For what it's worth, Steven, here's a plan. I'm not at all certain a plan is what you are asking for. But here goes.
That was what I was looking for, thank you. Not exactly a plan, but at least a general statement of intentions.
This will achieve the primary objectives of the invasion. It will remove Saddam and allow US forces to locate and destroy WMD and any facilities that would enable future WMD programs.
This will not produce a democratic Iraq. I don’t think it’s really intended to leave a functioning democracy behind. I think it’s supposed to install the basic structural requirements of democracy – at least a constitution, an elected legislature and executive – and extract our people. This will not create a functioning democracy, but it will allow us to say that we did all that could be expected.
I don’t really disapprove. This level of engagement is at least achievable, and the goal of installing a functioning democracy was probably unattainable to begin with. Of course, I have some comments…
Much also depends on whether the arriving American troops would be welcomed or shot at, and the Central Intelligence Agency has been drawing up scenarios that range from a friendly occupation to a hostile one.
I hope that one of the scenarios is realistic, meaning that it assumes that the arriving troops will be shot at by some and welcomed by others. I also hope that at least one scenario involves an initial welcome by much of the population, followed by rapidly increasing disaffection. That seems a very likely possibility to me. I expect that many Iraqis will be delighted to be rid of Saddam, but I don’t think very many will relish the prospect of an extended occupation. We also have to expect that many influential individuals and groups, both inside and outside Iraq, will be doing all they can to spread and exploit such disaffection. Many of these will be cooperating with us on the surface and acting to undermine us behind our backs. It’s going to be a nastily complex business, plots within plots within plots, and that’s not the sort of thing that Americans are traditionally good at managing.
A civilian administrator — perhaps designated by the United Nations — would run the country's economy, rebuild its schools and political institutions, and administer aid programs.
Wow. That’s going to be one busy administrator.
Ok, I realize that they meant to say administration, not administrator, but it’s still going to be quite a job for whoever is in charge. Ideally we will need someone who is half Jefferson and half Machiavelli, with the patience of Job and the ruthlessness of Genghis Khan. We won’t find that, of course, but I hope that whoever gets the job is an experienced administrator of complex international situations, driven more by practicality than ideology and with a well developed capacity to detect bullshit. I’ve half a mind to nominate Chris Patten; I know his views are not well received here, but I thought he did a quite creditable job in Hong Kong, a situation of similar complexity.
Only "key" senior officials of the Hussein government "would need to be removed and called to account," according to an administration document summarizing plans for war trials. People in the Iraqi hierarchy who help bring down the government may be offered leniency.
The administration plan says, "Government elements closely identified with Saddam's regime, such as the revolutionary courts or the special security organization, will be eliminated, but much of the rest of the government will be reformed and kept."
This is going to be a problem, probably a big one. Actually it will be several problems. The first, of course, revolves around the populations that bore the brunt of Saddam’s oppression. They are not going to be at all happy about seeing the people who participated in genocide at the ground level being let off. They will want revenge, or justice, or something like it, and some effort will have to be made to go beyond the people who gave the orders and remove individuals who held key roles in the implementation process.
As I’ve mentioned before, we also have to decide what to do with the people who used to be in the intelligence services, the Republican Guard, the Special Republican Guard, the police, and other key elements of Saddam’s administration. Many of these institutions will be disbanded, but the individuals that composed them will be at large and will remain connected. Together, they form a significant antidemocratic power bloc. They will also be targeted for recruitment by terrorist organizations and local antidemocratic politicians.
Other problems are more complex. Bureaucracies almost always reflect the character of the government that created them. If the government is authoritarian, corrupt, paranoid, and nepotistic, the bureaucracy will reflect that. I am quite sure that the existing Iraqi bureaucracy exhibits all these characteristics, and that key posts at all levels are dominated by Sunnis and Tikritis. Leaving this bureaucracy intact is going to create an extremely difficult challenge for the occupation government and whatever Iraqi government succeeds it, particularly if that government is not dominated by Sunnis and Tikritis. Easy to say that much of the government "will be reformed and kept". Actually reforming it will be a whole lot harder.
There will be a huge temptation to leave key people in the bureaucracy and industry in place. These people will have experience and connections, and their networks will already be in place in their fiefdoms. Leaving them in place will make things easier in the short term, but will leave key sections of the government and the economy in the hands of people with strongly antidemocratic sentiments.
Special attention will have to be paid to people who have stashed large sums of money away. Money is power in a nation in political transition. Money buys votes and loyalties of local officials. It hires muscle, and there will be plenty of that available for hire. A concerted and effective effort must be made at leveling the political playing field by finding and expropriating such ill-gotten gains.
Those problems are caused by our enemies. Our friends will be as big a problem. Much of the internal opposition to Saddam is wholly undemocratic in character. The Iraqi National Congress professes dedication to democratic principles, but few of its constituent groups show any significant affection for democracy. The few exiles that do seem to show a real commitment to democracy have little following in Iraq. Many of the Iraqi exiles once served Saddam, but were the losers in internal power struggles. Trysting these will be a mistake. Many people nominally on our side will be trying to set themselves up in positions that create access to money and bases for their own personal ambitions. This is where the Machiavellian aspect will be of major importance.
Along the same lines, it may be expedient in the short term to offer lenience to high officials that turn against Saddam. Placing any trust in such individuals, though, would be a terrible mistake, and while we might want to exempt them from formal trial and punishment, we will have to act quickly and decisively to breal their political influence.
Overall, I would say that the single greatest task of the interim administration will be to identify and incapacitate the individuals and groups that provide the most significant challenges to democracy, whether or not they were associated with Saddam.
We have become so focused on the apparently inevitable Iraq operation that many people have forgotten about or grossly distorted the relation between the move on Iraq and the broader war on terrorism. Many of the rationales initially advanced for invading Iraq (the idea that an American presence in Iraq would weaken the positions of terrorists based in neighboring countries, for example, or that an emerging democracy in Iraq would spread democracy to neighboring states) were based more on naivete and wishful thinking than any realistic expectations. As we become closer to actual action, though, naivete and wishful thinking become actual liabilities. It’s high time that we tucked those lovely dreams back into the cupboard where they belong and start looking at the impact our presence in Iraq is likely to have, in the real world, on other key fronts of the war on terror.
That’ll have to be another post, though; I’m about written out and I’ve other things to do…. |
