Gauging the Benefits, Perils of Iraqification

Army, Mar 2005 by Sinnreich, Richard Hart

According to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, "U.S. military commanders increasingly believe that American troops will never entirely defeat Iraqi insurgents and now plan to reduce offensive operations and focus on training Iraqi security forces."

Attributing its information to an anonymous senior military official in Baghdad, the article adds, "Under the plan, expected to be launched after the nation's January 30 parliamentary election, up to half of the U.S. troops in Iraq eventually could be enlisted to train police officers, national guard troops and other forces."

The proposal has a familiar ring. In Vietnam, U.S. leaders eventually reached a similar conclusion and made a similar decision. In 1969, in what became known as Vietnamization, the United States began turning the ground war over to the South Vietnamese. Four years later, American ground forces were pretty much gone.

The wisdom of that decision continues to be controversial. For some, it was as militarily sound as it was politically necessary. As evidence, they point to the defeat of North Vietnam's 1972 Easter Offensive by largely South Vietnamese ground forces supported by American airpower. According to this view, had that airpower been reintroduced in 1975 when the North attacked south again in violation of the 1973 peace agreement, the war might not have been lost.

Others are less convinced, citing the speed with which South Vietnamese forces collapsed in 1975 as proof of their fragility and the failure of the South Vietnamese government in the intervening years to instill essential leadership and commitment. At best, skeptics insist, Vietnamization required considerably more time than Americans disillusioned after four years of unsuccessful war were willing to allow it.

We'll never know. In any case, the situation in Iraq is very different. No superpower supports Iraq's insurgents, nor are they aided by the regular military forces of a neighboring state. Even without the foreign military presence against which the insurgents claim to be fighting, better organized, equipped and trained government forces should by rights be able to defeat their internal adversaries.

Whence the dilemma. While America's military presence furnishes the insurgents their excuse, it also provides the only effective security umbrella beneath which a home-grown Iraqi military capability can be constructed. Whatever material disabilities the insurgents suffer, they apparently lack neither commitment nor leadership. In contrast, both so far have proved elusive among Iraqi government forces.

Vietnamization confronted a similar problem. Inheriting a war in which the major engagements for four years had been fought mostly by Americans, the South Vietnamese Army lacked a tradition of victory. In its absence, three years proved insufficient to build the small unit leadership and tactical self-confidence needed to defeat battle-hardened North Vietnamese forces without American help.

In the communal antagonism between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites, moreover, Iraqification confronts a cultural problem that Vietnamization didn't. A truly national Iraqi Army must surmount that hostility even while defeating a largely Sunni-instigated insurgency. That isn't likely to happen quickly or easily.

Both history and current realities thus suggest that, if American military leaders intend once again to trade fighting for advice and training, U.S. forces probably will be needed in Iraq for a lot longer than the administration has been willing to acknowledge. If three years weren't enough to make South Vietnam's army self-sufficient, how much longer is it likely to take the Iraqis, starting from a weaker base and confronting internal divisions at least as severe?

On the other hand, no counterpart to the North Vietnamese Army stands poised to exploit gradual U.S. disengagement, nor is the Bush administration under the domestic political pressure to hasten it that confronted the Nixon administration from the day it took office. Barring a sharp escalation in American casualties, therefore, there may well be enough time to Iraqify if the Iraqis use it effectively.

The question is whether they'll be able to. That will depend heavily on whether they can surmount their communal antagonisms, at least to the extent of cooperating in their own security. It also presumes a commitment to that effort strong enough to override their distaste for a longer U.S. presence. Even more than has been true until now, in short, Iraqification implies a race between patience and progress.

That race will be taking place here at home as well as in Iraq. While Americans by and large have been remarkably steadfast about Iraq despite a succession of disappointments, our fortitude has limits. We as well as the insurgents will be gauging the strength of Iraqis' commitment to policing their own precincts.

If it fails to materialize, and if Iraqification like its predecessor of 36 years ago turns out to be no more than a convenient way to extract ourselves from an "unwinnable" war, we shouldn't be surprised to see it fail in the same way, and with potentially graver consequences.