Inside Iraq, stabilization would have preceded reconstruction. Tribal leaders would have been told: Money, jobs and development will flow your way – once your corner of Iraq is stable. But if we can’t achieve that here, we’ll go elsewhere. And if terrorists set up shop in your area, everyone will suffer.
I know: It’s easy to see clearly in hindsight, simple to win battles on paper. And no one – no politician, no general, no diplomat – can be expected to make correct decisions 100 percent of the time. Fifty-one percent is generally sufficient to produce a positive trend line.
But it’s also true that the trend lines in Iraq have not been positive. Unflinching “post-action reviews” are required to bring about change and adaptation, the development of new and better strategies in pursuit of realistic goals. One can only hope that exercises such as the one I’ve dabbled in above are taking place in the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA.
Encouragingly, a new effort is being made – finally -- to secure and stabilize Baghdad. The Iraqi capital has more than a quarter of Iraq’s population and is the most ethnically and religiously diverse area of the country. If this effort succeeds – and no resource should be spared to ensure that it does – it could begin to turn the situation around. Iraq may never look like Switzerland. But is it too much to expect that it should be neither the playground of a gangster nor a base for terrorists?
Yes, Americans have soured on this war. But most Americans, I suspect, don’t want to “cut and run” – neither do they want to merely “stay the course.” What they want is what they thought they had: a military and intelligence machine capable of defeating America’s enemies, whoever they are, wherever they are. That is not a mission impossible. But it will require learning from mistakes.
Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism. |