To Sir With Love - A Wesley Clark Blog

WKC op-ed outlines "A New Course Needed in Iraq"

Today's op-ed in the Boston Globe proposes an exit strategy that the general will likely detail further in today's national security address in South Carolina. Cogent, pragmatic and compassionate, it marks what should be a turning point in Wesley Clark's campaign. At last a Democratic candidate has moved beyond angry criticism of the war's present course to present a workable and constructive plan.

Clark first establishes a realistic baseline of what should constitute a successful outcome:

Success means that Iraq is strong enough to sustain itself without outside forces. Success means that representative government has taken root. Success means that Iraq's economy and civil society are healthy again.

He goes on to list a number of steps which clearly distinguish his proposed course of action from that of President Bush. Several of his more compelling positions:

End the American monopoly.

We must call a summit of the leaders we've alienated, the people whose advice we've scorned, the organizations whose assistance we've turned down. Out of this gathering, we can build a new organization to replace the Coalition Provisional Authority and internationalize the face of the occupation.

To guide the reconstruction of Iraq, we need a civilian from an allied country. That civilian official would report to an international council, composed of representatives from nations that support our efforts to build a democratic Iraq.

As we saw in the Balkans, when we share power, other countries share our burden. I would transform the military occupation into a NATO operation with US forces in charge. With US command, NATO authority, and UN endorsement, other NATO countries would send troops, and Arab countries would also step in.
. . .

More intelligence resources.

Success in Iraq depends on developing good information and a good rapport with civilians. Right now too many of our linguists and intelligence experts are working on the search for weapons of mass destruction. International inspectors should take over that search, which would free up enough experts to help us track down those who are killing our soldiers and creating chaos.

It is sadly ironic that valuable intelligence resources are being diverted from rooting out terrorists in order to sustain the administration's delusions about WMD. As a result we are operating almost in the dark about the nature of the clear and present danger to our troops and countless innocent Iraqis. A report in USA Today from 11/4 finds:

U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement officials say that after six months of intensifying guerrilla warfare, Iraqi insurgents know more about the U.S. and allied forces - their style of operations, convoy routes and vulnerable targets - than the coalition forces know about them. Indeed, U.S. intelligence has had trouble simply identifying the enemy and figuring out how many are Iraqis and how many are foreign fighters.

Clark also comes out clearly for redeployment of the Iraqi Army as soon as possible, a promising step strongly proposed by Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi Governing Council in a persuasive NY Times op-ed last month, which I blogged about at the time:

The coalition's early decision to abolish the army and police was well intended, but it unfortunately resulted in a security vacuum that let criminals, die-hards of the former regime and international terrorists flourish. And the coalition's plan to build a 20,000-member lightly armed force mostly responsible for security and border control would make poor use of a valuable resource: the 300,000 Iraqi soldiers who simply went home with their weapons in the face of the American-led invasion.

Clark likewise argues:

We should recall the Iraqi Army to duty right now. If given good pay, good training, and solid background checks, Iraqi civilians can also help fill the intelligence and security gap.

Regarding the administration's tying a constitution to any turnover of authority to a representative body of Iraqis, Clark cites once again the United States' own post-revolutionary efforts to codify democracy.

Give the Iraqis a rising stake in our success.

It would be wrong to transfer authority to the Iraqis before they are ready to succeed, but we can give Iraqis more control over their destiny. The administration says the Iraqis can't have a sovereign government without a constitution. This is backwards. Iraqis, appointed by representatives from Iraq's 50 elected regional councils, should name an interim government even while a constitution emerges. That is what our Founding Fathers did.

If we give the interim government control over oil revenues and transfer authority on an ongoing basis, it will be easier for the Iraqi people to see that those blowing up pipelines are sabotaging their future. If we give civilians a stake in stemming the violence, they will help us solve this problem.

Ambitious? Certainly. A right-turn from the present course? It will be rejected in every particular by an administration so infatuated with its own reflection in the mirror of world affairs that everyone else has been crowded out.

But best of all, Wesley Clark, among the many experienced hands both at home and abroad who would seek to extricate us from this mess, is the best prepared to hit the ground running on all of this challenging plan's components: the military alliance to quash terrorism, the diplomatic piece which will certainly require making concessions that will break the American re-construction monopoly, and the education of the Iraqi people in the benefits and demands of democracy. The South Carolina speech today may prove to be the most important Wesley Clark has ever made.