Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger has an excellent piece in The Wall Street Journal on why Iraq is critical to the war on terrorism. As he notes:
Osama himself has opined that “when the people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they naturally gravitate toward the strong horse.” Consequently, this country must conclusively demonstrate that we are not the weak horse. Withdrawal before we have successfully stabilized Iraq is, therefore, not an option: It would be dramatically more visible throughout the Middle East and elsewhere than were those earlier retreats cited by bin Laden. I recognize that inevitably debate will continue regarding at least the timing of our move into Iraq. Yet we must not allow the political contentions of an election year to create any impression that we are anything but united in our determination to persevere and to prevail in Iraq. Success is the only acceptable course of action, and we will succeed in sustaining order in Iraq only by embracing certain fundamental realities.
He goes on to illustrate the problems we’re facing and offers some suggestions to fix them. He seems to be on the right track with those suggestions – our procurement process must be streamlined – we don’t have the luxury of going through a wasteful procurement process to get the Iraqi people the help they need. The most successful reconstruction programs have been those in which local commanders have the authority to use a contingency fund for rebuilding projects as they see fit – meaning that the people in the field get to make the decisions rather than some bureaucrat in Baghdad or Washington.
The situation in Iraq is fraught with instability, but the promise of a free and democratic Iraq is not anywhere near inachievable. It will take some time, and even a decade from now Iraq will still have problems, but even that state is infinitely preferable to the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. We need to be both resolute and realistic, knowing that we can achieve our goals if we’re willing to be in this struggle for the long haul. The price of failure is simply too high to contemplate – if we become the “weak horse” in the eyes of the Arab world, it will do more to help al-Qaeda in the long run than anything we’ve done since September 11. Terrorists are opportunistic – they only prey on those they see as weak – it is imperative that we not show weakness in the face of terror.
