More Troops, Not Fewer

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The rising tide of bloodshed in Iraq does not seem to have made the slightest impression on Donald Rumsfeld. Touting the good news on the Sunday talk-show circuit this week, the Defense Secretary assured the nation that, despite the escalation of violence in Iraq, "there has not been a need for additional U.S. forces." Instead, Rumsfeld intends to withdraw 30,000 soldiers by next summer. This insistence that the United States has deployed sufficient troops to Iraq has become a favorite mantra among administration officials -- and among their critics. Senator John Kerry said in September that dispatching more troops to Iraq would be the "worst thing" the United States could do.

But the unlikely duo of Rumsfeld and Kerry has things backward. The United States shouldn't be drawing down its troop levels in Iraq; it should be building them up. Two months ago, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, said that, if attacks escalate, "that would be an additional security challenge out there that I do not have sufficient forces for." Well, the attacks have escalated -- from roughly a dozen per day during the summer to over 30 per day now. And, as the events of the past week show, not only U.S. installations but also Iraqi government buildings, humanitarian organizations, weapons depots, and oil pipelines need to be secured. Without adequate security, groups essential to rebuilding Iraq simply cannot function. And, at the moment, the U.S. Army is the only force that can provide this security. But the same overstretched force must also combat what has become a full-blown insurgency.

The administration's response to all this? "Our goal," Rumsfeld says, "is not to create a dependency in Iraq by flooding it with Americans." But the soldier-to-population ratio during past military occupations has rarely been so low. A recent RAND Corporation study recounts that, in postwar Germany, which the Bush team frequently cites as a model, the United States deployed one soldier for every ten citizens. In Iraq today, coalition forces field one soldier for every 154 citizens.

Their disavowals notwithstanding, the Bush team understands the problem all too well, which is why they have spent the past few months crisscrossing the globe in search of manpower. Alas, the French and the Germans, while supporting resolutions that lend the UN's imprimatur to the occupation, have no intention of lending anything beyond that. Such is the administration's desperation that it has been reduced to imploring Turkey for help, despite Washington's earlier pledge to keep Iraq's longtime foe from meddling in the country's affairs.

The administration has now latched on to the idea of "Iraqifying" the war -- transferring the responsibility for securing Iraq to Iraqis. Yet the mistaken logic of "Iraqification" is precisely the logic of "Vietnamization," whereby the United States entrusted foreign proxies to mask a collapse of U.S. will. Washington lost that earlier war, and, if it expects Iraqi policemen to triumph over America's foes, it will lose this one, too. Rumsfeld claims that "over one hundred thousand" Iraqis have been trained to provide security. But, a month ago, L. Paul Bremer put it at 60,000. Whatever the true number, racing to put an Iraqi force in the field also means putting a less competent force in the field. The Iraqis trained so far by the United States still lack equipment and, in many cases, have received only a week of training and suffer from low morale. As the Los Angeles Times reported last month, several Iraqi policemen "said they were under pressure from their families to leave the force" because the policemen were being targeted by their countrymen. If even crack American troops cannot quash the insurgents, how can poorly trained, besieged Iraqi security forces fare any better?

In fact, neither international troops, Iraqis, nor Rumsfeld's vision of a revolution in military technology provides an adequate response to the challenges in Iraq. To avoid a U.S. defeat, the administration will need to call up more reserve and National Guard units and deploy Marines to Iraq, steps it is beginning to take. But it will need to do so without reducing the overall troop count in Iraq, as it plans to by next spring. It may even have to expand the troop strength of the Army, an option Rumsfeld stubbornly refuses to entertain. Any of these steps could exact a steep political price from the White House and perhaps even mean losing the election in 2004. But, even for President Bush, losing the war would be far worse.

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