Exit strategy in Iraq
4/10/2004
ALONG SKEIN of blunders by the Bush administration led to the current calamities in Iraq. US policy makers failed to plan properly for the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's fall, arrogantly assuming that they had no need to prevent looting or provide for public administration. Today Shi'ites and Sunnis -- antagonists during Saddam's reign -- are taking up arms against US forces concurrently as a result of a continuing administration refusal to mold military tactics to political strategy.
Vicious as were the murder and mutilation of four US contract workers in the Sunni city of Fallujah, resorting to a purely military retaliation risks making everything worse. The Marines have been drawn into just the kind of urban warfare that the Pentagon had designed their invasion tactics to avoid. Marines being forced to scurry from house to house, taking fire from shooters they can't see, are suffering heavy casualties for an outcome that may be counterproductive.
Although Fallujah is a hotbed of Ba'athist diehards, Wahhabi extremists, and smuggling gangs, killing civilians in the city and dropping 500-pound bombs on its buildings can only horrify other Iraqis.
The effect will be the opposite of what President Bush and his advisers should want. Saddam Fedayeen gangs who were despised by most Iraqis in the past -- especially by Shi'ites -- may be transformed into heroes by the US assault on their stronghold. No matter how hard US commanders try to avoid civilian casualties, the harm done to women and children in Fallujah would only validate the claims of Ba'athist and Islamist groups preaching resistance against the Americans.
Having already done so much damage, US policy makers should end the operation as quickly as possible without needing to acknowledge a military defeat. Once they capture enough ringleaders of the armed groups in Fallujah, they should declare victory and withdraw. Then US officials, in company with Iraqis of the Governing Council, could enter into talks with Sunni tribal leaders to establish rules of the road for the future.
The situation in Fallujah is perilous enough. An even more irreparable catastrophe awaits if US authorities persist in responding with military force to provocations from Moqtada al-Sadr. This 31-year-old Shi'ite cleric is engaged in a struggle for power and the wealth generated by religious donations. His true rivals are the senior ayatollahs of the Shi'ite religious establishment, known collectively as al-Hawza. Sadr is using his pose as the leader of armed Shi'ite resistance to foreign occupation to strengthen his position in relation to Shi'ite factions loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
Sistani has called for a cessation of violence. But if US forces continue falling into Sadr's trap, enhancing his status by conducting urban warfare against his militia, Sistani will find it impossible to take any public position that might seem to side with the foreigners.
Instead, US forces should back off armed confrontations with Shi'ites, and the US civilian administrator, Paul Bremer, should publicly offer to address Shi'ite grievances. Members of the Iraqi Governing Council could serve as intermediaries to Sistani, seeking to accommodate his criticisms of the occupation, the pending transfer of sovereignty, and the interim constitution Bremer had sought to draft in secret.
US aims should be to avoid an Iraqi civil war, foster conditions for a decent representative government, and keep Kurds within a loosely confederated Iraq. These are political aims, and they require political savvy, not 500-pound bombs.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
