Troop Dreams
IN “A FEW MORE GOOD MEN” (May 3), Frederick W. Kagan argues that “a wise strategy” is to dispatch about 40,000 more American troops to Iraq. But would this not merely provide more targets for murderous Sunni suicide bombers?
In this former U.S. naval officer’s opinion, a much better strategy is to turn over all direct patrolling and policing in Iraq, before June 30, to the Iraqi forces of the independent Iraqi government we create there. The latter speak Arabic, know the terrain and the people very well, and are far more suited for the job. The United States would restrict its military interference in Iraqi affairs to massive displays of airpower.
Then we can influence Iraq indirectly. Concentrating on powerful, visible displays of airpower would also send a clear signal to the corrupt Syrian and Iranian dictatorships. President Bush may even be able to “persuade” Syria to withdraw all Syrian soldiers from the nation of Lebanon.
Howard Greyber
San Jose, CA
FREDERICK W. KAGAN RESPONDS: Howard Greyber voices a recommendation that has become common in recent days: Hand the problem over to the Iraqis. But this has been the policy of the Bush administration all along.
The administration always intended to turn both security and counterinsurgency over to Iraqi forces as rapidly as possible. In fact, it wildly overestimated its ability to do so rapidly, which is one of the major reasons for the current crisis and the current increase in American casualties.
The fact is that it takes time to train new recruits even in basic policing skills, let alone in the complex skills required to conduct a counterinsurgency. We rushed ill-prepared Iraqi units into the fray too soon, and the results have been disastrous.
American forces must stay in Iraq long enough to allow the Iraqis to field competent and trained soldiers who can face down the insurgents, and we will probably have to do a lot of the heavy-lifting in the counterinsurgency as well.
The notion that American airpower will somehow solve this problem has been another tenet of the Rumsfeld approach to war and counterinsurgency, and it is failing dismally both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Airplanes will not keep Iraqi police trainees and their families safe from insurgent attacks. Airplanes cannot hunt down Moktada al-Sadr’s rebel army with great discrimination, separating it from noncombatants, as the 1st Armored Division is now doing. Airplanes cannot prepare Iraq for sovereignty or make it stable.
The Bush administration has been implementing suggestions like Mr. Greyber’s, to the extent that they are at all possible, for the past year. That is why we are in so much trouble today.
Bad Publicity
FRED BARNES’S “Precarious Rumsfeld” (May 17) is about much more than the various scenarios that could lead to Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation. In fact, Barnes’s piece highlights yet another example of how the Bush administration has lost control of this year’s election agenda.
After weeks of bad publicity on Iraq, the administration got some good news recently that should be center stage in campaign coverage: confirmation of a genuine economic boom. The Labor Department’s April payroll survey numbers and revisions to previous monthly numbers confirm that we now have a Main Street (as opposed to Wall Street) recovery. But that news was overshadowed by the scandal at Abu Ghraib.
Yet, as troubling as that scandal is, it is almost inconceivable that the presidential election will be influenced by it. Barring some unlikely revelation that the administration itself ordered the conduct, the election ought to be about bigger questions, like whether the Bush administration was right to go to war and whether its economic policies are working. That’s why the administration needs to move decisively not just to deal with the scandal, but also to better explain the reasons behind the Iraq war and progress on the economic front. On Iraq, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has repeatedly argued the case for Operation Iraqi Freedom far better than the administration. On the economy, it seems no one trumpets the new boom.
But the Labor Department’s jobs data for 2004 make it clear that one can plausibly claim that it’s “morning in America” again. And the economic story should matter on Election Day just as much as Iraq–provided people are made aware of the administration’s economic success. Otherwise John Kerry, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and others will make sure the poster children for President Bush’s reelection effort are Herbert Hoover, Richard Clarke, and Lynndie England.
John Sepehri
Dallas, TX
