Thoughts on Iraq

The removal of Donald Rumsfeld from the office of Secretary of Defense will interject new ideas and new policy to the Iraq war. The move, in step with the eventual release of findings by the Baker Institute and the Democratic “thumping” in the recent midterm congressional elections, shows that the environment in Iraq is at a disconnect with the goals of the Presidential administration and the public.

The midterm elections were a referendum on the Republican leadership. The underlying issue that seems to have generated the referendum-feel, and also an increase in voter turnout across the country, was not a national issue, but a foreign policy issue—The Iraq War.

But can Iraq be fixed? Can the hopes of the President that Iraq will be a peaceful, democratic bastion in a region as volatile as the Middle East?

Probably not. At least not in the near future.

A mistake that war planners at the Pentagon and Central Command (under now retired Gen. Tommy Franks) made was that they did not foresee the animosity that was to be unleashed, a virulence amongst Shiites and Sunnis, against one another, that Saddam Hussein repressed under dictatorial control. In fact, they had no substantive strategy for post-Saddam Iraq (referred to as Phase IV of the war plan). Thomas E. Ricks in his book, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq:

It wasn’t that there was no planning. To the contrary, there was a lot, with at least three groups inside the military and one at the State Department working on postwar issues and producing thousands of pages of documents. But much of the planning was shoddy, there was no one really in charge of it, and there was little coordination between the various groups (79).

The lack of significant preparation and adequate troop numbers caused Iraq to explode. Looting was widespread and difficult to control. In addition, the minimal number of troops allowed a free passing of select Iraqis into neighboring Syria (and would also be the impetus for Iraqi civilian abuse at the hands of U.S. soldiers, notably General Odierno’s 4th Infantry Division), some of whom would fund characters of insurgency. In addition, it is a prime violation of counterinsurgency warfare to allow a lax control of territorial borders (see Lt. Col. David Galula’s, French army, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, a counterinsurgency “bible” despite its dated publication, 1938.)

Paul Bremer’s implication of de-baathification (removing all individuals once associated with Hussein’s party) and the abolishment of the Iraqi army effectively rooted insurgency in the already unstable country. Roughly half a million individuals were slighted, dishonored, and now without paychecks to support their families.

The current unemployment rate in Iraq is between 30%-70%, with notable percentage differences in various sections of the country. The creation of jobs in the country is essential. This will require extensive amounts of money. Perhaps Iraq’s neighbors, Syria and Iran, can help to build-up the fragile Iraq economy (both Syria and Iran have no need for a continuing unstable Iraq, which would cause an influx of refugees and could insight intra-religious violence amongst Muslims in their own countries).

In a recent article for Newsweek magazine, Fareed Zakaria puts forth this contemplation: “If you think that Iraq's tumult is a product of its culture, religion and history, ask yourself what the United States would look like after three years of 50 percent unemployment. Would there not be civil strife in Manhattan, Detroit, Los Angeles and New Orleans?”

There is one bright spot in Iraq, which is the growing economic strength of the Kurdistan region in the north. “While the government in Baghdad is still haggling over its petroleum law and violence wracks much of the country, the Kurds are about to pass their own oil law. They have already signed contracts with a handful of foreign oil companies, and they’re aggressively wooing more” (Fang, -style: italic;">U.S. News & World Report, Nov. 13, 2006). Fareed Zakaria further adds this notable characteristic: “…it is a Muslim region in the Arab world that wants to be part of the modern world, not blow it up.”

Iraq needs to find a way to allocate petroleum revenue to both Kurds, Sunnis, and Shias. This will generate much needed income if the new country is to grow.

However, the sustained violence curbs development in the country, and security is not at the levels it needs to be. This is the primary difficulty that the new Secretary of Defense will undertake. However, it is a pipedream to assume that U.S. forces can eliminate the sectarian violence in the country. The best hope that forces have is to keep the violence at minimal levels so the economy, based in oil revenue and employment-creation, can grow and become, at some level, self-sustaining without the aid of American troops.

I’m not quite sure how Americans view the situations in Iraq, nor do I comprehend their best wishes and intents (even their realistic goals) for that fragile country. But, we would be kidding ourselves to assume that a peaceful and a working democratic country will take form in the none-to-distant future. It will take many years, possibly generations, for a stable economy to emerge amongst sustained security and prevalent democracy.

However, there is no guarantee that this will happen.