Is America fighting a war in Iraq againts her enemies or building a nation of unwilling people?

The thing that continues to befuddle and frustrate many people, me included, is the inability of the American leadership and press to speak clearly and candidly on this issue. This inability is largely the result of dubious politically exigent circumstances and the irony of political and diplomatic double talk, which is short-changing the country on what is really important. Now the public is effectively confused; not knowing what is meant when statements are made. The America public does not know exactly what we are doing in Iraq, whether we are fighting a war, as they have always known war or building a nation in the way they have never known.

There is a fundamental difference between waging war with another country and engaging in nation building of another country. In war, the objective is clear and precise – defeat the enemy militarily: decapitate and destroy the enemy’s army, extract the enemy’s surrender or truce and come home. In nation building, the objective is not so clear and certainly not as precise. The precondition necessary for successful nation building, as was the case with Germany and Japan is full realization and political will of the people to move forward and their desire for a better future.

Because the dynamics of war and nation building are incompatible, especially when conducted simultaneously, it is only logical and prudent to have different objectives and different expectations. The thing that makes the situation in Iraq very difficult, a difficulty that the America people have not been allowed to appreciate fully, is that a large portion of the Iraqis (Sunnis and Shiites alike), as General Peter Pace put it, are unable to love their children more than they hate their enemies. That is the reality of a society driven by revenge rather than reason and you can trace this directly to Islam or the language of Islam (Arabic), which has no word or real concept for compromise, in terms of reaching an arrangement via struggle and disagreement.

Before the war broke, a former Israeli Head of Mossad broke with tradition and went public with his views and projections on how Saddam would respond. He outlined three strategies that Saddam would be inclined to employ:
1. Use WMD, assuming he has them. He concluded that it was highly unlikely that Saddam would do so, because if he did, he would be proving America right and would lose the international sympathy he enjoyed, in opposition to the war.
2. Use human shield to draw even greater sympathy, by making America look bad on account of potentially high civilian casualties.
3. The Iraqi military would decapitate or dissolve quickly, knowing that it has no chance against the greatest fighting force on the planet, but only to emerge as an insurgency (a gorilla army) after the real war is over.

Clearly, the third strategy is what is in now in effect and has been since Saddam was defeated and his regime toppled. Of course, the implementation of this strategy is not so much by the Baathists (The Arab Socialist Baath Party), as it is by Al Qaeda, which quickly established itself in Iraq, taking advantage of the chaos and momentary power vacuum that followed the unexpectedly quick defeat of the Iraq’s army. Of course, this strategy would have been of no effect, if our soldiers had come home after the war was quickly won. When it became clear to Baathists and al Qaeda that America was not going to leave Iraq in the ruins of war after winning the war, but was going to stick around to rebuild Iraq, they saw an opportunity to really implement this strategy.Al Qaeda, coming to Iraq with a rich experience, having cut its teeth and horned its experience in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets, was off to a good start, and have remained ahead of our strategies ever since.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was quick and decisive, but the occupation proved more treacherous and turned out to be catastrophic. It began with Soviet soldiers getting killed one by one, day by day and in small numbers in sniper attacks, ambush, kidnapping, suicide attacks, and hit and run attacks. The attackers were very difficult to trace or spot before they attacked. Precisely because they blend in with the public, in mosques, market places and crowded places, which they effectively used as cover, making it very difficult for the Soviet soldiers to respond and when they did, innocent bystanders often got caught in crossfire, resulting in unintended casualties of civilians. The outcome reinforced the sentiments against the Soviets and the occupation. Whatever the reaction of the Soviet soldiers to those attacks, the purposes of the perpetrators ended up being served. Responding forcefully resulted in unintended casualties, making them appear heavy handed, oppressive and repressive. On the other hand, not responding forcefully made them appear weak, and encouraged their attackers.

In the end, public sentiments at home forced the Soviets to leave Afghanistan before their work was done, and without any form of government in place. This premature exit plunged the country into chaos and anarchy and created a perfect environment for a repressive regime and a haven for terrorists, which the Taliban and Al-Qaeda exploited to the extent everyone knows all too well. The coalition soldiers have seen these tactics used against them continuously since May 1, 2003, of course, with its new and most deadly arsenal, suicide bombers and IEDs thrown into the mix, al Qaeda hopes to achieve the same results in Iraq against us as it had in Afghanistan against the Soviets; that is the reality we are confronted with.

The six billion dollar question is what do we do, how do we respond, knowing that a quick exit from Iraq, before a “stable” government and one we can work with is established, holds extreme danger to the United States and the World as a whole, much more than anyone can fully appreciate at the moment. As has been rightly said, failure is not an option. It seems to me that what that means is we must remain engaged in Iraq, but we must come up with a better strategy and overall plan, one that is not just in reaction to events as they unfold, given the high unpredictability of all the dynamics at play.

All the smart people in our think tank institutions and study groups have all concluded that there is no one particular thing that can be done to achieve success in Iraq. It has been said by virtually everyone in charge of one aspect of the effort or another, from the soldiers to the generals, from the Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of State, that no one can predict the effect of the troop increment or predict victory on account of the troop increment alone. Therefore, increasing our troop level by 21,000 or any number for that matter, must be accompanied by making clear to the region and the world that if we eventually pull out of Iraq without achieving our goal of a stable Iraq, it would not be because America is defeated militarily, it would be because the people we are there to help are so incapable of reconciliation that they would rather sacrifice their children and their future, just because they hate their neighbors more than they love their children. We have to make it clear to the Iraqis and the region as whole, that, though we have a lot at stake in Iraq, the stake is even higher for them. Eventually, we will find other ways of dealing with whoever controls Iraq, be it Iran or Al Qaeda. There is always another way to any objective; we just have to look further and work harder.

Right now, we have essentially constrained ourselves to thinking just within the box. It is high time we began thinking outside the box. We have to be true to ourselves, we owe it our selves, in admitting that there is a possibility that we may not be able to make Iraqis (Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds) to at least accept the proposition of one another’s right to coexist. The adage, “You can take a horse to the stream but you cannot make the horse drink from it”, holds true here as well.

It is prudent that we start developing levels of sensitivity analysis to an outcome in Iraq that may not be what we want or hope for. Such analysis would lead us to start thinking outside the box, in time, to come up with plans to deal with a situation that may result, if Iraq collapses on account of irreconcilable differences between the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. The one thing we cannot afford is to be unprepared or without a plan for another unexpected outcome in Iraq or one deriving from it. I am not against troop increment, but I would be very concerned if that is all there is to go with it and work with. The doctrine of clear, hold, and rebuild sounds very good theoretically, but if the Iraqis themselves (Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds) refuse to be reconciled, there is not much we can do to change the situation, even with additional troops of 21,000 or any number for that matter. We must make clear to them that the only option beside what we offer them (a chance to rebuild their country and to learn to live with their neighbors in peace) is the devil’s alternative.