Peace through Prosperity - Plan for Iraq?

People are too caught up with words like "democracy" and "ally" in trying to solve Iraq. What is needed is a government that supports some form of the right to speak freely, so that you do not have to live in fear of your neighbors and those with guns for questioning tyranny by small neighborhood warlords or religious zealots. And people need to accept that just because someone has a different religion, it does not mean they lose their right to property, to be safe in their home, to not be held up by thugs while the police turn away because you are not one of "them."
Because frankly, if you have these things, or at least a genuine effort to turn towards these things, you will have peace. And people can flourish. And a state with good natural resources can let business grow with very little taxation. But that resource will always be a problem. Control of the oil means money and guns. It could be used for other political patronage like construction (helping a broken nation form local construction firms that work of government patronages usually work well for a country, like Japan and Korea). A Marshall plan mostly funded by oil. Is this ideal transparency and perfect government?
No. But just try to get to "peaceful." No bombs going off daily, no massacres, no death squads in the night. Corruption is a luxury concern of developed and peaceful nations. Let us hope they can get there in a generation. But you can get peace now with some tolerance of financial corruption and tolerated with a nod and a wink.
But that also forgets the past 5 years of bloodshed. 5 years of death. In a culture very focused on "honor" and the need to make tribes or families look strong. But in that system was an old policy of reconciliation, repayment for wrongs, and the making of peace. And Islam is instrumental in that rekindling of faith between the warring groups quite often. So given sufficient money coming in from the government to help lubricate the area and quench some of the unemployment (which leads people to be susceptible to plating bombs against an occupying force for a few hundred dollars so they can eat for some time).
People could buy into this if the US strongly announces it as an agenda and also begins a drawdown (interestingly, many of the opposition groups like the Jihadi Milita and Sadr, and some of the Sunni guerilla groups have only asked for a timetable to leave in a year. And when they control their troops, they do keep attacks down. Like the ones we're bribing at the moment in Anbar. If we can get a drawdown rolling, a good and reasonable schedule, and get the central gov. to start kicking money to the local power groups so they can fund reconstruction and job programs (aka patronage = power in democracy), then things might be able to settle down.
But the US needs to always be the public advocate for a position of peace, prosperity, and respect for basic rights (but tolerant of economic corruption as long as all the groups are getting a piece of the pie...). Not of torture, of checkpoint killings, and home raids.
After all, Al queda is not loved by the population. It has strong points in Mosul. But if the rest of the country agrees to focus on peace more (which means Maliki can't move on Sadr before the elections, and the fed's start sharing more with Sunni Anbar), then the US can put more resources into Mosul and also gain allies among the populace if they see that the rest of Iraq can relax a bit too.
Perhaps the October elections will change the situation. If people with actual political legitimacy take power and agree to get fat together off of the patronage system that the country is capable of (see the U.A.E. for that), then we can declare peace, get out, and the local Iraqis can mop up any Al Queda remainder (which shouldn't be hard because they are there because we are there, and the Iraqis have come to loath their brutishness).
So if we get Obama in and focus on something realistic and mutually beneficial for all the parties in Iraq, maybe we met get it.
And if there are very few American soldiers in Iraq by 2010, then there's hardly any saber rattling over "American soliders being killed by Iraqi insurgents trained by Iranians."
We're an occupier. There are a sizable portion of people that think it is a religious duty to attack occupiers. So that means you will always take some small level of casualties in running an occupation. Then you can talk to Iran without all the current heat and noise that our bungled occupation seems to generate. They reached out to the US after 911 and Afghanistan. But President Bush and his circle smacked the hand away.
If the Iraqi government is fully on your side and knows you are on the way out the door, it can be a much better partner in protecting you as well. Because you will still be giving money. You still have arms and can be used to quell disturbances.
The ripple effects of achieving stability in Iraq would benefit the whole region (especially, I think, Lebanon and our Iranian relations). But that is a topic for another time.

Criticisms or suggestions about the plan are welcome. Please feel free to copy the text and remix it to your own agenda (but I would appreciate a hat tip). Give peace (and money... democracy, whiskey, sexy?) a chance.

The First Goal of Foreign Policy Should Be Peace

We have lived in security, across the oceans, and generally safe from foreign violence on our shore, for quite some time now (aside from 9-11). Considering the drubbing everyone else got in World War II, our States never really saw war (since Hawaii and Alaska were still territories). And our democracy and society has brought great wealth. So we have become very belligerent in recent years about trying to force our version of things down peoples throats, because deep down it is a pretty good basic system we had going (although things have been a bit broken down lately). So we forget that in most areas, some of which never really lived under democracy, and have been the worlds battlefields for hundreds of years, the people really just want a respite from violence. They want to live in peace.

We think of the first Iraq war as a spirited jaunt actoss the desert, an amazing tactical and strategic campaign. And it was, from our perspective. But to the people of Iraq, they took 100,000 casualties and had many critical pieces of infrastruture destroued. Then there was the Shia uprising, which we let Saddam crush (the Coalition, which included many Sunni leaders, weren't keen on lending a hand), and instability and war in the kurdish areas. Then crushing economic sanctions (with occasional surgical air strikes against military positions). Then another American invasion and a continuing occupation. Before all this was the Iran-Iraq war, a stupid futile and ugly thing that bled a generation out of each nation for 8 years. Iraq alone had 400,000 + casualties. So things haven't been too pretty there in the last 30 years or so.

Iraq and Iran aren't the only countries in the area that have a large number of veterans, of wars that didn't really go all that well either (which can leave some resentment in a nation). Turkey's been fighting an insurgency of their own for about 2o years. Lebanon? Hell, their last war was just a few months ago. There have been recent conflicts and strife in Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Gaza and the West Bank (Palestine?), Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, etc. All with wars. All with much destruction and loss of life. Some have even lived for years now with a steady drumbeat of war and death in their communities.

So maybe what they are really looking for is peace. Let's just get everybody some damn peace so we can all relax and catch our breath and just try to work things out, instead of shooting for "regime change," or to "shake up the status quo." We are a bunch of democratic revolutionaries with the most powerful army in the world. The last time the world really say that kind of aggression was the French Revolution, after it was seized by Napolean. An acquiescent Republican Congress combined with Bush's imperial presidency (hopefully ending soon), has led our young, idealistic democratic soldiers into the sands of Iraq. It's no Waterloo, but it's still stirring up a lot of ill will and leading people to fearfully unite against us and scramble for ways to defend themselves. They'd prefer we didn't roll in guns blazing and pushing liberty, democracy, whiskey and sexy.

Foreign Policy has many branches, there are always many options on how to finesse a situation. The key is you got to sell what's buying. You'd think an industrious nation like us should recognize this. And the people in the mid-east are ready to buy peace. All the leaders would like some peace, maybe some more trade, and a solution to Israel. Hell, the Saudis have a proposal on the table right now that the other countries are behind, but Israel is being to damned stiff-necked about things (and going off half-cocked like that in Lebanon didn't help much either). So we need to get serious about bringing Peace to the middle east, not more war. Not destabilization. We have created a violent monster in Iraq, in the heart of the middle east. That's not exactly what they were hoping the new century would bring them in the year 2000. And then the second intifada began in September of 2000 when Sharon visited the Temple Mount and everything started falling apart. And since Clinton left, we've only made things worse.

So we need to focus on peace. Forget any of the other goals in mind (democracy, oil security, the neocon desire to show a strong "will," etc.). Make Peace the number one priority, and put some muscle into it, damnit. If the Bush administration put as much effort and face time into this as he did to his ill-conceived social security plan or the atrocious Medicare bill, then something positive could actually happen (although we'll probably have to wait for a new president). Hell, Bush ran away from the whole Palestinian situation from day one, because they viewed it as unsolvable, and so didn't want to look ineffectual by getting involved (always putting spin and perception as #1).

We need to let everyone know that all we want is peace (John Lennon foreign policy, we'll brand it, get a good Beatles soundtrack. Now that's some image management). And mean it. And work for it like its the most important thing in the world. Every trip around the world for Bush is just a photo op with an occasional lecture on freedom. But he never really talks about working for peace.

We prepare for war, so that we may live in peace. But Bush prepared for war in Iraq, got inspectors in and could have secured peace, but choose war. We need to bring peace instead. If our home is attacked, we will respond, like in Afghanistan. But aside from responding to direct attacks, we will focus all our attention to championing peace, to find a way for people to just put their guns and bombs down. And if everyone can just have 10 or 15 years without all this bloodshed, the world will be a much better place. Let's keep the violence we face just from fanatical terrorists, and lets cut off the terrorist recruiting flows by preventing dead children in the streets (especially if killed by US weapons). And if we are living in peace, we can all work together to prevent and stamp out terrorism. Instead of picking fights, let's give the people what they want. The democracy, whiskey, and sexy will come. Just give it time. As Milton Friedman said, “The free market is the only mechanism that has ever been discovered for achieving participatory democracy."

Global Solution - Peace in Afghanistan Runs Through India

The War on Terror Part one: The key to cutting off support for the Taliban

The US has ignored the UN and the international community since getting the resolution in 2002 to put inspectors back into Iraq, in the lead up to America's new quagmire.
This is a global problem. We are in a global struggle. We need the cooperation and assistance of the world to win on a global scale, just like in WW II and during the Cold War. And we need a global solution.

This is includes significant action on the four main drivers of conflict across the middle east: Israel, Iraq, the Pashtun areas of Southern Afghanistan and the Tribal areas of Pakistan, and Kashmir. The Israel and Iraq problems need to be addressed by all their neighbors (including Syria and Iran). But Pakistan is the key to the other two. First and foremost, there must be true peace in Kashmir and between the countries that were once brothers, Pakistan and India.

Let me explain. The two have fought three major wars since the British Raj on the subcontinent split in two. They are both nuclear powers. They have almost gone to war several times in the last 1o years. And while Pakistan turns a blind eye to militant infiltration into Kashmiri India, Pakistan has basically lost all three of the major conventional wars. So once the US sort of abandoned the Pakistani government after the Soviets left Afghanistan in the 80s and began making nice with India, they planned for the worst. The Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, began to support a group called the Taliban. If India invaded Pakistan and took the capital (located very close to the Indian border), the Pakistani military could fall back into the mountains of the tribal areas and into Afghanistan, with their allies, the Taliban. Since India is majority Hindu, Pakistan supported a very religious sect so they could count on a jihadi sentiment (like we are experiencing in Iraq) to help them resist the outsiders. After the US gave an ultimatum after 9-11, Pakistan has mad some effort to change, but 20 years of investment in the Taliban creates a very close bond between many in the ISI, Pakistani religious parties, and the Taliban. So we must bring a true and lasting peace to the Eastern Indian border to change the dynamic on the Afghani Western border.

This will not be easy. But we must break the log-jam that is stifling the relationship between India and Pakistan. We must find a way to neutralize their stiff-necked pride and bitter, recent past. And once this sort of existential threat is lifted from the East, support for the Taliban from inside the Pakistani government will plumet. It will lose any strategic value, and will instead become a source of trouble. There will be no more strong Pakistani ISI and military support

We must neutralize this threat to stability, and prevent a resurgence of violence and strife in Afghanistan. But we cannot declare war on Pakistan, and the pride of the people in that region would never stand American invasion. We must show Pakistanis, Pushtuns, and Afghanis that America wants peace for the region, not war. But this requires action on the periphery as well in the center.

As Winston Churchill said, "it is better to jaw-jaw than to war-war." We cannot pretend we can bomb everyone in that part of the world away, since right now, the madrases are a veritable factory of Taliban production. The Pashtun tribesman on both sides of the border are bound by language, pride, and blood, and years of constant warfare and resistance from outsiders. They have lived through decades of conflict and war, first funded by Americans against the Soviets, then by the Pakistani ISI, which led to Taliban control of Afghanistan. And the motives and perceived needs of Pakistan that led to this alliance still exist. The instability in Kashmir. It is the key to the region.

This covers Kashmir and some of Afghanistan. I will discuss the rest of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel in future posts in the "Global Solution" series.

Update, 11-14-06:

The New York times just published a story about the recent rash of suicide bombers infiltrating into Afghanistan. It notes:

The would-be suicide bombers arrested recently, the Afghan intelligence official
said, emerge from two clear strands.
Some are linked to extremist groups that have long been set up and run by Pakistani intelligence as an arm of foreign policy toward rival governments in Afghanistan and India. They are technically illegal and the government now says it has cracked down on them.
Others are allied with Afghan groups like the Taliban and the renegade
militia commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, also a longtime protégé of Pakistani
intelligence, who has now allied himself with the Taliban, Afghan and NATO
officials say.

There are too many in Pakistan right now that either view the Taliban as either heroes or strategic assets. We have to change the dynamic in the region so that they are viewed as counter-productive and troublesome. The first step is to defuse the problem with India. Only then can the Pakistani government begin to take on the Madraseshat lionize the Taliban.

Update II:

For a smash up gathering of information on the tribal borderlands of Pakistan, go to this Frontline site. Movie clips, interviews, background stories and more. Only go if you want to know what we are fighting in southern Afghanistan though. And if you don't hate the troops. You don't hate the troops, do you?

What To Do About Iraq to Find a Worldwide Solution

Change is afoot in Iraq. But change in Iraq has been for the worse for quite some time. So it's time to understand that we cannot shift our policy, strategy, or troop levels and expect to erase the effects of the last three years. There is nothing we can do to change the fact that we are trapped in a low-grade civil war between many competing factions. To find a solution to our quagmire, we need to expand our horizon of possibilities. It's time admit to the world we've screwed up, we need some help, and we're willing to cede control to the world if its ready for that burden.

There was an idea infecting Washington at the end of the 90s of "We have this military so we might as well use it." Bush took this policy and ran with it, but running too far is one of the dangers inherent in such a reckless philosophy. We should always try to debate things in the arena of world opinion, and if we can't win that debate and there's no actual attack or actionable intelligence, we should simply remain vigilant and ready, like in the Cold War.

Lest we forget our history, The UN did authorize a rigorous inspection program, and Saddam let them in. An inspection team came in, and it made a report to the General Assembly only half-way through its search for WMDs (which we know now didn't exist). When they didn't find anything upon making a status report to the UN, Bush threw the inspectors out and invaded. He didn't adapt his belligerent policy to reality, and let his dogma rule his actions. Because in the minds of the Bush admin., resolve is all important, and never back down. So if you have started massing troops on the border, why not use it? That might a good surprise battle plan. But it is an utter failure politically. Invading before the search is done, against a crippled military we toppled in a few weeks? It didn't look good to the rest of the world, and it's all kind of gone downhill, with increasing anarchic violence and a decreasing Coalition of the Willing.

It's now a low grade civil war with us caught in the middle trying to keep the peace, but there is a substantial fraction of the various violent factions that view us as target number one. It creates a cloud of violence that hovers around our troops, and once the explosions start going off, neutrals get caught in the middle and bodies start to pile up. We're both targets and hunters, so we both inflict and invite violence. We do stop the local sects and militias from going at each other's throats 100% (we keep them down to about 25%, just assassinations, kidnapping, car-bombs, and the occasional ethnic cleansing bus hijacking). So that's what we're doing right now, the status quo we're defending. Here's what it looks like:

As a first step, we should scale back a heavy presence in the middle of urban areas. I think we can prevent the formation of armies or large mobs from mounting significant offensives, but from a more protected and remote position. That way, there will be less attacks on our forces (although I would expect it to increase some against our supply convoys), and less random violence against the civilians and kids. But that first step isn't enough for peace. And that is our goal. Peace. That's what winning is. And Bush doesn't seem to understand that.

We need to announce that we are open to a status quo change big time. And that means saying sorry to the world for kinda goin' off half-cocked into Iraq. We tell them we are going to establish a timetable for departure, but we're ready to commit to a totally different type of military presence in Iraq if the rest of the world is behind us. And we are willing to talk to the world and debate around the world how to handle this. And we're even willing to let another nation take the lead of any military force (subject to our veto, natch). Because leaving Anarchy in the midst of a bloody civil war and terrorist fanatics in the heart of the middle east would be a tragedy for the world.

Our last civil war? 141 years ago, and fought over slavery. There's been a hell of a lot of ugly civil wars around the globe over the last 50 years. We should ask around and see if anyone's got any good ideas on how to go forward. We understand economic based ideological civil wars a bit (like in Vietnam), but don't really get the nationalistic aspect much (also Vietnam). So let's ask around, and have some honest conversations about how to make peace and what the rest of the world is willing to do.

Right now, it's America, the local Iraqis, and the terrorists. But if it was the World instead of just America (and a few others), it could totally change the dynamic. We need to lay it on the shoulders of the world as well, so at the very least, if the world decides to let it all go to hell, we'll at least know where everything stands on the international level when we ask the world to deal with a problem collectively. We should offer to bear much of the burden and lend the firepower of our armed forces, but be open to whatever the world-wide debate produces. But we must put some real pressure on the world to find an answer to this question together.

But how often do we really put on the pressure in the UN? We put on some pressure in the run up to the Iraq war, but the UN needs general peace and stability to operate. Unless specifically authorized to use force, like in Korea, it can't operate in the violent anarchy of Iraq at the moment. We put on the pressure and got a serious resolution before the war. Let's get one to end the war too.

We'll establish a timetable to move completely to the periphery of Iraq (Murtha style re-deployment) in one year. But we will also announce our determination to ask all mankind to find a solution to this devilry. This will include a world-wide diplomatic tour for an honest conversation on the whole state of affairs in the Middle East and how to make it right: Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Iran's nuclear program, Hezbollah and Lebanon, the Golan heights and Syria: everything. Our executive leadership (President, VP, Secretaries of State, Defense) and our Senators will barnstorm the globe. Local Iraqis of all stripes will be invited to go travel for a solution as well, and the U.S. will pick up the tab. We will hold regional summits. And at the end of it all, with about four months left on our timetable, we'll take it to the UN for another month of debate. We will open the floor for a free-wheeling debate in the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council. Then we'll vote. And if one vote doesn't work, we'll make changes and vote again. And we'll vote on an official General Assembly recommendation, and then we'll have a vote in the Security Council. And I'll be damned if I know where we will be standing when the dust clears, but it can't be uglier than what we're looking at now.

I won't be naive. I won't expect this year-long bout of worldwide diplomacy to solve all our problems. But it might stop this downward spiral we're in of violence, threats, and suspicions. Let's pull away from this all-consuming fear-mongering and ascribing the fanaticism of Al-Queda to traditional Heads of State, and try to inject some rational cooperation on shared interests. It will be a noble and honest effort, unprecedented in the history of human conflict, and it might be crazy enough to work.

If it doesn't and things have deteriorated in the meantime...well, our I'll folks will be working on plan B. And we'll see what the Iraqi people and government think about things at the time. But I don't see how it could be a worse situation than our current trajectory.