Iraq War: Foreign Relations Committe testimony of April 20

There are a number of the statements given by those testifying this week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee available online.

Republican Senator Richard Lugar said in his April 20 opening statement:

For its part, the Bush Administration must recognize that its domestic credibility on Iraq will have a great impact on its efforts to succeed. On some occasions during the past year and a half, the Administration has failed to communicate its Iraq plans and cost-estimates to Congress and the American people. During the weeks leading up to the war in early 2003, the Foreign Relations Committee held multiple hearings in pursuit of answers to basic questions about plans for Iraqi reconstruction. Administration officials often were unable or unwilling to provide adequate answers. In one notable case in March 2003, General Jay Garner, who was Director of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance at the time, chose not to testify or send his deputy, even though he briefed the press at the same time our hearing occurred. This week, the Administration may again have missed an opportunity by declining to send the highest Defense Department official possible to testify at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearings. ...

The Administration must present a detailed plan to prove to Americans, Iraqis, and our allies that we have a strategy and that we are committed to making it work.

 Democratic Senator Joe Biden also made an opening statement that day.  The quality of it is suggested by the fact that he quotes columnist George Will as support for a key point.  Sad.

James Schlesinger, prewar Iraq hawk and a former Republican Defense Secretary (Ford Administration), also testified on April 20.  The first two pages of his testimony are spent quoting Osama bin Laden (he uses the variant spelling Usama) to draw the following moral:

Usama himself has opined that, "when the people see a strong horse and a weak horse—they naturally gravitate toward the strong horse." Consequently, this country must conclusively demonstrate that we are NOT the weak horse. Withdrawal before we have successfully stabilized Iraq is, therefore, not an option. It would be dramatically more visible throughout the Middle East and elsewhere than were those earlier retreats cited by Usama. I recognize that inevitably debate will continue regarding at least the timing of our move into Iraq. Nonetheless, we must not allow the political contentions of an election year to create any impression that we are anything but united in our determination to persevere and to prevail in Iraq. Success is the only acceptable course of action.

I wonder how many will have to die for this vague abstraction of "will"?  Assuming for the moment there's any sense at all in quoting Bin Laden on the Iraq War - which he did for dishonest propaganda purposes, of course - so what if Bin Laden thinks the Iraq War is a testosterone contest?  Or Muqtada al-Sadr, or Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, or others who actually are political players in Iraq?  It doesn't change the questions that need to be answered about the Iraq War.  Do we have achievable goals in Iraq?  Are we able to commit the forces and funds necessary to achieve them in a reasonable time frame?  And are the costs commensurate with the good to be achieved?

Toby Dodge of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London discusses the weakness of "civil society" in Iraq, civil society being the set of social processes that make democratic politics viable.  After long years of Baathist rule, war and sanctions, the institutions that we take for granted in democratic countries were badly damaged or unformed.  His testimony is a real reminder that not since the Vietnam War has the US had large numbers of troops involved in a war where military success depended on the political success of an allied government in the country at war.  And our South Vietnamese ally was a lot farther along in the process than any allied political force in Iraq.  Dodge testified:

The legacy of Saddam Hussein’s rule has made the task of the CPA that much harder. The institutions of the Iraqi state that the US had hoped to inherit in April 2003 were by that time on the verge of collapse. During March they were targeted by the third war in twenty years. This, in addition to thirteen years of sanctions specifically designed to weaken them and three weeks of looting in the aftermath of liberation, resulted in their disintegration. What had been planned as regime change and then the speedy reform of state institutions was now going to be something much more costly and long-term. The legacy of Baathist rule, thirteen years of sanctions and twenty years of war means that today the CPA is engaged in an unforeseen process of building a new Iraqi state from the ground up. By its very nature, this will take much more time, effort and expertise than was anticipated in the run up to invasion.

The problems the CPA (occupation authority) faces according to Dodge are things that one would think should have been painfully obvious to an Administration that had been planning to invade Iraq from day one in office: isolation of the CPA from the Iraqis; few Arabic speakers on the CPA staff; little expert knowledge about Iraq in the CPA; and, heavy reliance on dubious exile groups like Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) and the Iraqi National Accord (INA).  It's a very scary picture.

Ominously, Dodge thinks a scenario that some had regarded as "a loony-left conspiracy theory" is someting likely to be put into effect soon.  Dodge testified (my emphasis):

This means that the ICG [Ahmed Chalabi's group], the most likely core of a new government, post June 30, is detached from the very people it is meant to represent. This gap between the political structures left by the departing CPA and the population does not bode well either for the growth of democracy or for the vanquishing of the insurgency.

This comment of Dodge's is particularly striking (my emphasis):

For military occupation to be successful the population has to be overawed by both the scale but also the commitment of the occupiers.The speed with which US forces removed Saddam Hussein’s regime certainly impressed the Iraqi population. In the immediate aftermath of April 9 there was little doubt that US military superiority appeared absolute. But the inability of American forces to control the looting that swept Baghdad  and the continued lawlessness that haunts the lives of ordinary Iraqis has done a great deal to undermine that initial impression of American omnipotence.

 And what did our leaders tell us at the time that looting was going on?  As CNN reported on my man Rummy's response:

"Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," Rumsfeld said. "They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here."

Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. "Stuff happens," Rumsfeld said.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed. "This is a transition period between war and what we hope will be a much more peaceful time," Myers said.

That one is worth remembering the next 200 times Pentagon officials civilian and uniformed reassure us about how wonderfully the Iraq War is going.

Dodge also makes a critical point that policy makers should keep in mind when worrying about the "will" factor:

As the daily toll of US casualties’ mounts American forces are increasingly perceived of as weak and their presence in and commitment to the country as temporary. This general impression helps to explain why Baath loyalists began to reorganise in the spring of 2003 and why the remnants of Saddam's security services, sensing an opportunity to take advantage of US force vulnerability, began launching hit and run attacks with increasing frequency and skill.

Bluster and stubbornness are not the same as courage and determination.  And it may well be in Iraq that staying and fighting an endless guerrilla war with no realistic prospect of a satisfactory outcome will create an even bigger impression of American "weakness" than pulling out on some more accelerated timetable.

Dodge also describes the development of theIraqi resistance as having progressed from more isolated, frustrated groups in the immediate aftermath of the initial conquest of the country to a more coordinated, systematic group of forces.  The insurgency is growing and becoming better organized, in other words.  And the picture he paints of the counter-productive actions of the American military remind us once again that the Pentagon has trained and prepared for conventional warfare but not for counterinsurgency.  The post-Vietnam strategy, cheered by blowhard conservatives with belligerent rhetoric, was to avoid guerrilla wars, not prepare to fight and win them.

He also provides a succinct definition of how terror functions in a guerrilla war:

This new and destabilising phase of violence is designed to make Iraq ungovernable either by the US or a new Iraqi government. Terrorism is now being deployed with the twin aims of exacerbating sectarian tensions whilst at the same time seeking to stop the growth in indigenous governing structures designed to replace the occupation.

The guerrillas at this point don't necessarily want to convince the Iraqi public that they're the good guys as to show them that the Americans and their Iraqi allies can't or won't protect them against the insurgents.

I quoted earlier from the testimony of Juan Cole.  In his testimony, Cole mentioned how the American press has done the public as well as policymakers a disservice by their sloppy and credulous reporting:

The security situation in post-Baath Iraq has not been good in much of the country, though the Shiite south was for a long time somewhat quieter than the center-north. The problem area encompassed Baghdad, Samarra, Baqubah (and Diyalah province more generally), Mosul, Kirkuk, and al-Anbar Province (Fallujah, Ramadi, Habbaniyah). Nevertheless, guerrillas did mount significant attacks occasionally in the south, as with the huge August 29 truck bombing at Najaf, and in the far north, as with the bombing at Irbil in January. These bombings targeted highly charged political and religious symbols and greatly undermined Iraqi confidence in the ability of the US to provide security. Coalition troops routinelycame under fire in the South, though not nearly with as much frequency as in the center-north. The US official and press tendency to speak of the problems as having concerned a relatively small portion of the country, mistakenly termed the "Sunni triangle," obscured the scope and seriousness of a security collapse that encompassed perhaps half of the geographical area of Iraq and affected a good third of its population on an ongoing basis and at least half at some point.

Iraqi freedom is turning out to be a lot messier than Rummy predicted a year ago.  Lots of "stuff" is still happening.  And that "transition period" between war and peace that Gen. Myers hoped for in the same press conference looks like it's going to be quite a long transition.