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Thu. Sep 04, 2003

A Commitment Crunch

A Commitment Crunch – I’m having a bit of a crisis of confidence, although that’s not quite the right term. It’s a mix of disappointment and rising anger. One of the reasons I supported the overthrow of Saddam was because I believed the Bush administration … if nothing else ... knew that their reelection hinged on success in rebuilding and stabilizing Iraq. I counted on their self-interest. You can talk about the altruism of expanding democracy, fighting terror, yadda-yadda, but I figured they would be extravagant in covering their own ass by making certain the proper resources were applied to insure post-war success, and thus, Bush’s reelection.

Now, it appears they are seriously committed to doing it on the cheap, and rather than extravagantly covering their ass, they look as though they will fall flat on it. Rather than make the hard choices to cough up the commitment, the Bush administration now will humbly crawl back to the UN, tail between legs, and ask for help.

It’s a loss of face, which shows a lack of commitment, and is a blaring sign of weakness for partisan opponents. Oh, yeah, the Iraqi people kinda get the crappy end of the stick, too.

There’s an article in the Christian Science Monitor entitled, “Latest Iraq threat: cash crunch,” but the crunch isn’t actually from a lack of cash, it’s from a lack of willingness to commit. A lack of the most basic planning, despite nearly a year’s preparation. And it continues to have a very real cost, every day.

“The reconstruction of Iraq, Bush administration officials predicted before the war, will pay for itself. But hopes of using Iraq’s own oil and resources to fund the rebuilding were contingent on an ideal of postwar peace and security.”

“Many potential donor nations are shying away from getting involved [...] And, significantly, oil revenues aren’t flowing as expected. A coalition official says that war damage and sabotage have stanched the flow to just $2.3 billion per year, down from an earlier estimate of $3.4 billion.”

“The cash shortfall means that here in Baghdad, officials are already seeing reconstruction and development projects – including electricity, gas, and water facilities – put on hold because they do not have the funds to start work.”

“Paul Bremer, the top US civilian official in Iraq, has been warning officials in Washington that this year’s budget will fall short ‘somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.5 billion’ and has warned that ‘tens of billions’ more will be needed.”

Well, duh! Big Double Honkin’ Duh! Why do these officials in Washington need to be “warned”? To anyone with half a clue, it’s been clear for a year that Iraq would require tens of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid, and that, even when back online, Iraq’s oil revenues of $2-$3 Billion annually would not be enough. Especially over the first six months.

So, does this mean the Bush administration will finally go to the newly returned Congress, and push forward a $50 Billion appropriation bill so plans can proceed unhindered? Of course not. They’re going to ask for the few billion Bremer needs to squeeze through the rest of this year. That’s all.

This is the administration that says it’s perfectly Okey-Dokey to run a half trillion dollar budget deficit in 2004. Yet they will not honor their commitment to Iraq by appropriating a mere 10% of that amount.

The amount the Bush administration is planning to put before Congress can’t even be called a “half measure.” It’s more like a “5% measure.” But when you go before Congress to ask for money, it’s in for a penny, in for a pound. They are going to rightfully demand accountability, no matter how much you try to minimize the appropriation.

“But the administration’s congressional critics say they will demand a fuller accounting of postwar operations, and a clear picture of the administration’s vision for achieving success in Iraq, before appropriating more money.”

Well, damn, it would be nice if someone could get that out of them. We hear lots of talk about “vision,” yet we see little willingness to put hard commitment behind that vision.

But I also hear something else in that paragraph. I hear a good chance that the rebuilding of Iraq, and the fate of the Iraqi people, will be turned into a political football. You can see it in the people who are whining about the fact our military force in Iraq in running up a $4 billion dollar a month tab … all by itself. They think that’s outrageous, and that doesn’t pay for the first run of copper wire to get electricity to an Iraqi home.

Just as any Clinton initiative was instantly opposed on the basis of partisan hostility rather than merit, any appropriations proposal Bush puts forward that has a chance of really rebuilding Iraq will immediately be savaged. The merit of the proposal, the fact helping the Iraqi people is The Right Thing To Do, will take a back seat to the Battle to Beat Bush.

At this point, my guess is they will succeed, primarily because the Bush administration seems to be busy digging their own hole.

So what if you save our US bucks? There is a cost, nonetheless: “Iraq’s budget for 2004, according an internal document provided by an official in the Coalition Provisional Authority [CPA], ‘has inadequate funds for security, electrical, water, sewage, irrigation, housing, education, health, [and] agriculture.’ For many middle and working-class Iraqis, basic services like electricity, safe highways, and a living wage have disappeared. In frustration, many Iraqis say, some of those struggling people are joining the resistance movements.”

Ken Joseph, the former human shield and anti-war activist who renounced that movement, is back in Iraq, and while he offers favorable comparisons about the conditions pre- and post- Saddam, he also notes the critical needs: “What has happened as far as the general population is concerned is what I term ‘the great letdown.’ People tend to make the United States Superman. They think the United States is all-powerful, the bastion of freedom, democracy, strength.”

“They thought that the United States would come in and with superhuman power overnight transform Baghdad into New York and Mosul into San Francisco.”

“It is traumatic to realize that America is not God and is very, very human. There is this gap between godlike perceptions of Americans and the realization that they have limits and cannot do everything overnight. That is why it is critical to get basic services up—electricity, water, and transportation.”

For decades, the Iraqi people were used to getting what they needed from Saddam. He provided jobs for many, food for most, electricity and water most of the time. It’s the nature of a totalitarian society; the one in charge gives you the stuff you need, as it’s part of the control they exert. Suddenly, Saddam is gone. Who’s going to give us our stuff? Well, there in front of them stand representatives of the most powerful force on the face of the planet, the United States of America. Of course, the Iraqi people expected that not only would the US now give them “their stuff,” it would be better stuff. They’ll just airdrop it in, or snap their fingers, or something. And who can blame them?

The reality is much different, no matter how many resources we’d applied from Day One. But anyone who continues to delude themselves that the rebuilding of Iraq is going fine and proceeding “as planned” must not be paying attention.

Yes, there is a lot of talk about how the media is playing up all of the negatives in Iraq, and many observers report things aren’t as universally bad as we hear it is. I have no doubt that a lot of that is true. For example, we hear nearly nothing about the Kurdish areas of Iraq. That’s because they are mostly peaceful and relatively prosperous areas, from the years out from under Saddam’s boot that the Northern “No Fly Zone” provided them. Protests in Shia areas and guerilla attacks in Sunni areas provide far more spectacular media fare.

But you’ve got to be a very blindered observer not to see the trouble and contradictions here. At division level and below, we continually hear rumblings that two more divisions are needed in Iraq. Meanwhile, CENTCOM, the Pentagon, and Rumsfeld all sing a happy chorus of “No More Troops Are Needed.” Simultaneously, we hear we will crawl back to some of the countries we diplomatically stiffed earlier this year, and ask them to provide … more troops.

There’s a real bind coming, and for Bush, it’s going to come at a bad time. The Pentagon has set up one year rotations for the forces in Iraq, and in the first, second, and third quarters of 2004, various divisions will come up for rotation out of Iraq. There won’t be anyone to replace them, certainly not a sufficient quantity of non-US forces.

It sets up a rather high risk scenario, right during the primary and election campaign. For the current rotation plan to work, one of two unlikely things has to happen. One, a functional semblance of law, order, and stability will have to exist by spring in Iraq, allowing us to permanently draw down the force levels there. Or, two, the Bush administration will have to scare up commitments of 50,000 to 80,000 non-US forces to take the place of rotating US units.

Excuse me while I go buy a lottery ticket.

If neither of those two things happens, the force rotation will have to be extended (causing much grumbling by soldiers abroad and their families at home), and/or some units will have to be rotated back to Iraq (imagine the joy when the 3rd Infantry Division gets orders for another year in Iraq). Or … HA! ... they’ll have to call up the National Guard and Reserve units they should have back in February of this year. Didn’t happen then, and sure isn’t likely to happen during election year.

I know George Bush is a prayerful man. In my opinion, he’s going to need it, because he hasn’t exactly set himself up for success The Old Fashioned Way.

As is always the case in war, I know that many things did not come off as planned or hoped. I think if the 4th Infantry Division had been allowed access by Turkey, the Sunni Triangle where much of the guerrilla fighting is now centered might have been actively “conquered” as a part of the war rather than relatively passively “occupied” after the war. There’s many uncontrollable factors like that which could have made a significant difference.

But adding the 4th ID to the invasion force wouldn’t change the force levels today, other than to give them an earlier rotation date next year. And it wouldn’t have corrected the glaring omissions in planning for the post war recovery. It’s hard for me to understand how they could have been so naive in their assessment of the resources that would be needed in the wake of toppling Saddam.

But it turns out it wasn’t all naivety, they were simply in a hurry: “A secret report for the Joint Chiefs of Staff lays the blame for setbacks in Iraq on a flawed and rushed war-planning process that ‘limited the focus’ for preparing for post-Saddam Hussein operations.”

“In fact, the Pentagon was forced to scrap its original plan for rebuilding as violence increased against U.S. forces and basic services were slow to resume. L. Paul Bremer, a former ambassador, was tapped in mid-May to take over as Iraq’s American administrator.”

“The Joint Chiefs report reveals deficiencies in the planning process. It says planners were not given enough time to put together the best blueprint for what is called Phase IV the ongoing reconstruction of Iraq.”

That’s an important point to note. That hurried original plan for “Phase IV” was so flawed it was tossed three weeks in. In effect, they’ve been winging it ever since. But this article also points out that Bush approved going ahead with plans for regime change in Iraq when he returned from his August vacation in 2002. That’s seven months they had to come up with a post-war plan. And in the end, it was so out of touch with the reality on the ground that they tossed it in three weeks.

OK, so let’s be generous. Let’s assume the nice men in Washington had no idea bad men in Iraq would continue to ardently try to kill our troops and disrupt our efforts after we’d so clearly won the war fair and square. After all, that’s just not playing by the rules. Let’s also assume that while the nice men in Washington knew that Saddam ruled with an iron fist, wantonly killed his own people, and lavishly spent billions on Presidential Palaces, the nice men also believed Saddam had kept the expensive civil infrastructure on his country in tip-top shape. We can even charitably assume the nice men spent a lot of time and resources preparing for calamities that never happened (masses of refugees, burst dams, burning oil wells, etc.). Let’s assume that the nice men in Washington also thought that the 20% of Iraq’s population which in one way or another got their paycheck from Saddam’s government wouldn’t mind taking a nice 6 month vacation after working for such a tyrannical boss all those years.

Let’s assume these nice men in Washington simply had no idea what a mess Iraq would be left in by their evil peers in Saddam’s government. Let’s assume they were just too nice to comprehend.

Well, they sure believed Saddam had WMD, so surely they would be well prepared for at least that. But the report to the Joint Chiefs indicates the opposite: “Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) elimination and exploitation planning efforts did not occur early enough in the process to allow CentCom to effectively execute the mission. The extent of the planning required was underestimated. Insufficient U.S. government assets existed to accomplish the mission [...] WMD elimination/exploitation on a large scale was a new mission area. Division of responsibility for planning and execution was not clear. As a result planning occurred on an ad hoc basis and late in the process. Additionally, there were insufficient assets available to accomplish the mission. Existing assets were tasked to perform multiple, competing missions.”

Six months after Saddam’s fall, we’re still wondering where the WMD are. It sounds like we were never fully prepared to find them. The heartless cynic in me can understand why the Army and Marine divisions poised in Kuwait weren’t immediately replaced with regiments of National Guard waiting to secure vital points, or battalions of civilian engineers ready to repair infrastructure. But that heartless cynic can’t comprehend why there weren’t massive overpreparations for the central focus of the buildup to the war: weapons of mass destruction.

As we now have heard over and over, many of the suspected WMD sites weren’t touched by US personnel for weeks, yet most had been looted within days. The fact much of it was due to a now admitted lack of preparation seems inexcusable. And truly sad.

But to me, this is even sadder: “Conceding it needs international help in Iraq, the United States opened a campaign Wednesday for a new United Nations resolution that would encourage countries to contribute troops and money.”

Listen, we made our choice in the first two months of the year. We made our case, and for whatever reason, some on the UN Security Council (primarily in the form of France, Germany, and Russia) disagreed. We told the world that did not matter, we would overthrow Saddam’s regime and create a stable government and nation in its place, for the Iraqi people, and do it with a “Coalition of the Willing.” And they are still willing, as there are about 20,000 non-US troops still standing by our side in Iraq now. We made the choice, yet seem unwilling to deal with the consequences.

Much will be read into our return to ask UN members for help. To me, it says, “we’re not willing to pay the price and commit the resources on our own, even though we said we would.” We paid a very real price to topple Saddam, but now that we’re physically committed, we want to cut corners. Yet we hear continued firm talk of “staying the course,” “as long as it takes,” and, of course, “we don’t need more US troops (just foreign ones)”. To put it in Texas Terms, “Big Hat, No Cattle.”

To others, going back to the UN will be read as evidence that they were right to oppose us earlier this year, and they will want to extract a price for that. Even if they eventually refuse to help, or we refuse their terms, it will at the very least be an opportunity for Chirac (et al) to wave his private parts in our general direction. Significant help will not come without the price of very publicly rubbing Bush’s nose in it.

14 months from Election Day, the prognosis is not good. Impending force troubles, a lack of willingness to commit the needed funding, resulting in more press about the lack of progress, and soon, a thorough baptism at the UN dunking booth.

We always seem to be waiting for George to pull another rabbit out of the hat. A small voice in me wonders if they don’t have David Kay and others working up a bombshell of a report on what has been found in Iraq, as the administration has been uncharacteristically and totally silent on the topic of WMD for quite some time. Like there’s a strictly imposed blackout (getting burned can do that, too, though).

This same small voice wonders if it wouldn’t be somewhat Rovian to squeak by with a minimal appropriation for Iraq this fall, and follow that up with a major league appropriations bill, with all the PR trimmings, to be rammed through Congress during the primary campaign season next spring.

But it’s a small voice, quickly drowned out by shouts of “Pollyanna! Get a grip! They never had a plan, what makes you think they can come up with one now?”

The other voices in my head are reaching another consensus. They’re beginning to think that Bush doesn’t have the will, the commitment, or the cojones to properly finish what he has started. Evidence to the contrary is becoming flimsy, stretched, and scarce.

By trying to do this “on the cheap,” and requesting the efforts of others rather than redoubling our own, it’s beginning to look like he has neither the necessary strategic vision to see this through simply on those merits, nor the political smarts to realize now that he’s committed, he must succeed on the terms he began. Strength and commitment, not weakness and waffling.

Or else he will indeed fulfill his desire to be just like his daddy, who also admitted having a problem with “the Vision Thing.” Based on the current trends, he, too, may be a one term President.

And the Iraqi people may have an even longer and more dangerous road ahead of them.