- Just a month ago the Iraq Study Group issued its much
awaited, widely kibitzed, and--by the Bush team at least--now largely ignored
report on what to do to extricate the US from Iraq. As that report faded
from the front pages and prime times of major news media, it became clear
that Bush and his immediate supporters were bent on painting the United
States completely into a corner. They wanted no date certain or even a
suggested process for a US departure; they wanted no part of bringing the
neighboring states (notably Syria and Iran) into the discussion; they shied--perhaps
with credible reluctance--away from attempting to solve the Palestine issues
in the context of future actions on Iraq; They appeared to accept that
events in Iraq were on a continuing downhill slide, while searching for
some formula that would assure "success", a mantra that, whether
political or military, remained undefined. They floated on the notion that
a "surge" in US forces--upward of 30,000 most often mentioned--could
tame the conflict plagued streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi provinces,
and, if it didn't, the "surge" would be a show of US determination.
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-
- Never in the history of US military engagement have national
leaders been so patently unsure of themselves. But, but, critics of that
statement will argue, the Bush team always has been very sure of what it
wanted to do. That indeed may be true, but being ideologically certain
of what you want to undertake is not the same thing as knowing what you
are doing.
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-
- Having largely weaned itself from diplomacy as a foreign
policy instrument, the US went into Iraq with military tools that, except
for the initial shock and awe attack, were grossly out of mesh to the tasks
at hand. While the announced aim was "to free the Iraqi people",
the military went in virtually totally equipped for conventional combat
situations, not post combat administration. The troops were there to do
battle. Iraqi people quickly fell under the wheels of this juggernaut,
but they did not stay down. What arose instead was a creeping insurgency
that slowly morphed into a mix of efforts to get the occupiers out, while
attempting to redress ancient ethnic injuries and trying to prevent future
ones: A recipe, in short, for some combination of urban terrorism/insurgency
and civil war. As those conditions evolved, the mismatch between US on
the ground capabilities and intentions versus conditions in Iraq only mushroomed.
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-
- The certainty that it knows what it wants drives the
Bush team to stay focused on forceful engagement, not peace making. The
situation cries out that the last thing we need in Iraq is more combat
troops. What the Iraqi people need is relief from gunfire and some promise
that the infrastructure that actually was working fairly well before the
US shock and awe attack will be put back together.
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-
- To be sure, that result is unlikely to dispose of the
ethnic and religious differences that in some respects have accumulated
for centuries. But while arguing that the situation will simmer down if
we can only squelch the Sunni insurgency, it is worth noting that more
than half of the most wanted characters on the famous playing card list
were Shi'a, not Sunni. This says that left to their own devices, and free
of an occupying military force that too often shoots first, there is at
least some prospect that the differences can be bridged. In the meantime,
civil war flourishes in a conflict environment sustained by combat between
Coalition forces and Iraqis, and it is often hard to tell the difference.
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-
- One of the problems obviously is that the motives of
the various militias are mixed. While groups such as the Mahdi army of
Moqtada al Sadr seek to assure certain Shi'a dominance in any future arrangement,
they also want to get rid of the invaders. It appears quite probable that
this mix of motives applies to all of the militias except possibly those
members who have joined up from abroad, be they ordinary adventurers or
al Qaida.
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-
- In this particularly explosive environment, just what
good could additional US forces do? If they were not combat forces, given
a little time to demonstrate their intent to stop the fighting and restore
public order, they probably would get considerable help. On the other
hand, if they go in armed to the teeth and ready for battle, as seems probable
in the currently unstable setting, then their principle contribution will
be to add fuel to the fire.
-
- In that event, it is worthwhile up front to examine what
practical difference a "surge" force could make. The numbers
are not terribly encouraging. At present, we have about 130,000 troops
in Iraq to deal with roughly 25,000,000 Iraqis. In truth, not all are
troublemakers, but in an insurgent/incipient civil war situation it already
has been demonstrated that a comparative few troublemakers can do enormous
harm under the protective cover of a civil population. With these numbers
the ratio of US troops is one to every 190-200 Iraqis. If even two or
three of those Iraqis are determined troublemakers, that one trooper is
in deep trouble, and that is exactly where our forces are.
-
-
- If we were to add 30,000 more troops, the ratio improves
a bit to one US trooper for every 160 or so Iraqis. However, the number
improvement is better than the safety improvement for US forces, because
a few troublemakers can still successfully exploit a protective or even
merely sheltering civil population to do great mischief. Something like
this calculus leads a number of analysts to say we need a lot more troops
in Iraq to actually make any difference in the situation. But to overcome
the asymmetry that so solidly favors the Iraqi militants, the number of
additional US or Coalition troops would have to be enormous. It appears
obvious at this point that Iraqi insurgents could continue to operate successfully
in an environment where the total US force has been doubled.
-
- The reality may be even more stark. Frank Rich, writing
for Truthout, reports that "Last month the Army and Marines issued
an updated field manual on counterinsurgency supervised by none other than
Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the next top American military commander in Iraq.
It (the new field manual) endorsed the formula that 20 counterinsurgents
per 1,000 residents is the minimum troop density required." Applying
that formula, it would take three quarters of present troops in Iraq to
cover Baghdad alone, and it would take upward of 500,000 for Iraq as a
whole. The latter number is roughly half of all active duty men and women
in US armed forces, while senior military officers have said that there
are no more than 9,000 additional troopers available for Iraq duty.
-
- In this perspective, the addition of troops in Iraq is
a horrifying mirage, a glittering image in the sands of that troubled place.
What is needed is a fundamental change in the nature of the present situation,
and more troops simply cannot do that. To the extent that peacekeepers
are likely necessary to cool the civil war activities of various militias,
those peacekeepers cannot be part of the present occupying force. They
must be new; they must go in with a clearly reconstructive mission; and
they must have a mandate that is widely supported in the outside world
as well as the approval of Iraqi leadership in all camps. That means the
occupation must end, and it must do so on a timetable that is declared
soon. Adding troops will be counterproductive. Staying at present levels
will be unproductive. The present pattern and trend of violence appear
unlikely to subside until the occupation is replaced by a neutral team
that can persuade the Iraqi people they are getting their country back.
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- **********
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- The writer is the author of the recently published work,
A World Less Safe, now available on Amazon, and he is a regular columnist
on rense.com. He is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the US
Department of State whose immediate pre-retirement positions were as Chairman
of the Department of International Studies of the National War College,
and as Deputy Director of the State Office of Counterterrorism. He will
welcome comment at <mailto:wecanstopit@charter.net>wecanstopit@charter.net.
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