On training Iraqis to run their country

In working out steps forward in Iraq in the coming days, it is worth reviewing the US model of leadership in a part of the world that does not share its history of civilization.
As Washington struggles to find a new approach, training the Iraqi army, police and administration is an option on which there is agreement across the American political spectrum. This is based on the premise that Americans have things to teach Iraqis about war, governance, law and order, and peace.
Many Americans were taken aback by the obstinacy of Iraqis as warriors and the cunning of their ruse and feint. That should be no surprise since Iraqis have fought fratricidal wars for over 3000 years.
Iraqis are experts at conspiracy and compromise, as demonstrated by their survival over millennia without imploding. Evidently, they care little for American colonels and politicians trying to teach them how to fight, govern themselves, do policing, negotiate compromise and build peace.
Yes, Washington would have a lot to teach Iraqis in all those domains if they were to disown the civilization their ancestors built and replace it with values of America’s ancestors. That is not the case.
In any event, an American infantry soldier cannot fight efficiently without the support of multibillion-dollar logistics, weapons and command and control systems. On his back, he carries science-fiction equipment.
How is he qualified to train Iraqis soldiers who must ride in open vehicles, carry walkie-talkies that barely function and fight house to house using light arms?
Recent estimates suggest that 10,000 recruits add $1.5 billion to US defense establishment costs. How is such a high-cost military administration qualified to teach management to a third world army in which most ranks cost a pittance compared with a novice recruit in America?
American training has one vital use. It helps to make Iraqi troops interoperable with high-tech US soldiers. But what good is that kind of army for Iraq if Americans are going to leave anyway and may never again fight together?
The government for which the US wants to train Iraqi troops is already betraying American values. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has repeatedly ignored Washington despite personal endorsements by President George Bush. His latest duplicity was the hasty and medieval execution of Saddam Hussein.
Were domestic political compromises to happen as Washington desires, the governing alliance’s first act may be to get rid of Americans. Without that, the government could not persuade all its components to stick to the compromises. For example, Moktada al-Sadr and nationalists are hardly likely to accept continuing American influence in Iraq after swallowing the bitter pills of compromise.
Regarding law and order, American methods are far superior to traditional Iraqi barbarity but its credibility as a role model is undermined. Despite its high technology police, it has the world’s largest prison population and extensively violent criminal behavior. Gitmo and Abu Ghraib raise doubts about American methods of incarceration and ethics under stress. This is noted again by the recent internal FBI investigation of Guantanamo.
On homeland security, America’s standing as a trainer is questionable. The US has one of the world’s most bureaucratic homeland security systems in which even Americans show little confidence. It is superior to Iraqi methods regarding human rights but those precepts are hard to transfer to people with such dissimilar legal traditions.
With these factors in mind, US police and security administrators are not particularly qualified to teach other much less well-funded forces about homeland security, treatment of prisoners or preventing crime.
Nor does America offer Iraqis a role model of governance. The incompetence and corruption of its administration in Iraq is well documented. No new government trying to win popular support should deliberately pattern its administration on this track record.
Of course, governance within America is in many cases superior to that of other Western countries with similar economies, social systems and history of civilization. But how well is American equipped to lead and train people with very dissimilar history of civilization, mired in poverty and destroyed by war?
Even the American corporate model stands discredited in Iraq. Whatever economic dynamism remains in Iraq is thanks to the ingenuity of its own people working against great odds.
Almost all the money Washington spends in Iraq pays for American war costs with a small trickle going to reconstruction. Most of it never leaves America since it pays US defense establishment costs or goes or to American companies and their subcontractors. The achievements of those US companies in Iraq are negligible.
In effect, a massive redistribution of wealth is underway from US taxpayers towards shareholders of US companies and government entities involved in the Iraq war. The economic benefits to Iraqis are hard to discern.
Perhaps, it is time for American taxpayers to study more closely how they are being squeezed, while asking tougher questions about US involvement in places beyond those that share a similar history of civilization.