Carrying Coles
Juan Cole the anti-war set's favorite professor, has a characteristically dour assessment of the situation in Iraq. His conclusion:
The thing is, you don't have to agree with his ghoulish vision of Iraq (all dark cloud, no silver lining) or America (all greedy idiots at the top). You can argue whether de-Baathification was right or wrong, or whether Sunni disenfranchisement in the first election was a wake-up call or a delegitimatization. You can argue whether there ever was an alternative to Shi'ite religious parties. On the essential military picture, Juan Cole and I agree.
In fact, there's broad agreement, left and right, at least in the places I visit, over the formidable problems the U.S. and its Iraqi allies face in Iraq. Even if Zarqawi shuffles off his mortal coil sometime soon, this won't change.
And it's a challenge we -- we the entire modern Western world -- has to learn how to fight. We had a chance in Algeria in the 1950s and failed. We had a chance in Vietnam in the 1960s and failed. Different situations, different lessons, different mistakes, different failures. But a big, modern military machine has a losing record against a fluid insurgency with its roots in a local culture other than that of the big modern military.
You can literally pave the country, or you can settle for "gated communities" of control in a vast jungle of insurgency, or you can play sitting duck and accept bleeding loses that sap your citizens' resolve at home and turn the in-country citizens against you.
Or you can try something else. But we don't have a choice. It's a problem we had better learn to solve.
I think "Iraqification" is the right approach, and I think it will take time and patience. The retort to that is, "Vietnamization" was a failure. But it needn't have been. If the U.S. had taken more time to set it up, had had a more effective military model of its own to present, and had been willing to step back in to the country militarily when the enemy started to overwhelm our ally, it would have worked, I believe.
I said when this episode began, it will be 20 years before we know if this was a good idea or not.
Therefore, I conclude that the United States is stuck in Iraq for the medium term, and perhaps for the long term. The guerrilla war is likely to go on a decade to 15 years. Given the basic facts, of capable, trained and numerous guerrillas, public support for them from Sunnis, access to funding and munitions, increasing civil turmoil, and a relatively small and culturally poorly equipped US military force opposing them, led by a poorly informed and strategically clueless commander-in-chief who has made himself internationally unpopular, there is no near-term solution.
In the long run, say 15 years, the Iraqi Sunnis will probably do as the Lebanese Maronites did, and finally admit that they just cannot remain in control of the country and will have to compromise. That is, if there is still an Iraq at that point.
The thing is, you don't have to agree with his ghoulish vision of Iraq (all dark cloud, no silver lining) or America (all greedy idiots at the top). You can argue whether de-Baathification was right or wrong, or whether Sunni disenfranchisement in the first election was a wake-up call or a delegitimatization. You can argue whether there ever was an alternative to Shi'ite religious parties. On the essential military picture, Juan Cole and I agree.
In fact, there's broad agreement, left and right, at least in the places I visit, over the formidable problems the U.S. and its Iraqi allies face in Iraq. Even if Zarqawi shuffles off his mortal coil sometime soon, this won't change.
And it's a challenge we -- we the entire modern Western world -- has to learn how to fight. We had a chance in Algeria in the 1950s and failed. We had a chance in Vietnam in the 1960s and failed. Different situations, different lessons, different mistakes, different failures. But a big, modern military machine has a losing record against a fluid insurgency with its roots in a local culture other than that of the big modern military.
You can literally pave the country, or you can settle for "gated communities" of control in a vast jungle of insurgency, or you can play sitting duck and accept bleeding loses that sap your citizens' resolve at home and turn the in-country citizens against you.
Or you can try something else. But we don't have a choice. It's a problem we had better learn to solve.
I think "Iraqification" is the right approach, and I think it will take time and patience. The retort to that is, "Vietnamization" was a failure. But it needn't have been. If the U.S. had taken more time to set it up, had had a more effective military model of its own to present, and had been willing to step back in to the country militarily when the enemy started to overwhelm our ally, it would have worked, I believe.
I said when this episode began, it will be 20 years before we know if this was a good idea or not.
