The War Room, Cont

Four: Intelligence. All the experts agree that in counterinsurgency operations, body counts are meaningless and good intelligence is the key to ultimate success. In Malaya the Communists initially enjoyed better intelligence than the authorities, from frightened and/or sympathetic villagers. Once the villagers were separated out in protected villages, however, the balance of advantage switched sides and the British began to get the better information. In Iraq we are at an earlier stage of this process. The Saddamite-Islamist coalition seems to have more agents in sensitive posts than the U.S. and its allies have in their conspiracy. What is now needed is clever exploitation of the divisions within Sunni Iraq. Most Sunni Moslems were not Baathists but victims of Saddam Hussein. We ought to be able to exploit that fact to get better intelligence. But this is a long job, and it will require the commitment of a large U.S. force for a long time.

All of which confirms that we face, indeed, a long hard slog. If, moreover, the U.S. needs to commit more resources to Iraq at a time of multiplying crises in Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere, two conclusions follow. First, the U.S. needs allies, because global unilateralism is an impractical fantasy. Second, the American people need a kind of non-imperial fortitude to sustain them through the inevitable setbacks. And because America is where the battle for Iraq will be won or lost, fostering such a fortitude is perhaps the central task of statecraft. Two American qualities might, together, have provided such a fortitude towards Iraq: the traditional American determination to avenge attacks upon the U.S., and the strong national patriotism of ordinary Americans. But the administration has not succeeded in demonstrating that the war in Iraq is part and parcel of the War on Terror. And though September 11 made patriotism almost universal again, after years of multicultural dilution, the Bush administration took no steps to give this emotion political clarity and intellectual content, and therefore permanence. Unless the Iraqi security situation improves soon, these may be failures the administration comes bitterly to regret. NR

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Four: Intelligence. All the experts agree that in counterinsurgency operations, body counts are meaningless and good intelligence is the key to ultimate success. In Malaya the Communists initially enjoyed better intelligence than the authorities, from frightened and/or sympathetic villagers. Once the villagers were separated out in protected villages, however, the balance of advantage switched sides and the British began to get the better information. In Iraq we are at an earlier stage of this process. The Saddamite-Islamist coalition seems to have more agents in sensitive posts than the U.S. and its allies have in their conspiracy. What is now needed is clever exploitation of the divisions within Sunni Iraq. Most Sunni Moslems were not Baathists but victims of Saddam Hussein. We ought to be able to exploit that fact to get better intelligence. But this is a long job, and it will require the commitment of a large U.S. force for a long time.

All of which confirms that we face, indeed, a long hard slog. If, moreover, the U.S. needs to commit more resources to Iraq at a time of multiplying crises in Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere, two conclusions follow. First, the U.S. needs allies, because global unilateralism is an impractical fantasy. Second, the American people need a kind of non-imperial fortitude to sustain them through the inevitable setbacks. And because America is where the battle for Iraq will be won or lost, fostering such a fortitude is perhaps the central task of statecraft. Two American qualities might, together, have provided such a fortitude towards Iraq: the traditional American determination to avenge attacks upon the U.S., and the strong national patriotism of ordinary Americans. But the administration has not succeeded in demonstrating that the war in Iraq is part and parcel of the War on Terror. And though September 11 made patriotism almost universal again, after years of multicultural dilution, the Bush administration took no steps to give this emotion political clarity and intellectual content, and therefore permanence. Unless the Iraqi security situation improves soon, these may be failures the administration comes bitterly to regret. NR