# Posted 12:06 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WASHINGTON BUZZ -- "WHY IRAQ HAS NO ARMY": The talk of the town is James Fallows' cover story [subscription required] in the December issue of the Atlantic monthly about (you guessed it) why Iraq has no army. In fact, George Stephanopoulous attempted to use the article to cross-examine Donald Rumsfeld on Sunday morning. Rumsfeld insisted he hadn't read the piece and refused to comment. But I don't think that looked good and I think Rumsfeld could safely have confronted the issue head on.

The buzz around Fallows article suggests that is a pathbreaking and scathing account of what went wrong with our efforts to train the Iraqi army. The subheader on the article itself reads:

An orderly exit from Iraq depends on the development of a viable Iraqi security force, but the Iraqis aren't even close. The Bush administration doesn't take the problem seriously—and it never has.

Perhaps because of all they hype, the article seemed much less scathing to me than it should have. I thought that its three main points have been hit upon time and again in the pages of the WaPo and NYT, often in detail. Basically, it was a huge mistake to disband the Iraqi army, it was a huge mistake not to train ourselves in the local language and culture, and we took way, way too long to get serious about putting together an Iraqi counterinsurgency force. I don't think DoD spokesman would want to admit any those of points, but they aren't exactly surprising.

But what I did find surprising was how positively Fallows described Gen. Petraeus' and Amb. Negroponte's efforts to resurrect the American strategy of standing up a local force. Fallows writes that in June 2004,

A new American Army general arrived to supervise the training of Iraqis: Dave Petraeus, who had just received his third star.

The appointment was noticed throughout the military. Petraeus, who holds a Ph.D. from Princeton, had led the 101st Airborne during its drive on Mosul in 2003 and is one of the military's golden boys. What I heard about him from other soldiers reminded me of what reporters used to hear about Richard Holbrooke from other diplomats: many people marveled at his ambition; few doubted his skills. Petraeus's new assignment suggested that training Iraqis had become a sexier and more important job. By all accounts Petraeus and Negroponte did a lot to make up for lost time in the training program.

Under Petraeus the training command abandoned an often ridiculed way of measuring progress. At first Americans had counted all Iraqis who were simply "on duty"—a total that swelled to more than 200,000 by March of 2004. Petraeus introduced an assessment of "unit readiness," as noted above. Training had been underfunded in mid-2004, but more money and equipment started to arrive.

The training strategy also changed. More emphasis was put on embedding U.S. advisers with Iraqi units. Teams of Iraqi foot soldiers were matched with U.S. units that could provide the air cover and other advanced services they needed. To save money and reduce the chance of a coup, Saddam Hussein's soldiers had only rarely, or never, fired live ammunition during training. According to an unpublished study from the U.S. Army War College, even the elite units of the Baghdad Republican Guard were allowed to fire only about ten rounds of ammunition per soldier in the year before the war, versus about 2,500 rounds for the typical U.S. infantry soldier. To the amazement of Iraqi army veterans, Petraeus introduced live-fire exercises for new Iraqi recruits.

At the end of last year, as the Iraqi national elections drew near, Negroponte used his discretion to shift $2 billion from other reconstruction projects to the training effort. "That will be seen as quite a courageous move, and one that paid big dividends," Petraeus told me. "It enabled the purchase of a lot of additional equipment, extra training, and more rebuilding of infrastructure, which helped us get more Iraqi forces out in the field by the January 30 elections."

The successful staging of the elections marked a turning point—at least for the training effort. Political optimism faded with the subsequent deadlocks over the constitution, but "we never lost momentum on the security front," Petraeus told me. During the elections more than 130,000 Iraqi troops guarded more than 5,700 polling stations; there were some attacks, but the elections went forward. "We have transitioned six or seven bases to Iraqi control," he continued, listing a variety of other duties Iraqi forces had assumed. "The enemy recognizes that if Iraqi security forces ever really get traction, they are in trouble. So all of this is done in the most challenging environment imaginable."

Had the training units avoided the "B Team" taint? By e-mail I asked an officer on the training staff about the "loser" image traditionally attached to such jobs within the military. He wrote back that although training slots had long been seen as "career killers," the importance of the effort in Iraq was changing all that. From others not involved in training I heard a more guarded view: If an Iraqi army emerges, the image of training will improve; if it doesn't, the careers of Petraeus and his successor Dempsey will suffer.

Surprisingly, Fallows doesn't go into much detail about what Petraeus accomplished. At the beginning of the article, Fallows describes Petraeus' four-level classification scheme and tells us how many Iraqi troops fall into each category. But one doesn't get a sense from the article of what that really means. How do Level 2 troops behave in combat as opposed to Level 3? Have soldiers of either level had any notable successes? The Iraqis are clearly taking heavy casualties on the battlefield. Is this a sign of success or failure?

The list of questions could go on, but the basic point is that you don't get the in-depth feel for the subject that you should from an article this long. Instead, the overwhelming focus is on mistakes that were made before Petraeus took over.

The final pages of Fallows' article are like an op-ed. He's told us what the situation is, now he's telling us what to do:

Let me suggest a standard for judging endgame strategies in Iraq, given the commitment the United States has already made. It begins with the recognition that even if it were possible to rebuild and fully democratize Iraq, as a matter of political reality the United States will not stay to see it through.

That is a strange argument coming from a journalist who is doing quite a good job of stoking public pessimism. Anyhow:

What is needed for an honorable departure is, at a minimum, a country that will not go to war with itself, and citizens who will not turn to large-scale murder...If the United States leaves Iraq knowing that non-American forces are sufficient to keep order, it can leave with a clear conscience—no matter what might happen a year or two later.

That seems like a very strange moral standard, reminiscent somewhat of Pontius Pilate. Moreover, what about national security?

Call me a maximalist, but we don't just want to stop the casualty count and walk away with clean consciences. We want to make sure that Iraq (or even the Sunni part of Iraq) doesn't become what Afghanistan was before 9/11. You can argue that none of this would've happened if we hadn't gone in the first place, but that doesn't affect our national interests now. Finally, Fallows writes that:

If we were serious about reconstituting an Iraqi military as quickly as possible, what would we do? Based on these interviews, I have come to this sobering conclusion: the United States can best train Iraqis, and therefore best help itself leave Iraq, only by making certain very long-term commitments to stay.

How does that square with the (alleged) need to recognize that we lack the will to see it through? I'm not sure. In a lot of ways, I think Fallows gives voice to great dilemma of mainstream Democrats, who know we need to win this war but lack confidence in Bush and perhaps even morseo even Rumsfeld (in the same manner as a lot of neo-conservatives). If the Democrats turn against the war, they will hasten our defeat and be branded as soft. If they support the war, they sense that it will allow the administration to be even less responsible.

So is there a third way that will allow Democrats to both criticize the war and be seen as hawkish? Yes there is. They can click their heels three times and say "I agree with John McCain." (18) opinions -- Add your opinion