| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| Myths of the Current War |
| 2006-03-24 |
| Sorry if this was posted earlier but if not, I thought it was worthwhile reading. This guy pimp slaps the media by exposing every myth they perpetuate about Iraq for what it is: a myth. EFL The debate about American policy and strategy in Iraq has veered off course. A number of myths have crept into the discussion over the past two years that distort understanding and confuse discussion. It is possible and appropriate to question the wisdom of any particular strategy proposed for Iraq, including the Bush administration’s strategy, and there is reason to be both concerned and encouraged by recent events there. But constructive dialogue about how to choose the best way forward is hampered by the distortions caused by certain myths. Until these myths recede from discussions about Iraq strategy, progress in those discussions is extremely unlikely. Myth 1: The Bush administration intends to keep substantial U.S. forces in Iraq for a long time and must be pressured to bring them home quickly. This assertion is false. The American strategy in Iraq from the very beginning of hostilities in March 2003 has been to remove all U.S. forces from the country as rapidly as possible. That was the basis of the “small footprint” idea under which the military fought the war with too few troops to prevent the rise of the insurgency. As the insurgency began, the military consistently underreacted in the deployment of troops and pursued a series of strategies to avoid increasing the number of troops in the country. Since mid-2004, the administration has stuck to a single determined strategy to train a large Iraqi army to wage the counterinsurgency and to withdraw American forces as that army becomes able to take over responsibilities in Iraq.[2] Myth 2: The presence of U.S. forces in Iraq is the major source of the conflict there. Peace will return to Iraq as Americans leave. There is a certain amount of truth here, of course: a significant portion of the Sunni Arab insurgency is devoted to attacking Americans and driving them from Iraq, and a few elements of the Shiite community have joined in such attacks for their own reasons. The logical leap from that fact to the assertion that if only the Americans would leave, the insurgency would die down and peace would ensue, however, is baseless and indefensible. The results of such a rapid withdrawal will be primarily negative. Insurgent groups may initially begin to struggle with one another, both arguing and fighting over their future visions of the country. All will almost certainly attack the Iraqi government and security forces with renewed vigor. The absence of coalition forces will embolden some to increase sectarian violence in the hope of igniting a civil war. The likely result will be either chaos or the further weeding-out and merging of insurgent groups into larger organizations capable of posing a significant challenge to a very weak central regime. The prospects for the success of that regime in such a scenario are very dim. Myth 3: The war in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terrorism. Claims of Saddam’s prewar involvement with al Qaeda certainly seem to have been exaggerated--although it is known that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi trained soldiers under the aegis of the Taliban alongside al Qaeda fighters and then moved into Iraq before the U.S. attack.[10] This question, however, is no longer relevant to the problem of determining U.S. strategy in the war on terror. Al Qaeda’s “second-in-command,” Ayman al-Zawahiri, has repeatedly said that he now sees Iraq as the central front in the struggle with the West.[11] Zarqawi has linked his ideological program with that of Zawahiri and bin Laden to make plain that he has no intention of stopping with success in Iraq, should he attain it. Above all, the key question is: will chaos in Iraq help or hinder al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in their struggle with the United States and the West? The answer is, of course, that it will help them. Myth 4: The wisdom of invading Iraq in 2003 should be an important part of the discussion about what to do in Iraq today. When John Kerry made criticism of Bush’s decision to go to war--rather than of current administration strategy in Iraq--the centerpiece of his campaign, he helped ensure that future debates over policy there would be fruitless. From the standpoint of American policy today, it simply does not matter whether attacking Saddam in 2003 was the right decision or not. The question must be: where do we go from here? From the standpoint of American domestic politics, criticizing the decision to go to war is, of course, perfectly valid and may even have been essential. The American public was certainly entitled to make up its mind whether or not Bush had made a mistake and to fire him if it felt that he had done so. The electorate chose not to do so, implicitly accepting either the administration’s rationale for invading or the irrelevance of the discussion to the matter at hand. Either way, the wisdom of the invasion is now purely a matter for historians. Myth 5: Most Iraqis “want us out,” and we have lost the battle for “hearts and minds.” Therefore, we cannot succeed.[12] The real issue about the popularity of American forces is the degree to which their presence fuels the fighting or contains sectarian conflict. As we have already seen, the evidence that the U.S. presence is the key driving force in the insurgency is thin, and the evidence that that presence is an essential precondition for avoiding civil war is strong. Iraqi attitudes about that presence only really matter if they change this calculation in some important way. These attitudes are therefore worth monitoring, but should not be allowed to drive coalition strategy by themselves. Above all, it is essential to keep in mind that it is not the United States that has the task of winning the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqis, but the Iraqi government. The current Iraqi government has by no means yet succeeded in that task, and it may fail to do so. But we can judge the progress of the counterinsurgency only on the basis of the Iraqi government’s success or failure in this regard, not our own. Myth 6: Setting a timetable for withdrawal will “incentivize” the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own country. Both of these assumptions are contradicted by the facts on the ground. The Iraqi government is demonstrably unable to control its state, and the Iraqi Security Forces and, still more, the Iraqi police are inadequate to fight the insurgency. Recent estimates suggest that as many as 60,000 Iraqi Security Forces troops may be fit to undertake operations entirely on their own.[14]Counter-insurgency operations to date have required between 130,000 and 160,000 American troops in addition to those 60,000 Iraqis to maintain the current unacceptably low level of security and stability in the country. Training soldiers takes time. Gaining experience in combat and in command takes time. However hard we push, the Iraqis can only go so fast. It is unlikely in the extreme that 2006 will see the deployment of enough Iraqi troops to relieve all of the coalition forces and maintain security even at the current level. The Iraqi police are, by all accounts, lagging even further behind. |
| Posted by:eltoroverde |