AFTER THE WAR
Quagmire?
America has already won in Iraq.
BY F.J. BING WEST
Sunday, July 27, 2003 12:01 a.m.
URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110003803
In the doldrums of summer, a gun battle that erased the sons of Saddam has perked up the news. Uday and Qusay were the pillars of Saddam's brutal regime, and perhaps the most feared of all its members. This intelligence and military success will surely infuse some balance into the saturnine reporting from Baghdad. The raid that led to their richly merited deaths demonstrated the unremitting pressure that is squeezing the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime. So will the naysayers at last concede that we are doing something--anything--right?
The news brought celebrations in the streets of Baghdad, previously peopled, we've been told, only by surly Iraqis who hate our presence there. The market immediately reacted by dropping the price of oil. Yet it is hard for a reader to determine the trends in Iraq when most headlines focus solely on American casualties. Because shipwrecks make news, headlines about sinking ships are not a reliable measure of maritime safety. Late last March, the press rushed so quickly from one side of its own Good Ship Integrity to the other that it almost capsized. There were reports about U.S. forces bogged down in the desert and a flawed Pentagon strategy. While these stories were coming in, Baghdad fell. Phew, that was close.
Similarly, today the media may be overemphasizing the problems in Iraq. We understand that Baghdad is sweltering, electricity is intermittent, Iraqis are sullen, American soldiers are sweaty and their wives want them home. Each American casualty is featured as if our troops were stuck in a quagmire of increasing combat. More than three dozen Americans have been killed in action since May 1. Each death is a tragedy on an individual level; on a national level, however, this does not presage a crisis. If that rate continued for six months, the risk of a soldier dying would be 1 in 2,000. A recent Gallup Poll found that 74% of Americans believed the current rate of casualties was to be expected. During the campaign from Kuwait to Baghdad last March, the risk was much higher. And that rate pales in comparison with casualties in Vietnam, Korea and World War II. By historical standards no American unit in Iraq is engaged in serious combat.
Last March, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld predicted that some in the press would call Iraq a quagmire. In argument by analogy, Iraq is compared to the past U.S. presence in Somalia and of course in South Vietnam, which fell to a North Vietnamese army equipped with Soviet tanks and Chinese artillery. The quagmire tagline refers to Vietnam between 1962 and 1965, when the success of the Viet Cong guerrillas led to higher numbers of American troops and casualties. When the Viet Cong were attrited, the North Vietnamese took their place.
The emotional effect of suggesting a quagmire is to induce pessimism or, as Shakespeare would say, to take counsel from one's fears. According to this line of logic, the low-level violence in Iraq can be quelled only by more foreign troops, such as the French, who are sidelined due to the administration's unilateralism. So, owing to the absence of the United Nations, more American troops will have to be sent to Iraq, leading to more casualties and placing an intolerable strain on the U.S. military.
It is not clear, though, that the sky is falling. Iraq is a large country with multiple story lines. For instance, whatever became of those Marines last seen in April pulling down that huge statue of Saddam, symbolizing the fall of Baghdad? Ten thousand Marines are now providing security for 12 million Shiite Iraqis in the southern half of Iraq, an area about the size of Utah. It's hot south of Baghdad, the towns are a mess. The Marines are patrolling there in small units, often without helmets and flak jackets.
But shoot at them and they will kill you. Marines know how to fight. Correction: Marines like to fight. They also, in their own parlance, "do windows," meaning they consider it a core mission to act as police, to train a constabulary and to assist in civilian infrastructure and governance. They like to say "no better friend, no worse enemy." We hear nothing about them because shootings are rare, power is restored, crops are irrigated and police are deployed. Yet a few months ago the Shiites in the south were supposedly the real threat, because they would be infected by the virulent anti-Americanism of the Iranian ayatollahs. (There are thousands of U.S. soldiers in Bosnia performing similar jobs and we hear nothing about them either. Shipwrecks make the news, while normalcy is boring.)
The shootings will diminish dramatically when Saddam is put to rest and as the Iraqis establish a governance that treats Saddam loyalists as their enemy. The open terrain does not favor guerrilla bands, and the shooters, far from swimming in a sea of friendly people, are hiding their identities. As the killing of Uday and Qusay reveals, the Iraqi people are willing to give them up. President Bush has it right: If radicals sneak into Iraq to attack Americans, they will die there. That's better than having them plot against New York City. A quagmire refers to organized resistance supported and sheltered by a willing population. In Iraq, the vast majority of the people welcomed the American forces.
To be sure, the Iraqis have been disappointed by the slow pace of restoring security, power and jobs. The Pentagon was as ill-prepared for the peace as it was well-prepared for the war. Yet that institution recognized its mistakes and quickly shifted personnel and plans. In rebuilding Iraq, the U.S. will carry the major external burden, as we did in Korea, and before that in Europe. This will not be particularly dangerous work, but it will be messy and take years.
We should get on with the job. The next American general to grumble that his troops are not policemen should be relieved. Yes, they are policemen--and criminals and Saddam loyalists alike should fear them, while the average citizen should not fear an indiscriminate fusillade from them. Because freedom from risk does not exist, American casualties will continue to make the news. With the death of Saddam's sons, however, it certainly appears the U.S. Army units inside the "Sunni triangle" have taken the offensive and more raids can be expected. In Iraq as in Afghanistan, our troops will indefinitely confront hostile armed bands.
There is nothing new about this. Seventy years ago, the Marine Corps issued a "Small Wars Manual" with instructions for patrolling in barrios, feeding mules, drilling wells and holding elections. The Iraqi war is over and the seemingly tedious work of helping that country pull itself together has begun. Turbulent conditions and episodic violence are definitions of nation- building, a term eschewed yet practiced by the administration. There will no doubt be more shootouts like the one in Mosul. But make no mistake, the tyranny has been removed; this war is already won.
Mr. West, a former assistant secretary of defense, is a co-author of "The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division," due out from Bantam Books in September. |
