The Defense Department, intelligence agencies and the representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke on Capitol Hill yesterday. With the electoral success in Iraq undisputed, contention on that country was subordinated to the question of Iraqi self-reliance. A single read of Wretchard's opinion of revelations made in the course of hearings makes him out as brooding but a second or third look shows us that he's concentrating on what must be done to set success in the Iraqi campaign and the broader war even further — and in the distance between place and destination are the miles not yet walked.
We know Allied troops cannot and will not leave now; we know that even the best Iraqi units lack the advantages of gradual assembly and development; and we know regime holdouts and foreign invaders lurk in the country and beyond. There are others to interpret the information on its technical and strategic merits. Here, we can induct from accomplishments what strengths can be relied upon for victory.
At one point, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby announced that the number of terrorist attacks on Iraq's January 30th election day approached 300. The figure could be disheartening only if one failed to examine the numerical and political results of such an assault. On election day, about thirty people died and nearly four score were wounded; so one out of every four attacks managed to hurt a voter or security personnel, and only one out of every ten attacks resulted in lost life. Thugs' methods were crude, ranging from tossing grenades at small groups of voters to popping mortars into crowds or near broad targets like polling stations; to the thankfully well-publicized exploitation of a retarded boy; to the detonation of several car bombs, at least one of which having gone off properly, far enough away from targets, killing only its operator.
The terrorists' showing was not physically impressive, and in fact the tally of 300, apparently not released before Jacoby's testimony, comes as a bit of a surprise. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said there would be a bloodbath; there was none. January 30th's death toll resembled that of a serious, local riot. For their hitman's solecism, were the terrorists effective? While eight million Iraqis voted, about a hundred were caught by attacks. One victim was a young woman, whose body was removed from the scene in the back of a white police pickup truck, and we know this because Geraldo Rivera offered a brief, emotional television soliloquy on the madness of Iraq's enemies. Yet the anchor's trademark flamboyance was immaterial here. Who wouldn't be outraged by youth snuffed out for claiming the right to popularly choose one's leaders? "What are these 'heroes' trying to prove?" he asked rhetorically, and it seems only terrorists and their supporters have protested.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was right to present our enemy as insistent and inventive. Those who oppose war against authoritarians would just as quickly swap their complaint of the Allies not having captured big names with one of not having declared the end of operations after symbolic apprehensions and a long enough lull in enemy activity. Even while Iran and Syria have been fooled into officially declaring their belligerence against the United States, and the time for some measure of action against these dedicated enemies approaches, leftists are glancing at their watches:
[DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN MARTY] MEEHAN: And you couldn't comment specifically on what kind of basing agreements we're going to seek. We'll just have to...RUMSFELD: I can't.
MEEHAN: And the other quick comment I'd make: You can't help but go to Iraq and see the concrete being poured and not get a sense that we intend a little more of a permanent presence.
And that's why I think it's important for the Congress to stay on top of this and to work with the administration.
[REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN DUNCAN] HUNTER: Let me tell the gentleman, Mr. Reyes is making cut-off signs here for you, Mr. Meehan.
The danger, of course, is that those who want nothing to do with trouble will use the attributes "ability" and "complexity," given to terrorists by the military, as marks of failure. Detractors tend not to be satisfied with one argument; "losing the peace" is just too politically irresistable. They berate the performance of Iraqis while demanding that so-called incompetents and discontents be left to fend for themselves. Always is the vaguely collectivist assumption that strongmen are necessarily smarter than the weak. But leftists forget that bullying requires no courage; just muscle. When brute force is checked, bullies turn back into cowards. Jim Dunnigan:
[D]ay by day, more cell phone tips come into the police from Sunni Arabs. The calls report suspicious activities, possible suicide bombers or gunmen. These tips are also the result of fear. Most of the victims of the suicide bomb attacks have been Iraqis, often Sunni Arabs. Calling the cops also means reporting all manner of criminal behavior. Thieves, kidnappers and gangsters of all descriptions prowl Sunni Arab areas. The relative lack of police has made Sunni Arab neighborhoods gangster friendly, and the locals want to change it. With their new cell phones, they now have a weapon.
Like the election, the Iraqi display of bravery is empirically what used to be conceptual. Some on the left are forcing themselves to publicly consider that maybe the president's greater goal in Iraq was, as in Afghanistan, to prevent any future international threat by fostering democracy; that maybe the Iraqi people would by nature respond enthusiastically and fearlessly; that maybe appeasing dictatorship was as wise as quarantining disease with burlap sacks; and that maybe, just maybe, the threat of international conflict can be solved by removing dictatorships, and that such a repudiation of animal strength is the zenith of every culture.
Leftists will be the most obstinate with that last possibility because its affirmation obligates them not only to intrude on the business of authoritarians heretofore believed protected by "sovereignty," but to ensure those afflicted nations a polity resembling America's, the country the left lives to denigrate. So we've begun to see a rather reluctant "okay" from the left on Iraq; okay, maybe Bush was right on Iraq. Okay, Iraqis had love for neither Saddam Hussein nor living as slaves. But relativists — nihilists, collectivists, solipsists, and many parochialists and pragmatists — deny universalism, and if, for whatever reason, they pride themselves on the premise of moral discontinuity they won't forfeit identity. Maybe, we'll be told, it's not worth the sacrifice to find out. Most of the left will indeed glance at their watches and the exit doorway.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, reminded the Congressional panel before him that military force was only one means to end the war. The free world would win or lose by its resolution of will, tipped one way or the other by intellectual contention and electoral victories; the oppressed would gain and keep their freedom by following the lead of those who had gone before, plucking out the authoritarian strands of their cultural tapestry, embracing heritage but discarding the antediluvian:
What we do know about these insurgents is that overall they are not very effective. They can spike in capability, as we saw before elections. But it goes back down to a steady state. We know that they are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. We saw it on election day. And I think that gave the Iraqi people a lot more confidence as they went out and saw a lot more Iraqis going to the polls. And the insurgents were certainly set back by that phenomenon, as they were in Afghanistan and as we see now, the Taliban and Afghanistan wanting to come and rejoin the political process....[I]t's an important issue. And I'd say the insurgent's future is absolutely bleak.
Americans and their allies made the Assembly elections possible. But no one but Iraqis can claim credit for success — which is how those of us who wish to see others adopting our values intended it. The hundreds of murders since Fardus Square, the Bloody April of 2004, the continuing intimidation by those trying to subjugate Iraq — all of it will fit into a chapter titled "Struggles in the Early Years" or somesuch, found near the back of history books read by Iraqi public school students who, depending on their province of origin, vaguely or indelibly remember their parents and elder family uncertain, often frustrated, occasionally mortally worried but leavened by a quiet hope. When we speak of the Allied liberation, we mean the gift of opportunity. Not the gift of self-government; instead the plans and specifications for foreign peoples to interpret and build from. Any graveness in the military's report to Congress was to underline this lesson: while we are tasked with provision of means, the only truly free are those that have freed themselves.