20,000 won’t make much of a dent
Thursday, 11 January 2007 | 687 readers so far
Another 200,000 troops might make a difference. 20,000 additional sets of boots on the ground is not going to help Iraq any corners that lead to the promised land.
The real question in my mind is: how can we expect to win politically when we don’t have the willpower to win militarily? Iraqis may have been ready to vote, but their leaders are not ready to lead. The President would have done better if he had announced that we were going to deal with militias once and for all, starting with the elimination of Moqtada al-Sadr. But we Americans are growing increasingly spineless when it comes to following through with any painful, messy decisions. I’ve suggested that al-Sadr must be dealt with before in a post entitled Muqtada al-Sadr: enemy of a free Iraq. When Saddam was deposed, he was replaced with 1,000 little Saddams due to poor planning and ignorance of the realities of life in Iraq on the part of the invaders.
One of the most powerful of these little Saddams is Moqtada. We put out an arrest warrant for the man years ago, but we haven’t had the willpower to follow through on it. We need a full scale attack on his followers, instead of constant little clashes. Moqtada must most likely be killed. It’s easy for fat, comfortable Americans back home to complain about how brutal and harsh this approach is, but Iraqis would understand it. They lived with it under Saddam, and under many of his predecessors.
Killing Moqtada would send a message - that we mean business, and that we are not going away. If Iraq is to be pacified, if it is to be given a chance to develop and grow out of its savage state, we will probably have to continue killing every harbinger of violent and torture that steps forward until there are so few left that they run and cower. Instead, we’ve emboldened these crackpot fundamentalists by threatening them with a spanking instead of giving it to them. We have the military capability to put Iraq back in the Stone Age overnight, but we’re hesitant to use it because we’re compassionate.
Iraq’s politicians are not going to bring the bubbling cauldron back under control. We need to put aside our compassion and face the facts - daily life in Baghdad is a living hell for most of its residents. Now all we have to do is decide whether we want to set the conditions under which the militants there are going to die, or whether we want to continue allowing them to set the conditions.
As long as we continue allowing our enemies to choose their battlefields, we will continue suffering and fighting amongst ourselves about whether or not we’re accomplishing anything. It’s time to decide whether we’re willing to win. If we are, it could get very, very ugly in the short term, but in the long run, Iraqis and their neighbors will be better off. Let’s get serious about controlling Baghdad by any means necessary. That means destroying anyone that gets in the way.
20,000 more policemen won’t accomplish that. No, 20,000 more American uniforms in Baghdad will create what we in the U.S. military call a target-rich environment. Unless, of course, we send those 20,000 new fighters in with the discretionary authority to do whatever they need to do to subdue their enemy. But I don’t think we will do that. We’ve become weak-willed due to our own Sunni-Shia type split. Maybe we’re headed towards our own next civil war.
1 January 13th, 2007 at 1:54 am
alisa says:
The Iraqis are not going to be able to come together as a nation until each household feels safe. Once security for the citizens has been achieved, then maybe there will be headway made politically.
You’re right… engaging in small firefights here and there will not win this war. We need to go in with a military mind, not a media biased political mindset and just get the damned job done already regardless of how abhorrent it is to the non-military citizens of the US.
2 January 13th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Mathijs ter Wee says:
I agree, more troops are needed if “we†want to win. I am a student in international relations and I’ve learnt that you need about 20 soldiers per 1000 civilians in order to keep law and order. Theory and reality do not always match, but there is probably some truth in this theory. KFOR, numbered 50 000 troops in Kosovo, could maintain law and order in Kosovo (Kosovo has a population of 2.1 million).
This article suggests that it is not possible to built an democracy in Iraq: http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010807B I doubt whether Iraq can become some kinds of a consociational democracy. The current government seems to be pro-Shiite. Some ministries are even in the hands of militias. Although it is bad for the reputation of the US, it might be good for the CIA to take action now. Without democracy you can still have constitutional liberalism. The UAE or Hong Kong under British control can be seen as autocratic countries with liberal constitutionalism.
Some more international cooperation could be helpful as-well. It is believed that Jordan played a major role in tracking down Al-Zarqawi. Arab countries are could be helpful to gain intelligence and to influence the Sunnis. For the US it would make a big difference if Europe and Asian countries contributed troops and paid some of the costs of the civil war. Perhaps we could make a deal with some poor countries. We pay them and they deliver troops or we start some army containing foreigners ourselves. The war currently costs about $500,000 per employed soldier in Iraq (72000/0,125=576000). Furthermore, there are other costs: psychological, medical and welfare.
I’ve also an controversial idea: Paying money for every killed insurgent. Private defence companies, Kurdish peshmerga forces or other Iraqis could then earn money by killing insurgents. Insurgents, as private groups, have some benefits that states under public law don’t have. They don’t have to wear uniforms and so on. We can fight them on equal terms if we use private organisations as-well.
It would be fair to support an independent Kurdish state if we opt for loosing this conflict.
3 January 14th, 2007 at 12:42 am
gringoman says:
All my Firefox bookmarks gone due to some unspeakable glitch(after updating to the “improved” 2.0.1) I googled The Will to Live. Message: ‘This site for sale.’ First reaction: Is Trevor really selling out? Mortgage pressure or something? Bambino on the way? And what are all those seeds about, and this new look?
Then the non-Alzheimer’s portion of brain kicked in. ‘Yo, it’ ain’t ‘live.’ It’s ‘exist’!
And sure enough, there it was, transplanted to CONUS, updated and all, referencing Georgie’s Surge and the Sandbox!
Carry on, Sergeant!
4 January 15th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Richard F. Miller says:
Greeetings, Trevor: We met in Baghdad–I was a correspondent with Talk Radio News Service. Since then, I’ve followed your blog with interest, and always to my profit. I couldn’t agree with you more on this one. The “surge” is little better than swapping deck chairs on the Titanic. What’s needed (I think) is a major strategic re-evaluation, commencing with the recognition that creating a “civil” government in a Muslim country is an impossibility. Turkey has managed something like a civil government (close but not yet exact) only at the price of expelling Islam from the public square.
We need to jettison the democracy angle and start thinking about locating the bastard son of Saddam. In the long run, they’re going to wind up with a son-of-a-bitch running Iraq. Better he should be our son-of-a-bitch.
Regards
5 January 16th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Trevor says:
Richard and Gringo,
Thanks for dropping by.
Mathijis,
Thanks for your opinions as well.
Until we can be honest in our nation’s political pulpits, we will not win this war. We’re too busy fighting each other to fight the religious fanaticism that threatens the values so many of us hold.
We can argue all day about who, what, where, when and why. When the night comes, though, the insurgents in Iraq are not fighting for national pride. They are not fighting for justice and equality for all Iraqis. They are not fighting for a better society, with more opportunities for all those who want to work hard.
Either we give in and let them slaughter anyone who gets in their way until either Sunni or Shia once again dominate or we don’t. So far, we haven’t seen fit to take the gloves off and really, truly fight back. If we did, there might be a lot of short-term bloodshed, but Iraq would be pacified and those who remained could get back to the business of living instead of feeling trapped between Scylla and Charybdis each and every day.
Should we pay private groups to enforce security in Iraq? Maybe. We always want to take the moral high ground, but if we do that and lose, then what was the point?
6 April 25th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
the will to exist says:
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