Iraq in Arms

The January elections opened the next phase of Iraq's rebirth. The hands on the tiller more and more will be Iraqi, not American. But there's still an important job that the U.S. and its allies have just begun to tackle: building up an Iraqi military force that can defend the borders, put down the insurgents, and respect the civilian leadership.

I'm hoping the press does a better and more balanced job of reporting on this than it did covering the physical reconstruction of the country over the past few years. Except for the occasional Halliburton howl, or a tossed-off remark about sewage in the streets, you'd never know how well or poorly we were doing at it unless you knew people actually doing the work (as I did).

There's a fair and thorough story by Mike Dorning in today's Chicago Tribune about the problems and promises of Iraqi troops. Starting up democracy in Iraq is likely to prove about half as tough a task as starting up a military that is both honest and dependable.

Less than two weeks ago, Greene said, he saw a company from his Iraqi battalion spray gunfire in all directions after a sniper shot at a traffic control point. Several soldiers pirouetted as they fired, shooting 360 degrees on busy streets.

"There's no doubt in my mind people got wounded that day," Greene said, adding that Iraqi officers took no action as three American advisers ran down the street trying to get them to cease fire.

Still, Greene believes that with the right resources, a lot of determination and time, all of those problems can be overcome.
He has seen bravery in plenty of individual Iraqi soldiers. A handful of the battalion's officers have the makings of true military leaders, he believes. One young lieutenant, he said, could even hold his own at the elite U.S. Ranger School where Greene used to teach.

"There's issues," he said. "But there's hope. What we're doing is viable."

This is really starting from scratch; in some cases from less than that. But I've never been one of those who said disbanding the old Saddam-era Iraqi army was wrong. It definitely led to a set of problems. Keeping it intact after the tyrant's fall would have avoided many of those problems -- and it would have opened up a whole new set of problems that the Coalition and the Iraqis don't now have.

Stars and Stripes, while hardly mainstream media, also has an interesting look at how the work is progressing:

Iraqi soldiers are focused and reliable, he said. Over the last year, U.S. soldiers helped them improve marksmanship. The Iraqis have higher morale. They’re more disciplined in everything they do.

During a rocket attack on FOB Wilson on Wednesday, Iraqi soldiers not only spotted the launch, they placed it within 100 meters of the grid pinpointed by base ground radar, Jackson said.

But it took a long time to get to this point. When the 1-4 Cav arrived at FOB Wilson 12 months ago, “we used to have to push the IA to do every little thing,” said Sgt. Daniel Veach, a 1-4 Cav squad leader.

He wouldn’t even go out the gate with them, Veach said. Now, he patrols regularly with IA troops: “They’re 300 times better.”

That said, the Iraqi fighters still need work. “When they have contact, it’s not uncommon for them to go black on ammo,” Jackson said. That is, to empty their AK-47s before they have a clear idea of what or whom they’re shooting at.

Local soldiers also have little in the way of a rank structure or chain of command because they’re friends with all who live outside FOB Wilson in Mujama or Ad-Dawr.

But they’ve proved dozens of times they’ll fight, soldiers told Stars and Stripes. And they have come a long way, considering how bad relations were early on.

Then there's today's front-page Wall Street Journal story (subscription required, alas) about "pop-up" brigades of semi-regular local units, usually rallying around a charismatic leader.

In Iraq, two kinds of military forces are emerging in the battle against insurgents: the planned units and the pop-ups. As more of these irregular units proliferate, U.S. officials face a thorny dilemma: whether to encourage these forces, whose training and experience varies wildly, or to try to rein them in.

It's not fashionable to invoke "imperialists" like T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell, but they discovered the hard way that Arab military spirit -- like that of all men, but perhaps in a more extreme degree -- prefers the charismatic leaders to the bureaucracies, and will perform for them with spectacular bravery and effectiveness.

They fight enthusiastically and well. They draw off men who otherwise might bolster the regular Iraqi army. They could well be the short-term solution to the insurgency. The phrase "charismatic military leaders" ought to send a chill down the spine of people committed to a robust democracy.

As Kris Kristofferson once said, "It's like watching your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your brand-new Cadillac."

Nobody said this was going to be easy. I said at the start we were in for a 20-year hitch. I believe from everything I've seen so far that the men and women of the U.S. military, our allies, and the Iraqi people can accomplish this, and that in 2003, al Qaida or no, it was high time we began the process.

What do you call that? Idealism? I'm not ashamed of that word. The left didn't always sneer at it. Here's a little history, courtesy of Hitchens. This is a transcript from a debate, not a piece of writing, so the style is loose, but the vision is not:

Wolfowitz and Kissinger disliked each other and disagreed very strongly with each other for a long time. I think the origin of the disagreement and the origin of Wolfowitz's political career is that he argued it was important to dump the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. Base or no base, let it go and take the chances that this would have a ripple effect in the rest of Asia, which was just what Kissinger didn't want. As a result, there were outbreaks of democratic insurgency, starting with the Aquino election, in South Korea, in Taiwan, eventuating in Tiananmen Square, in fact, in 1989, which of course, Kissinger also opposed and took the side of the Chinese Stalinists.

On the Middle East, the victory of the neo-conservatives is very paradoxical, because [it came] contra Bush, Eagleburger, Bush Sr., Scowcroft -- I've just mentioned, by the way, the two leading members of Kissinger Associates -- and others, Colin Powell. The argument of the neo-conservatives, or at least of the Wolfowitz wing, was, "We can't go on like this, running the Middle East as a kind of political slum of client states. We have to take the chance that destabilization would be worth it in the long run." That's what, that's still why the extreme right in the country, people like Buchanan and others, oppose it. Precisely for that reason. They and the pro-Saudi conservatives. To the extent I'm a neo-conservative, it would be because they're the only ones willing to take the radical risk of regime change.

[emphasis added]

Sgt. 1st Class Clifford Jackson, on duty training the Iraqi forces, might as well be speaking for all of us when he mused, in the Stars and Stripes article:

“I did not want to be here. I wanted to be with my guys,” he said. “I keep asking myself, ‘Why am I here?’ ”

Then he realized getting the Iraqi army up and running “is my insurance policy. That I don’t have to come back here.”