The Iraq situation is I think a lot more complex than most believe, because before we can choose a policy we have to make a firm decision on what kind of nation we are.
Example: if what we wanted was regime change in Iraq, the time to do that was in the First Gulf War when, at the end, we encouraged uprisings against Saddam. What we hoped for was a coup d' etat by one of Saddam's generals. We could have had that had we made it clear that we would not tolerate the slaughter of those who were rising against Saddam. Instead we did nothing. None of his generals would be first in arranging a coup, and it wasn't clear what we'd do if one did. It was totally inept and resulted in slaughter of those who would have built a democracy -- perhaps -- in Iraq. Those passionate for democracy were killed, sacrificed to Bush I's inability to make up his mind: are we a republic or empire? Do we want to stay home and build America or go abroad slaying monsters and constructing hegemony?
If you cannot make that decision you cannot do what is needed. What we did was probably the worst thing possible: we postured, we encouraged, and we abandoned those we encouraged. The result was horrible including one of the worst man-made ecodisasters in two thousand years. The Turkish breaking of the terraces in Asia Minor, introducing goats into the Sahel; these may be comparable to what was done to the Garden of Eden. The Soviet destruction of the Aral and Caspian Seas is on a comparable scale. This one was on us.
Then we went into Iraq under Bush II. This time it would be a lot more difficult to build a democracy because most of those passionate about democracy had been given their lesson good and hard. The only way we were going to build a democracy would be first to establish order; then rule of law; then local democracy; then regional democracy; and finally a national federation of regional democracies. Nothing else was going to work and it took no great genius to see that.
There were only two ways to establish order: to take in enough troops to impose order -- my estimate was 500,000 but there were some optimists in the Pentagon who thought 400,000 would be enough; or to hire it done by paid soldiers, namely, the Army of the Republic of Iraq. The only way to do that would be to tell the Generals that we would give them money to pay their soldiers, and the condition of their continued payment would be order in their regions. Brutally enforced order. Ordnung! General, for every incident in your region we dock you a percentage of the money we pay you to pay your troops; enough incidents and we replace you.
Instead we sent in the neocons and Jacobins who couldn't wait to disband the Iraqi army and free the Iraqi people. Free them to loot and pillage and destroy, but look! Our hearts were pure! We were not oppressing them. I do not know what Bremer thought he was doing; from reading his book it is clear he did not know what he thought he was doing. The result was utter chaos, and it took no great amount of brains to KNOW that the result would be chaos.
We are going to disband the army of a tyrant. We will send those young men home with weapons but no pay and no jobs, and encourage them to be orderly and vote! After all --
It is impossible for me to put myself in the place of the people who made decisions like that. They thought de-Baathization, purification, our strength is of the strength of ten because our hearts are pure. I can't think like that, and I am a novelist.
But now we are there. Our army, once the finest in the world, is tied up trying to do constabulary duty, its equipment in ruins, lives interrupted by long deployments, and no end in sight.
And the military newspapers call for the resignation of the Secretary of Defense. Unprecedented.
Before we can decide what to do about Iraq we must know what to do about ourselves.
And having asked all that, we must still remember: we are in Iraq. We were led there by ideals. Rumsfeld hasn't enough history to understand that implementing Jacobin ideals requires more than an army capable of defeating every organized military force on the planet.
But we are there; and when we leave we must leave something behind; what I do not know, but fleeing in panic will not accomplish that.
"Stay the course" will not work; we need new strategic goals. I do not think Nancy Pelosi will be able to find them; and bringing home a victorious army and treating them as if they have been defeated and should be ashamed is not a healthy thing to do. The army knows it was not defeated. The Administration must now know that the cakewalk, mission accomplished, Chalabi installed as puppet king, was never in the cards.
We have to find a way out of Iraq.
source:
www.jerrypournelle.com
