Time for a New Strategy

It is time for patriotic Americans who support the cause of freedom in the world to say that there are things fundamentally wrong with the Bush Administration’s war on terror in general and the war on Iraq in particular and to participate vigorously in the search for better strategies and approaches. This is not an easy thing to do in wartime, and it must be done carefully and only after the observed facts make it clearly necessary. It is especially difficult in the present situation, because of the additional necessity for patriotic Americans to make sure that, in their criticism and questioning, they do not inadvertently aid either the enemy or the anti-American left. Irrespective of these difficulties, it still must be done.

The first thing we must demand is some level of rationality and consistency in the government’s public polices for the war on terror. Right now we have a situation where our government is so worried about the safety of airline flights that it has us shuffling barefoot through groping stations at airports, but is not worried enough to focus its attention on classes of passengers who might actually be dangerous; where the government wants to know what library books we are checking out and what web sites we are visiting, but can’t be bothered with securing the Mexican or Canadian borders; and where the government makes it painfully difficult for students and legitimate travelers to come to our country, but cannot find a way to avoid issuing entry documents to known terrorist suspects and members of the Taliban. We should all hope that the covert part of the war on terror is being run well, but we should also require that the overt, domestic public policy part at least make sense.

The next thing we must demand of the Administration is a strategy and set of objectives that both make sense and are commensurate with the problem and the threat in Iraq. It makes sense to hunt down and kill terrorists who attack or threaten us. It makes sense to demonstrate violently to governments who support terrorists that they will be subject to retribution along with the terrorists. It makes sense to prevent these governments from obtaining nuclear or biological weapons.

It can be argued reasonably that, given the state of knowledge at the time, points such as these perhaps could justify the decision to invade Iraq, neutralize its armed forces, and overthrow and replace its government. It is possible to imagine a well defined and successful mission having been executed along those lines, even if the threat turned out to be less than was believed before hand.

However, it is much harder to find good sense in a policy that seems to assert that we can turn Iraq into Belgium and that we have to stay and fight until we do. That policy seems questionable on several levels. First it assumes it is an appropriate strategy to commit our forces to a mission the success of which is contingent not on their actions but on the actions of the Iraqis. Second it assumes that the Iraqis want a pluralistic, fairly free democracy. Third, it assumes that such a democracy can be created in Iraq. Fourth it assumes that such a democracy will be beneficial and sustainable - that is that in their new democracy the Iraqis will in at least a broad sense vote right. Finally it assumes that creating such a democracy is important enough to the interests of the United States to justify the cost. Every one of these assumptions is questionable, and it is quite possible that all of them are wrong.

We need to define a mission in Iraq that provides a definition of success and completion that is reasonable and consistent with our actual interests and long term aims. Then we need to complete it and, upon that completion, we need to disengage as much as possible.

Our country faces some real problems. The Administration needs to come up with some good ideas for solutions.