"I think we are winning. Okay? I think we're definitely winning. I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05
"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.
Another recent paper by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies is the draft of a forthcoming book Staying the Course? What Can Be Done in Iraq (*.pdf file; 06/26/05 version). The text does show signs of being a work in progress; some passages still refer to the January 30 elections of 2005 as being future events, while others discuss more recent events in the past tense.
Cordesman says that anyone hoping for a rapid takover of the war effort by Iraqi forces is smoking crack (he doesn't put it exactly like that, but...):
No one can argue that Iraqi forces will be ready to deal with the every aspect of the current threat posed by insurgency and terrorism in the near future. Iraqi forces will remain a fraction of what is needed through at least mid-2005 and probably deep into 2006. Many critical elements of Iraqi army, security forces, and police development may not be complete by the end of 2007 - and this assumes a high degree of continuity and consistency in Iraqi efforts. Iraqi forces will not have airpower, significant armor, or modern IS&R support for years to come. Creating Iraqi forces that can be fully effective in both dealing with continued insurgency and terrorism, and capable of defending Iraq against any active threat from its neighbors, will not be a matter of sudden "tipping points," it will be a process involving "tipping years." (my emphasis)
"Staying the course" has its own costs and risks:
The answer cannot be adding more US and other coalition troops as a substitute for effective Iraqi forces. Temporary surges and reinforcements to US and British forces may be necessary, but they are at best a short-term expedient, and one that inevitably will have political costs that offset their military impact. The nature of both the insurgency in Iraq and Iraqi politics make it all too clear that only Iraqi forces can minimize the anger and resentment at US forces, give the emerging Iraqi government legitimacy, and support efforts to make that government and the Iraqi political system more inclusive. Even the segments of Iraqi society that tolerate Coalition forces as a necessity today want them out as quickly as is practical.
Even the best possible new elections, restructuring of the government, and efforts to create a constitution cannot by themselves make the new Iraqi government legitimate in Iraqi eyes unless that government provides security with Iraqi forces. Iraqis need to be seen as steadily taking over the security role by their countryman, the region, and the world. Poll after poll has shown that Iraqis see physical security as one of the most important single issues in their lives, generally followed by economic and educational security. The same polls show that they want Coalition forces to leave as soon as possible - and often long before Iraqi forces can be ready.
And the most powerful military in the history of the world, that spends over half the military budgets of the entire planet has its limits:
It is also important to note that the US is exhausting its ability to create, rotate, and retain the skilled forces that actually help in combat and specialized missions, and will soon have rotated a million men and women through Iraq – including those rotated more than once.
But, on the other hand, we're stuck. At least through the "tipping years":
The fact that more US forces are not a substitute for Iraqi forces, however, does not mean that the US can find substitutes for the US forces that Iraq still needs.
This is sure turning out to be a much longer "cakewalk" than the neocons thought. But can't the "international community" do something to share the disaster with the US? Maybe not:
The world would be a better place if commentators and analysts stopped talking in vague terms about the "international community." In practice, the real world "international community" that can participate in nation building consists of a relatively small number of organizations and NGOs with limited and overcommitted resources. Calling for the "international community" to substitute for US action, or the action of any other country, is meaningless unless that call can be tied to the identification of specific organizations and specific resources that can credibly be allocated to a given task or mission.
In the case of Iraqi security, the UN has no military forces, and is unable to recruit new forces at a scale that could begin to replace US and British forces. The UN as a whole lacks the support needed for such a mission and it has no readiness to become involved in a counterinsurgency campaign. Moreover, Iraqis do not want to replace one set of "occupiers" with another.
But surely some Muslim countries could be persuaded to bail us out, right?
Neighbouring countries are not a solution. They cannot provide the necessary combat-ready forces in a sustainable form. The presence of neighbouring countries’ troops would present serious internal political liabilities. Troops from Iran could inflame the Shi’ite issue, Saudi Arabia is dealing with its own bout of insurgents, Syria would present Sunni and Ba’ath Party conflicts, Turkey would be problematic due to the Kurdish question, and Jordan is already doing what it can without openly supporting the US and inviting internal turmoil given the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Even if the Iraqi political repercussions were less severe, other Arab and Islamic forces cannot deploy with the necessary speed and lack the ability to sustain their forces in the field. Once more, such efforts would inevitably be seen as efforts to bail the US out of a war that had no public supporters. The domestic outcry within these countries would be intense, to say the least.
But what about all those schools we hear about being painted and all? Isn't there some Jim-Dandy economic development going on there?
Iraq is also going to need continuing economic aid, and aid that it plans, allocates, and manages. The many failures in the US and Coalition effort to create effective Iraqi forces documentedin the earlier chapters of this book have at least been largely overcome. The same cannot be said of the aid effort. The initial ideological bias of the CPA, and the illusion that the US had the competence to create a new Iraqi economy out of the mess left by Saddam Hussein in a country his wars had effectively bankrupted in 1984 is only part of the story.
In broad terms, the US simply did not know what to do, and how to go beyond classic project aid to dealing with insurgency. The reprogramming of aid to meet short term goals – adding dollars to bullets – had to be forced on the system largely by the US Embassy team in Baghdad and the US military. USAID and the Department of Defense proved incapable of conducting effective surveys of requirements, establishing valid contracts, administering contracts, ensuring that projects could be carried out in threatened areas, and assessing success and failure with any objectivity. (my emphasis)
At least we didn't hold things up with a lot of, you know, fussy accounting:
Reliance on US contractors, and non-Iraq contractors compounded the security problems and wasted vast amounts of money on expenses that never reached Iraqis or improved their lives. While some contractors showed great courage and dedication, many simply took the money and "hid" in secure areas, and corruption was endemic in many aspects of the aid effort.
It is brutally clear, however, that the talent to plan and manage an effective effort simply does not exist in Washington, and outsiders may be able to advise in transforming the kind of "command kleptocracy" that existed under Saddam Hussein, but do not have the skills necessary to run that transformation themselves.
Cordesman's recommendations start on p. 23 of the document. Cordesman is a supporter of the Bush stay-the-course policy. Let me repeat that: Cordesman is a supporter of the Bush stay-the-course policy.
Keep reiterating that the US and its key allies will set no deadlines, for withdrawal, or fixed limits on its military effort, and will support Iraq until it is ready to take over the mission and theinsurgents are largely defeated.
I don't quite know why people keep suggesting the following, though. If this were the Bush administration's intention, they would have declared it long ago:
Make it clear that the US and Britain will not maintain post insurgency bases in Iraq, and that they will stay only as long as the Iraqi government requests and needs their support.
Post-insurgency bases were one of the main benefits of the invasion and occupation of Iraq in the minds of the neocon grand strategists.
I'm tempted to do a whole separate post on the following. I probably will use this one again. This is good advice. Advice that the current Pentagon leadership, military and civilian, is not following (my emphasis):
Any US approach to these issues should remember the lessons of the [1968] Tet offensive and Vietnam, as well as American reversals in Lebanon and Somalia. The enemies of the US clearly recognize that a strategy of attrition is often the key to defeating the US in grand strategic terms even if the US can win every military battle. If the American people are to "stay the course," they need to be prepared for the realities of just how long such missions take and their real world costs. Americans are not inherently casualty and cost adverse, but they must believe that the mission is worth the cost, that victory is possible, and that they are being told the truth.
The current approach to public affairs and the media in the US government and military is far too often to offer the reassuring spin of the day: To "cherry pick" the good news, exaggerate it, and understate or omit bad news and uncertainty. The result is cumulatively to deprive US officials and the US military of their credibility, and to make the media hostile or critical whenever it does not have direct contact with forces in the field and is not able to make its own judgments. It is also to cumulatively build-up distrust in the American people, as real world events play out over time in far less reassuring ways.
Successful propaganda cannot ultimately be based on a "liar's contest," even when the lies are lies of omission. Like leadership, it must consist in educating people in the truth and in the validity of the mission and the means be used to achieve it. There is also a long history in the US government and US military of cases where such liar's contests do more to blind those telling the lies to the reality of the situation than they do to sustain political and public support. In short, transparency, the truth, education, and leadership are the medium and long-term keys to success, and short-term spin artistry can easily become the prelude to failure.
Reality-based analysts like Cordesman can see through the stab-in-the-back theory of the Vietnam War, and the one that is already beginning to kick around on the Iraq War.
And if you read any of the document, be sure to read the part that begins on page 30. Again, this is a supporter, yes a supporter, of the Bush stay-the-course policy. But a reality-based one. Some excerpts (my emphasis):
The US committed a grand strategic error of monumental proportions in misjudging the political conditions, economic conditions, structure of governance, and popular support of an outside invasion and occupation. It did not understand the country it invaded or occupied. ...
The US proved incapable of performing such an assessment in this case. Worse, it both lacked pragmatism and realism in its effort to make such assessments, and both its senior civilian policymakers and its highest-level commanders confused war fighting with grand strategy. This vastly increased the risk of unrest and insurgency and vastly complicated the task of creating effective Iraqi forces.
Worse, these problems were compounded by a kind of cultural arrogance that tacitly assumed US values and perceptions not only were correct, but also would become Iraqi perceptions. The US went to war without understanding or giving importance to the value of the society it intended to liberate and transform.
The US was unprepared for nation building and made no prewar commitment to perform it. Even if it had understood conditions in Iraq, itwas not ready to take on the necessary commitment to nation building until this was force upon it by events,and it then clear lacked the talent, interagency structures, and experience to perform such task efficiently. ...
The US military was unprepared at the senior command level for counterinsurgency, and especially for serious partnership and interoperability with the new Iraqi forces it was seeking to create. The civil aid effort was organized around creating the wrong kind of police forces for a kind of nation building that could only take place in a far more permissive environment. ...
It is far from clear that any of the efforts made to create improve US capabilities to date have served any useful purpose.... The US did not demonstrate it had a coordination problem; it demonstrated that it had a fundamental competence problem.
The two levels I highlighted above are very important for both the present and the future. It would be another major disaster if the "lessons of Iraq" ignore the failings of the military leadership in the process of politicians of both parties falling all over each other to show they are "honoring the troops" by not making necessary criticisms and reforms to address the very real failures of the generals that have come to light in the Iraq War. The current massive effort toward "military transformation" will not prepare the United States to fight counterinsurgency wars more effectively.
This is apart from the question of whether as a matter of foreign policy we should put ourselves into situation like the Iraq War that require counterinsurgency warfighting capabilities.
The stab-in-the-back fans, both the conscious opportunists as well as the just foolish, will try to blame the whole thing on some cowardly civilians, or on the lack of insufficient Star Wars boondoggle spending, or some such thing.
"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05
No comments:
Post a Comment