The way forward

Jalal Talabani, President of the Iraq Govering Council has an article on OpinionJournal.com about things that need to happen in Iraq. Among other things, he argues that we need to get to the points where the Iraqis themselves are able to lead the fight against the Baathists and terrorists in Iraq.

Interestingly, despite his belief that Iraqis need to do more of the fighting, Talabani states that it was absolutely not a mistake to disband the Iraqi army.

Second, the new Iraqi army, police and intelligence services must be trained by the coalition and dedicated to defending democracy. Resurrecting the former Iraqi army is not an option. The Iraqi army had a record of internal repression and external aggression. L. Paul Bremer, the coalition's administrator, demonstrated great wisdom when he formally wound up the Iraqi army. Like the Allied decree in 1946 that dissolved Prussia, the edict abolishing the Iraqi army struck at the roots of the Arab nationalist militarism that plagued Iraq even before Saddam.

Those advocating the recall of the former Iraqi army are propounding the "stability first" policy that President Bush rejected with his Nov. 6 speech. The Iraqi peoples were victims of the "stability" imposed by the Iraqi army. All patriotic Iraqis were heartened when Mr. Bush said that "60 years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe--because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."

I suspect that part of this discconect comes from the fact that we in the West, sitting thousands of miles away, just aren't capable of understanding the emotional reaction that ordinary Iraqis have towards Saddam's army. The army is the ultimate symbol of all that Saddam did to his people. Bringing back Saddam's army, minus his generals, to help secure the country sounds very tempting as a way to more quickly bring things out of control. But I suspect that asking the Iraqi people to accept Saddam's army under new leadership is simply not practical. Starting over from scratch may be frustrating, but I believe the long-term rewards will be worth it

(Besides, all large organizations have a "corporate culture." The only way to change such a culture completely is to dump pretty much everyone and start over. Let's be honest here: Do we really want the new Iraqi army to have the same culture as the old one? I think not.)