an alternative plan.
We do not have the benefit of hindsight. We will never know if
America could have had a successful occupation with more competent
people in charge of it instead of arrogant foreign-policy dunces like Rumsfeld,
Cheney, Bush, Perle, and Wolfowitz. More intelligent people always
believed that the entire premise of the war was wrong, and we should
have never gone in. However, it’s too late. We are all there, as
Americans, stuck in the quicksand and sinking further. The only
question that matters is, what on God’s earth are we supposed to do
now? I want America to win this thing as badly as anyone else. I’m
sick of hearing people demand that we bring all the troops home now.
Leaving Iraq to crumble into another failed state is simply not an
option. It would jeopardize America’s own security and demonstrate to the world that we are weaklings.
The president has called on some of his dad’s cronies to bail him
out on the question of what to do, because none within his
administration has a clue. Grizzled old Washington men like Jim
Baker and Robert Gates formed the Iraq Study Group, which is supposed
to make recommendations in the next month as to how to solve the Iraq
problem. Since then Gates has been named as Rumsfeld’s replacement,
which is at least one step in the right direction.
Rumsfeld screwed up on so many fronts, I could write an entire book
about it. We’ll just list the more egregious examples in this
particular rogue’s gallery:
1) Allowing Abu Ghraib to happen on his watch. This is no doubt a
result of the bull-headed, "we’re going to get tough with these brown guys"
mentality bestowed on the military by both Rumsfeld and his boss,
George W.
2) Letting atrocious massacres of civilians happen at the
hands of US troops, at Haditha and elsewhere. The lax culture of any
organization comes from the top. Add on the extreme levels of stress
our poor soldiers are under in Iraq, constantly facing a relentless
enemy that could be any man, woman, and child whether Sunni or Shia or
anyone else on foot, in a car, or looking out a bedroom window. We
should never, ever put our military in this position again unless we
have to. In this case it was a choice.
3) Pushing for the
dissolution of the Iraqi Army and Ba’ath party. Once Saddam and his
buddies were taken out, the rest of the army and bureaucracy should
have been left intact to run the country. Most of these people were
not corrupt, and they were the ones managing the cities and provinces.
The Ba’ath provided security, garbage collection, water supplies, and
handled the sewage. If you take out the sewage people, who is
supposed to clean the shit? We cannot underestimate how many people
may have become insurgents because of the lack of electricity, running
water, and their jobs.
4) He tried to do the work that other
agencies and people are better at- running more and more intelligence
programs out of his office instead of letting the CIA do it, attempting
diplomacy which is supposed to be under the State Department, and
heading up the rebuilding of Iraq- which should have been in someone
(anyone) else’s hands. All were classic case studies in failed
management.
5) Fooling American soldiers in so many ways. The most
damning statistic of all about the men and women we have asked to fight
in Iraq is this: a whopping 85% of them believe that Iraq had something
to do with 9/11. A patent falsehood. Which means these kids are being
LIED to by someone- most probably their superiors. Rumsfeld is their
boss, so he should be accountable for this snow job.
6) Horrendous
military planning- from inadequate body armor, to all of the vehicles
and equipment sitting out of service due to procurement shortages, to a
woeful shortage of troops. Rumsfeld tried to demonstrate that a new type of war could be won with a new type of army- a leaner, meaner fighting machine. The war was won- but what was needed in the aftermath was a different animal.
The first step for Gates in his new job must be to solve these 6
problems listed above 100%. It’s actually quite simple but I’ll spell
them out:
1) Don’t torture them
2) Don’t tolerate Americans killing civilians
3) Don’t tinker any further with the Iraqi government
4) Let the CIA do intelligence, and let State get more involved in rebuilding and diplomacy
5)
Tell the kids the truth: that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. That
is the least we can do for asking them to put their necks on the line.
6)
Focus on managing the logistics: procurement, contracts, recruiting,
safety, public utilities. And for God’s sake, we need another 100,000 to 150,000 troops
there NOW. I am sick of hearing about the violence spiralling out of control.
If Gates can keep his nose clean and do these things, we would be on
the right path. But these are by no means the whole answer to this
complex quagmire. There is so much more that needs to be done. The
Iraq Study Group will be putting out a massive, boring volume that will
go into painful detail about the way out of Iraq. Let’s spare
ourselves the trouble and BS with my simple outline.
America’s first and most important step must be to bake a big humble
pie, and eat it. If I were president, I would invite all of the
world’s leaders to a meeting, and apologize for the mistakes we have
made. Then I would ask for a lot of help from everyone- especially all
of the Middle Eastern nations, and all of the rich nations, whether we think it’s desirable or not. This is our only way out left: bringing others in. America was foolish to not have done this in the first place, plain and simple.
If you hold that America isn’t alone in Iraq, then I would like to
disabuse you of that notion. Let’s not pretend the Iraqi occupation is
multilateral. Britain’s 8,000 troops are a symbolic little force
relegated to a more peaceful southern province of Iraq, and everyone
knows this cute bunch of blokes will not change the outcome in Iraq one
way or the other. The rest of the countries combined provide even less manpower than the limeys do. Multilateral, shmultilateral.
That needs to change. We need countries like France, Germany, Japan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, and Jordan to ante up. They need to send their troops and funds into Iraq to help maintain the peace. Enemies of order in Iraq need to understand that the whole civilized (and uncivilized) world is lined up against them, and not just in rhetoric. The effort also has to include Muslim countries, including the caretakers of Mecca, the Saudis. An unstable Iraq destabilizes everyone in the Middle East and beyond as a terrorist breeding ground, and an Alamo cry for the world’s disgruntled Muslim teenagers. The ones rioting from Paris to Egypt to Asia partly do so because of Iraq, even thoughmost of the world was against the war in the first place. Countries need to realize that in this tiny globalized world, they are in the quicksand with us. Whether they like it or not, whether America screwed it up for them or not.
Other countries will need to pour money and companies into the economic recovery effort. We can’t bear the burden alone. One of the administration’s mistakes was only allowing American companies to bid (when there was any bidding at all) for reconstruction contracts after the invasion- an utter embarrassment which pissed other countries off unnecessarily. There is plenty of work to go around, not just for Halliburton. America cannot go this fight alone.
If Iraqi men had jobs and the money to feed their families, I guarantee 90% of the insurgency would end. Getting the water, power, and sewage systems up and running wouldn’t hurt either. Fat and satisfied people won’t risk their lives to fight you. They’d rather watch Iraqi Idol on TV and eat goat meat pizza.
The task is challenging. It’s not easy to admit that you fucked things up, and then ask for help. Especially because the people you are asking for help have even more skeletons in their closets, next to the dead hookers. In particular, I despise the way that European colonial powers (in Iraq’s case, Britain) carved borders that didn’t make sense throughout Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. That’s why the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds got up each other’s asses to start with. Do you want a true test of America’s strength as the only superpower in the post Cold-War era? It can’t be proven by bombing the shit out of somebody "Shock and Awe" style; clearly nobody was impressed by the tens of thousands of civilians GI JOE killed in Iraq already. Our strength as a nation, as the leader of the world, will have to be demonstrated at the negotiating table. Diplomacy. If the next president can invite the leaders of the world together and convince them that fixing the Iraq problem will require their help, and they in turn provide it, we can be proud of the fact that America is once again led by a true champion of the world. It’s what the world is yearning for. Even those few countries who would challenge America’s authority, such as China or Russia, would greatly benefit from a peaceful Iraq gushing lots of oil out at capacity.
We do not have a choice about Iraq- we have
to stay until it is a successful democracy. We simply cannot allow it
to be a failed state. That would mark the beginning of the end of
America as a great power. It would be the first stage of a Rome-like
decline, and I don’t want to be a part of that in my lifetime. I don’t want to witness the decline of the greatest goddam nation in history.
