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Ledeen: The Surge and its Critics
Getting SyriousBy Michael Ledeen Weve renewed the great debate on Iraq, and as usual the central issue the regional nature of the war is not addressed. Still, one is grateful to Eliot Cohen and Bing West for some long-needed suggestions in their excellent article in the Wall Street Journal. Above all, they raise the question of Iraqi justice, one of the central requirements if the Iraqi people are going to have any confidence in the future. West and Cohen say that 80 percent of all arrested people are released without a sentence, and they point out that many of those people were originally arrested by American forces. If you want to understand the frustration of our troops, this is probably the best place to start. Americans are killed, we investigate, find the people we believe are guilty, and arrest them. We then turn them over to local authorities for processing. But the justice system is totally centralized in Baghdad; there are no local judges to pronounce sentences, and all cases go to Baghdad. Baghdadi courts are not a model of efficiency, thus alleged killers walk. Not just once, but many times. They kill again, are arrested again, and walk again. Thats the sort of thing that sometimes drives some soldiers to go on vigilante rampages when they see men walking around who are believed to have killed GIs or Marines. There must be local courts, otherwise the increase in the prison population for which West and Cohen call will be politicized, ethnicized, or tribalized, depending on whats happening in Baghdad. Posted by: Brett 2007-01-11 |
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