First, the president has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don't have to go it alone. It is late; the president must respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support.
Last spring, after too many months of resistance and delay, the president finally went back to the U.N. which passed Resolution 1546. It was the right thing to do -- but it was late.
That resolution calls on U.N. members to help in Iraq by providing troops, trainers for Iraq's security forces, a special brigade to protect the U.N. mission, more financial assistance, and real debt relief.
Three months later, not a single country has answered that call. And the president acts as if it doesn't matter.
The president should convene a summit meeting of the world's major powers and Iraq's neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly. He should insist that they make good on that U.N. resolution. He should offer potential troop contributors specific, but critical roles, in training Iraqi security personnel and securing Iraq's borders. He should give other countries a stake in Iraq's future by encouraging them to help develop Iraq's oil resources and by letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the reconstruction process.
This will be difficult. I and others have repeatedly recommended this from the very beginning. Delay has made only made it harder. After insulting allies and shredding alliances, this president may not have the trust and confidence to bring others to our side in Iraq. But we cannot hope to succeed unless we rebuild and lead strong alliances so that other nations share the burden with us. That is the only way to succeed.
Second, the president must get serious about training Iraqi security forces.
Last February, Secretary Rumsfeld claimed that more than 210,000 Iraqis were in uniform. Two weeks ago, he admitted that claim was exaggerated by more than 50 percent. Iraq, he said, now has 95,000 trained security forces.
But guess what? Neither number bears any relationship to the truth. For example, just 5,000 Iraqi soldiers have been fully trained, by the administration's own minimal standards. And of the 35,000 police now in uniform, not one has completed a 24-week field-training program. Is it any wonder that Iraqi security forces can't stop the insurgency or provide basic law and order?
The president should urgently expand the security forces training program inside and outside Iraq. He should strengthen the vetting of recruits, double classroom training time, and require follow-on field training. He should recruit thousands of qualified trainers from our allies, especially those who have no troops in Iraq. He should press our NATO allies to open training centers in their countries. And he should stop misleading the American people with phony, inflated numbers.
Third, the president must carry out a reconstruction plan that finally brings tangible benefits to the Iraqi people.
Last week, the administration admitted that its plan was a failure when it asked Congress for permission to radically revise spending priorities in Iraq. It took 17 months for them to understand that security is a priority, 17 months to figure out that boosting oil production is critical, 17 months to conclude that an Iraqi with a job is less likely to shoot at our soldiers.
One year ago, the administration asked for and received $18 billion to help the Iraqis and relieve the conditions that contribute to the insurgency. Today, less than a $1 billion of those funds have actually been spent. I said at the time that we had to rethink our policies and set standards of accountability. Now we're paying the price.
Now, the president should look at the whole reconstruction package, draw up a list of high visibility, quick impact projects, and cut through the red tape. He should use more Iraqi contractors and workers, instead of big corporations like Halliburton. He should stop paying companies under investigation for fraud or corruption. And he should fire the civilians in the Pentagon responsible for mismanaging the reconstruction effort.
Fourth, the president must take immediate, urgent, essential steps to guarantee the promised elections can be held next year.
Credible elections are key to producing an Iraqi government that enjoys the support of the Iraqi people and an assembly to write a Constitution that yields a viable power sharing arrangement.
Because Iraqis have no experience holding free and fair elections, the president agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role. Yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. Secretary General and administration officials themselves say the elections are in grave doubt. Because the security situation is so bad and because not a single country has offered troops to protect the U.N. elections mission, the U.N. has less than 25 percent of the staff it needs in Iraq to get the job done.
The president should recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force. This won't be easy. But even countries that refused to put boots on the ground in Iraq should still help protect the U.N. We should also intensify the training of Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened. Otherwise, U.S forces would end up bearing those burdens alone.
This is what has to be done. This is what I would do as president today. But we cannot afford to wait until January. President Bush owes it to the American people to tell the truth and put Iraq on the right track. Even more, he owes it to our troops and their families, whose sacrifice is a testament to the best of America.
The principles that should guide American policy in Iraq now and in the future are clear: We must make Iraq the world's responsibility, because the world has a stake in the outcome and others should share the burden. We must effectively train Iraqis, because they should be responsible for their own security. We must move forward with reconstruction, because that's essential to stop the spread of terror. And we must help Iraqis achieve a viable government, because it's up to them to run their own country. That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.
Kerry and the Other "F"-word
The Democratic candidate doesn't want to talk about how to deal with Falluja.
by Fred Barnes
09/23/2004 3:00:00 PM
JOHN KERRY'S NEW POLICY on Iraq is like a doughnut. It has a big hole in the middle. The Kerry four-point plan calls for recruiting more allies to help in Iraq, accelerating the training of Iraqi soldiers, pushing ahead on reconstruction, and guaranteeing a national election by next January. All that's fine. But none of it can happen unless the terrorists who've made the Iraqi city of Falluja their sanctuary and staging point for attacks and bombings are defeated. Kerry has no plan for dealing with the terrorists. Falluja is the hole in Kerry's doughnut.
In fact, the f-word--Falluja--was mentioned only once in Kerry's speech Monday outlining his Iraq strategy. He identified the city as a breeding ground "for terrorists who are free to plot and launch attacks against our soldiers." Indeed, it is exactly that. But then he went on to lay out his new plan without offering a scheme for subduing Falluja. He simply assumed, tacitly, that the single biggest problem in Iraq had been solved. Otherwise, his proposal for "high visibility, quick impact" reconstruction projects, for example, makes no sense. It couldn't happen unless Falluja had been vanquished. Of course, it's not just Falluja that's a problem now. A few other cities in the Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad are dominated by terrorists, too. Kerry has no plan for overcoming them either.
Falluja has been the greatest impediment to progress in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003. American Marines had nearly conquered the city last
April when they were called off. There were concerns among Iraqi political leaders and American officials that too many civilians were being killed. The decision was bucked to the Bush administration in Washington, which decided to call for a halt. Instead, a brigade of former Iraqi soldiers was sent into Falluja in hopes it would persuade the terrorists to hand over their weapons. That tactic failed and the brigade was later disbanded.
There are two basic strategies for conquering Falluja and capturing or killing the terrorists. The one being followed by the U.S. military today is to squeeze the city gradually, reducing the area controlled by the terrorists. By the end of the year, American forces are expected to stage a final effort to seize the city. The other strategy, favored by Sen. John McCain, is to take Falluja by attacking it forcefully, the sooner the better. This might be bloody, but, according to that strategy, the price would be worth paying in the long run.
It's clear that a national election couldn't be conducted in all of Iraq if the terrorists centered in Falluja are still free to operate. Nor would allies who've balked at helping in Iraq be inclined to send troops or other personnel as long as terrorism is rampant. And reconstruction projects, now delayed or halted entirely because of terrorism, couldn't move ahead either. The name of the game in Iraq now is: Defeat the terrorists.
Both the Bush and McCain strategies are risky and would probably produce many American and Iraqi casualties. Under the Kerry plan, however, there would be no casualties, since he doesn't broach the overriding Falluja problem. This oversight could have been erased the day after Kerry's big Iraq speech when he held his first press conference in weeks. But, again, Kerry offered no strategy for seizing Falluja and the other troublesome towns. He left the hole in the doughnut.
