TOO MUCH ORDER

Stop Blaming, Wise Up to Postwar Realities: A clever foe may have an 'occupation fatigue' strategy for victory (Caleb Carr, June 25, 2003, LA Times)

The continuing violence means that Iraq is not yet ready for the Middle Eastern Marshall Plan we were once so convinced that the Iraqis wanted. Let's remember that in order to implement the Marshall Plan, we destroyed Germany and dealt with the German populace ruthlessly. Had anyone in the former Nazi Reich mounted the kind of violent dissatisfaction with the pace of our charitable intentions that we're seeing in Iraq, they would have been arrested or wiped out, no questions asked.

Do we now want to shift gears toward a similarly draconian preparation for reconstruction in Iraq? Perhaps not, but the war is clearly not over, despite what Bush said during his patently silly amateur theatrics on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.

The Pentagon must, however reluctantly, send in not only additional Special Forces units (the only troops we have that are capable of handling this situation without alienating the Iraqi people) to pick apart the resistance machine, but also police troops to meet the public safety emergency, as well as extra engineering units to restore services quickly.

We were all supposed to be happy friends in Iraq by now. But our antagonist may have proved, once again, to be a damnably clever opponent. Before we get entirely swept up with finding people on our own side to blame (there will be ample time for that later), we ought to be about the business of devising new schemes to neutralize our foe - schemes even more imaginative than those admirable plans that brought us into Baghdad so quickly.

The problem in Iraq right now is actually the opposite of what folks are saying it is. We restored order too quickly and are maintaining it too tightly. When we liberated European nations from their German oppressors in WWII there were healthy periods of vicious vengeance-taking against those who had collaborated. Iraq could use a stiff dose of the same therapy. We should devolve power to the Shiites as quickly as possible so that they can undertake the massive and murderous reprisals against the Sunnis that will make it crystal clear to the Sunni minority that they will never again be able to lord it over the Shiite majority and make the country governable again. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 25, 2003 9:18 PM