The Horrors of Half-War

In Congress, the fashion these days is to debate whether or not we should pull out of Iraq and when we should do it. The Republicans, whatever their misgivings, stand behind President Bush and call for US troops to stay in Iraq until the Iraqi government can defend itself and defeat the insurgencies that boil around Iraq. The Democrats, wanting to be different but not knowing how, debate whether to set a date certain for withdrawal of US forces or the stick with what I think is a bad plan. Nobody is debating a third alternative which just might end the insurgency sooner rather than later and allow US troops to come home much more quickly.

I propose that we truly occupy Iraq. I propose that we put in the three hundred to five hundred thousand troops that would be needed to effectively occupy Iraq. That would allow us to permanently station troops in every city and town instead of having to periodically mount and remount offensives to "clean insurgents out" of strongholds that they will simply re-occupy when we leave, as we always do.

From the outset, the Bush Administration has wanted to minimize the "footprint" of US forces in Iraq so that it wouldn't seem like an unfriendly occupation rather than a friendly liberation. However, the latest polls show that most Iraqis think they are being occupied anyway. And yet we are doing a lousy job of occupying Iraq. There is no peace, no stability, no infrastructure being rebuilt, no progress. And we don't have these successes because our force is too small. We haven't been able to take and hold anyplace in Iraq. We haven't been able to create one secure place in that country, apparently, other than the Green Zone in Baghdad, which was once the palace complex of Saddam Hussein. Apparently he knew how to pick a defensible location in his own country.

By not having enough troops on the ground, we created conditions for the looting that took place in the immediate aftermath of Hussein's government. We allowed, because we could not prevent, the looting of vast stores of weapons and munitions that have provided the insurgent groups (and their are many) with all the weapons and ammunition they needed.

Worst of all, once the insurgency really got underway, not having enough troops to occupy the country meant that ordinary Iraqis--the ones who just want peace, security, electricity, and water--have had no one to protect them from thugs and each others' fears. One of the key elements necessary to fight an insurgent war is to have the people either on your side or afraid to be against you. Since we don't have enough troops to protect people who might actually help us root out the insurgents with tips and other intelligence, we don't get the information we need about insurgents' activities to round them up or kill them before they can execute their plans.

To win the hearts and minds of the citizens of any country, you have to make them safe and see that they have access to the resources necessary to fulfill their basic needs. To win the hearts and minds, you need boots on the ground and lots of them. If there's a cop you know on every corner and that cop can protect you from the thugs in the neighborhood, you'll turn the thugs in to make yourself and your family safer. If there are more thugs around than cops, then the thugs own the streets and you dare not inform on them because of what they will do to you and your family.

Half-way measures almost always produce failure. Believe it or not, we never had enough troops in Vietnam to secure that country, and we suffered a lot of the same problems we face again in Iraq. Having created this mess, by knocking off the only institution that maintained order in Iraq, we are morally obligated to these people to restore order. And that's gonna take a lot more troops on the ground. We should have done it in 2003. I think that if we had, we'd be out of there by now, or at least well on our way.

So what I think really needs to be debated in Congress is doubling or tripling the forces on the ground not arguing over whether or not to set a date by which we'll be out of Iraq.