by hilzoy
Now that I have slept a bit, I have decided to post a longer version of my quick take on the President’s new Strategy For Victory.
I completely agree with the President’s take on the consequences of losing in Iraq. (see pp. 5-6. Short version: it would be a disaster.) I only wish the gravity of these consequences had occurred to President Bush before he decided to invade on the cheap, without a plan for the occupation.
However, I think that the President has misidentified the main problem facing Iraq. The main problem, according to the President, is the insurgency:
“The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists, and terrorists affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaida. “
According to me, the insurgents are the main threat to our troops. The main threat to Iraq, however, is the presence of armed militias generally*. The insurgents are the group(s) who attack our troops. But the existence of any armed militia that the government cannot control threatens the Iraqi state and its people. The existence of armed militias means that the Iraqi government cannot enforce its will over those parts of the country controlled by the militias; ultimately, the armed militias threaten Iraq with an all-out civil war.
This entire complex of problems is glossed over in the President’s plan. For instance, on p. 21, “Building representative Iraqi security forces and institutions while guarding against infiltration by elements whose first loyalties are to persons or institutions other than the Iraqi government” is listed as one of the remaining ‘security challenges’, but no solution to this problem is given. Moreover, the plan’s security track relies heavily on training the Iraqi army, and many of the accomplishments it cites concern progress in training that army.
If you think that the main problem is the insurgency, then one solution to this problem is to train Iraqi troops, who will eventually be able to fight the insurgents on their own. The infiltration of the Iraqi security forces by members of militias is, on this view, a secondary problem, since members of other militias might do a perfectly good job of hunting down insurgents. But if you think that the main problem is the existence of armed militias more generally, then it’s not at all clear that training Iraqi troops is the solution, for two reasons.