Now, let me preface this by saying that I have been in opposition to the war from day one. It has been an absolute disaster, and I am convinced that beginning to withdraw US troops soon after the elections in Iraq is the best thing that can be done. I am even more strong in my belief that the death squads of El Salvador were an affront to the most fundamental human rights of all people, and there is nothing that can be said to excuse the Salvedorian government for the cold-blooded murder of countless innocents at the hands of their mobs, or to justify the US actions in condoning that brutality.
However, I think that this idea, as described, may have some merit.
First, it is quite obvious that the insurgents must be killed or captured. There is no political settlement that can be made to convince them to lay down their arms, as I think may now be the case in Afghanistan. The insurgents in Iraq are on the offensive, and winning, by killing Iraqis. The focus of this war is against the legitimacy of an incipient Iraqi government. The focus is no longer, IHMO, on simply getting the Americans out.
Second, we (the US and the Iraqi government) don’t have a hell of a lot of good options for taking the fight to the insurgents. The Iraqi forces are a joke, especially in areas where the fight is. They’re riddled with corruption and spies, and they don’t amount to a hill of beans, no matter what propaganda Rumsfeld et al might put out there. The US forces also have very few options, because they are geared to be more iron hand than velvet glove. When it comes to taking the fight to insurgents, our options seem mostly limited to indescriminate raids that net innocent civilians, but no terrorists; dropping 1000 lb. smart bombs; or laying siege to an entire city. There is no surer way to recruit more insurgents than driving innocents out of house and home. The harder we fight, the more we lose.
Third, despite those limitations, the US has to move the fight into the hands of Iraqis. We ought to be getting out, and it may well be that the best option now is to focus our efforts on recruiting and training a smaller force of elite anti-terrorism paramilitiaries. The efforts to train large numbers of police have been a failure. We have to think smaller.
Now, the parallels to the Salvedorian death squads are alarming. I don’t know how this can be done, but if these kind of paramiltiaries are formed in Iraq, there must be very strict controls over their actions. If any member or unit of these possible paramilitaries are found to engage in the thuggism as was the case in Central America, they should be taken out. Literally. I disagree that one must become a terrorist to fight terrorists.
Yes, there are very real risks to this idea, but I think it might have some merit. We clearly cannot continue along the path we are now, because it is a failure. I am convinced that the United States has already lost this war, and the only hope now is to turn this fight over to the Iraqis.