Here in Arizona we deal ever year with wildfires. Just like insurgencies, wildfires need three things to grow - spark, air and fuel. Much has been written about Bush's mismanagement of post invasion Iraq and the disastrous decisions which provided the spark and fed those early flames like a strong wind. Having failed to stomp out the fire, or even acknowledge the smoke in those initial months, we are left to find a way to control the continued burning.
Many on the left look at the misleading into and mismanagement of the war and conclude that we are justified in calling for the immediate withdrawal of our troops. Without rehashing the arguments lets just say that I don't think we can just leave Iraq to burn. Fires left unchecked even in the most remote and desolate desert eventually will affect us all.
What we, and by we I mean the American people, need is a strategy to win in Iraq. We can't "stay the course" and keep pissing on the flames and we can't leave Iraq to burn. We need to put the fire out.
Insurgencies survive only with the support of the general population. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a few idiots with bombs and guns can wreak a lot of havoc. But without safe places to stage and without a populace willing to look the other way, the insurgency can be quickly quenched. We need to take the fuel away from the fire.
That fuel is Iraqi mistrust of our intentions feed by a long history of western colonization of Arab lands, our insatiable need for oil, and tone deaf decisions which have only made that mistrust grow. From securing the oil ministry and leaving the rest to the looters, to Abu Gharib, to the building of permanent bases we have telegraphed exactly the wrong impressions to the Iraqi people. We are fueling the flames at exactly the time we should be building a firebreak between the hot fires of rebellion and the tender fuel of the Iraqi people.
If starving the fire of its fuel is the winning strategy, here's a few practical tactics to get us started:
- Establish with the Iraqi government tangible benchmarks for the full transition of security from U.S. to Iraqi forces
- Announce without equivocation and repeatedly that all U.S. troops will leave Iraq as soon as those benchmarks are met and possibly even if they are not
- Cease any efforts or appearances of efforts to establish permanent bases in Iraq
- Award all reconstruction contracts to Iraqi firms even if they will be more corrupt and less efficient than Halliburton (although that may be hard to do)
- Encourage and support international oversight of all Iraqi elections to prevent the appearance of U.S. interference
Iraq will not be the shining beacon of Democracy that some idealists hoped, but its fires cannot be allowed to burn unchecked either.