Tuesday, April 04, 2006

The Plan

First note: Nate need not be self conscience about our online goodwill. I like debate. I just haven't always responded to his critiques, for lack of time and energy. The fact is, believe it or not, things other than blogging about Iraq interest me, and sometimes I decide to spend time doing those things.

Anyhow, the Drum post is good, but nothing that hasn't been raised before. The left (if we need these distinctions for terms of debate) is always critizing the right (in this case, my position on winning the Iraq war), for not having a plan to win the war. But a question worth asking is upon who is it incumbant to define a plan? I could argue that not invading Iraq was just as bad a plan as invading, that the "low level" Civil War and high Iraqi casuality rate are happening right now was an inevitablity in Iraq at some point down the line.

There is still a presumption by the left that if we had ignored Iraq, left the failed sanctions and Saddam's terror state in place, that somehow we would be LESS responsible for the atrocities that were bound to happen. I'm not sure that is morally defensible. At best, it is practically defensible, because atrocities in Iraq could not then be blamed upon us (although Islamacists had already been blaming the UN/US on starving Iraqi children with the sanctions, although this was not a widely supported or popular view with most of the world).

So, while the war in Iraq is only part of the larger war on Islamic Fascism, I'll try to say as little about the larger war as possible and focus on the Iraq issue. But as basic conceit, that we are all probably willing to make, is a democratic Iraq would be preferable to a Saddam ruled Iraq, both from a moral and strategic point of view. The strategic, perhaps even more valuable than the moral, because the theory is that one example will lead to the "domino" effect across the rest of region, liberalizing country after country - hopefully, Iran, Syria, Palestine, and eventually Saudi Arabia. Ultimately, I believe the only way to eliminate the Islamicist threat to provide an alternative form of government from corrupt autocrats and a fascist, fantasy, Islamicist state (which is the only current alternative in the region because the one institution even the autocrats couldn't eliminate was the mosque - hence all the fasicsts use it as cover.)

All right...enough...the plan:

FOR the US:

1. Kill Zarqawi. Killing the A-list terrorists, I think, is fundamental to demoralizing the organizations. So, get Zarqawi, OBL, and Zawahri. Obviously, we've done a shitty job of this so far...so I say, get creative, listen to plans, hire Leon the Professional, pay the money, I don't give a shit. Make a truce with the lower level guys, something, anything. I don't think it should be as hard as it's been. The guy is running around war zone, for Chrissake.

2. Bring other countries on board. I think we need to renew our efforts to make Iraq a multinational effort. This is one of the reasons I voted for Kerry, that I thought we'd be in a position to make a "peace" offering to France and Germany and get others on board. We need, if nothing else, the illusion of cooperation. What's done is done, there's no use in crying over spilt milk. This should be the second most important issue to the State Department. The first - no Iranian nukes.

3. If the generals think we need more troops, let's get 'em. If this means a draft, so be it. If it means paying soldiers, more so be it.

4. Create a multinational police force. I think it's obvious our enemies recognize a weakness in our military capabilities - battling insurgents/criminal gangs in highly populated areas. Our army is not trained as police. We cannot train native police forces fast enough. We need to develop a multinational police force, skilled in the post-war militia and insurgent type battles we've seen in Mogadishu, Bagdad, etc. This organization could be part of the army or the FBI, or even the UN, but it needs to be trained to deal with a specific type of fighting that our regular army is not equiped to do. The force should be multilingual, un-uniformed, be able to assimilate into countries/areas, work with and support native police, train native police forces, etc. In short, we've seen trends of the ways our enemies are choosing to fight us, and we need to adjust...it's like when defensive coordinators starting using the 3-4 defense and were dominating offenses, the West Coast offense developed, short passing game, to react to the development. Same thing here. We will use this force to combat genocides in the future.

FOR IRAQ:

Our goal in Iraq is to develop a community. In my game class, we talked about online community development, but these are ideas that apply to any sort of real or virtual community. There are 9 elements of community development. Iraq, under Saddam for 30 years, had many of these elements demolished. We need to help them rebuild it.

1. Purpose: Iraq needs a simple, stated purpose that everyone can buy into. Iraq, I don't think we should have any bones about it, should strive to be a model for a peaceable, multi-ethnic, democratic state that will shatter the myth that Muslims/Arabs are not suited for modern democracy.

2. Flexible Places: There need to be FLEXIBLE places for people to congregate. The mosque, community centers, coffee shops, cinemas, I don't know the details of Iraqi social life, but there need to be MANY of these options and they need to reflect how Iraqis like to gather.

3. Member Profiles: People need the opportunity to grow, be creative, have reputations, etc.

4. Roles: Vistor, citizen, leaders, regulars, etc.
5. Levels of Leadership: leaders of groups, mosques, mayors, businessmen, etc.
6. Etiquette: rules of behavior considered right and wrong. Suicide bombing would be considered bad etiquette.
7. Cyclic Events: oscars, superbowl, etc, iraqi style
8. Integrate Rituals: marriage, graduations, quinceanera
9. Member run Sub-groups: probably ethnic groups, but hopefully cinema clubs, etc.


Anyhow, those are some of my initial ideas.

1 comment:

Greg said...

Wouldn't it be equally incumnent on those who believe in removing troops to qualify why removing troops is preferable to keeping troops, taking into account further long term instablity in the middle east?

1. I completely disagree with you on this one. I think you are right that there are tons of different groups running around. But these groups are inspired by the fact we can't capture and kill the leadership of Zarqawi and company (OBL). I also think it takes years to make A-list terrorists and when we kill them, they aren't as easy to replace as people would make it out. This idea that 100 Bin laden's will rise up is silly - he is obviously an exceptionally talented individual. It's like saying when Phil Jackson retires, there's going to be some awesome coach to fill his shoes. It just ain't the case.

2. I'm not arguing that Bush handled our allies well. He asked for the right thing the wrong way...which to me is better than asking for the wrong thing the right way. That being said, I don't exclusively blame Bush for our "allies" not getting on board. These countries should understand that a democratic iraq is preferable to a saddam controlled one, and that a choatic iraq is not beneficial to anyone, including themselves. if they won't help because of pride or because they think the world will be better off with a less-powerful US, and an even more destabalized middle east, well, it is their error, not ours.

Anyhow, we shouldn't give up in this regard, and try to get any support and help we can, even if it ain't all public. And perhaps we can change tactics and ask those mid-power countries what they would have us to and reopen a series of negotiations. If dipolmacy was mishandled at one point, the presumption is that it can be property handled. I say we attempt to handle it properly, and not hold a grudge.

3. My point is this - we should respond to the needs on the ground. We should respond to demands of Iraqis - what they want and need immediately. This does NOT involve grand, master planning. it's always a tough call - on film shoots some people think you need 30 crew, some 15. i tend to lean towards the 15. i think rumsfeld is in this camp...but that being said, if wiser people know better, we should defer to them.

4. I'm not saying we could build it overnight, but it's clearly something we need, so we might as well start building it now. I don't see how this is any less important than building a new generation of nuclear warheads, given that we've just about already achieved nuclear primacy.