Last updated November 22, 2007.
Note: All votes and comments are anonymous unless you choose to identify yourself in a comment.
A majority of Americans want an end to the Iraq war and a majority of Iraqis want an end to the U.S. occupation. And yet the war goes on.
The President still yearns for a military victory in Iraq. Militarily subduing the violence in Iraq would eventually require 10 years or more of U.S. military involvement there. That’s why we have built all those big permanent bases.
Congress is deadlocked and impotent to do anything about the war except to continue to fund it so they can be seen "supporting the troops".
Every front-running Presidential candidate seems to envision leaving tens of thousands U.S. troops in Iraq for many years to come.
Peace plans being promoted by activist groups have some valid points but fall short of providing a substantial plan for actually ending the war and achieving a decent outcome in Iraq.
The "surge" has reduced the violence in Baghdad, but it is uncertain what will happen when it can no longer be sustained by the military. The Iraq government has made little progress on reconciliation. The successes of the surge cannot be left as an isolated event with no plan going forward.
Iraq has lost about 10% of its population and another 10% has been forced to move within the country. Many of Iraq's professionals (like doctors) have fled the country. We have set the bar so low for success in Iraq that correcting these problems isn’t even on the agenda.
Here's the problem. All of our leaders are all politicians. Politicians get elected these days by raising a lot of money and running a bunch of TV ads. They have to make people think they are fine, upstanding leaders (or the least sleazy!), they must look good on TV, and last but not least, they must be great fund raisers so they can run lots of their irrelevant TV ads. Front-runners rarely have many interesting ideas. Rather, they are good at appealing to party affiliation or ideology.
We The People can do a better job of solving this problem in a format that allows the participation of anybody who is interested. This will be an ongoing project which will allow the solution to evolve along with the current realities. There are many people out there with information and ideas about the Iraq war. There are many people out there (even though they are only 1% of our population) who have fought the Iraq war. All this expertise should be put to the task of coming up with a good way to end the war in a respectable way.
The plan being developed here has several unique advantages:
- It is a peace plan instead of a war plan.
- It is based on a problem solving approach applied to factual information that we will collect.
- It addresses the future of Iraq in a responsible, comprehensive way.
- It is being developed with the help of anyone who wants to participate.
- It would be relatively easy to try.
- It would be relatively cheap to try.
- It doesn’t necessarily require the support of the U.S. Administration other than leaving when the Iraqi government asks them to and agreeing to a reconstruction plan that will cost them much less than they continue to spend on the war.
Very, very briefly, the plan is:
- A grand bargain is proposed to the Iraqis (or they can propose it to us, it works both ways).
- All Iraqi government, tribal, religious and community leaders call for a cease-fire. If Israel and Hizballah can achieve and maintain a cease-fire, the Iraqis can do it too. Bitter enemies can stop their fighting when it is in their best interest. The goal of this plan is to make it clearly in the best interest of all Iraqi factions to stop the violence and rid themselves of foreign militants. A number of cease-fire initiatives by parties other than the U.S. government have already been implemented or proposed in Iraq. If we joined in it would have a huge effect.
- Create a rich, well managed, well audited reconstruction plan in which most of the money goes to Iraqis, Iraqi businesses and the Iraqi government. This would cost us $20 billion per year instead of the $100+ billion per year that the war costs. Much of our reconstruction money in the past has been lost to corruption and war profiteering. A new reconstruction program must be managed by experts and strictly audited.
- Give the Iraqi people a voice. The Iraqis should vote on the plan in a referendum. The approval of the plan by the Iraqi people will remove legitimacy to any further insurgency or sectarian violence.
- The Iraqi government must take aggressive steps towards national reconciliation and do so quickly.
- All U.S. and coalition forces will be removed over 6-9 months if the cease-fire holds and the Iraqi government makes substantial progress on national reconciliation. During the cease-fire the remaining forces can continue to train Iraqi forces and provide other useful non-combat services. But, mainly, they should be packing up. Personnel to further train the Iraqi army and police forces will come from the international community at the Iraqi's request.
If this interests you, please continue reading through the Rationale and Overview below and submit your opinions along the way. Voting is anonymous and commenting is also anonymous unless you choose to sign your submission. It will only take a few minutes.
If you are going to fully participate, then keep on reading into the Plan Details section. I suggest that you read it all, take a little time to think about it, then come back later to vote and submit ideas. If you are going to fully participate and you haven’t read the Welcome page, please do that also so that you’ll understand how this works.
Rationale and Overview of the Plan
The resolve to help Iraq.
To begin with, let’s establish that we think this is worth doing. Regardless of your opinion about starting this war, it is a fact that we did start it and I believe that we have a responsibility to try to bring peace to Iraq. As Colin Powel said at the beginning, “If you break it, you own it.” Iraq has been badly broken, but we need to at least give it our best try.
What do you think?
The enemy.
The War on Terror made our enemy vague. Instead of declaring war on al Qaeda who attacked us and the Taliban who hosted them, we declared war on a tactic of war. This vague identification of the enemy was not only used to justify attacking Iraq, it has been used to our detriment to characterize everyone committing violence in Iraq. Since much of their violence is against civilians, they certainly are all terrorists. However, they consist of multiple groups with very different motivations. If we don’t understand the motivations of each community that different militant groups come from, then we won’t have much success at stopping the violence. A National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq identified several sources of violence going on in Iraq at the present time: The insurgency against the occupation and central government, sectarian violence in and around Baghdad, Shia on Shia violence in the south, al Qaeda attacks, and widespread criminal violence:
National Intelligence Estimate
Prospects for Iraq’s Stability:
A Challenging Road AheadThe oldest and most consistent violence in Iraq has come from the Sunni insurgency. The Sunni insurgency is being carried out primarily by Iraqis. Despite all the attention that al Qaeda in Iraq gets, it is estimated that al Qaeda and all other foreign fighters account for less than 10% of the insurgency. Al Qaeda in Iraq is definitely a problem, but they have worn out their welcome and are now being challenged by some Iraqi insurgent groups.
Sunni Arabs are about 20% of the Iraqi population, so we must be careful that we don’t craft a “solution” that makes enemies of 20% or more of the people in the country we’re trying to help. In fact, it seems like the key to ending the insurgency is to find a way to get the population supporting it on board with a plan to end it. “Winning” militarily over the insurgency is probably impossible without declaring all-out war on a significant percentage of Iraq’s population – something that surely not very many people would support. Let's remember: These people didn't do anything to us before we attacked them.
Once we have the support of the insurgent population for a plan, it is the Iraqis themselves who will be most effective in expelling al Qaeda and other foreign jihadists. This has already been happening for some time now:
Turning Iraq's Tribes Against Al-Qaeda
The Shiite militia death squad phenomenon became a formidable problem after the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra in February ‘06. This violence is directed almost exclusively against other Iraqis instead of being directed against the occupation, leaving us with some uncertainty about which side we should choose in this civil war. I suppose we should fight all violence, but militarily putting down both sides of a civil war is surely a larger task than we can accomplish.
It seems like we must find a solution that involves helping all Iraqis embrace a vision of a normal, prosperous future instead of endless violence and destruction. Once a large majority of the public renounces their support for the violence, anyone still committing violence will be a criminal, not a resistance fighter. As everywhere, criminal violence is best handled by competent local police forces.
What do you think?
There is a limit to what we can afford.
Actually, it is difficult to find out what the war in Iraq has cost. At one point, the GAO reported that the Pentagon could not account for how much had been spent on the war.
As of the end of fiscal year 2006 we had spent about $318 billion on the Iraq war according to the Congressional Research Service:
This was actually a pretty conservative estimate – most other estimates of the cost of the Iraq war as of that time were higher – some much higher. The Iraq Study Group report put the cost at the time of its release at $400 billion with a total of up to $2 trillion after all the costs of taking care of wounded soldiers and replenishing equipment are spent in the future.
As of the fall of 2007 almost everyone agrees that well over $400 billion has been spent.
Since the country is already running a budget deficit, the entire cost of the Iraq war goes straight to the national debt, which is over $9 trillion. Each American citizen’s share of that is almost $30,000. In fiscal year 2006 we paid $405 billion in interest on the national debt. That’s equal to the entire base budget of the Department of Defense ($402 billion FY 2006) – spent on just one year’s interest on the national debt.
The Debt to the Penny
Bureau of the Public Debt, U.S. TreasuryInterest Expense on the Debt Outstanding
Bureau of the Public Debt, U.S. TreasuryIraq requires a serious reconstruction and economic development effort. We cannot afford to significantly help fund this unless we can shift spending from the war to the reconstruction. Of the $318 billion estimated by the Congressional Research Service that had been spent on the war in Iraq as of the end of 2006, a little under $16 billion had gone to reconstruction. You can see that reconstruction is much, much cheaper than war. You could even do a lavish job of reconstruction and still be way cheaper than war. We need to give the Iraqis the opportunity to have a decent reconstruction in exchange for them taking responsibility for being a decent civil society. They get a peaceful, prosperous future and we get to stop piling up debt that we can never repay on a war that cannot be won militarily.
What do you think?
Give the Iraqi people a say.
Much was made of the Iraqi elections and it is good that they had the first multi-party elections in decades. However, the Iraqis have never been given a say in the continuation of the occupation. Polls consistently show that Iraqis want an end to the occupation:
BBC/ABC/HNK Survey
Opinion Polls in Iraq - UN Security Council - Global Policy ForumOf course a poll is not a vote, but it seems probable that the Iraqi people are opposed to a plan that leaves the occupation in place very much longer. In what sense are we bringing them freedom and liberty if they are not given a say in one of the biggest influences over their daily lives?
What do you think?
A Grand Bargain for the Iraqis.
A grand bargain is needed to end the insurgency and sectarian reprisals, end the occupation and get effective reconstruction and economic development programs underway in Iraq. The Iraqis should vote on the plan in a referendum. The main points of the plan are:
The details of the plan will be developed with much input from the Iraqis with the help of international experts, probably from the UN. The Iraqi people will vote on the plan, expressing their will to the world.
First, the violence must end. Not much good can happen in the current environment. Iraq’s government, community, tribal and religious leaders must strongly and unequivocally call for a cease-fire ending all violence. Anybody killing anybody else at that point will be a murderer, not a “resistance fighter”. Whatever local police force is available must do their best to capture murder suspects. These local police forces should be able to call on Iraqi national police and security forces for help. The Iraqi government will call for the U.S. and other coalition forces to halt all combat operations and keep all troops on their bases in training roles. There should be a cease-fire in effect before, during and after the referendum. However, the referendum should be carried out if at all possible to demonstrate the will of the Iraqi people. If a cease-fire cannot start, then the plan is dead on arrival. The Sunnis must expel, capture or kill al Qaeda and other foreign jihadists in their midst. These foreigners have no interest in a peaceful Iraq. Sunni and Shia Iraqis must stop killing each other. For those who would scoff at the idea that a cease-fire could be had in this situation, I offer the example of the cease-fire that Hizballah and Israel have honored despite their great enmity towards each other.
The Iraqi government must aggressively proceed with national reconciliation. Prime Minister al Maliki presented a plan in June of 2006 which at least laid out the issues and a position on them. The plan calls for amnesty for insurgents who renounce violence, support the national government and obey the rule of law. It calls for a reversal of Debaathification for those members of the previous regime who did not commit crimes against humanity. The government has already carried out some reconciliation actions. As with all government programs, some of the actions were not effective. As a cease-fire begins and holds, the government must make it the top priority to react quickly in implementing as many national reconciliation goals as possible. Iraq’s leaders much show themselves to be true national leaders and not partisan warlords. Tangled up with national reconciliation is the oil law because sharing the oil wealth is a major reconciliation point. Most Iraqis do not want to privatize their oil industry. The Iraqis should decide the privatization issue separate from the revenue sharing issue and should not be subjected to outside influence on privatization.
The Iraqi government will call on the UN to help it expedite the development of a high level reconstruction plan. This overview plan should be created as quickly as possible so that the Iraqi people basically know as soon as possible what is planned for their country. The plan should have a budget of $100 billion over 3 years.
The Iraqi government has already held an international conference that included the U.S., Iran and Syria along with Iraq’s other neighbors and regional countries. This is the sort of conference that was called for in the Iraq Study Group Report. As the International Crisis Group calls for in their plan, this must be the beginning of an ongoing process, not a one-time event. As part of that process, this international body would also be used to get pledges of reconstruction money for Iraq. The U.S. should pledge $20 billion per year for the next 3 years (a savings of at least $80 billion per year as compared to the occupation). The rest of the international community as a whole should be strongly encouraged to at least match the U.S. contribution. Some mechanism should be in place to guarantee that the pledges are actually funded in a timely manner. This is a very, very rich reconstruction plan, yet it allows the U.S. to greatly reduce the debt it is running up. The next richest reconstruction plan I have seen so far calls for the U.S. to contribute $5 billion per year for 5 years. The Iraqis should pay attention to this one-time opportunity.
A referendum will then be held in which the Iraqi people accept this plan or express their desire for the continuation of the current attempts to put down the violence militarily.
After acceptance of the plan, if the cease-fire is still holding, then all U.S. and other coalition forces will leave Iraq over a period of 6-9 months. During this period, again if the cease-fire holds, all coalition forces will halt combat operations. Remaining troops can perform badly needed non-combat functions such as further Iraqi army training. If the cease-fire does not hold during the withdrawal period, then the withdrawal will stop and the remaining troops will be available to the Iraqi government. Very few troops should actually leave early in this period to be sure the cease-fire is going to take hold well. There will be plenty of preparation that will take up the early part of the withdrawal period
The training of the Iraqi security forces will be taken over by teams of military and police training personnel of the Iraqis’ choosing. The UN will assist in organizing an effort to make expert international teams available to the Iraqi government. A new emphasis will be placed on the development of good local police forces.
The Iraqi government will undertake an aggressive overhaul of its criminal justice system with the help of international experts.
The group that helped with the reconstruction plan overview will proceed quickly after the referendum to developing details that can be implemented quickly and have the oversight of international experts. The vast majority of reconstruction dollars will go to Iraqi companies. One of the main purposes of the reconstruction should be to put Iraqis to work. Their high unemployment rate feeds the instability.
This is an overview of the plan. Each of the points above plus others are discussed in more detail below.
To put it bluntly, this is the “cut the crap” plan. Anybody committing violence on anybody must stop. The Iraqi people need a normal life and they won’t ever have it as long as there is an insurgency, sectarian violence, military occupation or rampant violent crime. The Iraqi government needs to immediately take dramatic, concrete steps towards national reconciliation – or resign and let the people elect officials who will be responsible national leaders instead of advancing a sectarian agenda. The Iraqi people need to be given the opportunity to tell the world what they want and then demand that the Iraqi and U.S. governments work in good faith towards those goals. Both U.S. and Iraqi government officials need to find some carrots among their expensive arsenal of sticks. They need to find the maturity to seek “victory” in peace instead of attempts at military triumph that just get more people killed. Everyone involved has a choice. The U.S. can spend a fraction of the cost of the war on a serious reconstruction effort and the Iraqis can have an economy like they had before Saddam’s ruinous war with Iran. Or, the U.S. can continue to pour $100 billion a year into the fantasy of wining militarily and the Iraqis can continue with their fantasy of sectarian domination by having a destructive civil war.
The Iraqis should debate the plan and provide input. Despite the lives and money we have put into this war, it is still more about them than about us. We need them to buy into and take responsibility for the plan along with us.
Will this work? Of course nobody knows. However, it is pretty easy and inexpensive to try. The costs of the international conferences and the referendum are about the only expenses up to the acceptance of the plan by the Iraqis. After that, the new reconstruction budget would be far less expensive than any other plan on the table. The only thing cheaper would be a quick withdrawal with no further financial support for Iraq. Hopefully, not very many people are in favor of that.
Another benefit of this plan is that it does not really require that the U.S. Administration be on board. It would certainly be best for the U.S. government to propose the plan and solidly support it but that is not necessary. The Administration has said that our military will not stay if the Iraqis ask us to leave, so the Iraqi government has control over the continuation of the occupation. The only part of the plan that the U.S. could refuse is its monetary commitment to the reconstruction. However, it is doubtful that our government would refuse this when they know Iran would be more than happy to fill the void.
Achieving the results of this plan would provide a much more stunning defeat of al Qaeda’s influence than a military victory in Iraq. A decisive military victory in Iraq is clearly not possible with the number of troops we can provide, so that strategy is not realistic to begin with. The plan being developed here provides the best possible outcome with a much smaller investment.
If this doesn’t work, the Iraqis can keep on killing each other and the U.S. government can proceed with whatever military plan they imagine might work.
What do you think?
The following are the ideas for the plan so far. Comment on these ideas and we’ll evolve them.
Establishing a cease-fire
Community and religious leaders of populations contributing to the violence must call for an immediate end to it and commit to work with local police and Iraqi security forces to help stop it. This is their part of the bargain. They have to go first because withdrawal and reconstruction is impossible until the violence stops.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani should strongly and repeatedly call for a cease-fire After the large bombings in November, he called for restraint:
Baghdad Shias mourn bomb victims
BBC News, November 24, 2006He was effective in bringing violence to an end in the past:
He is supposedly the most influential Shiite cleric in the country and he has a responsibility to try to end all this sectarian bloodshed.
Previously this section said that the Iraqis need to hear Moqtada al-Sadr call for a cease-fire Now, in fact he has effectively done so:
Sadr calls for Sunni co-operation
BBC News, May 25, 2007Whatever you think of al Sadr (and it is clear he doesn’t think much of us!), this is a welcome development that falls right in line with this plan .
The Iraqis need to hear all of their Sunni leadership call for a cease-fire American troops will halt operations against them as part of this plan, so they will no longer be able to consider themselves resistance fighters. They must ultimately join with the government and they must realize that their 20% of the population will not be able to rule over the other 80% ever again. One of the purposes of this plan is to show them the possibility of a peaceful, prosperous future without domination over the country.
Muslim leaders across Iraq and across the world must have the decency to speak up and denounce the killing of Muslims by Muslims (or the killing of anyone by anyone for that matter). They should call for an end to Iraqis killing each other or tell us why not. This plan calls for the complete withdrawal of foreign troops, so there will be no more “Great Satan” for foreign jihadists to fight there. The Iraqis need to hear Osama bin Laden or Ayman Al-Zawahiri have the decency to call on their followers in Iraq to stop instigating this civil war where many innocent Sunnis, many innocent Shias, many innocent Muslims, many innocent people are being killed. Otherwise, they need to tell us why they think it is acceptable for Iraq to have this civil war. They can either call it off or be discredited as any sort of “freedom fighters”.
All officials of the Iraqi government must call for the cease-fire Anyone involved in further violence should be considered to be a common murderer with no legitimacy to their actions. Local police forces must try to capture these criminals to prevent them from stealing a decent future from the Iraqi people.
At the same time that the cease-fire is called for, the Iraqi government must call on the coalition forces to halt all combat operations.
The international community, including and especially Iraq’s neighbors, must call for a cease-fire The only mention I have seen or heard of the idea to attempt a cease-fire (other than this plan) is from Bashar al Assad, President of Syria:
Engaging Syria and Iraq were major Iraq Study Group recommendations that are still missing from the new U.S. strategy. Once again, this is something that the Iraq government has control over. In calling for a cease-fire, there is nothing to prevent the Iraq government from bringing in anybody who can help achieve it.
As pointed out above, the Iraqis need to stop al Qaeda and other foreign fighters who have no interest in a peaceful Iraq and they have already formed alliances to do so.
If this step cannot be achieved, the plan is dead, the new reconstruction effort will not start and the U.S. will need to decide whether it wants to be in the middle of a civil war. No other parts of the plan can begin until the violence has reached a very low level. We cannot demand a 100% cessation of violence because it simply isn’t realistic. If a large majority of the combatants have stopped, we cannot let the whole process be derailed by a few extremist nuts. When we talk of an end to the violence I suggest we mean that it is reduced to the level that reconstruction can reasonably proceed.
What do you think?
National reconciliation is pursued aggressively by the Iraqi government.
This is the Iraqi government’s part of the bargain. They are a central government and they need to act responsibly for the entire nation in order to keep the nation together. Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki has in fact created a national reconciliation plan:
The Prime Minister announces the National Reconciliation Project before the Parliament
June 24, 2006Many of the points in this plan mesh well with the plan being developed here. It is a detailed plan developed by the Iraqi leadership and I think we should be supportive of it. Unfortunately, when it was released, Maliki was pressured by leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance coalition to take out provisions of amnesty for insurgents who have been resistance fighters against the occupation, reinstatement of jobs for some former Baath party members and withdrawal of coalition troops:
The provisions taken out are necessary for the plan’s success. The Iraqi government has continued to be stalled on the enactment of this plan. Now in a troubling turn of events, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has come out against a draft law for reform of the de-Baathification law:
Top Iraqi Shi'ite cleric rejects Baathist law
Reuters AlertNet, April 2, 2007This won’t work. Without aggressive national reconciliation, there will not be peace for a very long time. If this plan is adopted by the Iraqi people, then the government and all leaders in Iraq must take bold steps and as much progress must be made as quickly as possible. Time is the essence in keeping the plan from breaking down. If some items are so contentious that their solution bogs down, then they should get some professional mediators in to help them work through it as quickly as possible.
The Crisis Group report has more ideas for Iraqi national reconciliation than any other document I have seen so far. I would refer you to that document for more detailed ideas on the subject.
What do you think?
The U.S. and other donor countries pledge (and follow through on) security, reconstruction and economic development plans.
At the same time that Iraq’s leaders are calling for a cease-fire, they should solicit the help of the UN in developing a high-level reconstruction plan so that the people can see what is proposed as the alternative to the violence. This will be a new reconstruction plan, taking into account the plans currently being implemented, but creating a completely new plan for reconstruction. This is a necessary part of the overall plan. In the most troubled areas, unemployment is about 50%. Insurgent groups have been offering pay that greatly exceeds what a normal Iraqi can make. In place of the occupation we must leave a well funded and managed program that helps to restore Iraq’s economy so that they can focus on building a good future instead of focusing on murderously settling scores because everything is screwed up anyway.
After approval of the plan in the referendum, the Iraqi government will hold an international meeting including all their neighbors, the U.S. and all of its coalition partners and as many donor countries as possible. Iraq has already been holding international meetings about its future. For this one they should be as inclusive as possible (since donors will be sought) and should seek the guidance of the UN in organizing a meeting that will accomplish:
- Iraq’s security from outside influence is absolutely guaranteed by its neighbors and a border security plan is put in place
- Donor commitments are obtained from the international community and a mechanism is put in place to ensure payments as planned. The U.S. should commit $20 billion per year for the next 3 years and challenge the combined rest of the world to at least match it.
- A team of highly qualified reconstruction experts is formed to create a detailed reconstruction and economic development plan for Iraq. The team should be available during the implementation to be able to make adjustments as the situation requires.
- Donor countries form an oversight commission staffed with experts to ensure effective use of the reconstruction funds and to prevent corruption.
Once the violence has ended, the implementation of the plan will begin. I believe it should begin in Baghdad and Anbar province in order to kick-start the areas that have been most ravaged by the insurgency and sectarian violence. However, reconstruction programs should begin nationwide as soon as possible to get everyone on board.
Most of the money should be spent with Iraqi companies and not with donor countries' companies.
Oversight and auditing of projects should be carried out by people with good track records at this. Stuart Bowen whose oversight agency in Iraq has been very effective should be asked to join the effort – and surely there are more like him. Too much of the reconstruction money spent so far has been wasted through corruption. This new reconstruction plan should plan on careful oversight from the beginning.
Reconstruction should focus initially on providing reliable electricity, clean drinking water and sanitary sewage systems throughout the country. High priority should also be given to projects that will help guarantee universal primary and secondary education for both boys and girls. Many reconstruction experts say that large projects are not appropriate at this point, so many smaller projects which address these goals should be designed instead.
Continuation of the reconstruction plan must be contingent on a continuation of the cease-fire This will naturally be the case since reconstruction cannot occur in the middle of a lot of violence. However, it should be made explicit that this rich reconstruction plan will come to a halt if the violence resumes.
At $20 billion per year for the next 3 years this plan will be much cheaper than the $100+ billion we will spend with a continued occupation. At zero American military casualties versus the thousands of deaths and tens of thousands serious injuries the occupation has produced, this plan beats the socks off the occupation in supporting our troops.
What do you think?
Iraqis vote on the plan in a nationwide referendum.
The first step in implementing the plan is for the Iraqis to vote on whether they want an end to the occupation and the beginning of a new reconstruction effort or a continuation of the occupation trying to stop the insurgency and the emerging civil war.
This is key to the success of the plan. The International Crisis Group reports that the groups behind the insurgency “appear acutely aware of public opinion and increasingly mindful of their image”:
In Their Own Words: Reading the Iraqi Insurgency
International Crisis GroupThe insurgency groups need the support of the population and right now they have it. If the population decides they would rather have normal lives and say so in a referendum, then any group that continues the insurgency will have lost public support and its legitimacy. If the Iraqi people can make a strong statement of their desire to have a decent future, it will serve as a powerful tool in ending the insurgency and the sectarian violence that will be illegitimate in light of the vote.
What do you think?
U.S. and coalition forces leave Iraq over a period of 6 months.
Obviously the military leaders know best how to remove the troops from Iraq. The main point to be made here is that, as long as the cease-fire is holding, they should halt all combat operations, stay out of the cities as much as possible and provide non-combat assistance such as training and border control.
Some plans call for a military presence to be kept nearby for an unspecified period of time. Perhaps it would be good to leave some forces somewhere nearby and friendly to us, like Kuwait, for a very limited period of time. But I don’t think our troops should stay in the region very long as I think this would have a negative effect. It could be that there is no country nearby in which a majority of the citizens would approve of even a temporary deployment of U.S. troops. If that is the case, then I think we should skip the nearby military presence.
The training of Iraqi police and army would be transferred to an international team of experts of the choosing of the central Iraqi government in the case of the army and local police departments in the case of police. Donor countries would make training personnel with good track records available to the Iraqis for help with their training. The U.S. arguably has the best military in the world, so it could often be the case that the Iraqis would choose U.S. training teams who are training them already. The make-up of these teams should be public knowledge so that there is no perception of a lingering occupation. Enough personnel should be made available to allow an aggressive training schedule that allows international training help to be finished after 1 year. Part of the strategy should be to train the trainers so that they can become independent.
By withdrawal, I mean total military withdrawal from Iraq, leaving no permanent U.S. military bases there and no residual military personnel there (other than trainers for one year as detailed above).What do you think?
The Iraqi Army and Police
First, just some observations:
Using Iraq’s national army against its citizens is a key part of our strategy of having the Iraqi army “stand up” and put down the insurgency and sectarian violence.
The army is disproportionately Shiite and Kurd and so it doesn’t work well to have them trying to hold Sunni insurgent areas. They have made some attempts at recruiting Sunnis into the army and letting them serve in their local areas. This is a good idea, but it has not been successful enough yet to significantly change the makeup of the Iraq army.
A significant portion of the violence, according to the recently released NIE Report on Iraq, is simple criminal activity that is not politically motivated at all.
While it certainly makes sense for Iraq to have an army, local police forces are going to be essential in helping to hold a cease-fire It is also the local police forces that are going to be most effective in stopping crime and bringing about basic law and order.
According to the Iraq Study Group report, the Iraqi police forces are in even worse shape than the Iraqi army. I think resources should be focused more on getting good local police forces in place and less on preparing the Iraqi army to put down the violence militarily. Obviously, if a cease-fire cannot be achieved and held, then it will take more than local police to try to put down the insurgency and stop sectarian violence. However, if the cease-fire is achieved – the starting point of this plan – then it will be the police that are best suited to provide the remaining law and order that the Iraqis need to have normal lives again.
The army can focus on border patrol to keep out foreign fighters. They can also be available to carry out operations in cooperation with local police against al Qaeda in Iraq if they do not observe the cease-fire Of course, they will serve the normal function of protecting the sovereignty of the country, but part of the international agreement on Iraq’s security should provide for international guarantees of Iraq’s sovereignty. Once our invasion is over, I think we can safely assume that a large coalition could be built to prevent any country from trying to invade Iraq.
What do you think?
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Disarming and disbanding of militias
Many plans emphasize the necessity to disarm and disband the militias in Iraq. Since the militias are involved in the sectarian violence, this seems like a natural part of any plan to stop the sectarian conflict. However, these militias serve other non-violent purposes and are strongly supported by the populations they are part of:
A Day When Mahdi Army Showed Its Other Side
Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post, November 27, 2006Of course, it is also the case that they have death squads committing sectarian torture, murder and ethnic cleansing. It would be great to have them disarmed, but I just don’t think it will happen immediately. Iraq is awash in guns. The militias exist through social structures that will continue for some time. Therefore, I do not believe that disarming and disbanding the militias can be part of a realistic plan at this point. What we need is for them to stop the violence. If the militias still exist and perform policing or community services, then it should not have an adverse effect on the plan in the short run. If the cease-fire holds for a year, disarming of the militias can become a realistic goal. If Iraq is still violent enough in a year that major parts of the population think they require armed militias with death squads, then they will have failed in their responsibility to bring peace and prosperity to their country.
What do you think?
Distribution of oil wealth.
All Iraqis will need to benefit from the country’s oil wealth to avoid problems with regions that do not have oil reserves. Almost every plan agrees with this. In addition to dividing oil profits up by population for provincial governments, it might be useful to do what Alaska does and give each citizen a check. Every single person in the country, regardless of province, regardless of ethnic group, would get the same size check. Apparently this has been considered, but there is currently no census mechanism for identifying who would be paid. However, there obviously is a mechanism for voter registration, so perhaps this can be expanded to identify valid recipients of oil revenue sharing.
The Iraqis are receiving heavy pressure to pass an oil law. However, they have legitimate concerns which we should let them work through:
What do you think?
Partitioning Iraq.
Some people have called for the partitioning of Iraq into three countries that are Shia, Sunni and Kurd. The International Crisis Group has clearly pointed out the difficulties with this idea:
Basically Iraq does not divide up nicely into three ethnic areas. Before the war there were many mixed areas in Iraq. The ethnic cleansing that has occurred so far has caused people to lose their homes. We should be trying to correct that situation and get people’s neighborhoods back together rather than pursuing a plan that requires extensive ethnic migration and the loss of many more homes. Trying to partition Iraq will intensify the civil war because it will produce many boundary disputes and because a significant portion of the Iraqi population does not want Iraq broken up.
If Iraqis want to talk about splitting up their country then that is their business. For Americans to talk about it is arrogant.
However, it is the case that people everywhere like to have as much local control over their government as possible. Therefore, municipal and provincial governments should have responsibility similar to that of cities and states in the U.S. That does not require a partition or weak federation in order to implement..
What do you think?
Do you have an idea for the plan? Submit it and we’ll discuss it.
Specific Reconstruction and Economic Development Projects
In this section you are encouraged to brainstorm about ways to help reconstruct Iraq and restore its economy.
An Economic Development Project for Oil Poor Regions in Iraq.
I’m a big fan of solar and wind power. I think grid-tied, battery backed up solar and wind power would be an excellent way to provide reliable full-time electricity to Iraqis. In a grid-tied solar energy system, electricity can be generated by solar panels that are located at the building that the small system supplies. Any excess energy not used at the local building is put on the electrical grid for general use. Batteries allow the local building to have electricity during periods when the electrical grid is down and there is insufficient sun or wind to supply the needs. An inverter turns the DC power from the solar panels, wind generators and batteries into normal AC current. Wind generation is better suited as a standard utility energy source, but it would also help in providing local electricity needs. This project would:
Provide a decentralized, fairly sabotage-proof way of giving Iraqis full-time electricity.
Create a large Iraqi service industry.
Possibly create an Iraqi manufacturing industry if they decided to start making their own equipment.
Provide a proving ground for the rest of us in finding ways to generate emissions free electricity. It would also provide a boost to the alternative energy and battery industries allowing them to make advances in the technology.
Iraqis had electricity available to them 10-12 hours per day on average nationwide as of October 2006. In Baghdad, the average was 6.4 hours per day:
When the power is off, businesses can’t operate, refrigerators turn off and many details of daily life that we take for granted come to a halt. I’m sure a lot of personal generators are fired up when the power goes out each day in Iraq, but obviously everybody doesn’t have one and it is a pretty dirty, noisy, inefficient way to have electricity.
What do you think?
What’s your idea for an Iraq reconstruction project?
Submit a reconstruction project
View reconstruction projects
If this plan, or at least the process, makes sense to you and you would like for something to actually be done about it, then please contact your elected officials. Ask them to come participate here or have someone do it on their behalf. Ask your friends and family to come see if they would like to participate. Let’s have a real debate. Let’s have a civil, productive, imaginative debate that can produce realistic solutions.
Contact information for U.S. officials:
