A Time for Leaving:
American security and Iraqi stability depend on a prompt handover
by William R. Polk
Our parents were sold on the slogan that the First World War was the "war to
end all wars," although the 20th century went on to have more of them than
any other in history. We went into Vietnam fearing the "domino effect,"
although the struggle there had little relationship to events in any other
Asian country. We were rushed into the war in Iraq by the assertion that
little, poor, remote Iraq was at the point of attacking mighty America, and
now we are bogged down there allegedly by a ragtag faction of Ba¹athist
diehards.
What is the reality of Iraq, what do we face there and what can we do?
Iraq is a shattered country. Its infrastructure has been pulverized by the
"shock and awe" of the American invasion. Few Iraqis today have clean
drinking water or can dispose of their waste. About 7 in 10 adult Iraqis are
without employment. Factories are idle, and small shopkeepers have been
squeezed out of business. Movement, even within cities, is difficult and
dangerous. And the trend in each of these categories is downward. Iraq¹s
society has been torn apart, and perhaps as many as 100,000 Iraqis have
died. Putting Iraq's casualties in comparative American terms would equate
to about one million American deaths. Dreadful hatreds have been generated.
Not all hatreds are on the Iraqi side. American soldiers, often not knowing
why they are in Iraq, but only that they are getting shot at in 50 to 100
attacks each day, are fearful. Against an indistinguishable enemy who fades
into the general population, their fear turns into general hatred. To GIs,
the natives are "ragheads," just as in Vietnam they were "gooks." And they
may be suicide bombers. Hatred and contempt also, of course, echo far beyond
Iraq among the more than one billion Muslims throughout the world.
Thus, even when, as in the Fallujah battle, the insurgents were outnumbered
at least 20:1, and it was obvious that they could not win against a phalanx
of helicopter gunships, fighter-bombers, tanks, and artillery, they fought
to become martyrs for their cause, and thus to inspire others to take up
their mission. They lost the battle of Fallujah as they will lose every
battle. But they have not lost the war. This is the reality with which
America must deal.
Guerrilla warfare is not new. In fact, it is probably the oldest form of
warfare. Just looking at the twentieth century, we can study conflicts in
Europe, Asia, and Africa, including the Irish struggle against the British,
Tito's and the Greek ELAS's struggles against the Germans in the Balkans,
Mao Zedong's war against the Japanese and then against the forces of Chiang
Kai-shek in China, the Viet Minh's defeat of the French in Indo-China, the
Algerian war of national liberation against the French, the Chechens'
centuries-long war against the Russians and, of course, our Vietnam and
Russia's Afghanistan.
The story they tell was well summarized by Mao Zedong when he described the
guerrilla as a fish that must swim in the sea of the people. Absent popular
support, the guerrilla is at best an outlaw and, more likely a corpse. But
with the support of the people, he is nourished, elusive, and ultimately
replaceable. Consequently, almost no matter what forces are brought against
him, he — or his cause — has proven indefatigable. If we are ignorant of this
history, we are doomed to repeat it.
Today, in Iraq and in occupied Palestine, Americans and Israelis are
repeating these campaigns, focusing primarily on the application of
overwhelming military power designed to dishearten the insurgents. In 40
years, the Israelis have not achieved security; the chances that the
Americans will in five years appear unlikely.
Why is this so? The answer is essentially simple: people of all religions
and races share a common desire to control their own lives. Thwarted in this
quest, some people — whom, if we approve of them, we call "freedom fighters"
or, if not, "fanatics" or "terrorists" — take up arms, as Americans did in our
revolution. They are usually few in number, perhaps 15,000 or so in Iraq,
but many more people, who do not actually fight, support them.
Knowing that they cannot defeat the foreign enemy, they seek not so much to
win battles but to wear him down, to inflict upon him what he will regard as
unacceptable casualties and other costs, and to erode his political support.
Thus, almost inevitably, the techniques of guerrilla warfare fade into
terrorism.
We have mistakenly acted as though terrorism was a thing or a group against
which one can fight. But terrorism is merely a tactic that can be used by
anyone. Ancient Britons used it against the Romans, the Zionists against the
British, the Algerians against the French, the French against the Nazis, the
Chechens against the Russians, the Basques against the Spaniards, and so on.
It is the traditional "weapon of the weak," who resort to it when all else
fails.
So what can America do?
Today, there are no good options — only better or worse alternatives. Three
appear possible: First, staying the course; Second is Vietnamization; Third
is to choose to get out rather than be forced.
Staying the course: In practice, that means continued fighting. France
"stayed the course" in Algeria in the 1950s as America did in Vietnam in the
1960s and as the Israelis are now doing in occupied Palestine. It has never
worked anywhere.
At best, staying the course in Iraq can be only a temporary measure as
eventually America will have to leave. But during the period in which it
stays, say the next five years, my guess is that another 30,000 to 40,000
Iraqis will die or be killed while the U.S. armed forces will lose at least
another 1,000 dead and 20,000 seriously wounded. The monetary cost will be
hundreds of billions of dollars.
It is not only the casualties or treasure that count. What wars of "national
liberation" demonstrate is that they also brutalize the participants who
survive. Inevitably, such wars are vicious. Both sides commit atrocities. In
their campaigns to drive away those they regard as their oppressors,
terrorists/freedom fighters seek to make their opponents conclude that
staying is unacceptably expensive and, since they do not have the means to
fight conventional wars, they often pick targets that will produce dramatic
and painful results. Irish, Jews, Vietnamese, Tamils, Chechens, Basques, and
others blew up hotels, cinemas, bus stations, and apartment houses, killing
many innocent bystanders. The more spectacular, the bloodier, the better for
their campaigns.
Faced with such challenges, the occupying power often reacts with massive
attacks aimed at terrorists but inevitably kills many civilians. To get
information from those it manages to capture, it also frequently engages in
torture. Torture did not begin at the Abu Ghraib prison; it is endemic to
guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency inexorably corrupt the very causes
for which soldiers and insurgents fight. Almost worse, even in exhausted
"defeat" for the one and heady "victory" for the other, they leave behind a
chaos that spawns warlords, gangsters, and thugs as is today so evident in
Chechnya and Afghanistan.
Second "Vietnamization" — to train the army, equip it, and then turn the war
over to it. In Iraq, America inherited neither a government nor an army. It
is trying to create both. Not surprisingly, the results are disappointing.
Most Iraqis regard the American-selected and American-created government as
merely an American puppet. And the idea that America can fashion a local
militia to accomplish what its powerful army cannot do is not policy but
fantasy. An Iraqi army is unlikely to fight insurgents with whom soldiers
sympathize and among whom they have relatives. Many have reportedly thrown
off their new uniforms and joined the insurgents.
Much has been made also of the constitution we wrote for the Iraqis. It
reads well, as did the one the British wrote for the Iraqis 80 years ago in
1924, but it is not anchored in the realities of Iraqi society. Absent the
institutions that give life to a constitution, it will be simply a piece of
paper as was the one the British provided. Representative government grows
in the soil of the people or it does not grow at all. It cannot be mandated
by foreign rulers.
Thus, the best America might gain from this option is a fig leaf to hide
defeat; the worst, in a rapid collapse, would be humiliating evacuation, as
in Vietnam.
Third: choose to get out rather than being forced. America would have to
declare unequivocally that it will give up its lock on the Iraqi economy,
will cease to spend Iraqi revenues as it chooses, and will allow Iraqi oil
production to be governed by market forces rather than by an American
monopoly.
The second step, more difficult, is to make a truce and pull back its
forces.
Then, and only then, could Iraqis themselves set about creating a national
consensus. This is the most sensitive and difficult part of the whole
affair. It cannot be rushed, and we cannot do it for the Iraqis.
The danger during this period is twofold: on the one hand, Iraq, like
Afghanistan, could shatter, with local warlords seizing the pieces, or Iraq
could split into a sort of eastern Balkans with Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and
Shia Arab successor states. The one would certainly create mafia-style
terrorism, while the other would promote mayhem as thousands of
suddenly-created refugees flee from now alien states. Further regional
instability would be created, and possibly either Turkey or Iran or both
would intervene, Turkey to suppress the Kurds and Iran to protect the
Shi'ites. The results are unforeseeable but certainly ruinous.
On the other hand, in an attempt to avoid this disaster, we and our Iraqi
proteges could, as we are now attempting, create a new Iraqi army. We should
heed the lesson of Iraqi history. In the past, the British-created army
destroyed moves toward civil society and probably would do so again, paving
the way for the ghost of Saddam Hussein
Meanwhile, a variety of service functions would have to be organized. Given
a chance, Iraq could do them mostly by itself. With its vast potential in
oil production, probably the greatest in the world, it could soon again
become a rich country with a talented, well-educated population. Step by
step, health care, clean water, sewage, roads, bridges, pipelines, electric
grids, and housing could be provided by the Iraqis themselves, as they were
in the past. In carrying out the rebuilding and reordering process,
particularly at the grassroots level, Iraqis would begin to take control of
their lives and start building the neighborhood institutions and consensus
on which, if it is to grow at all, representative government will depend.
Economically, Iraq will also have to mend itself. Here the American role is
primarily negative. We have imposed policies during our occupation that
worked against the recovery of Iraqi industry and commerce. Abrogating these
would spur development, since any reasonably intelligent and self-interested
government would emphasize getting Iraqi enterprises back into operation and
employing Iraqi workers.
As fighting dies down, reasonable security is achieved, and popular
institutions revive, the one million Iraqis now living abroad will be
encouraged to return home. In the aggregate they are intelligent, highly
trained, and well motivated and can make major contributions in all phases
of Iraqi life. Oil production will play a key role. The income it generates
can make possible great public works projects that will help to lure back
Iraqi emigres, employ Iraqi workers, encourage local entrepreneurs, and
salvage the class of merchants and shopkeepers who traditionally provided
security in Oriental cities. In its own best interest, the Iraqi government
would empower the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC) to award concessions by
bid to a variety of international companies to sell oil on the world market.
This is obviously in the best interests not only of Iraq but also of the
Western world.
The safety and health of American society as well as Iraqi society requires
that this policy be implemented intelligently, determinedly-and soon.
A former member of the U.S. State Department's Policy Planning Council,
William R. Polk was responsible for the Middle East area.
Back to Peace
Talk Index, Spring 2005