Plus Ca Surge, Plus C’est Le Meme Chose

"Police state" is not a term one wishes to apply to post-Saddam Iraq, and yet policing is exactly what the strained sinews of state will be tasked with for the foreseeable future. Time reports on the tepid "surge" option:

There is a big debate about how many troops would be needed to execute that mission successfully. Some experts think 100,000 might be the right number; Keane and Kagan say it can be done with 35,000, which is about the limit that would be available. It does not appear that the White House will be sending that many.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a difference of opinion amounting to 65,000 soliders seem less than confidence-inspiring? That's like saying the safest place to land a crashing plane is on top of that mountain or at the bottom of that ravine. Add to this the fact that almost half of the Keane-Kagan figure is what the president actually plans to send to Iraq and you've got pre-production on We Don't Know What the Fuck We're Doing: The Legend Continues.

Any temporary military proposal at this point — let alone one vetted endlessly in international magazines, which the Sunni insurgency and Al-Qaeda at least glance at once in a while — is unlikely to yield long-term stability in Iraq. What is needed most is change at the political and civil levels. We might start by cracking down on roving Shiite goon squads and arresting those known to be involved in them; publicizing names of suspected criminals and mass murderers and offering hefty rewards for information leading to their capture; employing a zero-tolerance policy on working for the government by day and setting off car bombs by night. These changes will of course require an alteration in policing methods and greater expertise as to how to integrate the military into urban and rural infrastructures. How daunting is such a mission?

At present there are 50,000-plus American troops stationed in Western Europe, 2,000 in Bosnia, and 20,000 Marines in Okinawa. Would some of the personnel from these garrisons — which, with the possible exception of Bosnia, today seem otiose — be better suited for colonial civil service in Iraq, knowing, as they must, how to navigate native populations? (The idea of "plainclothes" soldiers is not that outlandish, particularly when informants put their lives on the line by being seen with Americans in broad daylight. That so many career officers have never seen combat in historical theatres of war is not such a deterrant to their usefulness in a raging one: They've spent ample time learning the social concomitants — people skills, for lack of a better term — of permanent duty abroad.)

The administration has the right idea about beefing up the Iraqi job market and deploying "Provincial Reconstruction Teams," which consist of State Department officials charged with assigning construction contracts to Iraqi companies and helping rebuild blasted-out civil facilities. This should have been done three ago.

But a reform of central authority such that it actually looks, well, authoritative, is what's needed most right now. Even before an addition of more feet on the ground in Iraq, we should make sure the ones already there know the right beat to be marching to. Nothing outlined in the "surge" proposal indicates we do.