Bush's Iraq plan, between the lines

Bush's Iraq plan, between the lines
Anthony H. Cordesman
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: January 12, 2007


WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush has presented a new strategy for the war in Iraq that he feels can reverse the country's drift toward large-scale civil war.

The new plan focuses on stabilizing Baghdad by adding thousands of American troops with newly expanded powers to take on Shiite as well as Sunni rebels. It also includes a limited increase in United States forces in Anbar Province, and calls for Iraqi forces to take formal control of the security mission in November.

The president was refreshingly candid, saying that "where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me." But taken as a whole, the speech raised more questions than it answered.

I've selected a number of important phrases from the address that beg for more detailed discussion, and included my own analysis of the validity and practicality of what the president seems to have in mind.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Tonight in Iraq, the armed forces of the United States are engaged in a struggle that will determine the direction of the global war on terror — and our safety here at home.

ANALYSIS: Iraq is only one element in the war on terrorism. The resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the failure to suppress Al Qaeda globally are probably of equal importance, and the Bush administration seems to have no overall strategy for America's "other war" in Afghanistan or the broader war on terrorism.

When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation. The elections of 2005 were a stunning achievement.

ANALYSIS: The elections were anything but a "stunning achievement." The system used virtually ensured that Iraqis would vote by sect and ethnicity and that the outcome would further divide Sunni Arabs and Shiites, compounding the tensions created by American efforts to make Iraqis draft a new constitution.

But in 2006, the opposite happened. The violence in Iraq — particularly in Baghdad — overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made.

ANALYSIS: This statement reinvents history. The level of sectarian violence had built up steadily during 2005. The rise of sectarian and ethnic conflict was a major factor long before President Bush announced his previous strategy at the end of 2005, before the attack on one of the Shiites' holiest sites, the Golden Mosque in Samarra — an event whose importance the administration sharply played down at the time.

The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. ... Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people.

ANALYSIS: This statement again tries to link Iraq to the broader war on terrorism. In reality, the risks are far greater that Iraqi Shiites and Kurds would end up fighting Sunnis, if not each other. Iranian influence would grow. Sunni nations would intervene on the Sunni side. The primary risk is civil war with broad regional implications, not a Sunni extremist victory.

The most urgent priority for success in Iraq is security, especially in Baghdad. Eighty percent of Iraq's sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles of the capital.

ANALYSIS: In reality, Iraq has about a dozen major cities, and there are severe problems in many, including Basra, Mosul and Kirkuk. It is far easier to measure the violence in Baghdad because there has been more killing there. But the kind of intimidation and softer forms of ethnic cleansing that are occurring across the country are equally important.

Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have.

ANALYSIS: This is simply untrue. Other factors — which could also destroy the president's new plan — have been more important. The real reason previous operations did not succeed was that the Baghdad government would not confront the Shiite militias and Iraqi forces were largely ineffective when they did fight. This forced American troops to act alone, and the result was often a substantial local backlash.

I have committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them — five brigades — will be deployed to Baghdad. These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations. Our troops will have a well- defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.

ANALYSIS: This raises serious political issues since Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's advisers and the leaders of the powerful Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq have gone on record as opposing an increase in American troops. The initiative will almost certainly mean a major confrontation with the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who can now draw on as many as 60,000 fighters nationwide.

In reality, the United States forces will not support or "help" Iraqi forces because the latter are too weak and lack motivation. The Bush plan will add up to 17,500 troops to the 15,000 now in the greater Baghdad area, and calls for three Iraqi brigades. But it seems unlikely those Iraqi troops will do much — the Iraqi Army deployed only two of the six battalions it promised for last summer's Baghdad offensive. Embedding an American battalion of 400 to 600 men in each of the nine military districts in Baghdad may help, but it is still United States forces that will do almost all of the hard fighting and dying.

In earlier operations, Iraqi and American forces cleared many neighborhoods of terrorists and insurgents, but when our forces moved on to other targets, the killers returned. This time, we'll have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared. ...Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.

ANALYSIS: Maliki has been quietly put under intense pressure, but may or may not continue to comply. More important, he simply does not have the political power to give a green light to the cleaning of Baghdad. This has to come from the Iraqi people in the neighborhoods involved.

The Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's Constitution.

ANALYSIS: These are laudable and ambitious goals, but the practical question is whether the Iraqi government can and will meet them. Assigning Iraqis responsibility for security in Iraq's provinces has so far proved to be a cosmetic gesture. Past pledges on oil revenues, local elections and de-Baathification have not been met. The fact is that Iraqis already planned to spend this much money on reconstruction, and the United States will actually have to finance most new job creation efforts.

We will increase the embedding of American advisers in Iraqi Army units, and partner a coalition brigade with every Iraqi Army division. We will help the Iraqis build a larger and better- equipped army, and we will accelerate the training of Iraqi forces, which remains the essential U.S. security mission in Iraq.

ANALYSIS: These are potentially positive measures, but the statement disguises the reality that a coalition brigade has far more real combat power than an Iraqi division and would do most of the fighting. It also does not address the fact that at the end of December, the Iraqi Army had trained and equipped 132,000 men, but many had deserted (as have at least a quarter of new police officers), many of the remainder were ineffective, and even effective units were often largely Shiite or Kurdish and had mixed loyalties.

Our military forces in Anbar are killing and capturing Al Qaeda leaders, and they are protecting the local population. Recently, local tribal leaders have begun to show their willingness to take on Al Qaeda.

ANALYSIS: Washington has been saying for two years that local leaders in Anbar were turning against the Islamist extremists, but there have been little more than token results. It is far from clear that 4,000 more American troops in the province will be enough to make a decisive difference.

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria.

ANALYSIS: This seems to reject the option of regional diplomacy and to tie Syria and Iran into a common threat. It's a hard-line position that may be justified, but it will certainly drive the two countries closer to each other.

To step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear the country apart and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale. Such a scenario would result in our troops being forced to stay in Iraq even longer, and confront an enemy that is even more lethal.

ANALYSIS: This overstates the risks of withdrawal or "defeat," just as those calling for force cuts and withdrawal understate them.

Anthony H. Cordesman is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.