Training Whom For What Posted by Morton H. Halperin

Most participants in the policy process in Washington know what they believe and what they want to see happen. Thus the lesson they learn is that the solution they had in mind is now needed more than ever. Think of a town full of solutions looking for problems.

Katrina is a prefect example. Liberals brought out their plans to deal with the problems of the poor. Against the backdrop of vivid images that sear the national conscience, they argued that the needs of America's poor were urgent. Conservatives said Katrina proved the limits of government and that we needed solutions that involve less government, such as stripping away environmental laws and labor standards.

The debate over Iraq is at one level a debate about what the true lessons of Vietnam were. Former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird has weighed in with the Kissinger version of Vietnam -- by a combination of a carefully phased withdrawal, matched by training of the Vietnamese and threats of further escalation, we had won the war, only to see victory taken away by the American people who removed the threat of escalation and cut aid to our allies.

The fatal flaw in that argument is what I want to discuss, because it goes to the heart of the question of how well we are doing in training the Iraqi army and when that will enable us to leave. We tried to do the same in Vietnam and there is much that we should learn from that effort.

First we need to ask who we are recruiting. Those involved in the screening process admit that is is very hard to do. The question is not whether the person has a criminal background but rather to whom he (or she) gives loyalty. In Vietnam we learned after it was over that about one third of those we armed and trained were actually in the Viet Cong Army. This meant surprise operations were impossible and a significant part of our force was actually on the other side. There is every reason to believe that this is true now in Iraq. There is no foolproof way to screen for insurgents.

In Vietnam, another roughly one third of the trainees in the Republic of Vietnam's army (ARVN) would quickly take the weapons they were given and sell them on the black market. In Iraq we again see signs of the same thing with large desertion levels and US weapons showing up in insurgency hands. The remaining ARVN troops, neither secretly the enemy or ready to desert and sell what they had been given, were in it for the pay and for the prestige and the opportunity to plunder. It was no wonder that despite years of training and the provision of equipment far superior to the enemy the ARVN was never capable of winning either the guerrilla war or the full scale battles that marked the final stages of the conflict. This was not for lack of training but for lack of commitment. The military leaders were riddled with those who had fought on the side of the French and the Japanese and had their evacuation plans in better shape than those of the US military. The others lacked the incentive to fight since they lacked an allegiance which is the bedrock of campaign effectiveness.

So in Iraq we put much of our faith and our hope in the process of training the Iraqi Army. The unstated assumption is that Iraqi men do not know how to fight and if only exposed to western methods will be able to deal with the insurgency. Even sharp critics of the war call for better and more training as if it would provide a way out. The unexamined but false assumptions behind this policy are monumental.

Start with the question of who needs training. The insurgents clearly do not. Nor do the various militias who have challenged the government from time to time and are clearly better fighting units than the Iraqi army units we have trained. The militias guarding the various Iraqi leaders, including the President and Prime Minister, are effective fighting forces. None of them requires US air power or embedded allied forces to fight effectively. The insight is simple: Many Iraqis know how to fight and will do so when they are led by leaders to whom they have a clear allegiance. The United States and the vague notion of a unified Iraqi government is not sufficient.

We need to consider who we are actually training and what we can hope to accomplish. While we will not know the precise number until later, there is every reason to believe that many of those we recruit in the army and the police are actually part of the insurgency and at the very least provide tactical intelligence. Many others come for the pay and to get a rifle and other equipment that they sell before deserting. We know that desertion rates are very high. Finally there are the ones who stay perhaps for the paycheck or the opportunity for graft. Certainly there are some who stay because they feel allegiance to a new united Iraq, but these are no where near enough. It should not be a surprise that we are left with the forces that -- unlike all the others in Iraq -- cannot fight alone and show no sign of being able to any time in the future.

US military officials have said unequivocally that they cannot win this war by military means alone; certainly the Iraqi Army we believe we are training cannot either. This means we can stay and fight until the American people tire of the effort, the sacrifice of Americans and of the cost, and insist that we come home quickly. That would be failing to learn the fundamental lesson of Vietnam -- that without domestic support the war cannot be sustained. Nor can we hope to prevail by relying on the strategy of training an indigenous army and expect it to win a war we cannot win.

We need a negotiated solution which I tired to sketch last week. We need to develop a set of tasks for the American military that includes preventing coups or outbreaks of conflict among those now allied with us. At the same time we need to bring in Iraq's neighbors and the UN for serious discussions about how to maintain a unified and relatively peaceful Iraq.

On a personal note I am still learning the blogging game. So while I very much appreciated the comments on my first post, I did not reply. I will this time.

Dale Carnegie Yes!: Dr. Strangelove No! Posted by Lorelei Kelly

One way progressives can begin to take back national security is to figure out how to talk about it in ways that most people can understand.  National security, after all, really isn't about rocket science anymore. Today's anti-war movement is very different than the 1980's freeze movement. Far from escalation theory and mutual assured destruction, peace today has got much more in common with regular old domestic tranqulity issues.  In society, we assure security because of the presence of limits on individual use of violence.  Our military itself--in Iraq--understands that carrying out policy at the pointy end of the spear has become self-defeating.  In prosperous cultures, domestic tranquility is assured when rising expectations outpace dashed hopes.  Globalization has made this an international mandate--one for which the United States is unprepared.  Our over-militarized policy apparatus is the wrong set of tools.

America has achieved outrageous success because of a couple hundred years ofleadership that has carried on a mostly balanced discussion about the use of force.   This is why banishing the notion  of pre-emptive war must be an utmost priority for progressives.  Our policy today needs to be more Dale Carnegie and less Dr. Strangelove.  We need to win friends and influence people.  I  cannot think of a more anti-social national security strategy than a policy of pre-emptive violence.  It distorts boundaries at every level of decision making: as a nation we seek submission when cooperation would work just fine.  In Iraq we apply door-kicking, search and destroy tactics instead of stability and support rules.

Derek's piece on mission creep lays out the landscape of our challenge.  We need something like a national twelve-step program to get back to a healthy balance.

Welcome Roosevelt Institution Posted by Heather Hurlburt

In the "promising developments" department, a web welcome to the Roosevelt Institution, billing itself as "the nation's first student think tank" [progressive].

They got some nice opening publicity from the LA Times, and I'll quote a little of their mission statement because it's so nicely done:

News Out of Baghdad Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Mild euphoria in the news coverage of the US-brokered deal in Baghdad to remove some of the most anti-Sunni features of the constitution. 

But the reality looks a little more complicated.  A commission will propose amendments which would require 2/3 ratification in the new National Assembly and another referendum.  The Times describes this as a "major victory for American officials," which may be true, but it's a little harder to be confident that this pledge of a future process really changes the destructive way in which constitutional business has been done up to now.

Juan Cole says "this weird procedure... cannot lead anywhere good."

After Liberal Internationalism, What? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

There's quite a growing trend, among people who would describe themselves as liberal internationalists, to describe that worldview as dead or on life support.

John Ikenberry over at America Abroad has an interesting post recounting a conference he helped organize debating the future of liberal internationalism.  I'll offer an excerpt:

Why the pessimism? Republican internationalists are increasingly rare and Democrats have lost the southern states that were part of the Cold War liberal coalition – twin developments that reduce national electoral incentives for bipartisanship. The Cold War itself was critical in generating support for America’s postwar global security, political, and economic commitments. Cold War threats made American officials more willing to listen to allies and settle economic and political disputes with European and Asian partners. As Peter Trubowitz noted, the rise of American unipolarity and the decline of traditional great power threats have given American leaders more geopolitical "slack" with which to pursue idiosyncratic policies or use foreign policy for partisan political gains. Indeed, one journalist at the workshop noted that American foreign policy has increasingly become a sort of offshoot of domestic social policy struggles – and this has exacerbated the conservative-liberal divide over foreign policy even in the face of new security threats.

Georgetown’s Charles Kupchan was perhaps most pessimistic, arguing that the declining influence of the World War II generation and the growing power of the heartland at the expense of coastal elites has – together with lots of other factors – eroded the constituency for liberal internationalism. No one really disputed the argument that America still had compelling national interests in a liberal internationalist foreign policy – as opposed to, say, neo-conservative or nationalist alternatives – but most agreed that it is getting harder and harder to build a political coalition around such a foreign policy orientation.

Suzanne Nossel's description of a Princeton conference last week had a somewhat similar flavor.  And I have been mulling over for a month now my surprise at some of the commentary that emerged during a sojourn at Wye River put together by the New Republic and Third Way: A Strategy Center for Progressives  (yes, the same Wye River where Yassir Arafat shuffled about in a golf cart back in the land before time, 1998.  It's an alluring place to have a conference, thanks to its Aspen Institute sponsors.)

Mission Creep is Back Posted by Derek Chollet

The debate about what to do next in Iraq – and how long we should stay – presumes that we have the luxury of the full range of choices.  We don’t.  Our military is reaching its limit in Iraq, and few planners think that we can sustain the tempo of our presence there much longer.  In fact, I’ve heard from reliable sources that Army plans for next year call for pulling at least 4 brigades out of Iraq – 15,000 troops – regardless of what happens with the political process or the training of the Iraqi forces.  Not a full pullout, to be sure, but I think a sign of things to come.

Added to this is the growing role the military is assuming in many areas – from post-conflict reconstruction, to diplomacy, to domestic disaster relief.  Today’s New York Times has a story about an Army idea to create a specially-trained disaster relief force.

Writing in this week’s Defense News, my colleague Julianne Smith and I have some thoughts about this.   Here's what we say:

Our bottom line is that mission creep is back. In the wakes of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Bush suggested that the military take on a bigger role in responding to natural disasters. Then his administration decided the Pentagon should assume responsibility from the State Department for providing assistance to Iraq’s Defense and Interior ministries.

Given the U.S. military’s unique competencies, particularly in managing large-scale and complex operations during a crisis, these changes might make sense in the short term. But Washington’s increasing reliance on the Pentagon is setting a dangerous trend, one that is already straining the force and undermining military preparedness for its core mission — to fight and win wars.

The trend is not new. Starting in the 1990s, the military slowly started to outrank its civilian chain of command in influence, authority and resources in many parts of the world. As the State Department struggled to meet the demands of an increasingly ambitious foreign policy agenda, and labored under severe budget constraints, U.S. combatant commanders — four-star generals in charge of military forces deployed around the globe —- stepped in and became a kind of regional ambassador on steroids.

With large budgets, their own planes and enough cache to secure an appointment with anyone and everyone they pleased, these military proconsuls transformed American diplomacy. U.S. ambassadors and their embassies often became sidelined in the process and the Defense Department found itself taking on a growing list of diplomatic tasks. Today, these combatant commands, in addition to their core military missions, find themselves spending an enormous amount of time shaping U.S. foreign policy with very little coordination with other parts of the U.S. government, and even less congressional oversight.

The Pentagon has also been given the de facto lead in undertaking and managing the full range of tasks associated with stability operations like those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Operations in Bosnia and Kosovo exposed the inability of other U.S. government agencies to mobilize sufficient personnel and resources for postconflict reconstruction. The Pentagon filled this void.

Yet, despite tireless efforts to learn from each mission, the U.S. military has little or no comparative advantage in many of the tasks associated with such operations, particularly those that fall outside of the security sector. With the exception of civil affairs units, the U.S. military is not adequately trained or equipped to build civil administrations, act as mayors of villages, establish a national financial system, rebuild health and sanitation infrastructure, instigate judicial reform, or hold elections.

Now, it looks like the Pentagon could soon supplement its military, reconstruction and diplomatic portfolios with domestic disaster relief responsibilities. The U.S. military’s enormous capacity to mobilize and turn on a dime is invaluable in the face of a natural disaster. But giving the military additional responsibilities at a time when it is already pushed to the limit in Iraq and Afghanistan is more than just unfair to the men and women who serve and the civilians who work in other government agencies. It could lead to the worst of both worlds: a military that is both ill-prepared and overstretched.

Republicans and Democrats alike must find a way to break their habit of turning to the military every time another agency fails to prove up to the task. Instead of piling onto the Pentagon’s never-ending list of responsibilities, the Bush administration and Congress must decide to resource and empower places like the State Department, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Treasury, Department of Education and Department of Homeland Security.

Those agencies need to develop the confidence to serve as the lead agency in their areas of comparative advantage, and confidence can only come with capacity. The State Department, for example, needs the authority and resources to build its own civilian operational capacity. And FEMA needs to return to the status it had in the 1990s, when it was a Cabinet-level institution fully empowered and funded to take charge when disaster strikes.

America’s military is one of this county’s most important institutions, and its men and women show every day why they are the greatest fighting force in the world. We want the military to be flexible, and we want it to be able to adapt and take on different kinds of missions.

But adding more responsibilities to an already overburdened force is not in the military’s interest, nor is it in the American people’s. Given all the challenges we face at home and abroad, we need the rest of the government to work too.

Getting Real on America's Role in Iraq Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Here's the thing:  its well and good to talk about what might, could conceivably or even should happen by way of U.S. policy in Iraq.  But, based on the last 2 years of hard experience, we know full well that such discussions bear little or no relation to what will happen under the stewardship of this Administration. 

So, in debating whether the US should stay or go we need to know whether we're talking about a hypothetical US government, or the people in charge today, because the answer may be different.

To illustrate:

- Contact Group - Several of the most cogent argument's in favor of significant troop reductions short of full withdrawal - including Mort Halperin's here, the Center for American Progress' here, and Joe Biden's here - all refer to the need to convene a kind of "contact group" comprised of Iraq's neighbors - Syria, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others - to assume common responsibility for promoting a stable Iraq.  They talk about this as a way we can drawdown American troops while minimizing the risk of Iraq becoming a failed state.  The problem is that this idea has been around since at least June of 2004.  The Administration hasn't done it yet, and I don't think any among us believe that they will.

- Internationalization - Many of the same proposals also talk about the need to further internationalize the Iraq operation:  expand the UN's role; get others to contribute troops.  This has been in discussion since before we invaded Iraq, and the Administration's never made it happen.   Their failure to internationalize at the get-go has become increasing debilitating over time as deteriorating conditions on the ground have made the UN and everyone else unwilling to put substantial personnel at risk.  Most analysts confess that internationalization is all but impossible at this point.  I don't think anyone believes the current Administration can or will make it happen.

- Iraqification - This is a somewhat different point, in that I don't know the degree to which the US Administration is to blame for the slow progress in rebuilding the Iraqi military.  But any realistic assessment needs to take account of where that effort stands.  At that conference I mentioned a very senior ex-government official described the training of the Iraqi military as a joke.  The latest Pentagon briefing by General Petraeus reveals that just one Iraqi battalion (down from 3) is thus far capable of operating entirely independently of coalition forces.  Petraeus does not venture how long it may take for any additional forces to reach that level.  So, to be realistic, let's just say that the Iraqi military won't be ready to stand on its own within the next 2 - 3 years.

The question the American people faces is given the above - an Administration that can't or won't multilateralize the stabilization effort, that can't or won't internationalize the Iraq operation, and that can't successfully Iraqify it - are we best off remaining in Iraq in current numbers, drawing down, or pulling out.   

Progressives can and should put forward how we would handle things differently, but we also need to think through what ought to happen next given who is in charge.

That's why I come around to thinking more seriously about a pull-out.  I continue to believe that the consequences of Iraq becoming a failed state will be grievous for the Iraqi people, for the region and for the US, and that we must do everything possible to avoid that outcome.  I also believe that a military force with US leadership could, if handled properly from the outset, have played a role in helping prevent Iraq from spiraling downward.   I even believe that the right set of measures now might conceivably help correct the course.

But I don't believe that our current mission can hold Iraq together, and I have waning faith in this Administration's will or ability to make it more effective:  there's no more sign of a strategy than there was months ago; there's no sign we better understand the insurgency or how to fight it; there's no sign of progress in the 3 areas noted above; the support of the American people is dwindling; and the military is voicing its own doubts about Iraq's future. 

To say that the US should remain there under these circumstances - when we know that the preconditions for possible success aren't and won't be met - seems to put US lives and even the structure of the US military at risk with virtually no chance of achieving our objectives.   

Under these circumstances, its questionable whether a substantial drawdown of American troops - leaving 50-75,000 in Iraq through the end of 2006, will work better:  will the training effort go better with fewer US troops to carry out the job? (CAP argues it just might in that Iraq's military would then take ownership of the nation's security) will the insurgents give us partial credit for a partial withdrawal, say from urban areas (as CAP suggests), or just rebouble their efforts to force the US out entirely? 

It's not that I disagree with CAP or with Mort, I just think we need to examine whether - in isolation - the portions of their proposals that deal with troop levels going forward still stand in view of the unlikelihood that the accompanying measures they recommend will actually be taken. 

It reminds me of the mistake progressives made en route to Iraq: saying that assuming the Administration did a list of things they had no intention of doing (letting WMD inspections run their course, building a coalition, shoring up support in the UNSC), progressives would support the war.  All anyone heard was the last 3 words, and when the prerequisites predictably failed to materialize, Kerry and others were stuck in the position of supporting something they knew would be disastrous.

Bludgeoning Democracy Posted by Lorelei Kelly

We won the vote before we lost it.

If anybody thought that Delay's demise might reveal a more deliberative, responsible Congress then guess again.  On Friday afternoon, the hooting on Capitol Hill could be heard from the House Floor and throughout the halls of the Rayburn House Office Building as the majority leadership once again torpedoed democratic deliberation.

The so called   "Barton Bill"  (HR 3893) was brought to vote ostensibly to help reconstruction in the wake of hurricane Katrina.  But this thoughtless boondoggle instead actually damages prospects for security and public health.  It is full of failed policies that didn't make it into the energy bill passed earlier this year.

Policy zombies, excavated from the oil and gas industry talking points graveyard-now live to haunt us once again.  Let's hope the populist dictators of Central Asia and Latin America aren't CSPAN geeks. It would be awful if they decided to emulate us these days.  This vote was held open by the frazzled looking Rep. Michael Simpson despite the fact that all members present had voted, and the bill had lost.  210 yeas, 212 nays.  Yet no gavel fell.  The only possible reason to keep a vote open like this--when every vote has been cast-- is for the majority to dragoon Members, twist their thumbs, and make them return and change their vote to the leadership's liking.  I have no idea what actually happened.  But somehow, with the anti-democratic over-time, the bill squeaked by.

The good part here was that the minority fought back, vocally, and with parliamentary inquiries.  Members of Congress, Bernie Sanders, Barney Frank, John Dingell and Nancy Pelosi, among others, didn't let this abusive behavior go unremarked.   The minority is feeling its oats.  Hopefully it is the start of a trend.