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COMMENTARY
October 2, 2004
Take no prisoners
Iraq is a learning experience and could only be a learning experience. As their retired general Tommy Franks has written the Americans and their allies made what plans they could from what information they could gather about an enemy who is opaque. They were right to assume that Saddam Hussein' s Iraq and the Jihad that hit Manhattan were bound together in a large ball of wool; they underestimated how large and how tightly knotted. As the situation on the ground in Iraq has proven that Jihad is not only much bigger than any initial estimate of Al Qaeda's resources it enjoys much broader support internationally. To blame the Bush administration for not having anticipated everything that has happened since they entered Iraq is to assume they have godly powers of clairvoyance. But as we all should have learned on that morning of 9/11 we are confronted with an enemy who does not share any of our cultural assumptions about whom we still know next to nothing. With the help of advanced technology we may know more about where he's hiding than about how he thinks. Unfortunately after Thursday night's U.S. presidential debate one is reminded that President Bush lacks the rhetorical power to communicate some of the realities he and ultimately we are facing. He is a strong and determined leader in pursuing the enemy but he persists in telling his people that "things are looking up" when they can see some things that aren' t. Given what I believe would be the disaster of a Kerry presidency Mr. Bush must successfully communicate in a more Churchillian way that war is war that the enemy will win battles that there will be plenty of casualties yet we can and must prevail. The great strength of Mr. Bush as a war leader is presently on exhibit in Samarra in Iraq. He is grittily doing what is necessary on the ground even though it cannot help him in the presidential race. As I write the U.S. 1st Infantry Division and the new Iraqi National Guard and Army are retaking Samarra street by street a very ugly task. The previous abandonment of Samarra Fallujah and Baghdad's Sadr City was a mistake a mistake for which frontline troops are now paying some inevitably with their lives. The White House was persuaded -- by some of their Iraqi allies but also by their more "liberal" advisers in State Department and elsewhere -- that it made "realpolitik" sense to put such towns in the hands of former Saddam officials (or in the case of Sadr City under the care of radical Shia mullahs) who would guarantee order and know how to keep it. But instead all of these places fell instantly under Jihadi (or Shia blackshirt) control -- which incidentally doesn't require popular support for they are ruthless in enforcing their own ideas of order. Such towns then became bases for terror attacks elsewhere. Likewise we heard the argument last year that the U.S. should employ "the more professional" of Saddam's ex-officers and officials in rebuilding the Iraqi military and bureaucracy. But the White House was foolish to listen to this advice. In one prime case a prominent ex-Saddamite (Guard Brig. Gen. Talib al-Lahibi) was found systematically forwarding information to help the Jihadis plan ambushes on his own troops. On a lower level among junior officers there are reports of similar loyalty problems. The U.S. commanders would not be in this fix if they had ignored their critics and instead followed their own gut instincts: for there can be nothing "professional" about a man who not only served but flourished under Saddam. We didn't employ Nazis to build a post-Nazi Germany. One simply cannot afford to take prisoners while fighting a war like this. I cannot know how much information has been extracted from inmates at Guantanamo Bay -- my impression is less than anyone expected -- but I do know that several have found their ways back to Afghanistan and even into Iraq after release. These included the Taliban commander Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar who died in a recent gun battle in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province. Moreover it is now common for those released to immediately make wildly improbable claims of mistreatment that are then carried as anti-American propaganda by Al Jazeera and other media across Arab and Muslim airwaves. In the hard reasoning of one of William Blake's proverbs of hell A dead body revenges not injuries. We are extremely na?ve to imagine that a murderous religious fanatic will cease to be so after a few months of questioning; or to treat him as an applicant for the usual "human rights". David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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