The first step is to replace our military force, with a “multinational stability force.” It should not be imposed upon Iraq but should be employed by the Iraqis. This force should not try to fight the insurgents but to create and maintain an acceptable degree of stability.
Stability will not be perfect. The key word is acceptable.
But the history of insurgencies teaches us that once the major irritant – the foreign occupation – is removed, the natives themselves will demand and achieve order. What happens is simple and obvious: when the general population feels that enough of its objectives have been accomplished, it stops supporting the insurgency; when that happens the fighters, the actual insurgents, lose their legitimacy and their support. As Mao Tse-tung put it in his 1937 study of guerrilla warfare, the “fish” lose the “sea” that sustained them. The insurgency then dies, often very quickly.
So the multinational national stability force is intended to help bridge the gap between the withdrawal of the Americans and the coalescence of the Iraqis.
This task, of course, is harder today than it would have been two years ago and will be much harder two years from now. But we believe it should be achievable in an acceptable fashion in about two years at a cost of about $6 billion – or about 2 percent of what we will spend if we stay there.
¬ The second step is the creation of a national police force. The danger is that it will be little more than a hit squad for the majority to be used against the minority. That is what Iraqis believe the one we have created now is. That is what your mission of inquiry also found.
To avoid the danger of it being used for violent, sectarian purposes, it must be counter-balanced. This can be achieved in part by the multinational stabilization force but also by what is traditional in Iraq -- neighborhood, village and tribal home guards.
¬ Third we should stop encouraging the growth of an Iraqi army on which we have already spent about 19 billion dollars.
Until Iraq rebuilds its civilian institutions, an army is a danger to all Iraqis. Iraqi armies, even long before Saddam Hussein, have been the seedbed of
dictators and the cause of national disruption.We should redirect the billions of dollars we are spending to create an army into creating what Iraq really needs, something like our Corps of Engineers to help rebuild the country. Only if jobs are created can the devastating level of unemployment be reduced.
¬ The Fourth step is a series of actions to convince the Iraqis that we really are leaving their country. To do this,
We should immediately stop work on military bases – which the Iraqis believe proves that we intend to stay;
We should stop using and paying the armies of mercenaries – now the second largest military force in the country. They are the “loose canon” of Iraq – out of all control and supervision. They are a major threat to American national interests and reputation;
We should avoid actions that suggest that we intend to hang on to the one significant national economic resource of Iraq, its oil;
We should turn the vast and expensive Green Zone over to the Iraq government, and replace it with a far more modest American embassy; and
We should close the vast prisons we have created. They now hold some 25,000 Iraqis who must either be released or tried.
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