U.S. Exit Strategy that Honors American Troops and Iraqi People
Time is not on the side of the U.S. in Iraq while the U.S. occupation refuses moderate, senior Iraqi religious leaders greater power in drafting a national constitution. If Islam remains forced to the margin of U.S. reconstruction, it's a matter of months before moderate religious leaders cave to pressure from a disaffected populace, and along with the need to oppose extremist jihad, issue "fatwa" or religious edict opposing the U.S. led occupation.
American troops will then either retreat into their compounds or fire into crowds of women and children. At that point, the only thing left to control will be nerves, with troop morale the only thing left to rebuild. Before relations with leading moderate clerics deteriorate into abandon, the peaceful cooperation they've shown the Coalition Provisional Authority demands their prosecution into drafting a constitution tolerable to them.
Winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis or even buying these is proving impossible, yet the great Iraqi middle must be held together. It's time the occupation realize that for Iraqis, the sincerest sign of U.S. reconstruction, is to allow them self governance as gladdens their hearts and minds. Bricks and I-beams, two chickens in every pot, even a water cooler in every Iraqi home ignores the fundamental provision: self-rule consistent with Iraqi culture and their notion of stable, legitimate, free and equitable governance of their society. The rest is window dressing on Iraqi resentment against a foreign occupation deemed as working for the material interest of the occupiers.
The moderate grand ayatollahs in particular must be turned to so the U.S. can find time to devise a dignified exit strategy before Iraq unhinges and the American liberation becomes a nightmare. The moderate Iraqi clerics, in particular Grand Ayatollah al Sistani offer the best hope. To refuse, place hope in UN salvation on President Bush's unyielding terms or a change in the angry streets, is to hope for a miracle.
Before events the U.S. cannot control shake the Bush presidency, the president can snatch proximate victory from the jaws of defeat. Immediately announcing a six-month timetable for military departure with a deadline of April 1, 2004 can salvage the incursion and still honor America's dead.
The White House must allow an Iraqi constitution drafted acceptable to leaders who most Iraqis trust and who are willing to work with the U.S. to stabilize Iraq. To achieve this the Provisional Authority must allow an immediate increase in the Iraqi Governing Council from 25 members to however many additional members are needed to dilute voting to be favorable to moderate senior Iraqi clerics.
Beginning with an off the shelf constitution, the newly expanded council would immediately hammer out a hybrid suitable to Iraqi culture and schedule a popular referendum for December 2003. It would pass, and elections held two months later. The last American boot would leave Iraqi soil by the first of April 2004. Whether or not a constitution is drafted, passed, or elections held, the American deadline would hold.
Originally proposed in the August column of these pages, the proposal calculates an accelerated time frame that risks ignoring details; however, continuing with the White House Iraq fantasy risks U.S. forces being run out of Iraq on a rail. Such a disaster of The United State's own making is beyond calculation. And if there is one thought that can cushion the idea of a less than ideal plan for salvaging Operation Iraqi Freedom and allowing at least an exercise toward democracy there, and by so doing justify the American action, it occurred in the Spring of 1975.
For Americans who remember it, no image of the past quarter century remains harder to bear than that of the last U.S. army chopper lifting off the U.S. embassy tower in Saigon, defeated, run out, fleeing exhausted and shamed. The reason for the defeat? American civilian leaders refused to face their earlier mistakes.
No admission now of error in Iraq is too great to bear in order to avoid a repeat of that terrible image of travail upon American men and women ordered to Iraq by their president in service to their fellow countrymen.
The men who let events degenerate until that dreadful Spring day occurred also meant well - and knew long before that retreat that their cause was lost. Do U.S. leaders today really believe that the responsibilities that befell their country once they broke into and wrecked Iraq, which include running the economy, maintaining domestic peace, protecting Iraq's boarders and infrastructure, bringing democratic revolution, is achievable with the deck stacked against the U.S.? Additionally, do they expect Americans to endure the mistake for years and decades? Who do they think Americans are? Who do they think they are? Slave to master it seems.
People's patriotism can be forged a long way. Nationalism can move mountains. Iraqis are finding this out. Whether it's defense of Islam, anti-imperialism or protecting the tribe, it's bringing meaning to every subheading of Iraqi. They look at the 25 U.S. appointed members of the Iraqi Governing Council and see continued manipulation by a great power. They see Sunni potentially fighting along Shiite and sense their own power. They see the U.S. managed Iraqi Council and sense a newly imposed regime organizing their lives. If they don't protest, they only disguise their hostility against the occupation - until their moment for action comes.
That time draws near. Most Iraqis consider they're giving the U.S. a well-deserved chance. Whatever America's motives, it got rid of the hated tyrant. Iraqis may not want a violent, terrorist, saboteur resistance, but they will sympathize with it should the sense that the chances of the U.S. improving their daily lives decrease and their humiliation increase.
To a mostly illiterate population, talk of democracy and elected leaders may be peachy, but the shambles of their jobless economy, spiraling murder rate, four hours a day electricity ration and increasingly insular occupiers who caused it, truncheon the pretty talk. Recognizable faces offering an outlet to express their anger and resentment, in their own tongue and manners, instead of the ways of foreign administrators, increasingly find favor with average people disappointed by American promises.
Ironically, Iraq's long misery is the U.S. Authority's window of opportunity. Of advantage to the Authority is a country accursedly accustomed to suffering neglect, oppression and predation; however, Iraqi patience is not infinite, and suspicions can't be abided forever by moderate religious leaders excusing slow U.S. progress. Donkey carts full of greenbacks, a constitution acceptable to senior clerics, and a timetable for imminent U.S. military departure is all that will patch a fragile net to keep the country agreeable to armed U.S. presence. Knowing there are set dates proscribed for Iraqis to take control of their country free of U.S. domination is the only palliative.
To continue the unseemly rhetoric employed by the administration to foster support for Operation Iraqi Freedom under circumstances that offer historic predictability for failure, betrays the American people. Guerrilla war faces U.S. troops and it's not going away. Terrorists now have specific strategic objectives that are significant in bringing disorder. Strong ethnic and religious tensions have not yet bubbled to the surface due only to decades of state repression and moderate senior clerics willing to give Americans a chance. But all the while, hotbeds get time to capture and direct brewing hatreds.
The deprivation the U.S. hasn't addressed can turn the most reasonable housewife into a combatant. It's only by the gut strings of a few patient, moderate Shiite and Sunni clerics that Iraqi society is holding together. Only these wise men command the respect of large sections of the country. Should the center that these men hold together fall, or they themselves fall to strategic or random acts of violence, radical clerical youth are ready to assume their place and turn to the fiercer interpretations of their holy book - with American troops caught in the storm.
By then all pretty thoughts of bringing liberal democracy to Iraq will be like a tale once told a hundred times but forgotten. The U.S. Army would turn to crushing all resistance. With ideals poisoned, what will have been accomplished toward extending "that shinning city upon a hill?" The frayed troops will come home then, the old way. The way their fathers did from Saigon. America owes them better.
This proposal means an end to phony reconstruction. In turn, Iraqis would testify to true generosity from the occupation's change of heart into recognizing deep-set Iraqi desires. As for the exit strategy, it's hardly cutting and running in the face of resistance. The unassailable fact of the U.S. Army remaining another six months means more dead and wounded American soldiers.
This fact demands the president level with Americans in laying out the timetable and resource commitment for the balance of the occupation. Top brass could estimate the number of U.S. casualties for carrying out President Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom to conclusion. Asked to back the timetable, Americans will. No more gross exaggeration of evidence and selective tooling of progress reports. End making statements like "stay as long as it takes," "never turn back" and "bring 'em on." Americans have had enough jock talk. Say what will be tried, for how long, and come home.
Once announced, this proposal will immediately raise troop morale, finally bring resolve to the people trying to carry out Operation Iraqi Freedom, add substance and direction they can hold onto. Internationally, allies of the U.S. with their own interests in mind will determine to press cooperation from their contacts in hopes of generating a successful U.S. military departure from Iraq and leaving a peaceable people there with a functioning government ready to do business with the industrial world. Iraqis would have promises they could measure. The resistance would know that whatever their acts of sabotage, there is no early withdrawal.
The compact time frame offers all parties interested in saving Iraq from upheaval at chance at getting an acceptable Iraqi government of and about an Iraqi majority. It would not be an implausible American-like state, but something that is possible in this time and that place, without coercion, and generally accepted by the largest number of inhabitants. The open ended, directionless occupation will finally have found an anchor, purpose and port of departure, and Iraq will realize American commitment beyond a police action or an excuse from which to capture their national wealth and from there their neighbors' dominion.
September 22, 2003