Reading Signs in the Rubble in Iraq II

In February of last year the Golden Mosque of Samarra was destroyed. In the rubble of that blast could be seen the whole future history of the Iraq crisis until now. That attack was the single most successful tactical strike launched by any party in the Iraq conflict. It reshaped the entire political and military situation of Iraq and created repercussions that continue to reverberate powerfully today.

Last Thursday a truck bomb destroyed the monumental al-Sarafiya bridge across the Tigris River in Baghdad. On the same day a suicide bomber struck the cafeteria of the Iraqi Parliament, killing one person, the Sunni Parliamentarian Muhammad Awad. The Islamic State of Iraq, a group affiliated with Al Qaeda, has claimed responsibility for both attacks. In the same way that the rubble of the Golden Mosque portended much that has transpired in the last year, in the twisted girders of the al-Sarafiya bridge and the destruction of the Parliament cafeteria one can see the future of President Bush's Baghdad security plan. Neither attack will likely prove to have achieved the enduring tactical effect of the Samarra bombing, but taken together they evince systemic problems that will likely prove the security plan unworkable.

Defenders of the Bush plan have pointed to measurable successes that have been achieved in its early phases. Unfortunately, those successes have been mainly in the realm of reducing sectarian violence perpetrated by Shi'ite militias throughout the capital. Until now it has been statistically unclear whether or not the security plan and its US troop increase has been having a measurable impact upon the other grave security concern in Baghdad: bombing attacks by Sunni insurgents such as the Islamic State of Iraq. These latest bomb attacks cast serious doubt on any positive assessment of the effectiveness of the security plan in this latter realm.

Keeping Shi'ite militias off the streets is a task for which the mobility and firepower advantages of the US military provide effective leverage. Though the capability of the Shi'ite militias to "go to ground" would make it very difficult for US forces to completely neutralize them, any standing "hot war" conflict with the US would cost the militias dearly in manpower and material resources, as prior conflicts between the US and the Mahdi Army have shown. The commitment of new US forces to Baghdad has thus succeeded in making the militias "blink," and turn down the heat in their campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The challenge of protecting Baghdadis from suicide and car bombers, however, is one for which the technological dominance of the US military provides less advantage. The destructive combat power of US troops provides no deterrent or genuine protection against those who are already resolved to die. As the insurgent attacks themselves require little in the way of personnel or materials, ramping up the US troop presence in the capital does not really increase the strategic risks for the insurgency. Whether they succeeded by blind luck or careful planning, Thursday's attacks registered points that cannot be ignored by anyone observing or experiencing the security situation in Baghdad. The attack on the al-Sarafiya bridge demonstrated that the insurgency can target vital infrastructure and materially degrade the conditions necessary for effective policing of the capital. The attack on the Parliament showed that the insurgency can penetrate the areas where the strictest security measures have already been put in place, sowing doubt that the security plan will be able to make the ordinary citizens of greater Baghdad, where nothing even approaching such strict measures have yet to be implemented, any safer.

In defending against attacks like those on Parliament or the al-Sarafiya bridge no technology exists that can genuinely stand in place of observant eyes and ears on the ground, scanning for suspicious activity. On this principle it would be difficult to know how many troops would be "enough." In a city of six million people, how many soldiers would create enough vigilance to prevent attacks like those of last Thursday? One can choose whatever number one desires- double, triple, or quadruple the number of US soldiers called for in the current plan. It would be impossible to know the effectiveness of such numbers until they were implemented. Such speculation is in any case moot, as the recent extension of Iraq tours for US units from 12 to 15 months suggests that at the levels programmed into the current security plan the US military is already working at something close to its maximum threshold. Moreover, the security plan itself puts US forces into a paradoxical bind. In expending manpower and energy on keeping Shi'ite militias off the streets, the US is intensifying the difficulty of warding off the insurgency. Without the eyes and ears provided by militia forces, the burden placed upon US soldiers to stand sentinel against insurgent attacks becomes even greater.

Senator John McCain is quoted in today's New York Times as supporting Mr. Bush's security plan, declaring that he has no "Plan B" for how to ameliorate the crisis in Iraq. In real terms the security plan itself is in fact probably "Plan X" or "Plan Y" if one counts through all of the various shifts in tactics and policy attempted by the Bush regime since the invasion of 2003. What Thursday's attacks demonstrate is not merely the weaknesses of this latest plan, but that there should never have been a "Plan A"- the invasion of Iraq- in the first place.

As much as this is true, one must note that there is another sign to be read in the rubble of the Iraqi Parliament and the al-Sarafiya bridge. Though these attacks target an irredeemable vulnerability of Mr. Bush's security plan, they also evince the strategic and moral impoverishment of the insurgency. Any movement grounded so firmly in gratuitous destruction has little long-term chance of enduring success. One must keep in mind that the political forces which perpetrated these attacks only possess the traction that they do in Iraqi society because the US invasion opened up a space for them. The US can thus go a long way toward eroding that traction by constructively disengaging from Iraq. This is the "Plan B" that Mr. McCain fails to grasp, though in fairness there seem to be few leaders on either side of the partisan divide in the US who do.

Stop Chasing Victory; Start Making Sense in Iraq

The time for US leaders and citizens to cease imagining the Iraq crisis in terms of "winning" and "losing" has long past. The US faces no tangible enemy that it may defeat in Iraq. Conversely, virtually any potential "victory" for US foes involves such suffering and loss for the putative "victor" that to call such a triumph "Pyrrhic" would be a ludicrous understatement. The Coalition mission right now, to the extent that it has any coherent and viable motive principle, is not a military or even a political contest in any meaningful sense. US leaders must stop using the logic and rhetoric of competition and begin to conceptualize and articulate the Iraq mission as a nation-building enterprise. Only when the US and its allies realize that they need to help make Iraq, not war, will any path to resolution of this crisis emerge.

Though erroneous logic prevails in almost all corners of the US discourse on Iraq, any review of the reigning climate of confusion must begin with the Bush regime. Though Mr. Bush and his subordinates speak constantly of "victory," they give no specific definition of what such a state would entail. "A free and democratic Iraq" is too vague to serve as any standard. Iraq already has as democratic a government as it has ever enjoyed and freedom is running riot through the streets of its cities and towns, yet no one could call the current state of affairs "victory." The shape of Bush "victory" must be inferred from the negative spaces in Bush rhetoric.

Mr. Bush's refusal to state definitively that the US desires no permanent troop presence in Iraq would seem to indicate that such a permanent troop presence is precisely one of his fundamental criteria of "victory." Right now in order to remain in Iraq the US must tolerate the death of about 50-150 US soldiers per month. Mr. Bush seemingly intends to fight until this number reaches zero. Once Iraq is no longer hostile terrain for the US military "victory" will have been secured.

The first question one must ask of such a "victory" is how one reaches it. After four years of occupation Iraq is deadlier terrain for US soldiers today than it was in March of 2003. Undaunted, the US military has implemented a new "counterinsurgency" doctrine. Such a doctrine is no doubt quite useful in addressing the tactical problems faced day-to-day by US units operating in Iraq. But a "counterinsurgency" strategy will not win through to any enduring victory.

The task of fighting the insurgency in Iraq is bedevilled for US soldiers by the fact that the insurgency is not fighting the US, nor is it compelled to. The insurgents have no ultimate stake in whether or how long the US remains in Iraq, their one critical task is to prevent the success of the constitutional government in Baghdad. Some insurgent attacks on US soldiers are no doubt motivated by anti-American feeling, and all such attacks are useful to the insurgents as propaganda among certain Iraqi constituencies. But the insurgency is not bound to any timetable or specific "to do" list in its strategic orientation toward the US military. The insurgents may attack the US if and when they choose to, very little is at stake if the insurgents choose not to attack US soldiers on any given occasion or in any given period.

Herein lies a deeply intractable conundrum for the US military: how does one fight an opponent who is only incidentally interested in fighting oneself? The liabilities of this conflict are stacked almost exclusively on the side of the US, and US assets of firepower and mobility are trumped by insurgent advantages of local knowledge, time flexibility, and logistical proximity. Beyond this, the US military finds itself locked in the jaws of a Catch-22 that could spin Yossarian's head clear off his shoulders:

The US is fighting the insurgency;

the insurgency is fighting the government;

the continued US military presence undermines the government's legitimacy,

therefore:

Every tactical move the US military makes against the insurgency, whether it inflicts damage upon the insurgents or not, aids the insurgency in its struggle against the government.

This situation would be bad enough, and would argue strongly against the practicability of a plan for the type of "victory" the Bush administration is chasing. This analysis only begins to enumerate the complexities faced by the US military in Iraq, however. If the insurgency was the Coalition's only worry "victory" might be imaginable in some impossibly rosy best-case scenario. But the insurgency is by far the easiest of the challenges confronting the US and its allies. Even as the insurgency fights to destroy the government the US helped establish, elements of that same government are mobilized to assault both the Coalition and the larger fabric of Iraqi civil society. Paramilitaries such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army cannot properly be called "insurgents," in that they are deeply implicated in the political process the Coalition is fighting to protect. Yet such Shi'ite militias rampage through major urban centers throughout central and southern Iraq, killing Sunni civilians and Coalition soldiers in a sustained campaign of ethnic cleansing punctuated by occasional expressions of anti-foreign rage.

In essence, the US military has been tasked with protecting a government that does not yet exist even in embryo. Elections have been held and cabinet posts filled , but exquisitely convoluted battles rage over which institutions will hold real power in Iraq and who will be authorized to speak for those institutions. One small corner of this drama has been playing out in Diwaniyah (80 miles south of Baghdad), where US and Iraqi Army forces have been locked in battle with the Mahdi Army for three days, inciting anti-US protests among Shi'ites throughout southern Iraq. The proximal cause for this conflict was an assault by the Mahdi Army upon the municipal police headquarters of Diwaniyah. Was this attack motivated by anti-US feeling? Anti-Sunni hatred? None of the above. The Mahdi Army targeted the Diwaniyah police because they had been infiltrated and were controlled by the Badr Corps, a rival Shi'ite militia under the leadership of Ayatollah Aziz al-Hakim. The struggle in Diwaniyah is thus not ultimately over whether the US will remain in Iraq or even what role the Shi'ite clergy will enjoy in Iraq's new order. It is over what groups within the Shi'ite community will be authorized to represent the Shi'ite clergy in the political arena.

Convoluted as it undoubtedly is, the Diwaniyah incident embodies only one of myriad such volatile schisms which riddle every element of Iraqi society. Individually, either extinguishing the insurgency OR putting a stop to interethnic and interpartisan violence would most likely have proven beyond the capacity of the US and its allies to accomplish militarily. Together they present a completely insurmountable strategic task.

What can or should be done? Though the Bush strategy for "victory" is logically bereft, Mr. Bush's critics among the Democrats have come up with little better in the way of long-term proactive thinking. Democratic leaders like Senator Carl Levin talk of setting political "benchmarks" for the Iraqi government to meet, but this is in effect an altered form of the same kind of "win-lose" game theory propounded by the Bush White House. In the same way the Bush White House cannot explain how deploying US troops can make Iraq safer for US troops, Mr. Levin cannot explain how a government that cannot defend itself meets "benchmarks" or what effect it will produce should it do so. Senator Hilary Clinton (among other Democratic leaders) has proposed ideas that combine all of the worst elements of the Bush strategy with none of its merits. She would withdraw most US troops from Iraq and leave a small contingent behind to fight Al Qaeda, thus completely subverting the chances of the nascent Iraqi government by treating Iraq as a geostrategic chessboard for the furtherance of US interests. Iraq would burn bright and hot as US troops engaged in a wild goose chase that could do little damage to Al Qaeda and bring even less security to the US.

The situation in Iraq is so complex that not only are positive steps difficult to conceive, developing criteria by which progress toward some goal might be measured is virtually impossible. If US casualties were the only significant gauge of "victory" or "defeat" some murky picture might be discernible. But such numbers exist alongside and are ultimately eclipsed by the 2,800+ Iraqis who have died per month over the last year of the conflict (according to UN figures). In relative terms this is the equivalent of more than 36,000 US citizens dying violently per month. Iraq is a society in cataclysmic and self-devouring collapse. All notions of US "victory" or "defeat" are rendered meaningless by this glaring and tragic fact, and all other goals are superseded by the urgent necessity of turning Iraq back toward sustainable stability.

The Coalition must abandon all notions of "victory" and focus exclusively on this latter goal of returning Iraq to stability. The strategic principles that should guide such a nation-building effort are:

1) Coalition casualties are a less important gauge of success than Iraqi civilian casualties. All policies should be focused on reducing the number of Iraqi deaths in the long term, even if it requires a short term rise in Coalition casualties.

2)All aspirations for a permanent US military presence in Iraq must be abandoned. The ultimate strategic goal of the US should be to disengage from Iraq in the manner that affords that nation its best chances for enduring stability.

3)Aspirations for a cease of hostilities against US forces must be abandoned. Not only will it be impossible for US forces to stay in Iraq, no exit will be possible free of continued lethal violence against US personnel. Iraq will remain provisionally lethal terrain for US soldiers until the day the last soldier departs, our best hope is for that departing soldier to leave behind an Iraqi government and military that can survive and ultimately restore order.

4)Aspirations to bring a total end to the insurgency and/or interethnic and interpartisan violence before the final departure of Coalition forces must be abandoned. Though the number of Iraqi civilian deaths should stand as the ultimate gauge of policy success in Iraq, the US and its allies must be prepared to see that number hold steady and perhaps even rise immediately after Coalition forces depart Iraq. The goal of nation-building should not be to force a Pax Americana on Iraqi society, but to help foster the creation of an Iraqi state authority that will, over time, be able to bring Iraqi society into order. Though the Coalition may take (and has taken) steps to help create such an authority, it may only fully establish itself after Coalition troops have fully withdrawn.

5)The US should embrace the goal of full autonomy for the Iraqi state and military, and undertake all risk and expense necessary to supply the Iraqi government and army with all the economic and military assets it will need to assert and defend its authority. The US should abandon self-serving interests such as privatization of Iraq's oil markets if it will aid the Iraqis in coming to a political settlement that will strengthen the foundations of government authority.

These are the basic principles of what I would term a strategy of nation-building rather than "victory." In several posts below I have outlined specific policies that would help advance such a strategy toward potential, provisional success.

Congress, Iran, and the Surge

Both the US House and Senate have passed spending bills that fully fund the Bush regime's Iraq deployment yet place provisional constraints on its continuing duration. The White House and its spin machine are in full lockhorn mode, broadcasting the message that if and when George W. Bush vetoes this legislation Congress will be guilty of starving the troops and leaving them bootless. The brazeness of this politicking would be impressive if the message was not so derivative. This is old wine in a new bottle- no matter how badly the Bush White House mismanages the Iraq policy it always comes back to somehow being Congress' fault.

In typical Bush regime fashion, the divisive belligerence of this latest offensive comes unalloyed with any empirical assessment of whether Congress' very mild conditions are in any way an impairment of current policy. An objective assessment would have to conclude that Congress' legislation can only enhance, not impair, the chances of the ongoing Baghdad security plan. The President's "surge" seems to have made some headway in reducing violence in the Iraqi capital. But there is no indication that any of what has been achieved depends on Baghdadis' belief that the surge will be permanent or enduring, quite the contrary.

We have seen no arrests of major militia leaders, no stockpiles of guns confiscated from Shi'ite paramilitaries. The security plan's access to neighborhoods like Sadr City was obviously brokered by a negotiated truce between the Shi'ite militias and US Centcom. Would that truce hold if groups like the Mahdi Army felt that US troops would be patrolling Sadr City indefinitely? This seems highly unlikely. One strongly suspects that one of the conditions which has made it possible for joint US-Iraqi Army teams to patrol through Sadr City in force and unmolested is the understanding that the "surge" is a temporary state of affairs.

This fact is underscored by the recent actions by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. The seizing of British marines and the escalation of that hostage drama on the world's television screens would be puzzling given all of the saber-rattling occasioned by Iran's nuclear program. Such actions would seem to be tempting fate, unless Tehran felt that the precariousness of the Baghdad security plan allowed it to bargain from a position of strength. Why the marines were seized and what Tehran hopes to gain from this fiasco are questions about which I would not speculate. But Tehran seems to feel that the prevailing homeostasis in Baghdad precludes US military action against Iran for the moment, and in this they are probably correct. As soon as American bombs hit Iranian targets Baghdad would most likely become a much deadlier place for US forces, as their prevailing truce with Shi'ite militias collapsed.

The fact that Shi'ite militias view the US surge as temporary does not preclude it from achieving provisional gains. Groups like the Mahdi Army are no doubt lying low in the assumption that once the surge winds down they can go back to business as usual. US Centcom must know that this is the case, but are counting on the fact that any window in which the Iraqi military and police can be shown as taking even partial control over security throughout Baghdad will help normalize these institutions and solidify their authority, making a return to unrestrained militia mayhem impossible. Whatever the merits of this plan, it is all too likely that the longer it is sustained the more it will encounter a harsh margin of diminishing returns. If Iraqi military and police effectiveness is seen to depend too much for too long upon an increased US troop presence, the Iraqi people's faith in the security plan will erode and its long-term impact will be squandered.

Congress' moves to limit the duration of the surge and the US deployment more generally are thus in accord with the general climate of expectations that may facilitate its provisional success. If anything, Congress' restraints did not go far enough in curbing the White House's tactical profligacy. The security situation in Iraq will only improve for the long term if and when the US openly commits to a complete withrdrawal from Iraq and complete autonomy for the Iraqi government and military. Mr. Bush would be wise to sign Congress' legislation, if he does not the only one to blame for depriving the troops will be he himself. Let him veto the bill and let every Republican representative and senator campaign while trying to explain why he or she did not vote to override. Mr. Bush's faith that his current rhetoric will be politically effective embodies the same kind of miscalculation that cost the Republicans so dearly in the mid-term election.

China Ad Astra

Speaking in Sydney, Australia on Friday, February 23, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney asserted that a recent anti-satellite missile test and China's general military buildup are "not consistent with China's stated goal of a peaceful rise." At a press conference concluding the latest session of the National People's Congress, PRC Premier Wen Jiabao deflected questions about the missile test and China's decision to increase military spending by 18 percent, asserting, "China’s position on the peaceful utilization of outer space remains unchanged." Inquiring minds no doubt want to know which of these leaders has got the story straight.

The incommensurability of Wen's and Cheney's remarks exemplifies a deep-seated clash of perspectives. For the Chinese, expressions of concern over China's presence on the "final frontier" smack of racism and 19th century propaganda about the "Yellow Peril." For Europeans and Americans, Cheney's ideas enjoy a long pedigree extending back to Napoleon's famous injunction, "Let China sleep, for when she awakens, she will shake the world." The Chinese view is undoubtedly well-founded. The idea that technology already possessed by other powers (say, the US) poses a unique threat in Chinese hands is a paternalistic one at the very least, especially in the wake of events like the most recent Gulf War. On the other hand the proposition that any nation of more than one billion people, whatever their race or creed, poses a distinct challenge to the international "balance of power" is not ridiculous.

While this latter principle may be true, it does not provide an easy calculus by which development of China's military strength may be judged inimical to peace. Pundits will always fret over the "balance of power," but such concern is only useful if it is done in full acknowledgment of the fact that the international "balance of power" is an infinitely more complex phenomenon now than it was in the age of Napoleon or Metternich. Dick Cheney (and others) presumably singled out China's anti-satellite missile test because it involves a technology that (according to their view) presupposes a conflict between China and another sovereign power. Only a nation-state can maintain militarily useful satellites, so goes this reasoning, so if China is developing weapons to destroy satellites it must anticipate a conflict with another sovereign power.

It takes little examination of the facts of the 21st-century world to realize that this line of thinking is erroneous. An increasing number of private groups and corporations deploy satellites in space, it is not inconceivable that a nation state might someday view a privately owned satellite as a threat. One does not have to imagine a James Bond scenario in which a mad scientist controls a laser in space. For example, if terrorists hacked into the computers of a company whose satellites could acquire images of important economic or military targets, a sovereign government pursuing an "all options" strategy might be very relieved to have such a system as China tested at its disposal.

In similar ways many of the fears about China's military power are rooted in antiquated or distorted notions of how the international balance of power works today. China's size is always cited as the root of international concern, but such thinking discounts the ways in which size is a liability as much as an asset. Pundits too often assume that a nation's ability to project force is uniform throughout its territorial domain, thus China's capacity to take military action against Vietnam is greater than the U.S.'s ability to project force against Cuba. China's logistical "home court" advantage only begins diminishing as one moves away from its sovereign borders, thus Vietnam is poised to bear the full force of Chinese military power.

Yet the history of China well demonstrates that the internal coherence of a state fluctuates in inverse proportion to its size. The further one moves from Beijing, the less firm CCP political control becomes. Thus when a PRC military unit penetrates one kilometer into Vietnam the CCP has not, in essence, projected force one kilometer. That distance must be measured between the operational zone of the unit in question and Beijing itself. At one kilometer into Vietnam, the CCP has thus projected force more than two thousand kilometers.

Moreover, most pundits vastly overestimate the importance of China's population to the calculation of its effect on the balance of power. Warfare has evolved over the course of the late 20th and early 21st century to give far greater prominence to technology than manpower. The US military is a mere fraction of the size to which it grew over the course of WWII, yet the entire military of that era could not match the combat power of a single brigade or carrier group of today. The most recent Gulf War provided the empirical proof of this principle. Despite having one of the world's largest standing armies, Iraq was defeated with lightning speed due to the vast technological superiority of the US military. Until China possesses technology to match that of the US, the size of its population or armed forces does not really figure into a calculation of the balance of power.

Then should not the world be concerned about China's acquisition of space-age technology? Concern may be warranted, but not paranoia. Most experts would agree that China is decades from developing military technology to match that of the US, and in the decades it would take to develop that technology the US will remain a moving target. Even if and when the day came that China and the US were on a technological par, war would not be inevitable or even likely. Until some technology is discovered that negates the threat of nuclear ballistic missiles the deterrence of "mutually assured destruction" will continue to restrain the strategic options of all powers.

Even if a war between superpowers is averted, would not a technologically advanced China be more prone to aggression against its neighbors? Here the realities of China's own internal political coherence are not the only facts to bear in mind. Though the speedy defeat of Saddam Hussein demonstrated the power that advanced technology affords, the subsequent aftermath of that conflict has been an object lesson in the limits of that power. The world is a very different place than it was when Napoleon spoke his sage advice. Nationalism, capitalism, industrialization, telecommunications, and economic globalization have created a world in which even a technological superpower faces discrete constraints upon its potential to project force beyond its borders.

Unless profound changes occur to stabilize China's internal political dynamic it is difficult to contemplate the circumstances in which the PRC would enjoy more success projecting force than the US has experienced in Iraq, space-age technology or no. Certainly China's political institutions as they currently exist could not withstand the kind of strain that the Iraq war has placed upon those of the US. One can never predict all the contingencies that might prompt a government to war, and it would be foolish to declare outright that China (or any other nation, including the US) poses no threat to peace. But where historically the Chinese are no less prone to conflict than anyone else, they are also certainly no more so. Whether China will ever pose a threat to peace is in this sense an imponderable, but in real terms one can predict that no matter how much China spends or what type of technology it comes to possess, the PRC will not pose a threat to the global balance of power any time in the near future.

Mogadishu Calling

The New York Times reports this week that U.S. Special Forces and air units were operating in Somalia during the recent fighting that drove Islamist forces from Mogadishu, a fact that comes as no surprise. The Bush administration, in essence, made a second, more successful pass at waging war by proxy in Somalia. Whereas previously Bush agents had attempted to stem the rising tide of Islamism by providing cash and weapons to clan warlords, in this second phase they have partnered with the Ethiopian military to undo the Islamist takeover that the first proxy war failed to prevent. Though the recent campaign has managed to install the internationally recognized Provisional Government of Somalia in the capital, the rapidly degenerating situation provides another sign of the incompetence and shortsightedness of Bush foreign policy.

The use of US air power underscores Bush administration priorities. Helicopter gunships targeted suspected Al Qaeda operatives active in Somalia; this appears to be the central strategic goal around which the entire recent campaign was built. This narrow focus upon military responses to the threat of Al Qaeda is in lock step with Bush policy since the administration's inception, and evinces the same flawed strategic thinking that has set the cause of US security so far back in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Though Al Qaeda operatives may well have been killed in these US raids, the overall campaign has done little to deny Al Qaeda safe haven and strategic purchase in Somalia. An Islamist insurgency has begun to wreak havoc in Mogadishu, and America's Ethiopian partners are withdrawing, having no will to sustain anything close to the level of casualities the US has endured in Iraq.

Here again is a lesson that the Bush White House seems determined to ignore no matter how many times they encounter it. Al Qaeda suffers very little from momentary personnel losses, as it is a political movement that requires few warm bodies for front-line action and is constantly recruiting and replenishing its human resource base. Attacking and killing Al Qaeda's standing personnel will never have a long term strategic effect unless such an effort is paired with an exponentially more intense campaign directed at its political recruitment capacities. The Bush administration, however, seems satisfied that "finding the terrorists" and "killing the terrorists" can stand in place of a genuine long-term foreign policy. This is the essence of the ludicrous "fly-paper" theory propounded in support of the Iraq war. In the same way that the Bush administration fails to understand that the momentary benefit of killing Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq is vastly offset by the strategic advantages of fertile anarchy and safe haven that have accrued to Al Qaeda as a result of the US invasion; they cannot see that the threat of Al Qaeda in Somalia will never be ameliorated until order and relative prosperity return to that beleaguered nation.

Where Iraq had no significant Al Qaeda presence prior to the US invasion, growing Al Qaeda operations in Somalia do pose a clear and present danger to US security. Moreover, unlike Iraq, Somalia could benefit from a US-led multilateral intervention. The Bush administration has not undertaken a more robust intervention in Somalia for three reasons: 1)though such an intervention would require military forces, it would more urgently require lengthy, intense efforts at diplomacy and economic aid for which the Bush White House has little patience; 2)such an intervention would provide little commercial profit to US enterprises akin to oil revenues to be garnered in Iraq; 3)the crippling commitment of US military forces in Iraq precludes robust action elsewhere in the globe.

One might object that to criticize Bush policy in both Iraq and Somalia is a contradiction in terms. Where Bush is held to task for being too aggressive in the former instance he is condemned for failing to be aggressive enough in the latter. But the issue is not whether aggressive tactics are good in and of themselves, it is whether our leaders have the foresight and knowledge required to understand when and where they might be applied to best effect in the post-9/11 world. Somalia is a completely failed state which has been the subject of many years of desperate international efforts to rebuild state infrastructure and repair civil society. If the US had stepped in to provide genuine leadership in this instance it would have garnered copious good will and enjoyed the support and cooperation of virtually the entire community of nations. Bringing order to Somalia would be arduous and require sacrifice to be sure, as the "Black Hawk Down" incident of the Clinton administration showed. But the prospects for success in Somalia have always been better than Iraq, and (prior to the US invasion of 2003, at least) the task was more vital to the global struggle against Al Qaeda.

The Bush administration's recourse to war by proxy in Somalia is more than an opportunity lost. Coupled with its application of aggressive force where Al Qaeda is lacking yet oil is abundant, it sends the signal to the rest of the world that the US will only take on the commitment of an extended intervention when there is economic gain to be had. The Bush White House has abdicated the moral authority of "world policeman" in favor of the image of "world profiteer." In the political struggle against Al Qaeda this is a tragic misstep. Many have noted that Al Qaeda's ideology is as imperialist as any. Even as this is apparent, enough (for Al Qaeda's needs) young Muslims throughout the world would rather sign on to create an Islamic imperium if they feel that the alternative is an American corporate imperium. Hopefully the next US administration will have the courage and wisdom to embrace the challenge of nation-building in all its complexity and diversity throughout the globe. Perhaps then the moral authority of the US will slowly be redeemed, and the terrible damage of the Bush years can begin to be undone.

Neocolonial Fog

One question hangs over the entire Coalition enterprise in Iraq:

"Why doesn't the Iraqi military have its own air force?"

Or, perhaps, the question should be revised:

"Why doesn't anyone in the U.S. ask, 'Why doesn't the Iraqi military have its own air force?'"

The White House and the Congress are locked in a squabble over whether 21,000 more troops should be sent to Iraq, but no one in our government seems willing or able to address the fundamental problem, that Iraq is no closer to having a sovereign government now than it was three years ago. This new troop escalation is doomed to fail, because it is targeted at symptoms rather than root causes of the crisis. More U.S. soldiers are needed in Baghdad not because there are too few Iraqi soldiers, but because the Iraqi soldiers that exist are unwilling to put an end to ethnic violence in the capital. It is true that Iraq's political leaders have shown little enthusiasm for this task, but much of their reluctance no doubt stems from a sense that their soldiers would not obey orders to attack Shi'ite militias like the Mahdi Army even if they were given.

Any platitudes about how the Iraqi army needs further "training" are ridiculous, and the new plan to "embed" U.S. soldiers among Iraqi units is an admission of this fact. Placing U.S. soldiers among Iraqis is an attempt to force the Iraqi military to cleave to the mission designed by U.S. Centcom. This is not likely to have much success. If they so desire, Iraqi units can find ways of evading or altering the mission that are imperceptible to their U.S. "embeds," who do not speak Arabic or understand the local culture.

No progress will be made in Iraq until the Iraqi military commits to the mission of national order and unity, and that is not going to happen as long as the status quo persists. Air power is key to the counterinsurgency. When any unit, Coalition or Iraqi, finds itself ambushed or outnumbered, fighter jets and helicopter gunships come to bail them out. It is these assets (along with heavy artillery and armored tanks) that give government forces the combat power advantage over insurgents, and right now all such assets are U.S.-owned and -controlled. The hand that controls air power is the hand that holds the leash, and Iraqi soldiers will not fight as long as that hand is an American one. The U.S. has spouted a great deal of rhetoric about desiring Iraqi soldiers to "stand up," but in reality what U.S. leaders have wanted is for Iraqi soldiers to "sit up and heel," and the Iraqis know it.

Control of air power is what makes a government sovereign. This is the post-WWII corollary of Mao Zedong's dictum- "political power grows from the barrel of a gun." While it is true that any armed group may exercise political power to a degree, the hallmark of sovereign power in the 21st century is control over the capital assets that reign over the modern battlefield- planes, helicopters, tanks, missiles- as possession and maintenace of such assets requires a stable base of tax revenue. Iraqis learned this lesson the hard way in the wake of the first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein's government was on the verge of being overthrown by a Shi'ite uprising before George H.W. Bush agreed to lift the "no fly" ban and allow Hussein to deploy helicopter gunships to "restore order." These weapons were the steel spine that secured Hussein's position of political supremacy. By contrast the current Iraqi government hunkered down in the Green Zone is spineless.

No doubt U.S. leaders have refrained from equipping the Iraqi military with heavy weapons in part out of fear of unintended consequences. Few voices can be found in the U.S. who will advocate trusting the Iraqis on this score. This sentiment is as strong among opponents of the war as its advocates (as this blog post by Steven Pizzo demonstrates). As legitimate as concerns about the misuse of heavy weapons may be, persistent refusal to entrust such power to the Iraqi military amounts to no more than crass paternalism. It is difficult to understand why no one on either side of the aisle in the U.S. government would realize as much. A latent form of neocolonial bigotry seems to pervade the mindset of U.S. leaders both Democrat and Republican, so that no one questions the wisdom of treating the Iraqi military with unrelenting and unalloyed contempt.

Moreover, it is obvious that the concerns preventing the U.S. from supplying the Iraqi military with heavy weapons are not merely prudential. As the conflict drags on it becomes clear that there was never any plan to develop a fully national and sovereign military for the Iraqi state. The Bush administration seems to have believed that post-conflict Iraq could enter into a strategic relationship with the U.S. parallel to that between the U.S. and Japan post-WWII. Iraq would not need heavy weapons, without which no sovereign nation can defend itself from even its smallest, weakest neighbor, because the U.S. would stand guarantor of Iraqi sovereignty against the threat of foreign invasion (presumably from permanent bases in Iraq akin to the U.S. facility on Okinawa).

Such a plan was foolish in the extreme and based on a misreading of historical precedents. The reasons for the practicability of the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Japan are complex. In comparing that situation to Iraq, however, only one difference need be examined to demonstrate why such a structure could not hold. If Japanese society had contained constituent groups as deeply divided against one-another as Sunni, Shi'a, and Kurds in Iraq, a strategic partnership could never have been forged, as each group would have been too suspicious of possible U.S. partiality toward its opponents to rest tranquil in a situation of U.S. strategic predominance. The U.S. will never be able to stand guarontor of Iraqi sovereignty the way it has in Japan, the Iraqi military will ultimately have to be fully equipped if a stable homeostasis is ever to be achieved in that country.

No end game will be reached in Iraq until the Iraqi military is fully armed. Yes, tragic consequences may follow that step, but the U.S. has no choice other than to take it and let the chips fall where they may. U.S. leaders worry about the power that heavy weapons will afford the Iraqi military, but one must remember that such assets are simultaneously a liability. Helicopters, planes and tanks are acutely expensive, once a government or army possesses them they immediately begin to calculate how they must behave in order to assure that these assets are not lost or destroyed. Right now, with the U.S. army standing arbiter between the warring factions, Iraqis are free to commit atrocities without fear of what they might lose as a result. If the Iraqi military were possessed of assets it needed to guard, its leadership (both political and military) would be compelled to strategize to contain the conflict and thus preserve those assets for the long term.

As Iraq spirals ever more rapidly into chaos, it becomes increasingly imperative to build Iraqi institutions that can endure and wield authority in the eyes of the Iraqi people themselves. There is little the U.S. can do to assist Iraq's political institutions toward that end. The Iraqi military, however, is an institution that the U.S. can bolster through one easy step. Once Iraq's military has all of the powers of a modern, sovereign, and autonomous armed force, it will enjoy the authority of a legitimate institution in Iraqi society. Until it does there will be no end to conflict and violence in Iraq.

Beijing vs. Jesus

The execution last month in Heilongjiang of Xu Shuangfu, the founder of the Three Grades of Servants Church, was the latest milestone in an ongoing trend that has attracted only sporadic attention outside of China. The number of Christians in China has been growing exponentially in the past two decades, and concurrently Christian worship has become an increasingly volatile flashpoint of conflict between the PRC government and rural society. No one can be certain how many Christians live in China right now. Some estimates place the number as high as eighty million and growing.

The greatest share of this Christian demographic surge has not been within established denominations recognizable to congregations outside China. This is not entirely surprising, as religious life remains under tight state control. Anyone desiring to "legally" participate in Christian worship in the PRC must join one of two officially established churches (one Catholic and one Protestant) chartered and regulated by the Chinese Communist Party. The new Christian explosion, however, has not taken place within the domain of the official churches, but within wholly novel and indigenous Christian communities that have sprouted and spread throughout rural China.

These new religious communities have come to be called "house churches" in the English language media. I am not sure who first applied this label to the new Christian groups in China, but the phrase is highly charged with symbolic historical associations. Scholars of late antiquity identified the "house church" as the focal unit of Christian communal worship during the first centuries of the religion's history. The implication of the label is thus to link current events in China to the narrative of Christianity's rise from persecution to triumph in Roman times. The facts on the ground provide much fodder for imaginative parallelism: the PRC is a vast empire, Beijing is Rome, the Party is Caesar, the house churches are communities of humble origins akin to those of the first Apostles. Indeed, many Christians in the US and Europe perceive developments in China as an epochal event with potentially prophetic implications.

The "house churches" themselves, however, do not easily assimilate to scriptural narratives cherished by non-Chinese Christians. Many of them are doctrinally quite idiosyncratic, such as the Eastern Lightning Church that insists that Christ has been reborn as a young Henanese woman (it is not entirely clear that the woman in question actually exists). Xu Shuangfu, the recently executed founder of the Three Grades of Servants Church, claimed to be in direct communication with God. Many of the new Christian churches are as distinct in social practice as they are in doctrine. The use of violence and extortion to win converts is quite common. Such violence is not reserved for unbelievers, but is aggressively applied to other Christians. Beatings and murders of the clergy and congregants of competing churches have been very common, and violence has even been applied to non-Chinese missionaries attempting to proselytize on behalf of orthodox denominations. Though PRC law technically empowered the state to execute Xu Shuangfu for his illegal religious activities, he and his lieutenants were in fact sentenced for murdering members of the rival Eastern Lightning sect. In the face of such theological and ethical complexities even the most enthusiastic observers of China's Christian effervescence have been compelled to develop a heuristic distinction between "house churches" and "cults."

China's new Christian communities thus sit at a complex nexus of cultural perceptions and expectations that colors many observers' readings of the implications of this phenomenon. In this climate it is perhaps most clarifying to focus on those aspects of the "house church" movement that fit integrally into the long context of Chinese cultural history. In many respects the "house churches" are no different from the long succession of Buddho-Daoist religious groups that have been a fixture of rural Chinese society since the Later Han Dynasty (25-220 C.E.).

Even during peak eras of imperial power central government institutions had very limited reach into the local domain of rural village society. Rural communities were free (indeed compelled) to organize themselves around locally rooted social and cultural institutions. Alongside family, clan, and lineage organizations, devotional traditions were ubiquitous matrices for the structuring of village life. Because these traditions picked up at the point where the ordering energies of the imperial state ebbed away (and because the imperial state itself was conceptualized as a grand spirit-cult), their "political" and "religious" functions could never be practically disaggregated.

Most of the time these local forms of religious life existed in a state of mutual benign indifference with the imperial government. The popular forms of Buddhism and Daoism that persisted in local society, however, preserved doctrinal visions that were radically at odds with the rationale of the imperial state. Self-cultivation traditions promised the practitioner health, long-life, and the acquisition of mystical powers that conveyed moral and spiritual authority. Eschatological teachings predicted the advent of a new age in which spiritual powers would effect the inversion of the current social and political order. Rural religious groups thus always retained the latent potential to explode into sudden and often violent political militancy. Though economic or political stresses can sometimes explain why this latent potential became actualized in any given instance, the metamorphosis from local religiuos group to armed millenarian rebellion was often completely unpredictable and seemingly motivated solely by the doctrinal teachings of the group itself. For this reason, though the imperial goverment remained practically committed to a posture of benign neglect toward local popular religion, it retained a broad and draconian system of prohibitions against any form of "heterodox (i.e. non-state -sanctioned)" religious expression so that state officials might be legally empowered to move swiftly and ruthlessly against any group that showed incipient signs of millenarian militancy. Thus though the extraordinary repression that the PRC government has applied to groups like the Falun Dafa and the Catholic Church has obvious roots in Communist ideology, in many respects they are in lock step with a pattern that has governed relations between the Chinese state and popular religion for many centuries.

Focusing upon the "house churches" we also see many aspects of a long historical pattern at work. These new Christian groups offer their adherents programs of self-cultivation (cast in terms of "prayer" rather than "meditation" or "yoga") that promise the same rewards of vitality and mystical power formerly claimed by Buddhist and Daoist teachings. Eschatalogical visions rooted in the New Testament nonetheless offer the same kind of social and political inversions predicted by Chinese millenarian groups in the imperial era. The violent militancy of groups like Three Grades of Servants and Eastern Lightning expresses the same political volatility exemplified by earlier non-Christian groups like the "Celestial Masters" or the "Eight Trigrams."

What, then, do these indigenous historical comparisons have to teach us about the "house churches" and their contemporary significance? One analysis is that these churches may be viewed as "old goods in a new wrapper." This view would hold that the rise of "house churches" is fueled by the same forces that impelled the spread of various popular Buddho-Daoist traditions throughout rural China for much of Chinese history. These groups are thus stepping into the same role as was filled by those earlier groups, and much of their social behavior can be understood as an expression of the same impulses that have always inhered within local religious life. There is much truth to this view, and it is indispensible to any clear global analysis of the "house church" movement.

The Christian nature of these groups cannot be completely discounted as ancillary or insignificant, however. The turn of local religious life toward Christianity may be a product of some essential appeal of the Christian message, as non-Chinese Christians would assert. This perspective is not wholly incompatible with an instrumental reading of the house church movement, moreover. If religious life has always been a medium for the expression of the collective political aspirations of rural Chinese communities, the choice of Christianity cannot be dismissed as arbitrary in the current political climate. In this regard, the most appealing aspect of traditional "Christian" narratives for Chinese congregants might be the long history of Christian opposition to Communism. Conversion to Christianity might represent a form of "voting with the spirit," electing to join the group that is most irreconcilably opposed to the ideology of the ruling Party. Awareness of the sympathies of Christians living overseas could play a role (if even a subconcious one) in this decision. Not only is the choice of Christianity an intrinsically anti-Communist one, but for precisely that reason the formation of a Christian group creates certain constraints within which the Communist Party must operate if it is to avoid international censure.

If something like this dynamic is a part of the "house church" phenomenon (and I strongly suspect it is) then anyone who is concerned about the long term stability of the PRC should pay attention. The Chinese Christian explosion is not only a religious or cultural event, but is one among many gauges of the political temperature of Chinese rural society. Along these lines, the course of Beijing's interraction with the house churches should not be wholly subsumed by narratives that are imported from outside the Chinese historical context. The execution of Xu Shuangfu is not first or only the execution of criminal justice or religious persecution, but is part of a longer struggle over whether the Communist Party will continue to retain control over the countryside.

Acknowledgment of this struggle does not provide clear ethical or pragmatic insights into who should "win." The "house churches" are not uniformly pious and humble apostles in search of spiritual redemption and the agents of Beijing are not uniformly brutal tyrrants bent on religious oppression. The great destructive potential of this conflict lies not in the moral character of its participants but in the systemic dynamic that makes the contest between Chinese state and local religion a zero-sum game. Decentralization and democratization of China's political institutions would help defuse the tensions that are bringing the house church movement to a political boil. The increasing violence transpiring at the interface between state and local religion suggests that the time for making these needed changes is running out.

Partition: No Magic Bullet

As US leaders cast about for ideas on how to pull the Iraq conflict out of the jaws of catastrophe one notion that has become very vogue is the partition of Iraq. Leslie Gelb, Peter Galbraith, and Senator Joseph Biden have all asserted in various forums that the road out of the Iraq quagmire lies in some form of tripartite division. Though this idea is often dressed in euphemisms like "federalism" or "confederation" (Biden writes of giving each region "breathing space" to manage its own affairs), it invariably reduces to division of Iraq into three independent states: one Kurd, one Sunni, one Shi'ite. This notion is superficially appealing for obvious reasons. Iraq right now is a portrait of sectarian strife. What better resolution to the problem than allowing the "sects" to go their separate ways? Unfortunately, as seductive as such a notion appears while one focuses on the current moment, it evaporates like a desert mirage as soon as one contemplates the history of Iraq and the larger region.

The greatest problem with any partition scheme centers on the Kurds. Unlike the Arabic Iraqi splinter groups the Kurds genuinely do desire their own independent and sovereign nation. The Kurdish nation is a dream deferred, Kurds still nurse lingering bitterness over Allied promises of "self-determination" in the immediate aftermath of WWI that have never been made good. US leaders seem to take for granted that Iraq's Kurds will blithely accept any "federalist" plan that is dictated to them. Yet nationalist passions run deep, and any steps toward greater Kurdish independence could easily snowball into a secessionist movmement, a development that would surely portend both deepening civil war in Iraq and a widening regional conflict. The natural boundaries of Kurdistan are not confined to Iraqi territory, Kurds are also a majority in parts of Turkey, Iran, and Syria. Those nations would go to war to prevent the emergence of a sovereign Kurdistan so as to staunch secessionist aspirations among their own Kurds. Moreover, the grant of any degree of sovereignty to Iraqi Kurds would cause enormous anger and resentment throughout the Arab world. The reduction of an Arab state to create a Kurdish nation would undoubtedly be compared to the international community's failure to reduce the Jewish state to create an Arab nation in Palestine. This would play directly to the rhetoric of groups like Hamas and Al Qaeda and would undermine US efforts throughout the Middle East.

As problematic as the situation of the Kurds is for any "federalist" plan, the condition of Iraq's Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs is little better. Neither community possesses the requisite coherence for functional nationhood. The Sunni minority would be left in control of a rump territory alienated from its economic and social centers of gravity. As the Sunnis were for years the proprietors of the Iraqi state that community's chief assets are concentrated in the "alpha city" of Baghdad, which would surely not be incorporated into the new "Sunni republic" and is in any case highly ethnically mixed. Such a scheme would be akin to asking the outer boroughs of New York City to carry on without any economic or political ties to Manhattan.

Iraq's Shi'ites, on the other hand, appear quite cohesive while the US occupation casts into sharp relief their differences with the Sunnis. But the Shi'ite community is impacted by historical forces that subvert its potential for functional political autonomy in the long term. The collective identity of Iraqi Shi'ites resides in their participation in a confessional community that crosses national and ethnic boundaries. Though divisions between Iraqis and Iranians, Arabs and Persians, are minimized by the current conditions of sectarian strife, those distinctions have historically been sources of profound friction. Very soon after the establishment of an Iraqi "Shi'ite republic" conflict will break out between those figures whose roots in the Shi'ite clerical establishment incline them toward closer ties with Iran and those individuals whose deep-seated feelings of Arab nationalism make the prospect of "Persion domination" anathema. The ultimate result would be a "republic" at war with both the Sunni community and itself.

"Iraq" as it exists today is obviously a terrain riven by social and cultural forces that make any degree of political coherence highly problematic. This does not indicate, however, that further fragmentation would be constructive. In historical terms one could argue that Iraq has arrived at its current impasse through hyper-fragmentation rather than the reverse. In the immediate aftermath of WWI Arab leaders who lobbied for independent nationhood on Wilsonian principles of "self determination" envisioned the Arab Middle East divided into far fewer nations than currently exist. Current political divisions express the colonial ambitions of Britain and France more than any intrinsic national consciousness of the peoples of the Middle East. The larger independent "Mesopotamia" envisioned by Arab leaders in the early 20th century would have had a more even admixture of Sunni and Shi'ite citizens, and might have been less susceptible to sectarian suspicion and violence.

In any case US plans for further partitioning of Iraq are deeply ill advised. The Biden-Gelb Plan, for example, calls for Iraqi "federalism," but such principles are already written into the Iraqi constitution. What, therefore, is new in this plan? The answer lies in provision 1: "Form regional governments -- Kurd, Sunni and Shiite -- responsible for administering their own regions." In other words, because the national government established by the US occupation is not working, the US should establish regional governments to rule in its stead. But if the US could not succeed in setting up a functioning national government why should it have any better luck setting up regional governments? According to the plan the central government would remain in order to oversee "truly common interests...like oil production and revenue," but a government that lacks the power to maintain the peace can hardly be expected to have the power to enforce a division of oil revenues, especially when its authority has been further eroded through the creation of three regional sub-governments with which it is forced to compete. If there is dire strife now in the absence of three regional governments it will only grow worse once those governments exist and are set to squabbling with one-another over oil revenues. The Biden-Gelb plan is effectively a recipe for replacing one dysfunctional government with three even more deeply dysfunctional governments, thus trading a slow-burning civil conflict for an all-out interregional civil war.

The lesson the US should take from its experience in Iraq thus far is this: Iraqi society is impelled by forces over which the US has little or no control, thus US meddling will most likely do more harm than good. If the government the US has assisted in creating does not operate as well as we like the answer is not to subvert it by creating new institutions that diminish its authority. Iraq may well be moving in the direction of some kind of functional partition, but the US should not imagine that it can "catch that wave" by way of retaining some residual influence over Iraqi politics. History dictates that within its current territorial boundaries (which for geopolitical reasons are unlikely to change in the near future) Iraqi society requires some form of central authority to function at all. Having planted the seeds of a central government the US would be very unwise to "change horses in mid stream," if only because this would undermine the already slim chances of the Baghdad government upon which the hope of any positive outcome rides. Ultimately the US must step back and let the Iraqis negotiate a modus vivendi between and among themselves, rooted in institutions of their own design and creation. The resulting outcome may not be entirely pleasing to the people or leaders of the US and its allies, but it is certain to be more constructive than what will result from further attempts by the US to compel a resolution of its own devising.

Exit Stage Three: The Eighteen Month Plan for Withdrawal from Iraq

This week senior military leaders such as General Anthony Zinni and General John Abizaid have warned against a hasty withdrawal from Iraq. One must respect their assessment of the "facts on the ground," but the danger of a hasty withdrawal does not argue for the wisdom of an extended American military presence in Iraq. Generals Zinni and Abizaid present sober cautions against changing the status quo but few new suggestions for moving the conflict forward. The blame for this lies with our civilian leaders, who persistently frame the problem in politically expedient and reductionist terms of "redeployment (i.e. withrdawal)" or "stay the course." Military officers can only give advice concerning the mission as it has been defined for them. The clock is ticking, however, on the American public's patience with the Iraq War. Voters will no longer make an open-ended commitment to a policy without a clear direction or goal.

It is long past time that American leaders lay a candid assessment of what is possible in Iraq before the public. Rhetoric about "victory" is both illogical and cripplingly counterproductive. Democrats and Republicans alike should confess to the American people that we no longer have (indeed we have never had) control over final outcomes in Iraq. We can not dictate what the institutions of the Iraqi government will ultimately look like or how power will be distributed socially, geographically, or ecomically. We can not produce an end to hostilities in Iraq or choose which of the current combatant forces will remain standing in the long run. America can not determine the destiny of Iraq, its best hope now is to disengage in a manner that gives the Iraqi government and people the best chance of achieving stability and progress.

To that end I propose the following eighteen month plan, divided into three six-month stages:

Stage 1- Full Armament of the Iraqi Security Forces

This is the most dangerous task that the Coalition must accomplish/facilitate, and entails the aspect of the conflict about which the US leadership has been most obtuse. US officials' constant intonation of the need to "train Iraqi forces" has become Orwellian in its ever-widening removal from practical reality. It is pristinely clear now that the problem with the Iraqi Army is not professional but political. No one can seriously believe that more training would make the Iraqi battalions that most recently refused orders to deploy to Baghdad more willing to accept such a mission. Every aspect about the IA's performance is rooted in its status as a dependent junior partner of the US military. The armed forces of virtually every sovereign nation on earth has its own air corps, artillery, and armor. No army can hope to survive on the modern battlefield without such elements, yet the IA remains a force composed almost entirely of infantry with light weapons.

This fact cries out for an explanation, yet I have never read of a US civilian or military leader being challenged on this issue in a public forum. Though the motives of press and academic observers of the conflict in this capacity are puzzling, the desire of US officials to avoid having to account for the strategic toothlessness of the IA is quite understandable. There are only two possible answers to such a query, neither of which are comfortable admissions for US leaders to make. The first is that the US has always intended to keep the IA in a state of dependency, so that responsibility for the strategic defense of Iraq would fall upon the US in perpetuity (this would explain the reluctance of the Bush regime to disavow maintaining permament US bases in Iraq). The other is that US officials have so little confidence in the competence and/or loyalty of Iraqi civilian and military leaders that they fear any move toward full armament of the Iraqi security forces would result in calamity.

The former possibility is a moot point. If the Bush administration had ever intended the US to assume the role of Iraq's permanent patron/defender that plan has become a complete impossibility. Iraq will remain lethal terrain for US soldiers for as long as they remain on Iraqi soil, a stable homeostasis like that of South Korea will never be reached. The operative motive for keeping the IA in a state of neutered limbo is thus a fear of how badly the process of full armament might go awry.

These fears are genuine. As the IA acquires heavy weapons many mishaps are possible. Fatal friendly fire clashes may occur between IA and Coalition forces. Infiltration of heavy weapons units by insurgents or militiamen could result in costly sabotage or the use of heavy weapons against Coalition troops or Iraqi government targets. As Iraqi military commanders achieve strategic independence they may "slip the leash" of civilian control and effect a military takeover. Worst of all, heavy weapons-armed IA units might square off against one-another in an all-out civil war.

As distressing as these concerns are, the full armament of the Iraqi security forces is an unavoidable necessity. In order to bolster the legitimacy of the Iraqi government and nurture civilian control the actual task of arming the security forces should be left in the hands of the Iraqi government itself. The Iraqi Defense Ministry should purchase weapons on its own budget-line, with funds borrowed from the US if necessary. Training new pilots, gunners, and technicians may have to be done outside of Iraq but it should be paid for by the Iraqi government and under Iraqi supervision. Iraqi intelligence services should perform security clearances on all trainees or skilled reinlistees from the Hussein-era armed forces.

Six months is a rush order. In that time weapons would have to be purchased, personnel recruited and trained, and further training exercises carried out in order to integrate the new heavy weapons units into the operational dynamic of already existing Iraqi security forces. Though these are complex tasks they could be provisionally accomplished in six months with a concerted US effort, in part because the Iraqis themselves will cooperate very enthusiastically. Moreover the armament program would not have to be entirely completed in six months. As the first heavy weapons units came through the "pipeline" stage two of the eighteen-month withdrawal plan could begin and continue as further units come on line. This is in fact advisable, as in order to minimize the temptation of internicine conflict it should be made clear to the Iraqi civilian and military leadership that this armament phase is step one in the final and inexorable withdrawal of US forces.

Stage Two- Internal Redeployment of US Forces

In the second six-month phase US forces should be withdrawn from Anbar Province and the Sunni Triangle, to be replaced by newly fully armed units of the Iraqi Army. Insurgent activity will continue and may intensify as US forces withdraw, but armed with helicopter gunships, tanks, and artillery IA units will be able to hold their own against the insurgents who, by all reports, display a bare minimum of military competency. If necessary small US teams could stay behind to help the IA in an advisory capacity, but the IA should ultimately assume 99% of the counterinsurgency effort in the Sunni Triangle.

The risks of this strategic shift are also high. The IA is predominantly Shi'ite, thus sectarian animosity might incite them to acts of brutality against the residents of the Sunni Triangle. There is the hope, though, that commitment to the mission in cities like Falluja and Ramadi might help professionalize and nationalize the IA. Brutality might produce as much resistance as it suppresses, forcing the IA to ameliorate its tactics and combine political suasion with military coersion. Moreover, Shi'ite IA soldiers struggling to pacify the Sunni Triangle might learn to construe their own self-interest differently than their more radical co-religionists in Baghdad and Basra. When IA soldiers perceive that atrocities committed by the Mahdi Army in Baghdad deepen support for the Sunni insurgency in Falluja their sympathy for the program of the Shi'ite militias will hopefully decrease sharply, thus creating pressure on the Iraqi civilian leadership to interdict and disarm the militias. While IA troops take over counterinsurgency duties in Falluja and Ramadi the US troops thus freed can be redeployed to mixed-ethnic areas like Baghdad and Diyala Province. The resulting increase in troop presence in those areas (combined with increased cooperation from Iraqi civilian authorities under pressure to support their troops in the field) would hopefully help restore order and diminish sectarian strife.

Stage Three-Phased Withdrawal of US Forces From Iraq

If the assumption of counterinsurgency duties by the IA in the Sunni Triangle has had the desired effect upon the working ethos of the IA, in six months the stage will be set for transferring all internal security duties in Iraq to the Iraqi armed forces themselves. US forces can thus begin to transfer their operational zones to Iraqi units of corresponding stength and skills. Some US units can remain deployed in the region (in Kuwait, say) to assist Iraqi forces as requested. As US troops depart Iraq, however, all bases and infrastructure built within Iraq for US use should be dismantled or turned over to the IA. Fighting is likely to be continuing as US troops depart and to go on for a long while after US forces have gone, but there is a chance that at the end of eighteen months the Iraqi military and government together will have the coherence and political will to win through to eventual peace and stability.

This plan is by no means assured of success, in fact it might well be an extreme long-shot gamble. The current situation offers no better alternative, however. In the end the odds of success or failure can not be set by the US, they will be determined entirely by the Iraqis. If the Iraqi people and their leaders can summon the will, the courage, the flexibility, and the political skills to weave together a new social contract from the current anarchy then no matter how quickly the US withdraws Iraq will eventually stabilize and prosper. If the Iraqis can not gather these energies then no matter how long the US stays the result will be chaos and bloodshed. Indeed, every day the US remains in Iraq now helps increase the odds of this darker outcome, as each such day depletes the legitimacy of the Iraqi government in many of its people's eyes and helps habituate Iraqi leaders to dependency upon US protection and assistance. An eighteen-month staged US withdrawal is not a perfect or a sure choice, but it the best choice for the people of America, Iraq, and the world at large.

Base Motives

The Democratic electoral victory and the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld are both hopeful developments for the war effort in Iraq, the former because it signals clearly that the American public has lost patience with the current failed strategy and the latter because Mr. Rumsfeld was its principal architect and civilian custodian. This institutional sea change naturally raises the question of what can and should be done differently going forward. The departure of Rumsfeld is likely to be the most important development in the long and short term. With Robert Gates as the new Secretary of Defense the US General Staff will feel more confident to assert their prerogative in charting the course of the conflict, a trend that is sure to produce profound changes in tactics and overall strategy. As the resolution of the Iraq conflict requires political maneuvers as much as military, however, there are steps that the civilian leadership can take right away that will assist Coalition forces in their task. Moreover, they are steps in which both Defense and Congress may participate.

The clearest and easiest policy shift that would help move the conflict toward resolution is for the US government to forswear maintaining any permanent military bases in Iraq. Such a move would bleed both the Sunni insurgency and provocateurs such as Moqtada al-Sadr of a great deal of political capital. The clear wisdom of this policy is so evident that it cries out for an explanation as to why the Bush administration has not embraced it already. The only real risk it entails is to foster the impression that the US is capitulating to terrorist pressure, but given the benefits at stake such a consideration only argues for the policy to be adopted as soon as possible. The longer the US waits to renounce a permanent military presence in Iraq the more it courts political embarrassment for doing so, but no matter how high that liability gets ratcheted up the inescapable necessity of renunciation will remain.

Why, then, has the Bush administration tarried? The only ultimately logical answer is oil. If we take Bush regime pronouncements at face value this conflict has always been driven by a "big theory" strategy to foster US security in the extreme long term. One does not have to be entirely cynical about Bush assertions of "promoting democracy" to deduce that the regime closely associate the long-term security of the US with the assurance of access to oil reserves. Any argument about the true nature or moral status of such motives is now moot, as an enduring US military presence in Iraq is simply not a sustainable strategy if a positive resolution to the current conflict is ever to be found. One of the potential long-term benefits of the nascent shift in US "Iraq politics" is thus a corresponding shift away from allowing fossil fuel dependency to drive foreign policy and towards using domestic policy to decrease or eliminate dependency on fossil fuels.

The first step, however, is a renunciation of permanent US bases in Iraq, a policy that both Defense and Congress should move to insititutionalize immediately, preferably in concert. New construction on bases should be halted, and contingency plans laid for the disassembly of current facilities or their staged transfer to the Iraqi Army. Congress can help effect this strategy by writing it into law, preferably with the input of both Defense and Centcom. The wording of such legislation would have to be worked out carefully, as it should not place artificial constraints on the current military conduct of the conflict. A simple solution might be to place a deadline for dismantlement or transferal far in the future- five to ten years hence. Such legislation would do much to deflect criticism of the Coalition mission as "neocolonial" and sap insurgent propoganda of most of its vitality and appeal.

Right Where They Want Us

As the midterm election draws nigh the Bush administration remains on message concerning the Iraq conflict: the US cannot withdraw troops before "we get the job done." Democratic rejoinders about the ill wisdom of "staying the course" are weak at best, as they might be taken to imply that the US should not "stay the course" because it cannot "get the job done." This latter prospect cannot be appealing to voters however persuaded they are of the shortcomings of the Bush Iraq policy, and Democrats would be better served by pointing out why Bush's "get the job done" injunction simply does not make sense.

Bush rhetoric immediately raises two questions for which there are no simple answers: 1)what job? 2)what can the US do that it has not already done to "get the job done?" Bush defenders might insist that there is a clear answer to question one: foster a free and a stable Iraq. But that still leaves unanswered what problems must be overcome to get there, and in that respect it must be acknowledged that if the US troops are in fact to proactively work toward that end they must accomplish three jobs: 1)end the violent ethnic cleansing campaign being waged by Shi'ite militias; 2)defeat the Sunni insurgency; 3)dislodge the foreign jihadists.

Once one acknowledges that US troops in Iraq are faced with three jobs, not one, it soon becomes clear that they will not be able to accomplish any of them by staying in Iraq. The first job of ending the Shi'ite ethnic cleansing campaign is manifestly beyond the strategic reach of US forces. This weeks' standoff between CentCom and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki makes clear a trend that has become increasingly evident these past months- the US military does not have the full cooperation of the Iraqi government in its anti-militia operations, an obstruction which will preclude success in those endeavors.

The second job of defeating the Sunni insurgency is also out of reach of US forces as they are currently deployed, a fact that US Centcom itself acknowledges. This is the crux of the "stand up, stand down" policy- only when the Iraqi Army and police reach full combat readiness, so goes the Bush strategy, will there be enough troops in place to defeat the insurgency. But as the length of the Iraq conflict draws even with that of the US participation in WWII the proposition that more time will yield more or better Iraqi soldiers grows increasingly absurd. By now a significant number of US soldiers patrolling the streets of Baghdad had never fired a weapon prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Unless an Iraqi for some reasons requires 3 or 4 times as much training as an American to be made into a soldier more time on the current tack is not going to create a significant change in the strategic trajectory of the counterinsurgency.

With regards to jobs 1 and 2 the plain fact is that they will only be accomplished by the withdrawal, not the continued deployment of US troops. Iraqi soldiers will only begin to make headway against the Sunni insurgency when they have true strategic and tactical autonomy. As long as the Iraqi Army remains dependent on the air, armor and artillery support of the US military the denizens of the Sunni triangle will continue to tacitly support the insurgents. Only when it has its own tanks, planes and guns will the Sunnis view the Iraqi Army as a serious and permanent force with which they are compelled to deal, and only then will a negotiated resolution to the Sunni insurgency be achievable.
In the same vein, the Iraqi government and army will never feel compelled to deal politically with the problem of the Shi'ite militias as long as the US military remains to shield them from the consequences of their neglect. Only as the US withdraws and Iraqi authorities are forced to weigh the competing priorities of defusing the Sunni insurgency and placating the Shi'ite militias against one-another will the Iraqi government and army move aggressively to disarm groups like the Mahdi Army.

In many American assessments of the Iraq war, job number 3 is the "clincher" concern that compels the US to keep its troops in Iraq despite all other reasons to withdraw. The foreign jihadists now based in Iraq are lethal enemies of the US, and it would be disastrous if they could ever develop a stable base in Iraq from which they could plan and launch 9/11-type attacks against US soil. As real as that concern is, it must be viewed against two factors:

1)Keeping US troops in Iraq to hunt down jihadists is simply not a tactically viable mission. US Centcom estimates that foreign jihadists make up 5-7% of the insurgency,thus asking our troops to hunt them in the vast expanse and dense society of the Sunni triangle and Baghdad is effectively sending them after a needle in a haystack. More concretely, we would be sending our soldiers to search for the needle with a flamethrower, and the "hay" in which it was hidden would be the Iraqi people. With so few boots on the ground and so little intelligence-gathering assets in place the only thing our troops could accomplish would be to further anger and alienate the Iraqis and thus make the very terrain in which they were operating more dangerous for themselves and more welcoming to the jihadists.

2)The history of Iraq shows that the ONLY condition that gives the jihadists any purchase in Iraq is the presence of US soldiers. As long as a critical mass of Iraqi society is angered at the US presence in Iraq the jihadists' suicidal malevolence makes them welcome allies of anti-Coalition forces. If and when the US pulls out, however, the jihadists' militancy for an Islamic state and their willingness to provoke foreign nations to further ideological ends will make their welcome in the relatively secular and nationalist society of Sunni Iraq expire very quickly.

Again, the plain fact is that the jihadists have us right where they want us. As long as US soldiers remain in Iraq the jihadists' toehold in Iraqi society remains firm, once the US leaves the Iraqis will pass them like a kidney stone. Bush critics who want to defuse the political efficacy of Bush's rhetoric must expose the rotten logical foundations upon which it rests. The one card the US has left to play to get anything like "the job" done in Iraq is a staged withdrawal, and the longer the US waits to begin that strategy the lower its prospects of success will sink.

The Autumns of Our Discontent: Falluja 2004 to Amarah 2006

As of today US forces in Iraq have suffered 73 fatalities during the month of October, already double the low casualty count of 30 reached during March of this year. These numbers in and of themselves do not present a clear strategic picture. March was the nadir of a six-month declining trend in US casualties, and pro-Bush pundits asserted that this was attributable to technological and tactical innovations that were frustrating efforts of the insurgents to target US soldiers. It now seems clear that that analysis was not sound, and that the trend from October 2005-March 2006 was conditioned primarily by a policy of "hunkering down" in fortified bases rather than sending US soldiers out on frequent patrols. After the Samarra mosque bombing of February set off an accelerating wave of sectarian violence, that defensive posture was no longer sustainable, and as US troops have been increasingly exposed to Iraqi society casualty figures have correspondingly risen.

Absent specific information about the frequency of US patrols, casualty figures do not provide concrete evidence of whether the risks to US soldiers in Iraqi society at large are rising or holding steady, and default assumptions would have to favor the latter case. The US infantry soldier enjoys such an advantage in training, armor, firepower, and logistical support that under the most perilous circumstances s/he is very difficult to kill. Though October's casualty figures are alarmingly high, they would have to double by the end of the month to reach the high casualty figures for April and November of 2004, the months when US forces launched frontal assaults on insurgent strongholds in Falluja. Unless Iraqi insurgents again achieve the same degree of territorial, social and political purchase acquired in Falluja 2004, they are unlikely to inflict the same kinds of high losses upon the US military as were suffered in the reduction of that defensive position.

A look at Falluja today explains why that is unlikely. Though the city was garrisoned by 3000 US soldiers in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 siege, today it is garrisoned mainly by Iraqi Army and Police, with only a "quick reaction force" of 300 Marines and a few dozen US reservists embedded as "military transition teams" among the battalions of the Iraqi Army garrison. Michael Fumento spent time observing joint US-Iraqi operations in Falluja in May 2006. He acknowledges that there are problems of tactical coordination between the Marines and their Iraqi Army partners- he describes one case of mistaken identity which almost ended with the Marines calling in a helicopter strike on IA soldiers. On the other hand, he speaks optimistically of the high morale of the IA forces- he reports one instance in which an IA patrol accompanied by only 3 US Marine advisors held off 50-80 insurgents until a Marine quick reaction team showed up to save the day with helicopter support.

Taken together, these incidents paint a picture of neither victory nor defeat for US forces in Falluja, but indefinite stalemate. As long as the Iraqi Army can be relied upon to cohere and patrol the city precincts (the units in question are mainly Shi'ite, so there is little prospect of them being infiltrated by/sympathizign with the local Sunni insurgents) the insurgents will not have the breathing space to consolidate control over the city's instititutions and infrastructure as they did in 2004. However, as long as the insurgents can summon the human resources to launch coordinated attacks of 50-80 combatants the IA will not be able to safely patrol the city without the backup of the Marine quick reaction force.

As the role of helicopters in both of Fumento's anecdotes conveys, in 21st century warfare infantry soldiers are in effect armed forward observers. The real combat power of a modern infantry unit resides in its ability to direct airpower, armor, or artillery to battlefield targets. Fumento reports that IA patrols can call in air support, but the coordination problems he describes suggest that only the Marines must have quick and unobstructed access to air power. Even if and when IA forces do successfully call for air cover, it is of course US planes or helicopters that respond. The IA has not been given heavy weapons of any kind, the Iraqi soldiers and officers Fumento spoke to lamented that they have not even been issued heavy machine guns for tactical use.

This is a situation that could persist indefinitely. The Bush White House and US Centcom is presumably hoping that civil society in Falluja will stabilize and state control will regenerate, displacing the resources of the insurgency. This is not a realistic expectation, however. As long as the IA is seen to be dependent on US support the residents of Falluja have no reason to totally withhold support from the insurgents. Fallujans have watched the US enter and leave their city several times, they have been conditioned to expect that the US will eventually depart. Were they to do so at a time when the IA remains dependent upon their fire support the insurgents might well regain control of the city, thus a Fallujan who is hedging his/her bets will continue to give at least passive support to the insurgency against the day when they potentially return to power.

The prospect for the US mission in Iraq for the near future thus might be read this way: in cities like Falluja a stalemate will hold, while in Baghdad and its environs civil unrest will force chronic exposure of US soldiers to mortal danger. If those circumstances could be counted upon to continue, US casualties would not be likely to again drop to the low level of this March, but nor would they be likely to rise again to the high levels of April and November 2004. Unfortunately, recent developments do not inspire confidence that current conditions will hold steady.

On Friday the Mahdi Army launched a (seemingly) abortive attempt to take over the city of Amarrah in southeastern Iraq. Though the Maliki government now claims that the situation has stabilized, even the prospect of such a takeover raises a troubling specter. Though the joint IA-US investment of cities in the Sunni triangle like Falluja have staved off the reemergence of an insurgent stronghold as had to be reduced in 2004, Amarah holds out the possibility that an analogous Shi'ite stronghold could be developed outside of the Sunni triangle, forcing the Coalition back to a strategy of frontal urban assault that would cause new spikes in ground force mortality. Moreover, the "hold" and "build" phases of those campaigns would present problems that have as yet not encumbered operations in the Sunni triangle. As IA forces are disproportionately Shi'ite, in a Shi'ite city such as Amarah IA units might not cooperate with Coaltion troops in the same kind of joint operational dynamic that currently prevails in Falluja. If Amarah is the thin edge of an advancing wedge the strategic situation of US forces in Iraq may be about to degrade drastically.

What is the best course of action with which to address this situation? Though it may seem counterintuitive, staged US withdrawal is still the best current option from the perspectives of both the US and the Iraqi people. As long as IA forces in the Sunni triangle remain dependent upon US support teams they will not truly be a national army, as they will not identify wholly with their mission or remain thoroughly invested in its success. However, if the IA were given complete control and responsibility for restoring order in cities like Falluja and Ramadi it would quickly be compelled to take a national perspective. If the IA were alone in policing Falluja they would realize that inflammatory behavior on the part of their Shi'ite coreligionists in other parts of Iraq cost them in local animosity and bloodshed in Falluja. Commitment to their strategic goal in the Sunni Triangle would bleed them of sympathy for provocateur forces like that of the Mahdi Army in Amarah.

The only force that has any hope of restoring unity and order to Iraq is the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Army. The Defense Ministry of the Iraqi government must be given true budgetary and strategic autonomy. They must be allowed to control their own fiscal resources and purchase the heavy weapons that will give the IA true combat superiority over insurgents in the Sunni triangle. Once that is done the US can withdraw completely from the Sunni triangle and focus on peacekeeping duties in Baghdad, Kirkuk, and other heavily mixed ethnic areas. Over the course of the next year US forces could then draw down throughout Iraq and transfer law-and-order duties to the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police. This is by no means a foolproof strategy- its success depends entirely on the commitment of Iraqi leaders to the genuine professionalization of the Iraqi security forces and the development of an authentically national policy in government affairs. Neither of those things might come to pass, but there is no alternative strategy that the US may employ that can accomplish what the Iraqis can not.

Two Dissidents

Last week saw the murder and imprisonment, respectively, of two dissidents on opposite sides of the line that is becoming increasingly reified in current discourse, that between "Islam" and "the West." The first was Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist and outspoken critic of the war in Chechnya, shot dead in her apartment over the weekend. The second was Ayatollah Mohammed Kazemeini Boroujerdi, who was arrested in Tehran on Sunday for his opposition to clerical rule in Iran.

Ms. Politkovskaya's reporting revealed that the treatment the Putin regime dealt the Chechen people rose to and surpassed the level of cruelty visited upon the Kurds by Saddam Hussein. The fact that Saddam Hussein sits in jail while Vladimir Putin remains at the helm of one of the G8 can hardly create any other impression except that crimes against Muslims will be held to account only if they are committed by other Muslims. The only redemption for "the West" on this score was provided by the outspoken courage of Ms. Politkovskaya herself, in that Saddam Hussein let no one of her ilk survive in his Iraq. Now she has paid for that courage with her life, and the thin thread by which any conceivable moral superiority of "the West" hung in this instance has snapped.

Ayatollah Boroujerdi provides a counter-example of the crimes of "Islam," but one that confounds the usual parameters within which that boogeyman is perceived. Here is an oppressed critic of the rightly decried Tehran regime, but rather than being an apostle of "modern rationalism" or "enlightened secularism" he speaks from the heart of Islam itself. Though Boroujerdi has not yet paid the ultimate price for his stance and his clerical rank perhaps affords him a degree of protection Ms. Politkovskaya did not enjoy, still his criticism took a similar kind of courage. His reasons for opposing clerical rule are no doubt complex, but the fact that they are rooted more in Koran and Hadith than in Locke and Rousseau does not make them any less principled.

What then, may we learn from Politkovskaya and Borourjerdi? Whatever else may be true of "Islam" and "the West" they are alike in the capacity to oppress or destroy those who take a principled stand against values that have strong institutional roots. Pope Benedict XVI's recent call for a "great dialogue of cultures" rooted in rationalism and tolerance was no doubt a message for the age. It will only serve a constructive purpose, however, if all people of conscience understand that no culture exercises a monopoly on intolerance or irrationality; these are universal human potentials that find expression wherever abstract principles or naked self-interest are put before the sanctity of human life. In this light, "the West" and "Islam" are best abandoned as categories that lack any real utility in a genuinely productive "great dialogue of cultures."