THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 174, August 12, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE SITUATION IN IRAQ:
THE PRICE OF COMPROMISE
By Michael Rubin
THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT'S IRAQI STRATEGY: SEEKING TO ACHIEVE PEACE, ORDER, SECURITY, & POLITICAL
STABILITY IN IRAQ THROUGH RECONCILIATION & COLLABORATION WITH FORMER BAATHISTS, ISLAMISTS, & ARAB SUNNI
REJECTIONISTS -- A FAILED U.S. POLICY BASED ON FAULTY ASSUMPTIONS & RESULTING IN THE INSURGENCY GAINING STRENGTH
& MOMENTUM -- THE PRICE OF POLITICAL COMPROMISE WITH AMERICA'S ENEMIES IN IRAQ: BITTERNESS & DIVISION
AMONG NATURAL ALLIES, EMBOLDENING OF TERRORISTS, & UNNECESSARY AMERICAN & IRAQI CASUALTIES
FULL STORY:
Insurgent violence has taken a heavy toll on the U.S. military and civilian personnel in Iraq. A series of attacks earlier this month
pushed the total of American fatalities past 1,800. The mounting casualties have shaken American confidence. Terrorism has hit
Iraqis even harder. On Capitol Hill, there are bipartisan calls for the White House to establish a timeline for withdrawal. Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been floating trial balloons. Senior military officials and diplomats, meanwhile, seek to deflate the
insurgency. They urge Iraqis to embrace and engage former Baathists, Islamists, and Arab Sunni rejectionists. If the Sunnis can be
brought into the fold, the conventional wisdom goes, peace and reconciliation will prevail.
But the conventional wisdom is wrong. The insurgency has gained momentum as a result of failed U.S. policy and well-meaning,
but wrong-headed, assumptions.
The Coalition's ouster of Saddam Hussein was popular among the vast majority of Iraqis. They greeted American troops warmly.
There were flowers and candies. Iraqis danced as Saddam's statues fell. But the honeymoon faltered and collapsed amid looting
and confusion about American intentions.
Throughout the 35-year Baathist dictatorship, survival depended upon maintaining a low profile and divining the leader's wishes.
Iraqis would note with whom the leader met as a sign of favor. Officials would parse televised speeches to fine-tune their
sycophancy.
Generations of Iraqis continued their Kremlinology when Jay Garner arrived as the Director of the Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance. They watched as he repeatedly met with Saad al-Janabi, a former Baathist businessman and a close
associate of Saddam's late son-in-law, Hussein Kamal. Iraqis interpreted Garner's outreach to an agent of influence of the former
regime as a sign that the White House might restore the former regime to power. The fear had precedent. In 1991, President George
H.W. Bush called upon Iraqis to rise up in rebellion against Saddam Hussein. They did. But the White House did not come to
their aid. According to the Iraqi narrative, Washington shared responsibility for the subsequent massacres by releasing
Republican Guard prisoners-of-war in time for their redeployment against the civilians. Garner's choice of dinner guests might
have been innocuous to American diplomats and military officers eager to catalyze reconciliation, but it created a chill of distrust
among ordinary Iraqis. More importantly, it convinced high-level Baathists that they need fear no justice.
A faulty belief in reconciliation is largely responsible for the disintegration of security in Mosul. Rather than confront Baathists
and Islamists, General David Petraeus empowered them. Discussing his strategy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
on April 7, 2004, Petraeus explained, "The Coalition must reconcile with a number of the thousands of former Ba'ath officials ...
giving them a direct stake in the success of the new Iraq." Good in theory, but the result was Potemkin calm.
Petraeus assigned former Baathist General Mahmud Muhammad al-Maris, for example, to lead Iraqi Border Police units guarding
the Syrian border. Al-Maris handpicked allies and poked holes in an already porous border. Petraeus allowed another former
Baathist, General Muhammad Kha'iri Barhawi, to be Mosul's police chief. Not only did such a choice demoralize Iraqis who
suffered under the former regime, but it undercut security.
On July 26, 2004, Brigadier General Andrew MacKay, head of the Coalition Police Assistance Training Team, told Pentagon
officials. "We are seeing an increasing confidence within the Iraqi Police Service, as they realize they are more than a match for
the terrorists - even more so when they are led by officers of Major General Barhawi's ability." Unfortunately, the confidence was
misinterpreted. After the November, 2004, uprising in Mosul, Coalition officials learned that Barhawi had organized insurgent cells
and enabled Islamists and former Baathists to briefly seize the city. Barhawi is now in prison. And both Iraqis and Americans are
dead because of misplaced confidence and baseless theories.
Under Saddam Hussein, Baathists survived by ingratiating themselves to power. Too often, U.S. officials would base judgments
on their own conversations, unaware of what former regime officials said behind their backs. The loyalty former regime elements
and Islamists show is illusionary. In January, 2004, for example, a delegation from the Ninewah Provincial Council visited
Makhmur, a town in the Erbil Governorate, but tied administratively to Mosul. When an accompanying diplomat excused herself
briefly, a translator -- a former student of mine -- said that councilmen berated the mayor for collaborating with the Americans. In
Mosul, Petraeus created not placidity, but rather a safe-haven for terror.
Engagement and reconciliation may be the bread-and-butter of diplomacy, but, in Iraq, they are a prescription for failure. There is a
correlation between re-Baathification and violence. Baghdad's security situation deteriorated sharply after Coalition Provisional
Administration head L. Paul Bremer, on April 23, 2004, declared:
"Many Iraqis have complained to me that de-Baathification policy has been
applied unevenly and unjustly. I have looked into these complaints and they
are legitimate."
While Bremer argued that only implementation -- not policy -- changed, Iraqis felt otherwise. Their perception was validated one
week later when Coalition forces lifted the siege of Fallujah and empowered former Baathists and insurgents in the name of
reconciliation. Within a month, car bombings across Iraqi had increased 600 percent.
A belief persists in Foggy Bottom, Langley, and the White House that extensive de-Baathification is unpopular and destabilizing.
Facts suggest otherwise. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad embraced politicians like Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and former
Governing Council member Adnan Pachachi because they favored Baathist reintegration. Given a choice at the ballot box,
however, Iraqis rewarded candidates who promised tough implementation of de-Baathification. Pachachi, once the shining star of
the U.S. State Department, failed to win a single seat. Incumbent Allawi mustered only 15 percent of the vote.
Engagement has a price. In June, 2005, word leaked that U.S. officials had engaged Iraqi insurgents in order to encourage them to
join the political process. A National Security Council senior director rationalized the approach by differentiating between "talking
to" and "negotiating with" insurgents. The Arab world drew no such distinction. A June 28, 2005, Ash-Sharq al-Awsat
cartoon depicted Uncle Sam, surrounded by barbed wire, with an insurgent blocking his path to escape. The lesson drawn was
that the U.S.A. was weak, not magnanimous. Violence spiked soon after.
Political compromises sometimes carry a high price. As a consequence of adding 15 Sunni Arab members to the Constitutional
Commission, women may lose their rights across Iraqi society. Contrary to popular wisdom, Iraq's Sunni political leaders are more
Islamist than many of their Shi'ite counterparts. Blatant sectarian pandering backfires.
American strategy in Iraq is fatally flawed. Not just policy implementation has gone awry, but rather the assumptions upon which
policy is based. Iraq is neither an academic problem nor a template upon which to impose theories imported from Bosnia and
Kosovo. It is a unique society with a very vocal population. Blinded by a false conventional wisdom, we refuse to listen. The cost
has been bitterness among natural allies, emboldening of terrorists, and unnecessary American and Iraqi casualties.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
The Problem of Rogue States:
Iraq as a Case History
Michael. Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly.
The foregoing article by Michael Rubin was originally published in the New York Sun, August 8, 2005, and can be found on
the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
August 8, 2005
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