What Bush's Man in Iraq Must Do to Win the Peace

First impressions are critical, and so far the US reconstruction of Iraq looks inept, misconceived, and haphazard. If L. Paul Bremer III, President Bush’s newly appointed envoy to Iraqi pasha, is to justify the war by winning a positive peace, he needs to take control firmly and at once. That is the lesson of our successful rebuilding of Europe and Japan after World War II and of our decisive reconfiguring of Cuba and the Philippines after 1898.

If Bremer is going to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis for the long haul, as well as influence other Arab nations and US critics in Europe, he must establish order, greatly reduce crime and looting, and show that the United States means business.

That will mean more US troops on the ground and for a longer time than Washington now intends. Hastily pulling thousands of US soldiers out of Iraq before securing the peace and jump-starting rebuilding efforts undermines the legitimacy of the easy smashing of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Bremer should be putting troops, whatever their training, on the urban streets to maintain discipline and impose stability. Military police in number, and temporary judges, should follow. Both can subsequently be replaced by local law enforcement and judicial personnel, but the United States should keep order and begin on its own imposing lawful behavior now.

Winning hearts and minds, and demonstrating the good intentions of the United States, depends on a rapid restoration of water and electricity to main cities, and a broad return to normalcy. Iraqis want gasoline to be available. They want to be able to buy basic foods readily. Their children need to go back to school. The hospitals need to function well. Any giant world power ought to be able to make the country work in these ways. That is the least Iraqis expect from a victor.

The Iraqi people desperately want to go about their daily business without fear. The spotty efforts of the United States to patrol the big cities and to truck food and gasoline in from Jordan and Kuwait is good but insufficient. The United States made the same mistake in Afghanistan by refusing to spend funds on security across the nation, thus undercutting local allies and giving the Taliban a renewed respect among poor Afghans.

Tough love is needed in Iraq, at least in the short run. Bremer ought unmistakably to take charge. The route to a respected and effective locally staffed administration runs, as in postwar Germany, through determined, no nonsense US leadership, backed by sufficient manpower and firepower. That means telling Shi’ite clerics and other Iraqi contenders that Bremer and his team are in command and that no other nodes of authority will be tolerated.

Shepherding the mullahs in the right direction will be tough, but without so concentrating the minds of Iraqis, we risk massive Iranian influence, a constant jockeying for power among local notables, instability, and the loss of our legitimacy in the Arab world. However, only if Bremer’s new administration can deliver the order and political goods that Iraqis demand will he succeed in deflecting the ambitious religionists.

Bremer will have to deliver, however, and rapidly, if his expression of US determination is to succeed and be persuasive. If Washington instead refuses to supply him with the necessary soldiers, and continues withdrawing regiments at a rapid rate, we may as well forget the case Washington made for prosecuting the war in the first place. Trying to reconstruct Iraq halfheartedly is bound to lose the peace - and fast.

The United States has frittered away too much of its victorious legitimacy by not focusing firmly on reconstructive tasks since winning Baghdad and Mosul. Bremer must now regard himself as proconsul and demonstrate that the United States really cares for Iraqis, and not just their oil. It would also show that the Bush administration knows how to use its soft power - the real basis of American influence in the world.

To some extent, we have done that already in northern Iraq, especially in Mosul, where one effective military leader has gone beyond his narrow instructions to bring order and a sense of caring power to the skeptical Sunni-dominated city. His efforts show what can and should be done.

Bremer can do more, and need not have formal elections to establish an administration in which Iraqis can have confidence. His main task is to persuade Iraqis that the United States has a positive vision for a future Iraq that will work.

So far we have bumbled along, reactively. We can only win their hearts and minds, and thus the hearts and minds of oppressed and terrorized persons everywhere, by spending the substantial sums to remake Iraq for Iraqis. Anything less will lose the larger, shadowy war for world peace.