Glenn Reynolds sorts through the latest round of criticisms directed at the Bush administration's conduct in Iraq's liberation. He has always been, like me, unconvinced by the pat "too few troops" complaint. For an occupation, the number of troops per capita in Iraq is very high, and that it has been sustained through nearly two years of localized, low-intensity combat is a testament to the strength of this perennial "military made for the last war."
Those with the strongest opinions can tend to be naturally argumentative, and uncomfortable with a situation that defies criticism — constructive or antagonistic. But what if that reflex ill-serves them in discussion on protecting an infant democratic Iraq from an enemy too animal to surrender?
Could the West simply be startled by the nature of this kind of war?
Personal motives aside, it seems a lot of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's critics aren't willing to confront the possibility that terrorist attacks against nascent civil infrastructures in liberated countries is inevitable, frustrating as it is to nearly every convention of state warfare. If they did, they'd have to concede that the fight against terrorists in Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with looting, or the number of Allied troops, or refusing to keep the Ba'athist SS on hand, or side-stepping of the Sunni Triangle, or any one of the strategically insignificant "mistakes" chalked up by the peanut gallery. And they'd also have to concede that every country in the Near East is on the front lines of — to quote Austin Bay — the Millenium War.
FROM GOOD, RATIONAL MEN: Wretchard and Chester each weigh in.
FROM A ONE-TIME DIRECT OBSERVER: Tim offers some helpful thoughts.
I do disagree with the internal "civil war" explanation. The highest serious estimate of Islamists and Ba'athists attacking the country is 10,000. If three tenths of a percent of Iraq's population of 25 million were the whole of the terrorist force, which it obviously isn't — given the foreign complement — then we would have to rename "Shay's Rebellion," a band of roughly 1,500 men who took up arms when the States were about 4 million strong, "the First American Civil War." If participation doesn't qualify it, can ideology or ethnicity? I say, "no." The Ba'athists — the Sunnis — are not very careful about company when they go out to murder.
I've thought about my reticence to pointed, specific criticism for some time now. It's largely because most of my demands for reforming Iraq were met shortly after the liberation of Baghdad. Once it was clear was the Bush administration was committed to an occupation of the scale and complexity not seen since the end of the Second World War, and would not subcontract out to an amoral, slothful United Nations administration — the likes of which have wasted time and lost lives in the Balkans and elsewhere — I was willing to offer a large amount of leeway. President Bush had already surmounted conventional wisdom by keeping his promise to hold Saddam Hussein accountable; if another promise, one to bring liberty to the Iraqi people and stay until a democratic society was constructed, was publicly made, which it was, most short-term setbacks would be dwarfed by an understanding that the White House would not turn from the objective. I tired of this sort of back-benching, made of suspicions that look absurd two years later.