[Mb-civic] FW: M. Rubin in NY Sun on "The Price of Compromise"

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Subject: FW: M. Rubin in NY Sun on "The Price of Compromise"


> -- 

> The Price of Compromise
> by Michael Rubin
> New York Sun
> August 8, 2005
> http://www.meforum.org/article/741
> http://www.nysun.com/article/18221
> 
> Insurgent violence has taken a heavy toll on the U.S. in Iraq. A series of
> attacks earlier this month pushed the total of American fatalities past 1,800.
> The mounting casualties have shaken American confidence. Terrorism has hit
> Iraqis even harder. On Capitol Hill, there are bipartisan calls for the White
> House to establish a timeline for withdrawal. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld
> has been floating trial balloons. Senior military officials and diplomats,
> meanwhile, seek to deflate the insurgency. They urge Iraqis to embrace and
> engage former Baathists, Islamists, and Arab Sunni rejectionists. If the
> Sunnis can be brought into the fold, the conventional wisdom goes, peace and
> reconciliation will prevail.
> 
> But the conventional wisdom is wrong. The insurgency has gained momentum as a
> result of failed U.S. policy and well-meaning but wrong-headed assumptions.
> 
> The coalition's ouster of Saddam Hussein was popular among the vast majority
> of Iraqis. They greeted American troops warmly. There were flowers and
> candies. Iraqis danced as Saddam's statues fell. But the honeymoon faltered
> and collapsed amid looting and confusion about American intentions.
> 
> Throughout the 35-year Baathist dictatorship, survival depended upon
> maintaining a low profile and divining the leader's wishes. Iraqis would note
> with whom the leader met as a sign of favor. Officials would parse televised
> speeches to fine-tune their sycophancy.
> 
> Generations of Iraqis continued their Kremlinology when Jay Garner arrived as
> the director of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. They
> watched as he repeatedly met with Saad al-Janabi, a former Baathist
> businessman and a close associate of Saddam's late son-in-law, Hussein Kamal.
> Iraqis interpreted Garner's outreach to an agent of influence of the former
> regime as a sign that the White House might restore the former regime to
> power. The fear had precedent. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush called upon
> Iraqis to rise up in rebellion against Saddam Hussein. They did. But the White
> House did not come to their aid. According to the Iraqi narrative, Washington
> shared responsibility for the subsequent massacres by releasing Republican
> Guard prisoners-of-war in time for their redeployment against the civilians.
> Garner's choice of dinner guests might have been innocuous to American
> diplomats and military officers eager to catalyze reconciliation, but it
> created a chill of distrust among ordinary Iraqis. More importantly, it
> convinced high-level Baathists that they need fear no justice.
> 
> A faulty belief in reconciliation is largely responsible for the
> disintegration of security in Mosul. Rather than confront Baathists and
> Islamists, General David Petraeus empowered them. Discussing his strategy at
> the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on April 7, 2004, Petraeus
> explained, "The coalition must reconcile with a number of the thousands of
> former Ba'ath officials ... giving them a direct stake in the success of the
> new Iraq." Good in theory, but the result was Potemkin calm.
> 
> Petraeus assigned former Baathist General Mahmud Muhammad al-Maris, for
> example, to lead Iraqi Border Police units guarding the Syrian border.
> Al-Maris handpicked allies and poked holes in an already porous border.
> Petraeus allowed another former Baathist, General Muhammad Kha'iri Barhawi, to
> be Mosul's police chief. Not only did such a choice demoralize Iraqis who
> suffered under the former regime, but it undercut security.
> 
> On July 26, 2004, Brigadier General Andrew MacKay, head of the Coalition
> Police Assistance Training Team, told Pentagon officials. "We are seeing an
> increasing confidence within the Iraqi Police Service as they realize they are
> more than a match for the terrorists - even more so when they are led by
> officers of Major General Barhawi's ability." Unfortunately, the confidence
> was misinterpreted. After the November 2004 uprising in Mosul, Coalition
> officials learned that Barhawi had organized insurgent cells and enabled
> Islamists and former Baathists to briefly seize the city. Barhawi is now in
> prison. And both Iraqis and Americans are dead because of misplaced confidence
> and baseless theories.
> 
> Under Saddam Hussein, Baathists survived by ingratiating themselves to power.
> Too often, U.S. officials would base judgments on their own conversations,
> unaware of what former regime officials said behind their backs. The loyalty
> former regime elements and Islamists show is illusionary. In January 2004, for
> example, a delegation from the Ninewah provincial council visited Makhmur, a
> town in the Erbil governorate but tied administratively to Mosul. When an
> accompanying diplomat excused herself briefly, a translator - a former student
> of mine - said that councilmen berated the mayor for collaborating with the
> Americans. In Mosul, Petraeus created not placidity, but rather a safe-haven
> for terror.
> 
> Engagement and reconciliation may be the bread-and-butter of diplomacy, but in
> Iraq they are a prescription for failure. There is a correlation between
> re-Baathification and violence. Baghdad's security situation deteriorated
> sharply after Coalition Provisional Administration head L. Paul Bremer on
> April 23, 2004 declared, "Many Iraqis have complained to me that
> de-Baathification policy has been applied unevenly and unjustly. I have looked
> into these complaints and they are legitimate."
> 
> While Bremer argued that only implementation - not policy - changed, Iraqis
> felt otherwise. Their perception was validated one week later when Coalition
> forces lifted the siege of Fallujah and empowered former Baathists and
> insurgents in the name of reconciliation. Within a month, car bombings across
> Iraqi had increased 600%.
> 
> A belief persists in Foggy Bottom, Langley, and the White House that extensive
> de-Baathification is unpopular and destabilizing. Facts suggest otherwise. The
> Embassy embraced politicians like Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and
> former Governing Council member Adnan Pachachi because they favored Baathist
> reintegration. Given a choice at the ballot box, however, Iraqis rewarded
> candidates who promised tough implementation of de-Baathification. Pachachi,
> once the shining star of the State Department, failed to win a single seat.
> Incumbent Allawi mustered only 15% of the vote.
> 
> Engagement has a price. In June 2005, word leaked that U.S. officials had
> engaged Iraqi insurgents in order to encourage them to join the political
> process. A National Security Council senior director rationalized the approach
> by differentiating between "talking to" and "negotiating with" insurgents. The
> Arab world drew no such distinction. A June 28, 2005 ash-Sharq al-Awsat
> cartoon depicted Uncle Sam, surrounded by barbed wire, with an insurgent
> blocking his path to escape. The lesson drawn was that the U.S. was weak, not
> magnanimous. Violence spiked soon after.
> 
> Political compromises sometimes carry a high price. As a consequence of adding
> 15 Sunni Arab members to the Constitutional Commission, women may lose their
> rights across Iraqi society. Contrary to popular wisdom, Iraq's Sunni
> political leaders are more Islamist than many of their Shi'ite counterparts.
> Blatant sectarian pandering backfires.
> 
> American strategy in Iraq is fatally flawed. Not just policy implementation
> has gone awry, but rather the assumptions upon which policy is based. Iraq is
> neither an academic problem nor a template upon which to impose theories
> imported from Bosnia and Kosovo. It is a unique society with a very vocal
> population. Blinded by a false conventional wisdom, we refuse to listen. The
> cost has been bitterness among natural allies, emboldening of terrorists, and
> unnecessary American and Iraqi casualties.
>> 
>> Mr. Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is editor
>> of the Middle East Quarterly.
> 
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