Related Resources On NationalJournal.com National Journal Cover Story: "Out of the Nest" (April 9, 2004) · National Journal Cover story: "The Lost City" (March 12, 2004) · Well Read Wonk: "America's Role in Nationbuilding" (Sept 25, 2003) · Insider Interview: Hans Blix (March 31, 2004) · Insider Interview: Jay Garner on Iraq, Federalism and Civil War (March 10, 2004) · Recent Polling on Iraq Additional Information On The Web 2004 Gallup Poll of Iraqi Public Opinion · Iraq Coalition Casualty Count · "Iraq: What is to be Done?" from the Center for Strategic & International Studies · Iraqi Freedom and American History, from the American Enterprise Institute · Low Intensity Conflict and Nation-Building in Iraq: A Chronology · U.N.'s Lakdhar Brahimi's Proposals for Iraq Transfer of Power

By James Kitfield, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, May 14, 2004

Inside the Bush administration's top echelons, it was an article of faith that muscular leadership in the post-9/11 world meant never having to say you're sorry. Admitting mistakes and signaling course corrections were considered signs of weakness. Senior Bush officials, as a result, almost never did the former and only reluctantly acknowledged the latter.

So when a torrent of clench-jawed apologies and policy reversals emanated from senior officials over the past few weeks, many of them in response to graphic evidence of abuse and psychological torture at a prison run by the U.S. military, many experts took it as a welcome, albeit belated, indication that the Bush administration finally grasped just how serious the situation in Iraq had become. The question is whether that realization has come too late to salvage President Bush's grand vision of a democratic Iraq that would serve as a catalyst for reform throughout the Middle East.

"The United States lacks good options [in Iraq], although it probably never really had them in the sense the Bush administration thought," Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, concluded in a recent analysis. "The option of quickly turning Iraq into a successful, free-market democracy was never practical, and was as absurd a neoconservative fantasy as the idea that success in this objective would magically make Iraq an example that would transform the Middle East."

The American Enterprise Institute think tank is considered the nation's bastion of neoconservative thought. It has been an ideological training ground for several prominent neoconservatives influential in the Bush administration's Iraq policy, including former Defense Science Board Chairman Richard Perle, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and vice presidential spouse Lynne Cheney. Even at AEI, however, experts worry that recent setbacks in Iraq are a symptom of a much greater problem -- a mismatch between the Bush administration's lofty rhetoric and goals concerning Iraq, and the resources and energy committed over the past year to achieve them.

"I think the Bush administration's post-9/11 strategy of changing the political dynamic in Iraq as a way of liberalizing the Middle East with democracy is sound, because it pits our greatest strength [our democratic values] against the enemy's greatest weakness" -- its failed Arab regimes, said Thomas Donnelly, a senior fellow at AEI. "The thing that most disturbs me, however, is this dangerous gap between the strategic goals set by President Bush and the resources and military means committed to getting there. That has been fundamentally out of whack from the beginning."

Circumstances Conspire
Photos of war and conflict have always held the power to galvanize public opinion: Recall the images of U.S. soldiers liberating Nazi concentration camps; a naked Vietnamese girl being scorched by napalm; blindfolded Americans being held hostage in Iran; or the bodies of U.S. soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. The graphic pictures of U.S. reservists sexually humiliating and abusing Iraqi prisoners -- along with gruesome footage of an American civilian being beheaded by terrorists in Iraq -- have served as a similar flash point, both abroad and at home, for growing anxieties about deteriorating conditions in Iraq.

After failing to find the weapons of mass destruction that were the chief reason for going to war, the Bush administration has focused on the liberation of tyrannized Iraqis as its key justification for invading Iraq. Perhaps unfairly, the prison photos call even that rationale into question. Recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup polls found, for instance, that a majority of Iraqis now want the United States to leave Iraq immediately, while for the first time, a majority of Americans disapprove of President Bush's handling of Iraq.

Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, an assistant commander of the 1st Armored Division, wrote from Iraq in an e-mail exchange with National Journal that the photos certainly have made his troops' job harder. "Many Arab media, and American media for that matter, continue to circulate the pictures of abuse taken by a very few, and that isn't helpful, because those photos pander to what the Arab culture already believes about the West," he wrote. "We have thus adopted the practice of bringing up the prisoner-abuse situation whenever we meet with senior Iraqis. We apologize for the actions of this very few, and remind them that they know us, and that the great majority of our soldiers would never do such a thing. The trust and confidence we have built up with many Iraqis over the past year has proven crucial to countering the bias produced by these pictures, and most Iraqi leaders and groups we talk to understand that only a few soldiers were involved in these horrible incidents. But they are still embarrassed that their countrymen have suffered this indignity."

The timing of the abuse story and photos also contributed to their explosive impact. U.S. officials had hoped to mark the one-year anniversary of operations in Iraq with sober but upbeat reflections on the numerous and significant accomplishments in reconstructing Iraq. Instead, April 2004 proved to be the cruelest month in the Iraqi conflict, as U.S. commanders were confronted with a wave of violence that made it by far the deadliest period since the war began. Overall, 140 U.S. troops died and more than 1,000 were wounded in Iraq in April, a higher toll than in the previous three months combined. According to an Associated Press tally, up to 1,361 Iraqis were killed in the same month.

The nearly simultaneous uprisings in the Sunni stronghold of Falluja, west of Baghdad, and among the armed followers of firebrand Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr in the southern cities of Najaf and Karbala and surrounding areas, also underscored the shakiness of the Iraq venture. Fears that the violence could ignite a general uprising forced U.S. commanders to back off initial vows to retake Falluja and capture or kill al-Sadr, and that retreat raised questions about U.S. resolve and determination.

Meanwhile, a terrorist bombing linked to Al Qaeda that killed 202 Spaniards prompted a new government in Madrid to withdraw its troops from Iraq in May. Honduras and the Dominican Republic soon followed suit by pulling their troops out. The unrelenting stream of bad news suggested to some experts that Iraq was in danger of spinning out of control, even as the Coalition Provisional Authority holds to a tight deadline of June 30 for transferring sovereignty to a still ill-defined Iraqi caretaker government.

"In terms of America's security, I think this is the most critical moment in a generation," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, said at a recent forum at the Council on Foreign Relations. "If we fail in Iraq, we will have taught our enemies the lesson of Mogadishu, only one hundredfold: If you inflict enough pain, America will leave. Iraq will then descend into chaos and civil war. Warlords will reign. There will be bloodletting. We will have energized the extremists and created a breeding ground for terrorists, dooming the Arab world. Unfortunately, as we continue to see large numbers of American casualties a year after Americans were told major combat was over, I fear U.S. public support is eroding. So I think we need to admit that serious errors have been made, increase our troop strength in Iraq, and do what's necessary to turn this thing around."

Zbigniew Brzezinski was President Carter's national security adviser and has just published a new book, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership. He, too, senses that the United States is approaching a moment of truth in Iraq, and perhaps in the post-9/11 era. "I'm increasingly worried that unless we succeed in getting more international help in Iraq, we could become bogged down and isolated in a massive problem, the dimensions of which are unprecedented and not fully understood by the American people," he said during a recent roundtable discussion.

In invading Afghanistan and Iraq on a "highly unilateral basis, without serious consultation with our allies," said Brzezinski, the United States has become enmeshed in a region of 550 million people that is "ethnically combustive, religiously aroused, and seething with unrest and hostility toward the United States. If we stay on our present course, I'm worried that we could become truly isolated and overwhelmed by problems that outstrip our ability to respond."

Changing Course
In a series of recent policy changes and reversals, however, the Bush administration and Pentagon officials have signaled what amounts to a major course correction in Iraq policy. Suddenly, officials are more willing to use international partners and to shift more control to Iraqis.

After opposing calls to give the United Nations a central role in Iraq for most of the past year, the administration is now counting on U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to identify a caretaker government and oversee the transfer of power to it after June 30. That change in policy has infuriated Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, a Pentagon favorite who is a member of the present Iraqi Governing Council, which will now be disbanded. U.S. officials, who insisted before the war that "the mission will define the coalition," are now tacitly admitting that the coalition as constructed is unequal to the task. And it is pressuring NATO, unsuccessfully so far, to take on a greater share of the security burden in Iraq.

Meanwhile, on May 4, the Pentagon announced it will not cut back troop levels in Iraq this summer as planned. Instead, it will keep as many as 138,000 troops there through 2005. The announcement is sure to reignite a fierce debate about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's decision not to increase the overall size of the U.S. military, which even its own senior officers concede is too small to indefinitely sustain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at present troop levels. The Bush administration likewise recently abandoned a funding plan for Iraq: It will request a $25 billion supplemental budget now instead of asking Congress for additional funds for Iraq after the November election.

In an almost dizzying about-face, and an often-confusing one, the administration has also modified its policy on the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. First, President Bush backed Israel's plan to pull back from the Gaza Strip and explicitly endorsed Israel's keeping some settlements in the West Bank and refusing to grant Palestinian refugees the right of return to Israel proper. But after that reversal of long-standing U.S. policy caused a backlash in the Arab world, the administration insisted that it had never meant to prejudge final-status negotiations on West Bank settlements and refugee returns. Then, after a year in which Palestinian leaders were largely ignored by the White House, the administration said that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice -- who more than a year ago was designated the president's point person on Middle East peace -- will finally meet with Palestinian leaders. If anything, the moves are an acknowledgement of the central role that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict plays in inflaming Arab anger at the United States.

Inside Iraq, signals of a major course correction are equally evident. The Coalition Provisional Authority recently relaxed restrictions barring former Baath Party officials from holding many government jobs, and U.S. commanders trying to reconstitute Iraqi security forces are reaching out to militias and to former Iraqi army officers. Analysts see both moves as attempts to mitigate what many of them consider the most misguided decisions of the U.S. occupation -- an early "de-Baathification" drive that radicalized much of the Sunni community, and the wholesale disbanding of the Iraqi army and security forces.

Critics, however, doubt that all of the course corrections amount to a coherent new strategy. "We have mismanaged the occupation and need to rethink the strategy," declared Phebe Marr, author of The Modern History of Iraq. "We keep pushing the panic button and shifting tactics and methods, creating incoherence. Now panic is producing a search for an exit strategy -- even a precipitous exit. We should stop panicking. Whatever the reasons we went into Iraq, we're in there now, and a precipitous exit will cause far more problems for us in the long term. We can't simply turn over authority and get out."

Douglas Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, was a key architect of the Iraqi Freedom campaign and its aftermath. The shifts in tactics that some characterize as incoherence, he says, are actually signs of tactical flexibility.

"Everyone knows that prewar predictions never unfold perfectly, and in war you will face setbacks, so we've shown that we can be flexible," said Feith, speaking at a recent AEI forum. As examples of U.S. flexibility, he pointed to the decision last year to request an $87 billion supplemental to jump-start reconstruction after Iraqi infrastructure proved much worse than officials had anticipated; the creation of an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps to fill the gap left by the disbanded and discredited Iraqi army; the accelerated timetable for the transfer of sovereignty to meet Iraqi demands for more say in their own fate; the willingness to drop a plan for regional caucuses to pick an interim government when that idea proved unpopular; and the relaxation of the de-Baathification process to address complaints that it was marginalizing the Sunni community.

Throughout all the adjustments, Feith and other Bush administration officials say, quickly transferring sovereignty to a nascent and vaguely defined Iraqi interim government is still compatible with the overarching strategic goal of establishing a viable democracy in Iraq that can spark Middle East reform.

"The essence of successful strategy is steadiness and not allowing yourself to be buffeted by the latest polls or news of the day," said Feith, who acknowledged that the level of violence in Iraq is likely to spike as the June 30 date for transferring power approaches. "President Bush's steadiness has been described by some as unapologetic stubbornness, but I can only imagine what the same people would have said about Winston Churchill's 'stubbornness.' History teaches that steadiness is a gemlike trait in wartime leaders."

Sound Strategy?
History is also replete, however, with examples of major powers falling victim to the bane of empire -- hubris and imperial overreach. The determination to bring democracy to Iraq at the point of a gun, with few allies and against a well-documented tide of anti-American sentiment in the Arab and Islamic worlds; the insistence on a historically small invasion force designed for speed and liberation rather than for a lengthy occupation and counterinsurgency; the reluctance to share decision-making and burden-sharing in Iraq with the international community; the conviction that the United States could accomplish such an ambitious undertaking on the cheap during a time of unprecedented tax cuts, without bothering to shift to a wartime footing of shared sacrifice -- all of these are part of a strategic calculus that many experts now say may add up to failure.

"The Bush administration's notion of creating in Iraq something that even vaguely resembles a Wilsonian-style democracy, in a country where security has traditionally come not from the ballot box but from force of arms, was always a very high-risk, high-payoff type of gamble that you might expect from a Texas oilman," said Andrew Krepinevich, director of the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments in Washington. "Going against such strong cultural currents demanded a very innovative strategy and a long-term, high-level commitment of at least a decade, if not decades."

Although Secretary Rumsfeld did warn that Iraq would be a long, hard slog, says Krepinevich, "unfortunately, he's attempting it with a capital-intensive military built for sprints, not manpower-intensive marathons of counterinsurgency. That's why the Pentagon is having such difficulties establishing a [troop rotation] for Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. military purposely got out of the counterinsurgency business after Vietnam."

The reforms and corrective policies that are sure to follow the prisoner-abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison could slow the intelligence-collection effort that lies at the heart of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq. These problems, in turn, could accelerate an already frantic handoff of security duties to untested Iraqi security forces of dubious loyalty.

Some experts fear that, collectively, all of the new signals may tell an already skittish Iraqi public that U.S. forces are looking for the exit doors. "In typical American fashion, we seem perplexed that we're not getting more support from the Iraqi street, because we obviously can offer Iraqis a better future," said Steve Metz, chairman of the regional strategy and planning department at the Army War College. "If you look at it through Iraqi eyes, however, the most salient question they might be asking is, 'Who is more likely to be here in five or 10 years, the armed insurgent groups or the Americans?' If you look at Iraq from that perspective, you might come up with a less ambitious and optimistic strategic assessment."

Like other strategists, Metz has also been struck by the gap between the Bush administration's grand strategy for Iraq and the follow-through on the ground. For the past year, the administration steadfastly resisted calls to increase the size of the U.S. military and to send more troops to Iraq despite obvious shortfalls, now tragically evident in the prison abuse perpetrated by overworked, undertrained reservists.

"Bush has no shortage of vision, and I happen to agree that a democratic Iraq and reformed Middle East would represent a bold transformation benefiting not only the United States, but the whole world," said Metz. "The administration never mobilized the country or allocated the resources necessary to achieve such a decisive victory, however, which suggests an actual strategy of managing problems as they occur. The choice now is to try and raise our commitment commensurate with our strategy, or to downgrade our strategy and expectations."

A Razor's Edge
With anti-occupation sentiment running high in Iraq, and with the June 30 deadline for transferring sovereignty fast approaching, the United States has limited options. About all it can do is hang on and hope that the course corrections already taken will see Iraq through what promises to be a long, difficult summer. At this point, delaying the transfer date, rushing many thousands more U.S. troops to Iraq, or taking a more confrontational stance against Sunni insurgents or renegade Shiites could ignite an already smoldering tinderbox.

"We've made so many mistakes and grotesque miscalculations that yesterday's good idea may not work any longer," said Rick Barton, co-director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. "There was a window of opportunity to capture the silent majority in Iraq. I don't know if it's closed yet, but it sure isn't letting in a lot of fresh air, and the temperature is getting hotter."

The Bush administration will likely seek another U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq to give U.N. envoy Brahimi maximum legitimacy and the strongest possible mandate to manage the transfer of power and the run-up to Iraqi elections in January 2005. (U.N. officials have warned, however, that elections will be impossible without a marked improvement in the security situation.) The administration could also put many billions of dollars of the reconstruction funds bottled up in contracting red tape at the disposal of the interim Iraqi government and its ministries. Such a move would elevate the government's stature and importance in the eyes of workaday Iraqis.

Although the United States might enlist more help from Arab and other allies for training and equipping Iraqi security forces outside the country, further calls for international help to be delivered inside Iraq will likely go unanswered. Already, influential European allies are warning the administration that NATO and European military forces are stretched thin trying to manage Afghanistan and other crises. Dragging NATO into a fractious Iraq, one European foreign minister warned privately, could reopen the painful wounds caused by the Iraqi invasion and even sound the death knell of the trans-Atlantic alliance.

U.S. commanders on the ground believe that their best chance of success now lies in convincing moderate Iraqis that their own moment of truth has arrived -- that Iraq's future hangs in the balance. "If we are transparent and apologetic in pursuing the prison abuse investigation, we can still maintain our relationship with the Iraqis," said a senior U.S. Army commander in Iraq who asked not to be identified. "Whether they like us is not the issue. Most Iraqis know that they need us to improve their lot in life, and we need to help them understand that there is much to be gained by cooperating with coalition forces during this period of transition. As long as we are patient with Sadr, and don't do anything heavy-handed that unites the moderate Shiites behind his banner, I also think the more- moderate Shiite clerics who are upset with his behavior will marginalize him. Give us another four to six weeks, and we may be over the hump on this."

Six weeks is but an instant for a nation that traces its origins to Mesopotamia and the dawn of civilization. It is little more than an asterisk in this era of American imperium that now stretches back more than a half-century. Yet a growing number of strategists warn that ancient history and current events are rapidly conspiring to propel both nations toward a fateful rendezvous.

"Most wars reach a moment of crisis, when the outcome hangs in the balance and in which weakness and errors, military or political, can shape victory or put it permanently out of reach," analysts at Stratfor, a private intelligence and analysis firm, concluded recently. "The strategy of the United States in its war with radical Islam is in [such] a state of crisis.... The situation is balanced on the razor's edge. The United States could recover from its tactical failures [in Iraq], or suffer a massive defeat and strategic collapse. One thing is certain: The United States cannot remain balanced on the razor's edge indefinitely."

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