Iraqis are ready to take over
By Greg Jaffe

The Iraq war is over for America. That doesn't mean that the United States won or achieved all of its aims or that fighting among Iraqis will stop. It doesn't mean that Iraq is stable, democratic and relatively free of corruption.

The war is over for the United States because the Iraqis don't really need or want American forces around anymore. Every time U.S. troops roll out of the gate with their Iraqi counterparts in Baghdad, they discredit the Iraqi forces in the eyes of their people. They make their Iraqi partners' jobs harder. Although senior U.S. commanders understand and accept this fact privately, they will never admit it.

Last week in Baghdad, General Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, blanched when a reporter asked him whether the war is “functionally over”.

“There are still civilians being killed in Iraq,” Odierno replied. “We still have people that are attempting to attack the new Iraqi order and the move towards democracy and a more open economy. So we still have some work to do.”

In the Iraqi capital last week, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates mouthed the standard line that there will still be “tough days ahead” for U.S. and Iraqi troops as the “enemies of a free Iraq try to derail progress”.

On the same day Gates spoke, Iraqi forces stormed the camp of an Iranian opposition group that U.S. forces had spent the past six years protecting. The People's Mujahedeen of Iran had made common cause with Saddam Hussain against Iran, but the new Iraqi government, which sees Tehran as a potential ally, decided it could no longer allow them a haven.

Odierno suggested that it wasn't the U.S. military's job to intervene in what was essentially an internal matter. “This is about the Iraqis,” he said. His tone marked a big change from the days when U.S. commanders would press the Iraqi government to fire or replace commanders they thought were incompetent or overtly sectarian.

Earlier the same day, Gates visited Tallil air base southeast of Baghdad to chat with U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police commandos as they prepared to head out on a joint patrol. The Iraqis, clad in camouflage uniforms and do-rags, huddled around their Humvees in the 46C midday heat. The American soldiers gathered in a separate cluster around Gates. The Pentagon chief thanked them for their sacrifice and service. “The training and partnering missions that you are doing are the next step in our success,” he said.

A few feet away, Major Sean Kuester admitted that the Iraqi police in the area were largely self-sufficient and his own soldiers were more than a little bored. The Iraqis had asked for some help with evidence collection and forensics, but that was about it. They conducted their own patrols and interrogations with little to no oversight from U.S. troops. “Honestly, they seem to have a very firm grasp on things,” Kuester said.

In Afghanistan, it is likely to be years before the U.S. military is pushed into the background. Afghanistan has few roads, little government capacity, almost no economy and a jaw-dropping illiteracy rate. Without the U.S. military pushing the Afghan government and security forces to act, little happens. Not surprisingly, most ambitious U.S. officers these days are doing all they can to land in units that are likely to deploy to Afghanistan instead of Iraq. One U.S. colonel in Iraq even suggested in a memo, first reported last week by The New York Times, that it is time “for the U.S. to declare victory and go home”.

But U.S. forces still have a role to play in Iraq. Their presence serves as a check on Iraqi military and political leaders' more sectarian instincts. The Americans can also act as honest brokers to resolve disagreements over the distribution of oil revenues and territorial boundaries in northern Iraq. These two issues were a major focus of Gates' trip last week.

Even General David Petraeus' celebrated counterinsurgency doctrine, which was finished in 2006, the year before he became the commanding general of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, recognized that there would be a point when the U.S. military's efforts to improve the situation in Iraq would only erode the credibility of Iraqi officials and make things worse. “Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction,” one of its Zen-like maxims read.

After six years, more than 4,300 deaths and 31,430 wounded, the moment for doing nothing in Iraq has arrived.

Greg Jaffe, who covers the military for The Washington Post, is the author, with David Cloud, of The Fourth Star.

(Source: Los Angeles Times/ Washington Post

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