While passing the baton to Iraqis for control of Iraqi security is the most apparent way to allow a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, the slipshod and poorly planned execution of this missions raises several possible explanations, each more disheartening than the other.
It could simply be a perfect storm of administration incompetence and its ideological faith that Iraqi democracy would by moral force alone dissipate the insurgency. One can never underestimate the impact of either of these factors with the Bush administration.
Or it may be a mission designed to fail so that US forces can remain indefinitely, with a steady bleed of forces being the price for a Mideast presence. It is undeniable that our intervention in Iraq has left a major power vacuum in which Iran, Iraq’s nutty neighbor, has decided to flex its muscle and thwart US designs. With religious extremists and ethnic chauvinists on all sides, there is little reason to think any future Iraqi regime ruled democratically would remain friendly to the United States. In addition to the niggardly commitment of men and resources to the mission of training Iraqis, other evidence of a failure-by-design consists of plans for large permanent bases in Iraq and the administration’s steadfast refusal to commit to any kind of drawdown of forces based on a date certain or a clear metric of victory.
The administration does not now appear to plan to extricate American forces from Iraq by the only feasible means: scaling back objectives and letting Iraqis pursue them with a minimally competent, US-trained military. The administration’s earlier failure to provide adequate troops for a US-led counterinsurgency and its continuing failure to support the natural alternative of training a proxy force of Iraqis shows either a complete denial of reality or a not-too-hard-to-discern secret agenda to stay in Iraq forever.
In an eye-opening article in the American Conservative, former Army officer Joe Guthrie exposes the sad reality of our efforts to train Iraqis characterized alternately by Iraqi corruption, American indifference, and deceit at all levels to conceal the extent of our failure to create any Iraqi forces to take care of the insurgency upon any US departure. He writes:
Our cellââ¬â¢s replacement arrived in June in combination form. The first part came from two Special Forces teams. The second was part of the MiTT program (Military Transition Team), consisting of ten soldiers who were either experienced enlisted personnel or officersââ¬âmeaning they had at least six to ten years time in the Army. I went with other Iraqi Army Liaison Officers from different battalions to Taji to meet with these men and describe what they would face in Mosul. To my dismay, I quickly learned they possessed no knowledge of their final destination. They made the journey with no radio communication, some with only one pair of boots, no information on where they would go or what they would be doing when they got there. I expected to hear questions like ââ¬ÅWhat sort of operational tempo do your Iraqi counterparts possess?ââ¬Â In contrast, I was asked, ââ¬ÅLieutenant, do you have e-mail capability up in Mosul? Nobody has told us anything and I really want to know how I will communicate with my family.ââ¬Â I later found out that they were selected mostly from desk jobs in the Recruiting Command or the Pentagon. Yet I listened with them at their initial briefs about how they were performing ââ¬Åa mission that was the most important key to our success in Iraq.ââ¬Â If this were true then why were they sending desk jockeys with little or no experience training indigenous soldiers? And why during one of their initial briefings did their leader, a full colonel, have to plead for more boots for his men?
Once these men arrived in Mosul, they were given a two-day welcome briefing. Then they were sent to remote combat outposts in the middle of the worst areas. Their only radios had been given to them by us. Running water worked on occasion. And they received no equipment to outfit their Iraqi counterparts. To this day, MiTT teams operate under the same conditions.
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