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The
Mess in Potamia
by Fred Reed
September
30, 2003
by Fred Reed
Our
foray into the Middle East appears pregnant with largish
consequences. I wish I knew which consequences.
The
attack on Iraq was indeed shocking and awesome. If the
United States can now subdue the country, and bend it to
chosen ends whatever they may be, America will presumably
be the dominant power in the world for decades to come.
Syria and Iran will take note and behave prudently.
Everyone will understand that the US can enforce its will
almost anywhere and impose such political solutions as it
thinks wise.
On
the other hand, if the US cannot hold on in Iraq, no one
will fear it for a long time. Instead of gaining influence
in the Moslem world the US will lose any it had. Iran for
example will understand that it can do whatever it likes.
America will shrink from overseas involvement as it did
after Vietnam. The occupation will be seen less as the
beginning of the new American century than as the end of
the last.
Which?
Further,
the presidency of Mr. Bush, and his place in history, are
at stake. He knows it, which will either make victory
possible or defeat ugly. He has invested too much of both
pride and political capital to pull out. Coitus reservatus
is not much of an electoral strategy. If he prevails, he
will perhaps be seen as a smaller Churchill, a
clear-sighted man who by tenacity and unsuspected wisdom
transformed the Middle East. If he loses I suspect that he
will be remembered as the worst president we have had, the
man who single-handedly neutered America in the world.
Which?
I
don’t know. But one thing is sure. He won’t retreat.
Now,
can Mr. Bush prevail? I don’t know. I’m not in Iraq. I
neither speak nor read Arabic. However: If, as the White
House has argued, the Iraqi resistance consists of outside
agitators and a few followers of a detested dictator, the
US can probably wear them down. If the population of Iraq
supports the resistance, or is coming to support it, then
the occupation is in all likelihood doomed.
Which?
The
power of the American military will be largely irrelevant
to the outcome. The military is small, heavily reliant on
technology, and designed for attacking point targets and
organized military forces. For these purposes, it is good,
and in fact has no competitors. It is, however, poorly
designed for occupying large countries with armed and
hostile populations that choose to adopt guerrilla
tactics.
The
way to defeat American forces is to avoid giving them
clear targets, stretch them thin, steadily inflict enough
losses to alienate public opinion in the US, and keep the
war dragging on. You don’t defeat the US in the field.
It can’t be done. You defeat it in America. When a war
loiters about inconclusively (if it does) and the body
bags trickle home, eventually the country wearies, the
press turns against the war, the president’s numbers
fall, politicians of the other party make elections into
referenda on the war, and (in this case) Hillary smells
blood in the water.
Oddly,
the occupying army itself often becomes the ally of the
resistance. For example, the guerrillas destroy a truck in
a supply convoy in a town. The soldiers return fire
wildly, killing several civilians including, if the
guerrillas are lucky, a child. The burning truck gives the
resistance credibility: they are defeating the invaders.
The killing of the civilians arouses hatred and aids
recruitment.
Killing
GIs eventually forces the occupiers into fortified
encampments, making political ends harder to achieve. It
also (reasonably enough) causes the GIs to hate the
population. The soldiers are very young, in a country
whose ways they do not understand and whose language they
do not speak. Many of its people want to kill them. This
makes troops angry and quick on the trigger. They
therefore tend to treat the population roughly, which is
exactly what the guerrillas want.
The
occupiers often find themselves in circumstances in which
there is no right answer. If at a checkpoint they do not
search a woman in baggy clothes, it may well turn out that
she was carrying a large amount of Semtex. Something blows
up. If they do search her, the population will hate them.
Body-searching the women of a conservative society
doesn’t get you party invitations. Kicking in doors in
the night and holding women at gunpoint poses the same
difficulty. If you don’t do these things, you don’t
catch the resistance. If you do, you recruit for them.
It’s
a hard kind of war to win. A while ago, the media
reported, GIs accidentally killed nine Iraqi policemen.
Other American troops (said the papers) killed civilians
when, hearing celebratory shots fired into the air, they
opened up on a wedding. If these accounts are correct,
they suggest very poor fire discipline. To the US command
these were "incidents." To families of the dead,
the killings were reasons to seek revenge. And of course
all Iraq knows. The guerrillas could ask for nothing
better.
Now,
is the resistance growing or diminishing? I don’t know.
Having been around both reporters and military PAOs, I
know better that to trust either too blithely. Still, it
sounds as though the Iraqis are getting organized and
getting better. They seem to be gaining in sophistication.
A
few weeks back, for example, the media reported that the
Iraqis had attacked a convoy and then ambushed the rescue
forces. This was a standard Viet Cong tactic. Another is
to put two remotely detonated mines close to each other.
The first one gets the convoy and, a bit later, the second
gets the medical teams. Coming soon to a theater near you.
What
now? So far as I can see, the best possible solution now
is that the US win, establish some reasonable government,
and leave. I’m doing more hoping than expecting, but
maybe. (Of course, I run to pessimism. This would be a
splendid time to be wrong.) But if – if – things get
worse and fighting grows, the odds would seem good for a
long war by an increasingly desperate president and a
humiliating retreat, leaving a helpless Iraq next to a
healthy Iran. It sounds like a recipe for chaos. If you go
to Baghdad, rent.
Meanwhile
Hillary makes backseat noises: Oh, no, I’ll never, no,
not that, keep trying….
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