Errors of Judgment

A couple of years ago I gave a talk about the dangers of Utopianism. I said that those who have a simplistic view of life’s problems can end up being even more destructive in their attempts to make things better than those who act with malicious intent. ‘The Road to Hell’ and all that. After my talk a friend asked me if I thought that The Anglo-American venture in Iraq should be categorized in the same fashion. At the time I dodged the question by saying that we were too close to the situation to be able so see what the final outcome will be. After all if a few specific battles in 1864 gone differently President Lincoln could have lost the election and history would be dramatically different. In the same way a few things changing in Iraq will greatly affect how future generations view this campaign.

A few weeks ago this same friend asked me the same question and asked if the intervening time had led me to alter my answer. For the most part it remains foolish to forecast what the end result of the war will be. However, we can look to some things that could have done better and could in turn have made our little game of guess-work go more smoothly.

The main criticism that I have had of W, Rumsfeld et al has been that they confused what it would take to defeat Hussein with what it would take to run Iraq. For the first point they were absolutely correct. Despite all the criticism to the contrary before they went in, they managed to take on the largest army in the Arab world, advance 200 miles in 4 days in the face of opposition, and take the enemy capital in three weeks of combat. That campaign, led by Gen. Tommy Franks, was brilliant. I've heard of Iraqis who had only the propaganda to hear of the war who were absolutely shocked that morning in April of 2003 to see American tanks rolling through their streets. They'd only heard about Iraqi victory after Iraqi victory. This campaign cost "only" a few dozen American lives and few Iraqi lives as well. It was a textbook military action.

However, to defeat Hussein's army was only one thing. To rebuild Iraq was another. Whether it was a naiveté about the goodness of your everyday Iraqi or a misplaced insistence not to play the role of the conquering foreigner, The Anglo-American forces failed to exploit their advantage. Instead of maintaining the perception of invincibility created by their charge up the Tigris and Euphrates they soon were perceived as first indifferent and then as impotent in the face of the chaos in the power vacuum. They managed to cause far more damage by playing Mr. Nice Guy than had they been a terror to behold. People are not nice, and it was foolish for them to think that their hatred of Hussein was the same thing as a love for their fellow man.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22349336-2703,00.html

Either of two things could have avoided this situation. The first, and least likely, was that the UN could have organized massive peacekeeping forces. This was unlikely for two reasons. The first is that the UN is perhaps the most useless organization in the world when it comes to conflict resolution. You might think that they would have learned their lesson out of the 90's with the Balkans and Rwanda. UN forces there sat and watched as Serbs and Hutus killed their neighbors. That this hope is a shadow is shown by the UN's paltry response to Darfur in which their peacekeeping force amounts to 26,000 troops that cannot interfere, but can only "observe." However, we never got to see even this pathetic effort. The UN pulled out the first time they got hit. How they expect to resolve conflict if flight is their first response is beyond me.

The other thing that could have helped was the Iraqi Army. Many argued that just as the German Wehrmacht had to be de-Nazified in 1945 so the Iraqi Army needed to be de-Baathified. This makes sense. You can't end a tyrannical regime by keeping the tyrants in power. The question remains is whether the baby went out with the bathwater. After the war in Europe, many who had been not only foot soldiers but also officers ended up in the new West German armed forces. They were able to help build up their country from the chaos their leaders had unleashed. Has our zeal to rid the land of Hussein’s cronies in the Baath Party led us to leave the Iraqi military without teeth.

Without an effective military you don’t have a nation. You have a bunch of people who are little but prey. Until there is an Iraqi Army strong enough on its own to police its own cities and to defend its borders on its own we can’t leave. So long as we are doing this job for them we leave ourselves vulnerable to pressures from other regions of the world. Iraq must stand.

Now many folks have come to just this conclusion and have decided that the best course for America is to cut our losses and get out before more of our blood is spilt. They say we started this mess by going in and the best thing for all concerned is to get out now. Unfortunately this has the same logic as someone kicking a hole in a ship and deciding that going back to his cabin is the best thing to do.

The answer is not go away and pretend it isn’t happening. Many on the Left have let their visceral hatred of the President blind them to the fact they’d be far less comfortable were radical Islam to become the dominant force in the world. Many on the Right have joined in with the short-sighted calculations of those who cannot see beyond next year’s election. The first group pretends that the radicals will sit down quietly and join Greenpeace if we leave, and the second group pretends that preempting our immediate pain will forestall greater pains later on. Both see this deep and global conflict in terms of American political jousting. Do we really think Bin Laden cares which freedom-of-religion and equality-of-gender advocate is in the White House?

This is a war that must be won, and to be won it must be fought. Some of us like to think that fighting is not a nasty, disgusting business. But there simply is no clean war. There is no war where civilians don’t die and soldiers don’t kill. The dangers of Utopianism that were disgusting two years ago stand still. If we withdraw we will be turning millions of souls over to the affections of those who consider broadcasting beheadings of relief workers to be a service to God. What choice do we have? We must, in the words of The Untouchables’ Elliot Ness, never stop fighting till the fight is done. We have to stay there and fight until no one can say that we were driven out. The smallest window otherwise will be a golden ticket inviting attack after attack after attack. God help us.