When the Marines Make Policy, Iraq Burns

Who's in charge?

Argument over American policy in Iraq and the Middle East presumes that there is a considered policy in Washington and that in Baghdad, people are in charge - L. Paul Bremer 3rd until recently, Ambassador John Negroponte now - who carry out Washington's policy.
.
One would think policy discipline would be particularly important now to the Bush administration. A Pew poll of American opinion, published last week, says that foreign policy has become the most important issue in the presidential election, replacing economics. Surely somebody in the White House is paying close attention to Iraq?
.
It seems not. The New York Times reported this week that two of the most sensitive recent U.S. decisions in Iraq were taken by regimental-level Marine Corps officers without consulting either Washington or senior officials, Iraqi or American, in Baghdad.
.
Outside Falluja, a city of more than half a million people and a center of Sunni nationalism, a Marine Corps force replaced army troops in April. After the several U.S. private security operatives in the city were murdered and their corpses mutilated, the Marines mounted an assault to search for and arrest the unidentified murderers.
.
The attack provoking armed uprisings against the American occupation elsewhere in Iraq. This did attract attention in Washington, and American forces were eventually ordered to make a thinly disguised handover of Falluja to some of the same people they had just been fighting. Most of Falluja has since been no-go territory for Americans.
.
In Najaf, in early August, commanders of another newly arrived Marine force decided on their own to end a four-month defiance of American and Iraqi governmental authority by Moktada al-Sadr and his so-called Mahdi Army of radicalized young Shiites.
.
The Marines violated the agreed "exclusion zone" around the Imam Ali Mosque, Shiite Islam's holiest shrine, setting off an eight-day battle. The Marines had to be reinforced by U.S. Army and untested Iraqi forces. Truces followed but failed to hold, and at the time of writing the confrontation remains unresolved.
.
Who is in charge in Iraq, if military initiatives of the highest political sensitivity are being left to gung-ho Marine commanders, with a career interest in demonstrating how much tougher the Marines are than the army units they replace?
.
Why then is Ambassador John Negroponte in Iraq? He is now building up what is to become a 3,000-person U.S. mission to a nominally sovereign Iraq, whose new interim government is supposed to be taking political control of the country.
.
It is reported that when the shooting started between the Marines and the Mahdi army, and Negroponte was informed that Sadr was summoning help, he "decided to pursue the case" - apparently meaning that he backed what the Marines had started, leading to the present stand-off in Najaf.
.
The Falluja fiasco took place when Bremer was proconsul. It was Bremer who touched off the original clash with Sadr four months ago when he decided to shut down Sadr's radical newspaper - which "nobody read," as Bremer was warned at the time - and sent forces to arrest "or kill" Sadr. This provoked the earliest uprisings by Sadr's armed sympathizers in Najaf, Baghdad and elsewhere. The United States had subsequently to back down, at least temporarily.
.
As a result, Sadr, who was originally a figure of minor and local consequence, was turned into a national leader of the Shiite community and a threat to that community's existing moderate leadership.
.
This lack of political supervision of the Marines, and the responsibility of both Bremer and Negroponte in these confrontations, adds to an American record in Iraq that has displayed a persistent lack of common sense. The pursuit of Sadr has so far proved a political and military disaster. A policy of attacking large cities with armor, artillery and airpower in order to seize individuals defies reason.
.
The fundamental question in Iraq is whether the United States should simply get out, cutting its losses now. There are many Americans who believe that, including this writer. But neither the Bush government nor the Kerry campaign wants to contemplate so enormous and desperate an act of common sense.
.
The only chance of minimizing current costs is to do everything possible to lend legitimacy to the interim government and its chaotically formed new National Assembly. This means, above all, allowing it, and not the U.S. Marines, to run the country and to make the important security decisions.



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< < Back to Start of Article Who's in charge?

PARIS Argument over American policy in Iraq and the Middle East presumes that there is a considered policy in Washington and that in Baghdad, people are in charge - L. Paul Bremer 3rd until recently, Ambassador John Negroponte now - who carry out Washington's policy.
.
One would think policy discipline would be particularly important now to the Bush administration. A Pew poll of American opinion, published last week, says that foreign policy has become the most important issue in the presidential election, replacing economics. Surely somebody in the White House is paying close attention to Iraq?
.
It seems not. The New York Times reported this week that two of the most sensitive recent U.S. decisions in Iraq were taken by regimental-level Marine Corps officers without consulting either Washington or senior officials, Iraqi or American, in Baghdad.
.
Outside Falluja, a city of more than half a million people and a center of Sunni nationalism, a Marine Corps force replaced army troops in April. After the several U.S. private security operatives in the city were murdered and their corpses mutilated, the Marines mounted an assault to search for and arrest the unidentified murderers.
.
The attack provoking armed uprisings against the American occupation elsewhere in Iraq. This did attract attention in Washington, and American forces were eventually ordered to make a thinly disguised handover of Falluja to some of the same people they had just been fighting. Most of Falluja has since been no-go territory for Americans.
.
In Najaf, in early August, commanders of another newly arrived Marine force decided on their own to end a four-month defiance of American and Iraqi governmental authority by Moktada al-Sadr and his so-called Mahdi Army of radicalized young Shiites.
.
The Marines violated the agreed "exclusion zone" around the Imam Ali Mosque, Shiite Islam's holiest shrine, setting off an eight-day battle. The Marines had to be reinforced by U.S. Army and untested Iraqi forces. Truces followed but failed to hold, and at the time of writing the confrontation remains unresolved.
.
Who is in charge in Iraq, if military initiatives of the highest political sensitivity are being left to gung-ho Marine commanders, with a career interest in demonstrating how much tougher the Marines are than the army units they replace?
.
Why then is Ambassador John Negroponte in Iraq? He is now building up what is to become a 3,000-person U.S. mission to a nominally sovereign Iraq, whose new interim government is supposed to be taking political control of the country.
.
It is reported that when the shooting started between the Marines and the Mahdi army, and Negroponte was informed that Sadr was summoning help, he "decided to pursue the case" - apparently meaning that he backed what the Marines had started, leading to the present stand-off in Najaf.
.
The Falluja fiasco took place when Bremer was proconsul. It was Bremer who touched off the original clash with Sadr four months ago when he decided to shut down Sadr's radical newspaper - which "nobody read," as Bremer was warned at the time - and sent forces to arrest "or kill" Sadr. This provoked the earliest uprisings by Sadr's armed sympathizers in Najaf, Baghdad and elsewhere. The United States had subsequently to back down, at least temporarily.
.
As a result, Sadr, who was originally a figure of minor and local consequence, was turned into a national leader of the Shiite community and a threat to that community's existing moderate leadership.
.
This lack of political supervision of the Marines, and the responsibility of both Bremer and Negroponte in these confrontations, adds to an American record in Iraq that has displayed a persistent lack of common sense. The pursuit of Sadr has so far proved a political and military disaster. A policy of attacking large cities with armor, artillery and airpower in order to seize individuals defies reason.
.
The fundamental question in Iraq is whether the United States should simply get out, cutting its losses now. There are many Americans who believe that, including this writer. But neither the Bush government nor the Kerry campaign wants to contemplate so enormous and desperate an act of common sense.
.
The only chance of minimizing current costs is to do everything possible to lend legitimacy to the interim government and its chaotically formed new National Assembly. This means, above all, allowing it, and not the U.S. Marines, to run the country and to make the important security decisions.

William Pfaff TMSI Saturday, August 21, 2004
International Herald Tribune