WHERE’S Rudy Giuliani when we really need him? Looking back on a year of mistakes in Iraq, it’s clear he would have been a better choice to run our occupation than those we sent.
Hizzoner’s great insight was a blinding flash of the obvious: Respect for the law in great things starts with respect for the law in small things. Want to reduce urban violence? Bust the juvie who jumps the subway turnstile. Before he kills somebody.
It’s appalling how we’ve blustered on about building a civil society and a rule-of-law democracy in Iraq, while letting the streets degenerate into a wilderness. It began with the post-war orgy of looting. Our over-confident leaders looked away. Yes, some of the initial destruction after Saddam’s fall was an inevitable blowing off of steam by a long-oppressed population. But gutting museums, libraries and hospitals didn’t fall into the post-game-exuberance category.
We never made more than a half-hearted effort to enforce order on Iraq’s streets thereafter. Often, we made no effort at all – in terror-cities such as Fallujah, Ramadi or Samarra. Even when street thugs danced atop damaged U.S. vehicles in Baghdad, we treated them as if they were respectable citizens expressing their rights of free speech.
The truth is that, after conquering a vast state and deposing a monstrous dictator, the Bush administration didn’t really want to get involved.
News from the briar patch, guys: We’re in it now.
If anything has encouraged insurgents, terrorists and opportunist thugs in Iraq, it’s been our lack of resolve to enforce order. The effect has reached beyond the country’s borders. We’ve never made a serious effort to view our actions (or inaction) through regional eyes – except to recite mistaken claims that we mustn’t use too much force for fear of alienating those who are already our enemies.
Whether among the confused people of Iraq or in the squalor of the greater Arab world, those images, repeated almost daily, of Iraqi gangstas jumping up and down on our burned-out combat vehicles created, then reinforced, the impression that American troops not only could be defeated, but were being defeated.
The truth was irrelevant. In the age of the satellite dish, the image trumps all. The greatest recruiting tool for our enemies in Iraq and beyond its borders has been those clips of Iraqis plundering disabled Humvees with impunity.
It may be too late to recover the chips we’ve squandered at the strategic poker table. But we have to try our damnedest to come from behind.
In addition to the military reduction of the last breath of resistance in Fallujah and the arrest or killing of the renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf, we need to change the rules on Iraq’s streets.
If any adult touches a damaged or destroyed U.S. military vehicle, he must be shot. Start with a one-week warning period to get out the new rules. Then execute. The Iraqis playing trampoline on the hoods of our charred vehicles aren’t the ones who will build a better future.
As for the juvies, send them to reformatory camps. No exceptions, even if daddy’s the Sheik of Araby.
If we can’t or won’t bring order to that festering country’s streets, we’ll never see a lawful state emerge. I still believe that most Iraqis want democracy – in some adjusted form that gives them a voice in their country’s affairs. But they want and need security even more. You can’t build a legal economy or hold honest elections if you can’t control the neighborhoods in broad daylight.
Law first, then democracy. Sorry, but it doesn’t work the other way around.
The lack of resolution and common sense on the part of the Coalition Provisional Authority has plunged Iraq into crisis. You can’t change history’s direction on the cheap. From turning a corner six months ago – we were doing exactly that – our diplomats’ taste for displays of weakness and empty “negotiations” dragged the country back from the brink of success.
So, as the hordes of punk terrorists are merrily ringing our doorbell, here are “three simple rules for dating Iraq”:
Bring order to the streets, no matter what it takes: If you shoot plunderers and the Arab world wails, too bad. If we won’t pay the price of unpopularity in the short-term, we’ll fail and be despised for decades to come. Changing the direction of the Middle East is not about immediate popularity – it’s about go-the-distance effectiveness.
Never interrupt an ongoing military operation for “negotiations”: Finish the job, then talk. In the Middle East, strength, not chitchat, elicits respect.
Add the stick to the carrot: Stop this nonsense of trying to bribe terrorists and murderous Ba’athists to love us. Instead of pouring money into cities and town that kill American soldiers, expend development funds on the communities that behave. The present policy of rewarding those who assassinate our troops is as unacceptable as it is counterproductive.
This doesn’t take a genius. Just the sort of common sense that Rudy Giuliani brought to the greatest city in the world. Baghdad doesn’t need another “brilliant” diplomat. It needs a Wyatt Earp.
Ralph Peters is the author of “Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace.”