Send More Troops to Baghdad?
A major justification for President Bush’s plan to send 20,000 additional troops to Iraq is that they will restore a semblance of peace to turbulent Baghdad. They will achieve this aim not by surrounding the city (which is far too big) but by pacifying selected areas of it one by one. This “clear-and-hold” approach – expelling guerrillas and establishing civilian security in one delimited area and then repeating the process in another -- has been the method of distinguished practitioners of counterinsurgency from the French General Joseph Gallieni in West Africa and Tonkin in the late 19th century to the English Sir Robert Thompson in Malaya in the mid 20th century (although clear-and-hold is usually associated with counterinsurgency in rural areas).
But beyond the immediate problem of Baghdad, when speaking and thinking about Iraq it might be well to keep a few elemental facts in mind.
First, in the 20th century guerrilla insurgencies have frustrated or humiliated every major power: the British in Ireland, the Germans in the Balkans, the Japanese in China, the Chinese in Tibet, the French and then the Americans in Vietnam, the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Russians in Chechnya (and the Vietnamese in Cambodia), to name only the most spectacular instances. Therefore, it is not necessary to view current American difficulties in Iraq as exclusively the results of someone’s incompetence.
Second, analogies to Vietnam, which dominate American discourse on Iraq or almost any other contemporary conflict (“Iraq is Vietnam, Afghanistan was Russia’s Vietnam, Cambodia was Vietnam’s Vietnam,” etc.) can be very misleading. One of the more questionable of these analogies is equating the projected Baghdad clear-and-hold operation to the “failed” strategic hamlet program in South Vietnam. Quite aside from the problems of comparing rural and urban counterinsurgency, the strategic hamlet program did not fail, but was in fact abandoned, after the assassination of President Diem, by the South Vietnamese Army which had always opposed it. But when talking about Vietnam, the absolutely most important thing to remember is that, even with all the American errors there, the Viet Cong insurgents were defeated, or defeated themselves, before, during and after the Tet Offensive of 1968. That is why in order to conquer South Vietnam – a full seven years after Tet – the Hanoi regime had to mount the most massive conventional offensive in Asia since the Korean War.
Third, General Patraeus has stated that ”Vietnam was an extremely painful reminder that when it comes to intervention, time and patience are not American virtues in abundant supply.” Quite true: on the subject of patience, consider the British effort to defeat the Provo guerrilla/terrorists in Northern Ireland. The area of that province is smaller than Maine’s Aroostook County, its population less than that of Philadelphia (Iraq is 31 times the area of Northern Ireland); the capital, Belfast, is but 40 miles from the British mainland; the British had centuries of experience in the area; the population is English-speaking; the majority of that population supported the British presence; and at its peak the British military commitment there equaled one soldier for every fifty inhabitants. It nevertheless required nearly a quarter-century under successive Conservative and Labour cabinets to bring a few hundred not very impressive IRA gunmen to heel. Such an extended effort by the U. S. in Iraq, or anywhere else, is inconceivable, especially since enemies of the U.S. the world over have become quite aware of the influence of media sensationalism on the American ability to sustain an overseas combat effort. Thus guerrillas in Baghdad may deliberately create as many civilian casualties as possible. (Under these circumstances, correct treatment at all times of civilians and prisoners by American troops becomes as essential as it is difficult.)
But General Patraeus’s point is correct in another sense: even the best-conceived and best-executed counterinsurgency doctrine is a hostage of political forces far beyond the U.S. military’s control. Political factors are operating mightily against U.S. success in Iraq. Powerful interests in the Middle East (and outside it) do not want democracy, or even independence, for Iraq, or a U.S. presence in the general area. Many would like to turn Iraq into a larger version of Lebanon. Even some U.S. allies are not displeased at the American frustration in Iraq. And – most regrettably -- while it is a safe bet that some members of the U.S. Congress would be unable to locate Basra on a large map of Asia, nonetheless more than a few members of that body apparently believe that they have a vested interest in the failure of the American effort in Iraq.
Whatever the fate of the projected pacification of Baghdad, it may be that the struggle for a peaceful and democratic Iraq is already and irretrievably lost. That would really be too bad, since the Americans liberated the Iraqi people from one of the world’s most repulsive dictators, and enabled them to choose a free parliament. But if the war is already lost, some of the most important reasons for it have less to do with events in Iraq, or American counterinsurgency skills, than with the American election of 2008 -- and 2000.