The President Must Command by Fareed Zakaria

April 26, 2004, U.S. Edition

The President Must Command
What the Iraq question needs right now is a totally engaged American president, immersed in every element of the military operation
By Fareed Zakaria

Desperate to stop the transition in Iraq from coming apart, the United States has finally done what it said it would never do--give the United Nations a central political role. It may be too late. The occupation has already been branded an all-American affair and the move might be seen as window dressing. Still, better to try it than persist in the old course. But this rectifies only one of the two major errors of the occupation. The other was to allow a security vacuum to develop within Iraq. Things looked better last week, but sieges in two cities, constant explosions and a tape of a captive American GI are reminders of how grim the situation essentially is. Iraq remains unstable and insecure. If this problem isn't solved, the United Nations can sprinkle all the magic dust it wants and it will not matter.

In fact, things could get worse. After July 1, the United States will have to combat insurgents by working through a sovereign Iraqi government that will have its own constraints. If the insurgency persists, the new government might be seen as weak and never gain the respect of its nation. Reconstruction will slow to a crawl as foreigners leave the country.

The blunt truth is that we still need more troops in Iraq. Yes, it would be nice to have foreign troops or to have well-trained Iraqi forces. But for now neither option exists. We have a choice between more American troops or continued instability.

The Third Infantry Division is apparently going back in. We have two to three divisions earmarked for a conflict in Korea that could be moved. Overall we could probably add 50,000 to 60,000 troops to the current force in Iraq. This bulked-up presence would be needed for about six months. By July there should be an Iraq government partnering with the United Nations to write a constitution and hold elections. In those circumstances, and with good diplomacy, we should be able to get some countries to contribute to an international force. Plus, six months of additional training will strengthen the Iraqi security and police forces considerably.

Whenever George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld have been asked about the need for more troops, they answer almost identically. If the generals ask for them, they explain, we'll give them what they want. For months they explained that the military didn't want more troops. Suddenly this changed last week.

Hiding behind the military is disingenuous. The generals know full well that they are not supposed to ask for more troops. For months, lower-level military officers openly admitted that they needed more troops, but their generals were too worried about crossing Rumsfeld and Bush. (General Abizaid tried squaring this circle six months ago when he explained to The New York Times that of course he needed more troops but only foreign troops not U.S. ones.)

In any event, the job of civilian leaders is not simply to rubber-stamp military requests. In his book "Supreme Command," Eliot Cohen points out that great wartime leaders always question military strategy and tactics. War, as Clausewitz famously said, is the extension of politics by other means. It takes politicians to make political judgments.

If this argument sounds familiar, it's because you heard it often in the fall of 2002, when George Bush had decided to wage war in Iraq. The uniformed military argued that a successful Iraq operation would require several hundred thousand troops. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, were openly dismissive of the military's views. The president let reporters know that he was reading Cohen's book to signal to the generals that he was happy to overrule them.

One is tempted to say, if Bush was so mindful of what the military wanted, he should have listened to them in 2002. But generals are neither always right nor wrong. As Cohen concludes, a good supreme commander will give the military leeway but will be constantly asking questions, examining assumptions and searching for new strategies and tactics.

Militaries, even superb ones like America's, have institutional biases. For example, armies tend to fight a counterinsurgency the way they fight war—with massive force. The American Army is smart, and trained in counterinsurgency, but does tend to revert to what it does best. The problem is that this military strategy has terrible political consequences—creating broader support for the insurgency—as Algeria, Vietnam, Northern Ireland and countless other examples show.

Armies also don't like doing peacekeeping. Patrolling streets, fighting crime, making contact with locals isn't what people join the army to do. It also interferes with force protection, an understandable and legitimate concern of commanders. And yet, success in Iraq will depend on successful peacekeeping.

What we need now is a totally engaged commander in chief, immersed in every element of the Iraq operation, who is willing to listen carefully to generals but also willing to push them to achieve political objectives. This is not a job that can be delegated to the military or anybody else.