by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n T<\/span>he insurgency in Iraq has no military capability either to drive the United States military from Iraq or to stop the American training of Iraqi police and security forces \u2014 or, for that matter, to derail the formation of a new government. The United States air base at Balad is one of the busiest airports in the world. Camp Victory near Baghdad is impenetrable to serious attack. And even forward smaller bases at Kirkuk, Mosul, and Ramadi are entirely secure. Instead, the terrorists count on three alternate strategies:<\/p>\n First, through the use of improvised explosive devices (IED), assassinations, and suicide bombings, they hope to make the Iraqi hinterlands and suburbs appear so unstable and violent that the weary American public says \u201cenough of these people\u201d and calls home its troops before the country is stabilized. In such a quest, the terrorists have an invaluable ally in the global media, whose \u201cif it bleeds, it leads\u201d brand of journalism always favors the severed head in the street over the completion of yet another Iraqi school.<\/p>\n Second, the al Qaedists think they can attack enough Shiites and government forces to prompt a civil war. And indeed, in the world that we see on television, there is no such thing as a secular Iraq, an Iraqi who defines himself as an Iraqi, or a child born to a Shiite and Sunni. No, the country, we are told, is simply three factions that will be torn apart by targeted violence. Sunnis blow up holy places; Shiites retaliate; and both sides can then blame the Americans.<\/p>\n Third, barring options one and two, the enemy wishes to pay off criminals and thugs to create enough daily mayhem, theft, and crime to stop contractors from restoring infrastructure and thus delude the Iraqi public into believing that the peace would return if only the Americans just left.<\/p>\n O<\/span>ne of the great lapses in world journalism is investigating what happened to the 100,000 criminals let out by Saddam Hussein on the eve of the war. Thus the terrorists have succeeded in making all the daily mayhem of a major city appear to be political violence \u2014 even though much of the problem is the theft, rape, and murder committed by criminals who have had a holiday since Saddam freed them.<\/p>\n We are at a standoff of sorts, as we cannot yet stop the fear of the IED, and they cannot halt the progress of democracy. The Americans are unsure whether their own continued massive use of force \u2014 GPS bombings or artillery strikes \u2014 will be wise in such a sensitive war of hearts and minds, and must be careful to avoid increased casualties that will erode entirely an already attenuated base of public support for remaining in Iraq at all. The terrorists are more frustrated that, so far, they cannot inflict the sort of damage on the Americans that will send them home or stop the political process entirely.<\/p>\n During this sort of waiting game in Iraq, the American military silently is training tens of thousands of Iraqis to do the daily patrols, protect construction projects, and assure the public that security is on the way, while an elected government reminds the people that they are at last in charge.<\/p>\n The IED and suicide bomber answer back that it is a death sentence to join the government, to join the American-sponsored police and army, and to join the rebuilding efforts of Iraq.<\/p>\n W<\/span>ho will win? The Americans I talked to this week in Iraq \u2014 in Baghdad, Balad, Kirkuk, and Taji \u2014 believe that a government will emerge that is seen as legitimate and will appear as authentic to the people. Soon, ten divisions of Iraqi soldiers, and over 100,000 police, should be able to crush the insurgency, with the help of a public tired of violence and assured that the future of Iraq is their own \u2014 not the Husseins\u2019, the Americans\u2019, or the terrorists\u2019. The military has learned enough about the tactics of the enemy that it can lessen casualties, and nevertheless, through the use of Iraqi forces, secure more of the country with far less troops. Like it or not, the American presence in Iraq will not grow, and will probably lessen considerably in 2006, before reaching Korea-like levels and responsibilities in 2007.<\/p>\n The terrorists, whom I did not talk to, but whose bombs I heard, answer back that while they fear the Iraqization of their enemy and the progress of democracy, they can still kill enough Shiites, bomb enough mosques, and stop enough rebuilding to sink the country into sectarian war \u2014 or at least something like Lebanon of the 1980s or an Afghanistan under the Taliban.<\/p>\n It is an odd war, because the side that I think is losing garners all the press, whether by blowing up the great golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, or by blowing up an American each day. Yet we hear nothing of the other side that is ever so slowly, shrewdly undermining the enemy.<\/p>\n The Iraqi military goes out now on about half the American patrols, as well as on thousands of their own. It is not the Fallujah brigade of early 2004 \u2014 rather, it is developing into the best trained and disciplined armed force in the Middle East. While progress in reestablishing the infrastructure necessary for increased electricity and oil production seems dismal, in fact, much has been finished that awaits only the completion of pipelines and transmission lines \u2014 the components most vulnerable to sabotage. It is the American plan, in a certain sense, to gradually expand the security inside the so-called international or green zone, block by block, to the other 6 million Iraqis outside, where sewers run in the streets and power from the grid is available less than 12 hours per day.<\/p>\n T<\/span>he nature of the debate has also changed at home. Gone is \u201cmy perfect war, your screwed-up peace\u201d or \u201cno blood for oil,\u201d or even \u201cBush lied, thousands died.\u201d And there is little finger-pointing any more that so-and-so disbanded the Iraqi army, or didn\u2019t have enough troops, or didn\u2019t supply enough body armor. Now it is simply a yes or no proposition: yes, we can pull it off with patience, or no, it is no longer worth the cost and the lives.<\/p>\n Most would agree that the Americans now know exactly what they are doing. They have a brilliant and savvy ambassador and a top diplomatic team. Their bases are expertly run and secured, where food, accommodations, and troop morale are excellent. Insufficient body armor and unarmored humvees are yesterday\u2019s hysteria. Our generals \u2014 Casey, Chiarelli, Dempsey \u2014 are astute and understand the fine line between using too much force and not employing enough, and that the war cannot be won by force alone. American colonels are the best this county has produced, and they are proving it in Iraq under the most trying of conditions. Iraqi soldiers are treated with respect and given as much autonomy as their training allows.<\/p>\n Again, the question now is an existential one: Can the United States \u2014 or anyone \u2014 in the middle of a war against Islamic fascism, rebuild the most important country in the heart of the Middle East, after 30 years of utter oppression, three wars, and an Orwellian, totalitarian dictator’s warping of the minds of the populace? And can anyone navigate between a Zarqawi, a Sadr, and the Sunni rejectionists, much less the legions of Iranian agents, Saudi millionaires, and Syrian provocateurs who each day live to destroy what\u2019s going on in Iraq?<\/p>\n The fate of a much wider war hinges on the answers to these questions, since it would be hard to imagine that bin Laden could continue to be much of a force with a secure and democratic Iraq, anchoring ongoing liberalization in the Gulf, Lebanon, and Egypt, and threatening by example Iran and Syria. By the same token, it would be hard to see how we could stop jihadism from spreading when an army that is doing everything possible still could not stop Islamic fascism from taking over the ancestral home of the ancient caliphate.<\/p>\n Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq \u2014 mostly unafraid that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of language and religion, the propaganda of the state-run Arab media, and the cynicism of the liberal West are all stacked against them. Iraq may not have started out as the pivotal front in the war between democracy and fascism, but it has surely evolved into that. After visiting the country, I think we can and will win, but just as importantly, unlike in 2003-04, there does not seem to be much of anything we should be doing there that in fact we are not.<\/p>\n \u00a92006 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The insurgency in Iraq has no military capability either to drive the United States military from Iraq or to stop the American training of Iraqi police and security forces \u2014 or, for that matter, to derail the formation of a new government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[779],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-14y","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4124,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-other-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":4126,"position":0},"title":"The Other Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Taji, Iraq \u2014 Screaming Iraqis and mangled body parts still dominate Americans' nightly two minutes of news from Iraq. And, indeed, Iraq is still\u00a0a scary place within the Sunni Triangle. Opposition politicians in the United States charge that our troops don't have enough\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2006"","block_context":{"text":"February 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/february-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3773,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-wonders-of-hindsight\/","url_meta":{"origin":4126,"position":1},"title":"The Wonders of Hindsight","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 24, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Looking back is a sure way to stumble. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Most of the blame game being played over the Iraqi occupation \u2014 and always with the wisdom of hindsight \u2014 is now irrelevant. Should more or fewer soldiers be in Iraq? That\u2019s basically settled: There\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2006"","block_context":{"text":"October 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/october-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4790,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-mind-of-our-enemies\/","url_meta":{"origin":4126,"position":2},"title":"The Mind of Our Enemies","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 30, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorting out all the agendas in Iraq. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online \u201cIt is easy to be against the war now,\" boasts Howard Dean, as he goes on to describe Iraq as a hopeless quagmire. We are reminded daily not of the birth of the first consensual government\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2004"","block_context":{"text":"January 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/january-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4767,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/blame-whom\/","url_meta":{"origin":4126,"position":3},"title":"Blame Whom?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 14, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers Let me get this straight. Two-and-a-half years after September 11, on a similar eleventh day of the month, 911 days following 9-11, and on the eve of Spanish elections, Al Qaeda or its epigones blows up 200 and wounds 1,400 Spaniards. This horrific attack\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2004"","block_context":{"text":"March 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/march-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3517,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hope-yet-for-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":4126,"position":4},"title":"Hope Yet for Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Iraq for most Americans is now a toxic subject \u2014 best either ignored or largely evoked to blame someone for something in the past. Any visitor to Iraq can see that the American military cannot be defeated there, but also\u00a0is puzzled over exactly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2007"","block_context":{"text":"October 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/october-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4490,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/fight-over-flight-staying-power\/","url_meta":{"origin":4126,"position":5},"title":"Fight Over Flight: Staying Power","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson The New Republic With the increasing violence leading up to this week's Iraqi elections for 275 seats in a new national assembly, a despair emerged in some U.S. circles that 150,000 American troops and their coalition allies could never really maintain security. 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