Nation Building on the Cheap

I said I’d follow up on an earlier post about Abu Ghraib, but there’s been such a firestorm in the media, you probably don’t want to hear too much more about it. So I’ll use it as a segue: an aspect that’s been mentioned in the press, but not emphasized, is that just about everyone involved - from the reservist MPs, reservist officers, to the contract interrogators - lacked any significant experience in managing prisoners and prisons. So this isn’t so much about the actions of some depraved individuals as it about the failure to commit the necessary resources to get well-trained, responsible people running the place.

It’s part of the larger problem that has brought us to where we are in Iraq: trying to run an occupation and perform nation building on the cheap. Setting aside for the moment my belief that we shouldn’t have invaded in the first place, once you’re in, you’ve got to bring in soldiers and money by the boatload.

In regard to the force level, I recently came across the RAND study America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq that backs up this point. In reviewing our nation building experiences, the study concludes “The highest levels of casualties have occurred in the operations with the lowest levels of U.S. troops, suggesting an inverse ratio between force levels and the level of risk.” A subsequent NY Times interview with the author states: “In his book, Mr. Dobbins cites a rough strategic rule of thumb from the Balkans. It takes about 20 peacekeepers for each 1,000 civilians to safeguard the peace. Applying that rule to Iraq would yield a peacekeeping force of more than 450,000 in Iraq, a far cry from the 155,000 or so [troops currently in Iraq].” The Bush administration used post-WWII Japan and Germany as their reconstruction models (countries that had been economically advanced, were thoroughly defeated, and were relatively free of ethnic strife) when 1996 Yugoslavia was a much closer parallel (hence the Balkans comparison). This isn’t just ex post facto armchair quarterbacking: this RAND study was released in July 2003, and back in Feb 2003 when the Army Chief of Staff testified that we would need “several hundred thousand soldiers” in Iraq, Rumsfeld dismissed his estimate as “far off the mark.” (Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation Force’s Size)

In regard to the expenses of the war, as columnist Mark Shields has often pointed out, the message of the Bush administration to the wealthiest Americans is: “you will pay no price, you will bear no burden.” Traditionally, war is a time when sacrifice is asked of all Americans. Many of our soldiers have sacrified their lives and limbs, while domestically, the economic debate focuses on who should get the biggest tax cut. Meanwhile, the cost of the war is incremently loaded onto the national debt via piecemeal supplementary budget requests, so that the overall price tag is less apparent.

Why has the Bush administration gone done this path? I think there are a variety of reasons:

1. As with the decision-making on the Iraq invasion itself, there was a highly selective use of information to reach the desired conclusions (i.e. that Iraq could be rebuilt and democratized quickly and cheaply, and that Iraqi oil would cover the expenses). It also seems there was a general lack of knowledge in the Bush administration regarding what the domestic situation was really like in Iraq (see my previous post Going Into Iraq)
2. Rumsfeld’s desire to transform our military forces into smaller, lightweight, highly mobile units (using Iraq as the testing ground for his theories)
3. A belief that heavy reliance on private contractors would engender significant cost savings and not entail any significant risks (with Iraq again serving as a very large playground for this untested approach)
4. Disdain for Clinton, and any lessons that could be drawn from events that occured on his watch (i.e. the Balkans)
5. A willingness to continue to draw on the political capital afforded them by 9/11. Even after it became clear that the occupation wouldn’t be a cakewalk, the Bush administration has not frankly discussed with the public just how much sacrifice of blood and money is going to be required to see this through. I guess rather than take the political risk of starting such a discussion, they’re just holding out, hoping that some lucky breaks might turn things around.

The latter point assumes you’re willing to believe a positive outcome is possible at this point. I do not. Even if the occupation was run perfectly, achieving the goals desired by the Bush administration would have been a very difficult task. At this point, too many mistakes have been made, there are too many bells that cannot be unrung, to turn this around. My feelings are the same as those voiced by Retired General William Odom (Reagan’s head of the National Security Agency) in this Wall Street Journal article (this link goes to a reprint).