Bush's Speech and Iraq Policy

Last night I wrote a general statement about Iraq policy in an e-mail. I'd like to start by posting an adaptation of that here, followed by updated comments since hearing Bush's address tonight.

Spreading "democracy" is destined to fail without other subsequent conditions being met. The simple ability to elect a government does not guarantee freedom, security, and prosperity. In fact, it can do quite the opposite. If the people of a country do not have the right values, they have the ability to elect awful leaders. After WWII, we saw a lot of Arab nationalists taking power in several Middle Eastern countries. They downplayed the role of Islam in government and were generally thugs and strong-men. Despite this, fundamentalist Islam remained as the undercurrent of popular opinion. By removing these Arab nationalist strong-men and bringing democracy to the Middle East, we achieve the exact opposite of that which we want. Since the people are motivated primarily by fundamentalist Islam, they will elect leaders that reflect this interest. Thus in Afghanistan we see Sharia law and a Constitution largely based on Islam. In Iraq we see a slightly watered-down version of this, with the religious majority of the country in power. In the Palestinian territories we see the fundamentalist group Hamas popularly elected into power. In Lebanon it seems highly possible that the fundamentalist group Hezbollah will gain popular support and rule the country. Are you starting to see why democracy is not an inherent good?

What exists in Iraq now is a very weak government that is propped up only by our presence there, and does not actually reflect the popular will of the country. Most of the will of the country is either behind Sunni terrorists or Shi'ite militias, both killing each other and us in the process. I do not think it that far off to call the current situation a civil war. The only way to really obliterate the insurgency is to be absolutely ruthless. In 2003, extremist Shi'ite militias took control of Falljuah and occupied the city. (Correction: Fallujah is Sunni, not Shi'a. I mixed it up with a similar occurence in Najaf and Karbala, two centers of the Shia. Thank you Jason for the correction!) Our response was weeks of negotiation followed by a very timid threat that we would enter the city if they did not leave. We gave them ample warning, they left, we performed some "operations" and "took back" the city. We scattered these forces, only to have them prop themselves up elsewhere. They actually came back and re-took Fallujah, and we did the same kind of thing. The only really effective way to stop such an insurgency is to absolutely crush every hope that the opposition has. They have to be absolutely convinced that nothing they can do will achieve their objectives. We have not come even close to doing this. We have been afraid of civilian casualties and causing too much damage, and thus have never engaged in the kind of military operations necessary to crush an enemy. Instead, our primary strategy has been to pour ridiculous sums of money into the country in the attempt to create jobs and economic prosperity. But economic prosperity is impossible without first having the rule of law and well-protected security. We virtually ignored the security situation and poured all our effort into reconstruction prematurely. Not only was the reconstruction INCREDIBLY half-assed, but it was impossible to achieve given the security situation.

As I see it our only option for victory is to be incredibly ruthless. We assassinate Al-Sadr (the biggest leader of the extremist Shi'ite militias) and every other Islamic cleric that advocates violence of any kind. We move into several cities and decimate insurgent bases of operation and weapons caches. But most importantly, by being ruthless in hitting these targets, we must scare the living crap out of anyone that even thinks of supporting the insurgency. I am talking absolute Machiavellian tactics here. To do this we would have to completely abandon the notion (for the time being) of reconstructing Iraq. Reconstruction is not possible until the enemy has been completely wiped out or has such an utterly devastated morale that they see no point in further fighting. So in summary, we completely abandon all notions of creating a democracy and reconstructing the country economically, and turn it back into a severe war zone until the insurgency is crushed. At that point, we could consider economic reconstruction, and only at that point.

Here are my thoughts about President Bush's address to the nation tonight:

I have mixed feelings about Bush's address tonight. Surprisingly, there were several aspects of his speech that I found to be encouraging. While I am skeptical of the actual implementation of these positive suggestions, they do sound encouraging. For example, Bush openly recognized the fact that our rules of engagement and general counter-insurgency strategy have been utter failures. He specifically recognized that we did not have a commitment to hold territory once we "cleared" it of insurgents and that in many cases we would not even disrupt certain insurgent bases of operation for fear of offending Iraqis. I am very encouraged by his promise to eliminate these restrictions and to place securing actual territory as a prime objective.

However, I am skeptical as to how much these new rules of engagement will be implemented. Bush's speech tonight was far from promising ruthlessness. The rhetoric was partially there, but I question how tough we will actually be on the insurgents on the ground. We have to absolutely demonstrate that they will be decimated and that they will have no quarter. Up to this point, we have done nothing of the kind. At this point, I do not think we have the political capital to implement such a ruthless campaign (if we ever had it in the first place, which is suspect). If we were fighting for a really good cause, these kinds of tactics would be justified. But what would we really be killing all these people for? To create a democratic Iraq that will ultimately be dominated by Islamic fundamentalism and will stab us in the back anyway?

So in summary, I'm intrigued the military suggestions that Bush has recommended, but while I'd like to be optimistic, I'm skeptical that they will have any effect at this point. Too little too late.

What are your thoughts?