leaving a security and administrative vacuum, which the U.S. military was utterly unprepared to fill. The U.S. forces arrived in Iraq with far too few military police and civilian affairs officers to run the country.
I believe Friedman has nailed this one correctly as well, painful as the realization is for me.
But I'm not here to be a hack for the Bush administration, even if I strongly believe in the mission to change the regime in Iraq and restructure it with some kind of foundation for future democracy (even if it takes decades).
I'm surprised that it seems the post-war operation is woefully under-funded, under-planned, and consists mainly of "crisis management".
The first thing the US should have done in Iraq was to be prepared to vet the previous poliice force and to hire and train new Iraqis of all the ethnic groups. An internal police force is imperative for maintain social order. It's a position of power and authority within ANY society, but especially those of the mid-east, and willing recruits, if properly paid, would be swamping recruitment offices.
Obviously basic infrastructure, food, and health care are equally important, but social order, carried out under a set of just and fair laws, is the only means for creating any foundation for democratic reforms and political legitimacy.
People want to eat, work, and have access to any other basic human needs. But their primary basic need is security and social order. Until order exists, you can't attract investment dollars; engage in infrastructure improvement; or spur local commerce to resume.
These are "no-brainers" that should have been part of any post-war plan of action. And frankly, I'm not seeing any particular evidence of that having been incorporated.
And while I could care less about paying Iraqi officers back wages, I do see the efficacy of placing them in managerial positions (closely supervised) where they are engaged in administering clean-up and rebuilding efforts.
From my perspective, we're seeing evidence that lessons of the past (occupation of Germany/Japan.. etc) have been ignored. And we'll eventually get ahead of this learning curve as well, but the lessons learned will likely find their way into some deep file over in the Pentagon library.
Hawk |
