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COMMENTARY
November 15, 2003
Iron Hammer
Paul Bremer the U.S. proconsul is back in Baghdad after urgent consultations in Washington and in the field Operation Iron Hammer has begun. For the perspective that is missing from media reports we must see that Mr. Bremer's Washington visit was not his first; only his most publicized. He frequently jets back and forth for consultations at the highest level of the U.S. government. He was not being called on the carpet. Much balderdash has been written about the failure of Pentagon post-war planning. Three points about that: First while there were innumerable tactical plans it was understood from the beginning that the U.S. would be facing an unprecedented situation in the occupation of Iraq and that all such plans would have to be adapted by trial and error. This is the American strength not weakness. The U.S. military learns lessons faster than any other in the field. Second the strategic plan has not been amended. It is on a scale larger than Iraq. The deposition of Saddam Hussein the occupation and the rebuilding of Iraq as an open society are a means towards the end of changing the whole Middle East. This may be wildly ambitious but it is what the Bush administration is attempting. Third far from having failed the Pentagon tactical approach -- annihilating the enemy takes priority over winning "hearts and minds" -- has been vindicated by events in Iraq. Last May it was the Pentagon arguing that the war wasn't over yet. Though I am simplifying for clarity it was the State Department arguing that it was then time for the civilian types to take over from the military types and "win the peace" through the usual distribution of candy. In that sense the U.S. is indeed now trying to recover from a lapse of attention. There have been two intelligence failures. The first of these is fundamental essentially military and appears unfixable. The big U.S. weakness is that it cannot get reliable military intelligence about the enemy. It cannot infiltrate agents Arab let alone American into the enemy's command or intercept his communications. >From external evidence it would appear that this enemy consists of not more than 10 000 well-trained native Fedayeen Saddam and imported Islamist terrorists under a single command who enjoy a certain amount of cover mostly through intimidation. In order to prevent being infiltrated the enemy has done one devilishly clever thing. He does not recruit within Iraq. All new agents come from abroad. And it is quite impossible for the U.S. to guess the rate at which infiltrators enter Iraq across thousands of kilometres of remote borders. The suicide bombings seem to be conducted mostly by the foreigners. The Saddamites must keep themselves alive in order to maintain a command structure which knows the ley of the land. They are thus the irreplaceable inner core of the operation -- probably less than 2 000 individuals -- and each one of them who can be killed further limits the possibilities for mounting terrorist hits. For without this native command the Palestinian Syrian Saudi Yemeni Iranian and Afghan "volunteers" are fish out of water in Iraqi society much easier to detect. While terrorist hits are attempted far afield -- in order to foment chaos in the Kurdish north and Shia south of the country -- most hits are in the familiar Sunni Triangle and the command centres are mobile but restricted to the old Saddamite heartland. Operation Iron Hammer is designed -- so far as it is more than a morale-building exercise -- to strike harder less reticently and more often simultaneously at targets in use by this enemy. (Some real progress seems to have been made in locating and eliminating bomb-making facilities for captured collaborators report that the pay they are getting for specific delivery services has gone up ten times in the last two months.) The other intelligence failure is more general but also more fixable. This is the old American naivete the characteristic failure to fully grasp the self-interested quality in human nature the limits of gratitude. It is foolish to imagine that people of any nationality or creed are governed by ideal conceptions of the future or the past. The Iraqis neither love nor hate Americans per se. They co-operate when they think Americans are doing them a favour and get in the way when they think they are not. Nor are the Iraqis starry-eyed about "democracy"; rather much more concerned in the preservation of their lives and property and cultural identities. This is why "hearts and minds" missions are doomed to fail; except when they make a visible difference to living conditions. It was the Pentagon that wanted a faster turnover of civilian functions to an Iraqi provisional government; and State which wanted a slower and more thorough constitutional process. Once again the Pentagon is now getting its way and President Bush is applying pressure to speed up transfers of power. The Americans are in the best position in Iraq if they are doing two things: building infrastructure and destroying the remnants of Saddamism. They may appear to be retreating under cover of a firestorm but in fact they are consolidating their position. Their job is to help an Iraqi show not solicit Iraqi help for an American show. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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