Iraqi Security Forces Need a Cause as Much as Training

Regardless of where one stands on the issue of the war in Iraq, all sides agree that the best solution lies in the Iraqi people looking after their own concerns, and especially when it comes to security. As the president is fond of saying, “As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” The key, so the world has come to believe, is in training Iraqis to do the job of protecting Iraqis. While the pro- and anti- camps argue over how many combat ready troops have been trained, the real question is, for what will they be fighting?

In one very simple sense, any insurgency against foreign troops has an inherent advantage when it comes to motivation. The resistance fights to send the other side home. It was so for the Maquis fighting the Nazis in occupied France; it was so for the Viet Cong in fighting the French and the Americans, and it is so for the insurgents in Iraq. They don’t need to say what it is they favor after the conflict beyond an absence of foreigners.

For the pro-government side, it is always harder. One cannot say the other side would do a worse job of dealing with people’s problems. When one fights in defense of a government, one often must defend not just roads and bridges but policies and public personas. This is why the Iraqi security forces aren’t really going to get the job done with training alone. It is one thing to provide a man with the ability to fight. It is quite another to provide him with a reason to fight.

So what, precisely, does the average Iraqi trooper have as his personal casus belli? The buzz words of “freedom” and “democracy” aren’t going to do it. They sound good, but there isn’t enough behind them in the average Iraqi’s experience to motivate anybody there. Allah is a more likely cause, but the other guys seem to have taken that motivation. That isn’t to say the pro-government side can’t do so as well, but it starts to make things look like the Thirty Years’ War in which Protestant and Catholic killed each other over just what Jesus meant by “love thy neighbor.” After that, there is patriotism, but to a Kurd the word may well mean something other than what it entails for an Anbar province Sunni.

Ironically, this was Saddam Hussein’s real value to Iraqi society. He managed to get so many people to fear him that they would fight for him (at least against Iran), and a few who benefited from his rule were fanatics for him. American marines and soldiers can train 500,000 Iraqis but without a reason for those people to fight, it’s about as relevant to global politics as a karate class. A paycheck can motivate a man to kill for a government, but it takes something much different to get him to die for it. Thus far, the Iraqi authorities can’t even agree on a constitution. No one wants to die for a committee in mid-debate – that’s hardly a cause worthy of the name.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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