Mission Baghdad
"Clear, hold and build" will take at least this many troops.
Thursday, January 11, 2007 12:02 a.m. EST
President Bush's challenge last night was to convince Americans that his new plan to secure Iraq won't mean risking more lives on a conflict that critics say has become "unwinnable." We think he offered compelling reasons for skeptical Americans of good faith to back him, but the key will be deploying enough forces to accomplish the task.
Mr. Bush's words offered the hope that the new plan won't simply mean employing more troops to carry out a strategy that hasn't been working. Though widely described in the press as a troop "surge" or even "escalation," the number of additional soldiers being sent to Iraq is significant but not overwhelming. The real difference will be how America uses its troops in Iraq. Put in simplest terms, Mr. Bush seems finally to have decided that the way to defeat the insurgency is to protect the population, especially in Baghdad.
For the past couple of years, every visitor to the Iraqi capital has been struck by the near invisibility of American troops on the city's streets. Sure, there were a few in the Green Zone, and lots out by the airport and a bit north at the airbase in Balad. But instead of using them to provide order, Generals George Casey and John Abizaid limited them largely to search and destroy missions while waiting for Iraqi forces to step up to the task of protecting civilian neighborhoods. There were reasonable arguments to be made for this strategy at the beginning--it might have prevented Iraqi resentment of U.S. occupation--but it couldn't survive the onslaught of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's car bombs and the reaction of the Shiite militias.
The new plan grew out of ideas presented by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki when he met Mr. Bush in Jordan last year. And under it, U.S. forces are slated to become more visible in the Iraqi capital than they have since the invasion in 2003. Instead of being confined to large bases outside the city, a U.S. combat battalion will be garrisoned in each of nine districts into which the city will be divided. Their job will be to support an Iraqi Army brigade (3,000-5,000 men) that likewise will be dedicated to each district, as well as a national police brigade and the local police.
Iraqis will take the lead in security operations, as they have in recent days in anti-insurgent fighting along Haifa Street. But there seems to be agreement on both sides that the Iraqis will perform with more confidence if they have close American support. The visibility of American forces will also reassure Baghdad's Sunni population, which has had justifiable worries about the infiltration of Iraqi police by Shiite militias.
Thus one question is whether one American battalion--600 to 1,000 soldiers--is enough to do that job in these large areas of Baghdad. The tragedy would be if, after so much buildup, the U.S. only provided enough troops for an expanded version of Operation Forward Together, which failed last year.
Outside Baghdad, meanwhile, another U.S. combat brigade will be dedicated to Sunni-dominated al Anbar province. Ramadi will have to be a main destination, because that insurgent stronghold has to be tackled lest its car-bomb factories disrupt progress in the capital. There are also plans to increase the size of the Iraqi Army by five brigades, from the current 36, though we have our doubts that even this will be enough since the Army is so much more effective than the police.
Crucial to all of this will be the new U.S. ground commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who not only recruited and trained the Iraqi Army starting in 2004 but also oversaw the drafting of the U.S. Army's latest Counterinsurgency Manual. His job will be to execute the "clear, hold and build" strategy Mr. Bush has talked about for some time. General Casey has resisted the deployments necessary to make the "hold" and "build" phases work, and General Petraeus will have to insist that he has them.
Iraqi leadership will also be important to the new strategy, as the President noted last night. Mr. Maliki will have to show that Shiite criminals will be dealt with just as Sunni terrorists are. That means no more special treatment for the thugs of Sadr City. Rapid completion of a new oil law that guarantees equitable revenue distribution would also ease Sunni fears that they are going to lose out in the new Iraq. But we continue to believe that the best way to help Mr. Maliki accomplish these goals is not overt American pressure but consistent and overt American support. He will need it, because some compromises will alienate portions of his political base.
In any case, last night's address was at least a tacit acknowledgment that the U.S. has placed far too much emphasis on a political progress as the solution to the violence. The truth is that political compromise won't happen without better security, or as the Petraeus Counterinsurgency Manual puts it, "security is essential to setting the stage for overall progress." There's also the outside meddling by Iraq's neighbors, particularly Iran and Syria. This remains primarily an indigenous Iraqi conflict. But showing those countries that they will pay a price for helping to kill Americans is also necessary for counterinsurgency success.
With the new strategy, new forces and new generals President Bush is putting in place, we have a fighting chance to create a virtuous circle whereby better security leads to more anti-insurgent cooperation from the public--which in turn leads to still better security. If Congressional Democrats have better suggestions, we'd love to hear them. But the one "strategy" that simply isn't credible is the idea that anybody's interests would be served by a hasty U.S. exit from Iraq.
opinionjournal.com |
