George Bush continues to dangle before a war-weary public the happy prospect of Iraqi soldiers assuming combat and patrol duties now performed by American troops. This transition, claims the president, will relieve the need for direct American involvement – that we will “stand down as they stand up.” All we need is a little patience, and by golly, before you know it our fighting days will be over.
Nice rhetoric. Bad reality.
In a recent “clear, hold and build” operation in which freshly trained Iraqi troops played a major role, one veteran reporter in the thick of things observed that “the Iraqis often seemed disorganized, complacent and undisciplined.”
For instance in one area “where the Iraqis had a chance to take the lead because they outnumbered the Americans, house-to-house clearing operations were sloppy. The troops moved unsystematically from house to house, sometimes giving buildings nothing more than a glance or, worse, bypassing them altogether.”
The journalist further noted: “Some soldiers demonstrated unorthodox uses for their weapons, including two soldiers who used their Kalashnikov assault rifles to swat a ball around as if they were playing field hockey.”
This is the sense of urgency displayed by the homeboys: security inspection by glances and the use of assault weapons as hockey sticks – oh, and as crowbars, whereas several of these crack, American-trained troops used their rifles “to pry metal security doors off their hinges.”
Yet patience is what Bush counsels.
The problem faced isn’t that complex. By way of simple analogy, let’s say you’re a private tutor who specializes in waging war on ignorance. After two years of “training” some deficient but inherently capable lad, you note that he continues to shift in his chair, stare out the window and play with his pencil as you explain – for the 50th time – the fundamentals of long division. You haven’t been talking advanced mathematics, just the basics. He’s perfectly capable of mastering the material should he ever apply himself, but there he sits – shifting, staring, playing, excelling only at being “disorganized, complacent and undisciplined.”
The problem, obviously, isn’t your lack of patience. The problem is, he doesn’t care. He could “get it” if he cared, but he just doesn’t. You could sermonize on the lifelong benefits of understanding basic mathematics and go through example exercise after example exercise till you’re exhausted, but if the lad isn’t willing, the cause is hopeless. You can’t teach, or force, the underlying prerequisite: motivation.
The American public learned that lesson the hard way in South Vietnam. For years we were promised that clearly unmotivated “indigenous personnel” would somehow get motivated and assume the combat and counterinsurgency duties of American troops and thereby save their own land. They were provided the best tutoring and best military hardware that any empire could offer.
We were patient. Oh, how we were patient. Later when that patience was to pay off, the indigenous personnel, on their own, lasted about three minutes in the field.
These analogies are so blithering obvious, I suspect even the famously ineducable George W. Bush knows how our patience will play out – again. In the meantime, however, he’ll deal with the problem in the same intelligent way he deals with all problems: He’ll give pleasant speeches loaded with delusional prospects of success.
It ain’t never gonna happen. It’s that fundamental, unalterable reality that makes redeploying now far wiser than reliving the inevitable later.