This diary combines a photograph in today's NYT with a deeply disturbing analysis of the long-term Iraq situation in an Op-ed column in the same newspaper by General Wesley Clark.
I am putting the two things together as a defence, or more properly as an excuse, for my total vacilitation over what form this diary might take in regard to Iraq. I am writing it not entirely certain of how it will conclude.
The photograph took the whole of the front-page of one of the British tabloids last week. I noticed it on the rack in the Supermarket because the girl depicted has an arresting beauty that has none of the artificiality of harsh glamour associated with the minor celebrities that the newspaper normally publicises. I wondered who this person was that was featured so prominently under the headline of "The Girl Next Door".
I read that she was Muriel Degauque, the tragic suicide bomber from the coal fields of Belgium who had exploded a bomb that severely injured an American soldier in Iraq on Nov 9 of this year. I moved on to do my shopping, further convinced about the sickness of this war and our need to get out of it as quickly as possible.
It is now there in today's New York Times.
I turn from it to the column by Wes Clark. It gives what he rightly calls a devastating critique of the Iraq situation that he picked up from colleagues whilst in the Gulf region last week. Like him, I think it one that is entirely correct.
The Arab states agree on one thing: Iran is emerging as the big winner of the American invasion, and both President Bush's new strategy and the Democratic responses to it dangerously miss the point. It's a devastating critique. And, unfortunately, it is correct.
While American troops have been fighting, and dying, against the Sunni rebels and foreign jihadists, the Shiite clerics in Iraq have achieved fundamental political goals: capturing oil revenues, strengthening the role of Islam in the state, and building up formidable militias that will defend their gains and advance their causes as the Americans draw down and leave. Iraq's neighbors, then, see it evolving into a Shiite-dominated, Iranian buffer state that will strengthen Tehran's power in the Persian Gulf just as it is seeks nuclear weapons and intensifies its rhetoric against Israel.
Wes Clark sees no option as a result of this analysis other than to respond fully and properly to the threat that it presents to the whole balance of power in the Middle East.
We need to keep our troops in Iraq, but we need to modify the strategy far more drastically than anything President Bush called for last week.
On the military side, American and Iraqi forces must take greater control of the country's borders, not only on the Syrian side but also in the east, on the Iranian side. The current strategy of clearing areas near Syria of insurgents and then posting Iraqi troops, backed up by mobile American units, has had success. But it needs to be expanded, especially in the heavily Shiite regions in the southeast, where there has been continuing cross-border traffic from Iran and where the loyalties of the Iraqi troops will be especially tested.
We need to deploy three or four American brigades, some 20,000 troops, with adequate aerial reconnaissance, to provide training, supervision and backup along Iraq's several thousand miles of vulnerable border. And even then, the borders won't be "sealed"; they'll just be more challenging to penetrate.
We must also continue military efforts against insurgent strongholds and bases in the Sunni areas, in conjunction with Iraqi forces. Over the next year or so, this will probably require four to six brigade combat teams, plus an operational reserve, maybe 30,000 troops.
He then discusses at length some of the political initiatives required in parallel with these military efforts. In truth they may be no more than the window dressing for the complete military control needed of the insurgency situation that Wes Clark and his friends see as essential. They appear sound and sensible, although their ease of achievement seems fraught with difficulty against increasing opposition to American military presence.:
First, the Iraqis must change the Constitution as quickly as possible after next week's parliamentary elections. Most important, oil revenues should be declared the property of the central government, not the provinces. And the federal concept must be modified to preclude the creation of a Shiite autonomous region in the south.
Also, a broad initiative to reduce sectarian influence within government institutions is long overdue. The elections, in which Sunnis will participate, will help; but the government must do more to ensure that all ethnic and religious groups are represented within ministries, police forces, the army, the judiciary and other overarching federal institutions.
And we must start using America's diplomatic strength with Syria and Iran. The political weakness of Bashar al-Assad opens the door for significant Syrian concessions on controlling the border and cutting support for the jihadists. We also have to stop ignoring Tehran's meddling and begin a public dialogue on respecting Iraqi independence, which will make it far easier to get international support against the Iranians if (and when) they break their word.
CONCLUSION
I find Wes Clark's analysis overwhelmingly persuasive that a rapid withdrawal of American troops will not only cause a mess in Iraq but will create extreme dangers for the whole region. If a certain solution involving American military presence is to be obtained it needs, as he says, responses "far more drastically than anything President Bush called for last week."
It highlights the dangerous nonsense of the concept of troop withdrawals that Bush is offering as a prospect to the American people, a dangerous nonsense to which he may give partial effect in order to gain some electoral advantage in 2006. This is just further evidence of the corrupt manoeuvring for political ends that will place our young men and women at risk.
Yet I believe that Wes Clark is also dangerously underestimating the demands for troop redeployment if the area is to be made secure in the way that he says the situation demands.
I have been writing here on DKos ever since I began of the lessons that we here in the UK are deeply conscious of as they were bitterly learned in Northern Ireland.
They were clearly enunciated by Charles V. Peña, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, in October, 2003:
" The history of the British experience in Northern Ireland (a close parallel to America's precarious position in Iraq) suggests a need for10 to 20 soldiers per 1,000 population for there to be any realistic hope of restoring security and stability. In Iraq, that translates to a force of 240,000 to 480,000 troops...You do the math.
Back in Washington, the Bush administration continues to be in denial about troop requirements. With five of the Army's 10 active divisions already deployed to Iraq, getting to the low-end number of 240,000 troops is more than a bit of a stretch. Most countries are unwilling to contribute troops to a peacekeeping mission for a war they didn't support, and the U.S. military is burdened with obsolete security commitments around the world. And if assembling 240,000 troops is next to impossible, then 480,000-the equivalent of the total U.S. Army active force -- is out of the question.
What this said then, and says equally clearly today, is that Bush cannot, must not, be allowed to fudge the situation to the American people. To make token withdrawals of troops, when in reality his policy demands that far more are required, is not just absurd but dishonest.
The Democratic Party should not feel conflicted in stating this to the US electorate. If the policy of Bush is to prevail, as it appears that it will, then the full and proper implications must be brought clearly to the attention and accepted by the American people and truthfully stated by Bush.
Having said this I find, at the end of this diary, that this is not my own conclusion regarding the policy for Iraq.
Make no mistake, I believe that what Wes Clark has written should be taken with deathly seriousness and should be shouted through the halls of Congress so that it reaches even the deaf corridors of the White House.
Yet, because of the impossibility of meeting the full burden of the troop deployment needs and the tenuous nature of combining this with any realistic political solution, I do not see Wes Clark or Bush offering any certainty of security in the outcome. Not for US troops nor for Iraqi civilians for as long as this conflict continues militarily.
Which brings me back to the photograph of that girl. It is the face of terrorism that is being bred in the girl next door to our homes whilst this catastrophic adventure continues.
For me there can be only one solution. End this now and deal with the consequences, even the terrible consequences foreseen by Clark, by the armoury of peaceful means that will still remain available. Fraught with risks? Yes. Now tell me that the alternative does not have equal risks but with a higher body count.
Bring the troops home in the way described by Murtha or face the full, devastating consequences of what is needed in extra troops and more aggressive military response
Anything less is a delusion of the type that we saw in Vietnam. The military options that seduce Bush and seduce even Wesley Clark are deceptive because they will never be enough. There are too many lives that will be lost to prove this conclusion right or wrong.
Cross posted from ePluribus Media