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Jewish World Review June 28, 2005 / 21 Sivan, 5765 It's winnable By Rich Lowry
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
A new pall of gloom has settled over the Iraq War. There is no
doubt that the insurgency has increased its lethality in recent
months, and that can't be spun away. But neither is it cause for
existential despair. We can still beat the insurgency, with the very
same methods that have already proven successful in Iraq.
Last year, the U.S. military was faced with a radical Shia
revolt led by Muqtada al-Sadr in the south, presenting a ticklish
problem. If the U.S. were too heavy-handed in response, it could
have lost the tolerance of the crucial majority Shia for its
presence. If we are to prevail against the Sunni insurgency, success
will look like our victory over Sadr — a messy, imperfect amalgam
of military pressure and negotiations, ending with some of the bad
guys getting positions in Iraq's government.
In April 2004, it fell to Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey's 1st Armored
Division to handle Sadr's revolt in five southern cities. Dempsey
realized that his most important task was to isolate Sadr
politically, denying him the support of his fellow Shia. So
Dempsey's information campaign with the Iraqi public came first, and
the military operation was supplementary to it. "We reversed the
paradigm that we had lived with during my first 30 years in the
Army," says Dempsey.
Dempsey publicly said that he was going to systematically take
back the cities, leaving Karbala and Najaf — the cities with
especially important mosques — for last. "We were giving the Iraqi
people a sense that we were giving [Sadr] a chance to stand down,"
Dempsey says.
Eventually, Dempsey went after Sadr's forces militarily. But he
beat them back into the mosques at Karbala and Najaf, and stopped
there. There was a negotiated solution, with the U.S. giving up on
its demand to arrest Sadr, who was wanted on a murder charge.
Importantly, Sadr lost political support during the confrontation,
rather than gaining it. "This was very delicately done," says an
administration official.
With his forces still holed up in the mosques, Sadr lived to
fight another day. In August 2004, Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli's 1st
Cavalry Division had to confront him again. Like Dempsey, Chiarelli
realized the key was driving a wedge between the population and
Sadr. The fighting in Baghdad was concentrated in the northern part
of the slum of Sadr City, so Chiarelli redoubled his infrastructure
work in the south: "We let them in the north look at what was
happening in the south. We wanted them to say, 'These guys who are
fighting have stopped the improvement, all for what?'"
We should be aiming to do the same with the Sunni insurgents
(the foreign jihadists are truly irredeemable). That's why news of
the political process in Iraq is just as important as news of the
latest bombing. If the balance of Sunni opinion embraces the new
Iraq, this could isolate the insurgents within their own community,
the same way Sadr was isolated within his. While applying military
pressure, we will have to talk to the insurgency's more reasonable
fringes. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has confirmed that
these kinds of conversations are taking place, prompting ritual
denunciations from some conservatives for "negotiating with
terrorists."
Would that we could simply kill all our enemies in Iraq in a
neat black-and-white battle. Alas, we can't. Which is why the fight
against Sadr has to be our model.
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© 2005 King Features Syndicate |
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