[lit-ideas] Helprin's analysis
- From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 00:15:32 EDT
Here's the last half of that article cited in a previous post, in which
Helprin gives his view of the Iraq blunders, Kerry, etc.
[http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/mhelprin/]
_____
The year-and-a-half delay between action in Afghanistan and Iraq mobilized
the Arabs and the international left, weakened the connection with September
11,
and prompted allies who would have been with us to fall away. The delay was
especially unconscionable because it was due not merely to normal difficulties
but to the aforementioned military insufficiencies and to indecision
masquerading as circumspection. Once the Army and Marines were rolling, their
supply
lines were left deliberately unprotected, and are vulnerable to this day. Why?
Why do the generals, in patently identifiable top-down-speak, repeatedly state
that they need nothing more than the small number of troops (for occupying
such a large country) that they are assigned? Why do they and the
administration
steadfastly hold this line even as one event cascading into another should
make them recoil in piggy-eyed wonder at the lameness of their policy?
From the beginning, the scale of the war was based on the fundamental
strategic misconception that the primary objective was Iraq rather than the
imagination of the Arab World, which, if sufficiently stunned, would tip itself
back
into the heretofore easily induced fatalism that makes it hesitate to war
against the West. After the true shock and awe of a campaign of massive
surplus, as
in the Gulf War, no regime would have risked its survival by failing to go
after the terrorists within its purview. But a campaign of bare sufficiency,
that
had trouble punching through even ragtag irregulars, taught the Arabs that we
could be effectively opposed.
Mistakenly focused on physical control of Iraq, we could not see that, were
we to give it up, the resultant anarchy might find a quicker resolution than
the indefinite prolonged agony through which our continuing presence has nursed
it. Seeking motivation after the fact, we decided to make Iraq a Western-style
democracy, and when that began to run off the rails, to make Iraq the mere
model for a Middle East filled with Western-style democracies. Of course,
instead of a model to inspire them (of which they have many, such as
Switzerland),
what the Arabs need is first the desire, and then a means to overcome the
police states that oppress them, neither of which a reconfigured Iraq, were it
possible, would supply. Japan and Germany are often cited in defense of this
overreach, but rather than freeze our armies in place and set them to policing
and
civil affairs as we fought through the Second World War, we waited until we
had won.
Having decided to remake a country of 26 million divided into warring
subcultures with a shared affection for martyrdom and unchanging traditions,
the
administration thought it could do so with 100,000 troops. Israel, which nearly
surrounds the West Bank, speaks its language and has 37 years of experience in
occupation, keeps approximately (by my reckoning) one soldier on duty for every
40 inhabitants and 1/13th square mile, and the unfortunate results are well
known. In Iraq we keep one soldier per 240 inhabitants and 1.7 square miles. To
put this in yet clearer perspective, it is the same number of uniformed
police officers per inhabitant of the City of New York. But the police in New
York
are not at the end of a 9,000-mile supply chain (they live off the land at
Dunkin' Donuts), they do not have to protect their redoubts, travel in convoys,
maintain a hospital system, run a civil service, reform a government, build
schools, supply electricity, etc. And, most importantly, they do not have to
battle an angry population that speaks an alien language, lives in an immense
territory, and is armed with automatic weapons, explosives, suicide bombers,
and
rocket-propelled grenades. Imagine if they did, and you have Iraq. Imagine if
then the mayor said, "We don't need anything further, it's just a question of
perseverance: Bring it on," and you have the Bush continuum.
Leaving out entirely our gratuitously self-inflicted inability to deal with
major contingencies in Asia, this has been the briefest summary of
mismanagement, a full exposition of which could fill a thick and very
unpleasant book. But
to these failings the left offers no better alternative, for if the right has
failed in execution, the left's failure, in conception, is deeper.
John Kerry may say one thing and another, but no matter how the topgallants
break in the Democratic Party, its ideological keel is a leaden and unthinking
pacifism, a pretentious and illogical deference to all things European, and
the unhinged belief that America by its very nature transforms every aspect of
its self-defense into an aggression that justifies the offense against which it
is defending itself. After the enemy has attacked our shipping, embassies,
aviation, capital, government and largest city, and after he has slit the
throats of defenseless stewardesses, and crushed and immolated three thousand
unwary
men, women, and children, those who wonder what we did wrong are not likely
to offer a spirited defense.
Their allergy to military expenditure assures that, unlike Republicans, who
provided just enough to accomplish an arrogant plan if nothing went wrong, they
would not provide enough to accomplish a humble plan if everything went
right. They say that war is not the answer, and, meaning it, profess their
faith in
special operations. But are we to credit their supposed indignation that in
the early Bush presidency there was a shortage of covert insertions into
sovereign states, a dearth of assassinations, the absence of close cooperation
with
the intelligence services of dictatorships, and insufficient funding for black
operations? Or to take seriously the crackpot supposition that this was a war
for oil, the price of which, since the war, has gone up? And why then did we
not invade Venezuela? It's closer, and the food is better.
With nothing to offer but contradictions and paralysis, they and their
presidential aspirant have staked their policy on a mystical and irrational
prejudice against unilateralism. This is a new thing under the visiting moon,
an
absurdity propounded by the very same people who often urge the U.S. to
unilateral
action when it refrains, for example, from interventions in Africa to fight
genocide or AIDS. In what way is America, moving in concert with Britain and
Spain to invade Iraq, more unilateral or less multilateral than France moving
in
concert with Germany and Belgium to oppose it? And does a wrong act cease to
be wrong if others join in, or a right cease to be right if others do not?
Just as many Republicans detest the idea of international governance but glow
at the prospect of empire, many Democrats are reliably anti-imperialist yet
dewy-eyed about world government. Thus, Sen. Kerry's only non-secret policy for
the war is a bunch of mumblings about the U.N. and our "allies," presumably
the ones who are not with us at the moment in Iraq. It is they and the U.N. who
in the fairy dust of multilateralism will solve this most difficult problem.
But in fact they neither can nor will do any such thing. Either Sen. Kerry
knows that his strategy is just a cover for simple, complete, and ignominious
withdrawal, or he does not know, which is worse.
Though the parties have been incompetent, nothing but politics keeps them
from correcting their deficiencies, and at a point like this, even if
professional politicians are incapable of knowing it, explicit and decisive
correction
would be the best politics. The situation need not remain intractable if once
again respect is accorded to certain fundamentals.
The military must be reconstituted so that it has a surplus of power without
having to choose between transformation and tradition, quality and numbers,
heavy and light: All are necessary. This is expensive, and would require more
plain speaking and less condescending manipulation from those who govern, but
would allow for the quick and overwhelming application of force, unambiguous
stay
ing power, coverage of multiple contingencies, and, most importantly,
deterrence. It is always better to deter an enemy than, by showing weakness, to
encourage him to take the field.
In addition to more aggressive unconventional, police, and paramilitary
operations against the fragmented terrorist legion, we must strengthen civil
defense. Although striking a thousand targets is easier than defending ten
million,
it isn't possible to control every laboratory and closet in the world. If the
social cost and hundreds of billions of dollars annually necessary for a
probabilistically effective defense against weapons of mass destruction appear
a
great burden, they pale before an unrestrained epidemic or a nuclear detonation
in a major city.
In the Middle East, our original purpose, since perverted by carelessness of
estimation, was self-defense. To return to it would take advantage of the
facts that the countries in the area do not have to be democracies before we
require of them that they refrain from attacking us; that a regime with a firm
hold
upon a nation has much at stake and can be coerced to eradicate the terrorist
apparatus within its frontiers; and that the ideal instrument for this is a
remounted and properly supported U.S. military, released from nation building
and counterinsurgency, its ability to make war, when called upon, nonpareil.
The Kurds and Shia of Iraq could within days assert control in their areas.
We already have ceded part of Sunni Iraq: What remains is to pick a strongman,
see him along, arrange a federation, hope for the best, remount the army, and
retire, with or without Saudi permission, to the Saudi bases roughly
equidistant to Damascus, Baghdad, and Riyadh. There, protected by the desert,
with
modern infrastructure, and our backs to the sea, which is our metier, we would
command the center of gravity of the Middle East, and with the ability to
strike
hard, fast and at will, could enforce responsible behavior upon regimes that
have been the citadel of our enemies.
In a war that has steadily grown beyond expectations, America has been poorly
served by those who govern it. The Democrats are guilty of seemingly innate
ideological confusion about self-defense, the Republicans of willful disdain
for reflection, and, both, of lack of imagination, probity, and
preparation--and, perhaps above all, of subjecting the most serious business in
the life of a
nation to coarse partisanship. Having come up short, both parties are sorely
in need of a severe reprimand and direct order from the American people to
correct their failings and get on with the common defense.
Mr. Helprin is a novelist, a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal
and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.
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