# Posted 10:35 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

DO THE MATH: According to the NYT,

The number of American troops in Iraq fell to 127,000 last week, down roughly 10 percent from a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, the Pentagon and L. Paul Bremer, the American administrator, envision Iraqi security forces totaling 186,000 by 2005. They already count 46,000 Iraqi police now on the job, heading toward a goal of 65,000 or 75,000. They want a new Iraqi Army of 40,000 (right now 1,000 are being trained) and 15,000 members of a civilian defense corps, though they acknowledge it could take five or six years to get there. They also want 3,700 border guards, twice the current number. And for every one of those Iraqis who step into the street or the desert, some American is supposed to be going home.

There's a big story here that very few correspondents or policymakers are focusing. Just how good are these tens of thousands of Iraqi security officials? Are they competent? Corrupt?

These questions are tremendously important for two reasons. First of all, it's become clear in recent weeks that the shortage of American manpower is the most important constraint on American occupation policy. If Iraqi security officers can actually do their job, then the whole "Should we go to the UN?" and "Should we expand the Army?" debates will be unnecessary.

Second of all, the (apalling) quality of our allies is perhaps the most overlooked factor in explaining American setbacks in Third World conflicts. For example, what is the lesson of Vietnam? One side says that America cannot win immoral wars. The other says that it cannot win wars with one hand tied behind its back. Others say America can't win Third World conflcits if it it doesn't understand foreign soldiers. Still others say America underestimated Vietnamese nationalism.

To be fair, almost everyone recognizes that South Vietnamese forces were less than motivated and less than competent. But almost no one lists that as the primary cause of American failure. Mostly, I think because American generals avoided acknowledging that fact by relying on more and more American soldiers and American firepower. For one account of just how devastating South Vietnamese failures were, take a look at Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, specifically his account of the battle of Ap Bac.

[NB: My office mate, who's about to get his Ph.D. in the history of the Vietnam war, says that Sheehan's book, like most of those about Vietnam, suffers from an excessive reliance on American sources. I'm more than willing to acknowledge that point, but don't think it bears on my argument directly.]

The issue of allied forces is also very much on my mind because of my own dissertation on Reagan and Central America. In Reagan's time, arguments about El Salvador were very similar to those once had about Vietnam. The Administration kept insisting that it couldn't win with one hand tied behind its back. Its opponents kept insisting that America could never win an immoral war in which it backed brutal military officers against popular guerillas.

But as I see it, the real problem was the incompetence and corruption of the Salvadoran military. While it's brutality cost it heavily in terms of popular support, its incompetence and corruption cost it far more on the battlefield. When it comes down to it, you can't win a civil war when your officers are getting rich by selling American weapons to the guerrillas. The parallels to Vietnam are disturbing.

That said, one of my main concerns about Iraq is the quality of indigenous security forces. In Vietnam and El Salvador, it may not have been possible to come up with better allies, especially because the US was dealing with entrenched regimes. But Iraq is different. The past weighs heavily on the present, but little would stand in the way of an aggressive effort to ensure the honesty and competence of the new police and military forces. Thus, the real question is whether American policymakers will show enough of an interest in such issues to prevent another disaster. (1) opinions -- Add your opinion