"I think that this could still fail." Those words—uttered by a senior
American officer in Baghdad last week—probably gave opponents of the war
in Iraq, particularly those clamoring for a hasty exit, a bit of a kick.
They should be careful what they wish for.
For history strongly suggests that a hasty American withdrawal from Iraq
would be a disaster. "If we let go of the insurgency," said another of the
officers quoted anonymously last week, "then this country could fail and go
back into civil war and chaos."
As many of the war's opponents seem to have forgotten, civil war and chaos
tend to break out when American military interventions have been aborted.
Think not only of Vietnam and Cambodia, but also of Lebanon in 1983 and Haiti
in 1996. To talk glibly of "finding a way out of Iraq," as if it were just a
matter of hailing a cab and heading for the Baghdad airport, is to underestimate
the danger of a bloody internecine conflict among Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites.
Instead of throwing up our hands in an irresponsible fit of despair, we need to
learn not just from past disasters but also from historical victories over insurgencies.
Indeed, of all the attempts in the past century by irregular indigenous forces to expel
regular foreign forces, around a third have failed.
In 1917 British forces invaded Mesopotamia, got to Baghdad, overthrew its Ottoman rulers
and sought—in the words of the general who led them, Sir Stanley Maude—to be its people's
"liberators." The British presence in Iraq was legitimized by international law (it was
designated a League of Nations mandate) and by a modicum of democracy (a referendum was
held among local sheiks to confirm the creation of a British-style constitutional monarchy).
Despite all this, in 1920 there was a full-scale insurgency against the continuing British
military presence.
Some may object that warfare today is a very different matter from warfare 85 years ago.
Yet the striking thing about the events of 1920 is how very like the events of our own
time they were. The reality of what is sometimes called "asymmetric warfare" is how very
symmetrical it really is: an insurgency is about leveling the military playing field, and
exploiting the advantages of local knowledge to stage hit-and-run attacks against the occupiers,
as well as anybody thought to be collaborating with them.
Indeed, if there is asymmetry it lies in the advantages enjoyed by the insurgents.
The cost of training and equipping an American soldier is high; by contrast, life
is tragically cheap among the young men of Baghdad and Falluja. Even if the insurgents
lose 10 men for every 1 they kill, they are still winning, not least because the American
side takes its losses so much harder.
How, then, did the British crush the insurgency of 1920? Three lessons stand out.
The first is that, unlike the American enterprise in Iraq today, they had enough men.
In 1920, total British forces in Iraq numbered around 120,000, of whom around 34,000
were trained for actual fighting. During the insurgency, a further 15,000 men arrived
as reinforcements.
Coincidentally, that is very close to the number of American military personnel now in
Iraq (around 138,000). The trouble is that the population of Iraq was just over three million
in 1920, whereas today it is around 24 million. Thus, back then the ratio of Iraqis to foreign
forces was, at most, 23 to 1. Today it is around 174 to 1. To arrive at a ratio of 23 to 1 today,
about one million American troops would be needed.
The United States also faces two other problems that the United Kingdom did not 85 years ago.
The British were able to be ruthless: they used air raids and punitive expeditions to inflict harsh
collective punishments on villages that supported the insurgents. The United States has not been
above brutal methods on occasion in Iraq, yet humiliation and torture of prisoners have not yielded
any significant benefits compared with what it has cost the country's reputation.
The Americans' other problem has to do with timing and expectations. Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld has said that American forces should aim to work to a "10-30-30" timetable: 10 days should
suffice to topple a rogue regime, 30 days to establish order in its wake, and 30 more days to prepare
for the next military undertaking. I am all in favor of a 10-30-30 timetable—provided the measurement
is years, not days. For it may well take around 10 years to establish order in Iraq, 30 more to establish
the rule of law, and quite possibly another 30 to create a stable democracy.
Those American officers who say that it could take years to succeed in Iraq are therefore right.
But the Bush administration has just three and a half years left. Is it credible that American troops
will still be in Iraq for even another four years after that?
The insurgents don't think so. They know that American democracy puts time on their side. Once again,
the contrast with the British experience is instructive. Although Iraq was formally granted its independence
in 1932, there was still some form of British presence in the country until the late 1950's.
So, if we acknowledge that the United States simply does not have the luxury of time that the British
enjoyed and cannot be similarly ruthless, can it at least increase the manpower at its disposal in Iraq?
The official answer from Washington is that Iraqi security forces will soon be ready to play an effective
role in policing. Few who have seen those forces on the ground find this strategy realistic. Some fear that
the training that Iraqi soldiers are receiving may prove useful only when they fight one another in an Iraqi
civil war.
What, then, of America's own resources? Almost no one (least of all the Pentagon) wants to go back to
the draft. So could today's all-volunteer force somehow be expanded to double (at least) the troops available?
That too seems unlikely. Indeed, the current system is already showing alarming signs of stress and strain as
more and more is asked of the "weekend warriors" of the reserves and National Guard, who account for roughly
two-fifths of the force in Iraq. In December, the Army National Guard acknowledged that it had fallen 30
percent below its recruiting goals in the preceding two months. Many members of the Individual Ready Reserve
have been contesting the Army's right to call them up.
How did the British address the manpower problem in 1920? By bringing in soldiers from India who accounted
for more than 87 percent of troops in the counter-insurgency campaign. Perhaps, then, the greatest problem faced
by the Anglophone empire of our own time is very simple: the United Kingdom had the Indian Army; the United States
does not. Indeed, by a rich irony, the only significant auxiliary forces available to the Pentagon today are none
other than ... the British Army. But those troops are far too few to be analogous to the Sikhs, Mahrattas and
Baluchis who fought so effectively in 1920.
No one should wish for an overhasty American withdrawal from Iraq. It would be the prelude to a bloodbath of
ethnic cleansing and sectarian violence, with inevitable spillovers into and interventions from neighboring countries.
Rather, it is time to acknowledge just how thinly stretched American forces in Iraq are and to address the problem:
whether by finding new allies (send Condoleezza Rice to New Delhi?); radically expanding the accelerated citizenship
program for immigrants who join the army; or lowering the (historically high) educational requirements demanded by
military recruiters.
YES, as that anonymous officer said, the Bush administration's policy in Iraq could indeed still fail. But too
few American liberals seem to grasp how high the price will be if it does. That is a point, unfortunately, that
also eludes most of this country's allies. Does it also elude the secretary of defense? If "10-30-30" are the
numbers that concern him, I begin to fear that it does. The numbers that matter right now are 174 to 1. That is
not only the ratio of Iraqis to American troops. It is starting to look alarmingly like the odds against American
success.