Iraq thoughts

We have a fellow in our collaboration who likes the sound of his own voice, wants all analyses done his way, and always tries to get his oar in. Most of the time his input is redundant, but he's a sharp guy and sometimes he sees things we overlooked. You can't just set the bogosity bit when he starts talking.

Likewise the Axis of Weasels... What does it mean to say we can win the war and lose the peace?

Our goals in the region are (or ought to be)

1. Get Saddam out of power. This probably won't take too long.
2. Find and dispose of his nuke and biowar factories and stockpiles, and offer lucrative employment to his engineers and techs. This I'd expect to take a couple of years at least, and people may find the occasional mustard gas stockpile for years to come the same way the French plow up the occasional WW-I artillery shell.
3. Establish a fairly democratic, stable and friendly state to serve as a proof-of-principle that Arab democracy is possible. This one is very hard, since the Kurds and Shi'ites are likely to want to break loose, and the Saudis have an interest in trying to make it fail. The Iranians have a grudge too; and the Turks want dominance in the north. We need to maintain a military presence at the start, and slowly build up economic, social, and political infrastructure. I hope somebody has been giving some thought to how to develop social infrastructure--political institutions alone won't cut it.
4. Establish a military presence with an eye to overthrowing the Saudi regime.
   • Control the border with Saudi Arabia. This doesn't take long to establish, but it will have to be maintained as long as necessary--ie, years.
   • Establish links with trustworthy Shi'ites. Developing relationships takes time, especially when you can't deal with them directly, but only through the intermediation of local Shi'ites who make the clandestine border crossings.
   • Supply the Shi'ites in Saudi Arabia. We risk having a lot of war materiel go astray here.
5. Separate the oil from the Holy Sites, so that the financial power is divorced from the religious status. Jordan is probably the best bet for governing Mecca/Medina. We cannot do this directly, of course, and victorious Arabian Shi'ites may want to grab the whole pot.
6. Undercut Wahhabism and other Jihadist Islamic elements. This can only be done with information: radio/TV/print and word-of-mouth. It will take time: at least a generation and perhaps two. Luckily this doesn't require much more military support than is needed to guard the broadcasting towers--but it does require a long-term commitment of trained people.
7. Encourage the overthrow of the mullahs in Iran. I really have no feel for how long this will take.

The first point is nearly the quickest. I think we can probably stay the course to finish that job. But the second will take into a second presidential administration. I haven't a clue who we'll elect, but I'd guess that whoever it is will retain enough sense of urgency to finish the job. It is, after all, pretty clearcut.

But the third point is fraught with complications. I don't really see any hope of developing a stable state in less than 3 or 4 years--if we pay attention and if the Shi'ites and Kurds are willing to give it a try. In the meantime we will be attacked again--will we be distracted? Will we be ready to sacrifice a bit more to keep several war fronts going?

The fourth point and sub-points worry me. It could take as much as a decade to finish the overthrow of the Wahhabi regime. You might argue that we don't have to overthrow them, just force them to reform. They won't reform (it would be too painful and dangerous) unless they had no choice because we were ready and able to carry out the threat to overthrow them. Some have said that Saudi Arabia is too unstable to last that long--but we can't move very fast because we have no allies in the country.

These points mean we need troops on the ground in Iraq for years. And this is where the criticisms from the Weasels start to bite. Troops on the ground hasn't been our strong suit. Wizard weapons from the air--those we've been good at, but peacekeeping troops are made of ordinary men with ordinary guns. In the Balkans we did a lot with air power, but when that was over the rest of the work had to be done with ordinary foot soldiers. As I recall, a number of those foot soldiers were supplied by the "Weasels." True, the French betrayed the operations as often as they could, but that was the actions of some hierarchs back home. Soldiering is as dull and dangerous as always, and needs dedication.

Do we have the dedication, the stomach for a long engagement? I don't see it. Of the two nearly equal sized parties that profess to represent views of America, one is governed by people who largely don't see any need for the long struggle--and they frequently win elections. I worry that we'll embark, get the tiger by the tail, and then a pacifist government will back off--but the tiger will remember, and our situation will be worse than before

There's another side to a lack of stomach. If we don't stick to the dull parts of the war, we're apt to become impatient; and when attacked again (and again) fly off the handle and start throwing nukes around. Whether our adversaries deserve such treatment or not, I won't judge now; but it would mean a degradation of our morals. I don't want us to be that kind of people.