Hawkmoon, your ranting about "islamists" shows a deep fear and concern that the situation in Iraq is not good, and not getting better. Yet you seem willing to endorse everything that Bush and his strategists (if they can be properly called that) have done, despite the growing chain of disasters. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, what should Bush have done differently? More troops on the ground? Better armor? A different set of favored Iraqis? Or do you believe, like the President, that there have been no mistakes?
btw, I'm not retired.
I received the following from a friend much more knowledgable in these matters than I. I apologize for the length:
We seem to want to believe that because our intentions toward Iraq are good, it must be that the great majority of Iraqis are appreciative of our good intentions and are grateful. Therefore, the masses want to like us and to behave well and that the various insurgent groups are basically small, unrepresentative groups of "soreheads" and spoilers. I believe that "dead enders" is the phrase that SECDEF likes to use. Based on this understanding of reality, it follows that what is going on in the country is essentially police work against criminals who are hiding among a population friendly to us. From this it follows that problems in relations with the majority are either problems in miscommunication of goals and progress or the result of "ham handed" excesses in the use of military power which is alienating a population which otherwise would be welcoming.
In other words, if the Army and Marine Corps would back away from the situations at Fallujah, Ramadi and Najaf, then the underlying benevolent attitudes of the people towards the reconstruction of Iraq would re-assert themselves and life would improve.
I think that this is a basic misunderstanding of the situation. Rulers in the Middle East hold power through force and police action. The countries mostly have fine sounding constitutions which are just "window dressing." Even in that context Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who exceeded expectations for egregious cruelty among the various kinds of Iraqis. Even most of the Sunni Arabs who were for so long the core "establishment" of Mesopotamia were glad to see him gone. It does not follow that this means that they like having us occupy and re-organize their country on the basis of an idealized vision of what WESTERN values would do for their lives. The evident case that this re-organization will involve handing over power to returned émigrés who have little support in the country compounds Iraqi opposition to our "project."
The continued emphasis on "Globalization" of the Middle East (read Islamic World) starting with Iraq as a tool in fighting the War on Terror adds a lot to the belief of many Iraqis and others that what is intended is de-Arabicization and de-Islamicization of the region in pursuit of regional security.
Many Americans seem to think that "culture" is really unimportant, that, in fact, "inside every gook there is an American trying to get out." Iraqis and other Muslims know that this is not true. They know that their way of life does not consist of "Kodak moments" involving quaint folkways which tourists can film.
The truth is that it is our mere presence in Iraq that fuels the resistance to us. The great majority of Iraqis reject our presence in much the same way that an organism rejects foreign tissue. Most Iraqis see us as an alien army come to take away their identity. They see us essentially as "the other," the adversary. Through that lens they view everything we do with deep suspicion and a desire to see us leave. Will they be better off when we are gone? No. They will not be better off, but that has never proven a deterrent to revolt on the part of any people under occupation by an alien army.
Within this context the resistance grows. It waxes and wanes not according to some sort of "fever chart" of hostilities between our soldiers and the insurgents. No. It waxes and wanes according to the perception of the Iraqi people of the effectiveness of resistance efforts. When the insurgents are effective it spreads to other places and groups.
In this setting we need to do two things:
1-The political situation must be radically altered. The grand scheme of using the new Iraq as a political base for cultural revolution must be dropped. The plan to establish the émigrés as a new government for our own ends must be dropped as well. The authentic internal interests within Iraq must be represented in a new government. Someone like Brahimi acting for the UN is the appropriate way to go. Brahimi is a Sunni Arab politician. The UN enjoys a level of respect among Arabs which is real if unjustified. UN sponsorship of an interim government will be accepted by most Iraqis.
This will lead to a massive erosion of support among the people of Iraq for the insurgents. There will still be insurgents, but they will be an isolated and unimportant remnant.
2-Until the political solution described above can be attained, it will be necessary for coalition forces to maintain firm control throughout the country. A failure to do so will lead to a progressive disintegration of the polity into warring groups each striving to seize as much power and territory as it can in the understanding that no one will be able to hold the country together. The Iraqis do not like our soldiers. The Kurds want us to protect them. Is this love? The Iraqi people, like many in the Middle East, are very good at low level propaganda. It is almost instinctive for them to "play back" to us themes that they know are effective in supporting their deep seated desire to continue to push us towards leaving and to cause us to stop "leaning" on them. You can hear it every day from drivers, porters, members of the Governing Council, etc. It is easy to be deceived.
All this pressure must not be allowed to make us think that the "hearts and minds" approach will be enough to hold Iraq together long enough to allow a reasonable political result. No. We will have to be tough enough to make our adversaries both within and without the insurgency believe that it will be a good idea to wait for Brahimi and the UN to sort this out. Will this be pleasant? No. It will be the opposite. It will be very hard in light of our undersized force structure. There are not enough US and British soldiers on the ground to saturate the country and dampen resistance through continual presence. This means that at times it will be necessary to use a lot of force. No one wants that, but it will come to that. There is no choice. Too many mistaken assumptions and wildly optimistic dreams have led to this awful place, a place from which there is no easy exit.
Does this mean that the worldwide Jihadi war against the US is the same thing as the war in Iraq? No. It does not. That war is one in which the Jihadis intend to destroy us. They intend to attempt this on a world wide basis, and the outcome in Iraq has little to do with that. That war will go on and on and on, no matter what happens in Iraq. |
