All Alone on the Long View in Iraq?
(another in the series of letters from Marine Col. Mike Walker, retired)
Marines,
I freely admit to being a fellow traveler within the
rank and file of the small minority who are optimistic
about Iraq. I blame this on three personal flaws.
First, it was my misfortune to have gained most of my
insights about Iraq by serving there (2003 & 2004).
Alas, you read that correctly, I was one of those poor
souls “stuck” over there despite having an
undergraduate degree from Marquette University and
graduate degree from Harvard University and a nice
civilian job back in the States. I was given every
opportunity to make it in correct society but somehow
wound up in the Marine Corps. I will try to do better
next time.
Second, I must confess to being a loner even within my
generation of fellow service members in that during my
career in the Marines I spent a good deal of time
studying insurgencies and/or modern civil wars which,
even within the military, was a subject largely
eschewed due to the trauma of the Vietnam War.
Finally and perhaps most damning, I have never been
able to catch on the to “I want it now, 24-7” mindset
of most of my friends and acquaintances. I am slow in
this regard. I actively seek to become more patient
and take a broader view amidst an American society
that is seemingly evermore cramming yet something else
into each and every day so it can readily chase after
the next “shiny object.” Iraq and war on terror are
not social unpleasantries to me. They are not
something to be done with because I have grown tired
of them and need to “move on.”
Given all those handicaps, I have been sadly compelled
to think this through for myself having to forego the
blissful privilege of being told what to think by
various combinations of the US “Big Media,”
politicians (of all manner of persuasion, and party),
and/or water cooler/cocktail party/barroom pundits.
Here is what I have concluded:
I believe we are winning in Iraq. I am flawed indeed.
But it gets worse.
I think we have (finally) put all the pieces in place
to assure our victory. Of course, we must give credit
where credit is due and thank the Saddamists for
running both a lousy conventional war in early-to-mid
2003 and an equally inept insurgency since. If your
“Capo di tutti Capo” guy winds up with his neck in a
noose, you are hated by the Kurdish minority, and the
Shi’a majority is screaming for your blood rather than
your return to power, then you certainly can’t take
much pride in your accomplishments.
But things are not as simple as that summary. For
example, in an insurgency, the political strategy is
superior to the military. The Saddamists relied
almost exclusively on the military solution, i.e.
trying to kill off an ever growing list of “enemies.”
First it was Coalition Forces then they added
“collaborators,” then they added in the Iraqi Security
Services centered on an Iraqi Army (when we finally
got past our own sorry reasoning opposing its
creation) and finally they added the Shi’a population
in toto, every man woman and child. Gee whiz, Hitler
and Stalin would have been impressed. But where was
the enemy’s political strategy? Missing and still
missing. They can never win without one but they have
created so many enemies that it is now pretty much
hopeless.
What about the Shi’a? I am optimistic about them too.
We need to take some specific steps such as removing
Muqtada Sadr as a military threat and suppressing the
militias but the overall strategy is working. The
Shi’a led government is off the ideal but as much as
it wheezes and gasps, moves in fits and starts, at the
end of the day it is good enough to get the job done.
Look, we worked to introduce “democracy” into South
Korea beginning in the late 1940’s (even before the
war there began) but it really did not flower until
the 1990’s, it took over half a century for the roots
to really sink in but they did. Never underestimate
the power of an idea or the strength of a
constitutional government. As recent polling has
shown, the Iraqi people are moving towards a
democratic government rather than walking away.
This brings up a final lesson I learned in Iraq.
There is a complex insurgency in Iraq but the Iraqis
are a far more resilient and capable people than most
give them credit for. The will of the Iraqi people
will not allow failure even if we lose ours. I left
with a deep degree of respect and admiration for the
Iraqis I knew over there, from all walks and
ethnicity. One of the most frustrating issues I have
in discussing Iraq with my fellow Americans is real
lack of knowledge about how good the Iraqi people are
and how successful they will continue to be in the
future, if we give them a fair chance. My unshakable
conclusion is that the Iraqi people are going to win
this war for themselves. With our continued support,
it will happen quicker, with less loss of life and one
that will strengthen the position of the United States
in the region and weaken that of our enemies, but in
any case, the Iraqi people will prevail.
The lesson is that it takes time.
Let us look at a timeline for the insurgency in Iraq
as compared to some other historical examples. The
insurgency in El Salvador that began in 1980 took 14
years to end. The Communist insurgency in the
Philippines began 1968 and peaked in 1986 before
becoming ineffective in the early 1990’s, over twenty
years later. Perhaps the best example comes from
Malaya.
In 1948, the Communist Party in Malaya began an
insurgency there. At that time it was a British
colonial possession. The British won the war in 1960.
That war took “only” twelve years to win. Noel Barber
wrote the definitive book on the conflict entitled
“The War of the Running Dogs, How Malaya Defeated the
Communist Guerrillas 1948-1960.” As he reports, the
first four years were a seesaw struggle and the path
to victory took a further eight years. The fight was
tough. Barber admits that the early years were
“tragic and wasted” but they won nonetheless because
they had the will and the vision to take the long
view. It also required a strong financial commitment.
It demanded a strong military presence, some “40,000
troops and 25,000 police and 50,000 special
constables” in order to pull it off in a country with
a population that was less than one fourth of Iraq’s.
They won the political war by giving the Malay people
control of their government (which was not a pretty
thing to see when it first began just as the workings
of the government in Baghdad is sometimes hard to
watch now) and they ensured that the large ethnic
minorities had a sufficiently strong economic and
political voice to win them over as is the case in
Iraq.
If all you looked at were the monthly number of
terrorist attacks and the casualties you could never
have seen the “mess” in Malaya as anything resembling
a victory because it took nearly 12 years to win. We
Americans seem to have no patience for those types of
timelines. For too many it is not a matter of winning
or losing but only a matter of it being too long.
That we would consider basing our national policy on
the rule “if it will take too long then declare
failure and quit” is disheartening to contemplate.
Now I am not suggesting that we need to have 130,000
American soldiers in Iraq for 12 years, quite the
contrary in fact. While many Marines knew in January
2004 that the war in Iraq would probably still be
going on in 2014, we also knew the Iraqis would no
longer need us after several years providing we
ensured the establishment of a constitutional
government and security services centered on the Iraqi
Army. The critical components of that task should be
completed later this year or early next year. So I
too am a member of the majority that thinks the US can
start a major redeployment out of Iraq in the next
12-18 months. By then, there will be an Iraqi
government and security force in place that can do the
heavy lifting for the next seven or eight years that
it will take to finish the war.
But that means the US cannot walk away from Iraq in
2008. We need to stand firm as we did by staying
engaged in Western Europe after 1945 and Korea after
1953 during the Cold War. We may still need to
conduct some combined operations over the next two or
three years where the US provides support to Iraqi
ground forces. We will still need military advisors
to work with the Iraqis for the next four or five
years. We will need to place Iraq high on the list of
countries that we provide foreign aid to for the next
decade or so. We will also need to vouchsafe the
borders of Iraq from a military invasion by Iran
and/or Syria. If we do all that then Iraq will be as
much of a success story as the Marshall Plan and the
Korean Intervention were in the last century.
Or we can sit back, tune into “Big Media,” turn off
our brains, take counsel of our own fears, and cut and
run.
…and if we cut and run now we will conduct, in due
course, a witch hunt to determine “Who Lost Iraq?” and
then throw out all the bums in Washington from both
parties. It will be their just deserves.
Semper Fi,
Mike
