The Fromson File

The Election Fetish: Americans have had an incurable desire to use elections as a barometer of a country’s success in adopting democracy. Iraq is just the latest example. Having tracked balloting in more than a dozen nations of the developing world, I can say that generally speaking the odds of a successful outcome, devoid of corruption, violence and mismanagement, are slim to none. Constitutionally, however, we seem never able to abandon an unrealistic objective. Nor do we realize that putting as complicated a procedure as an election in place requires time and cannot be rushed. What’s clear is that the Bush Administration is anxious to rush. It has it eye on our own election and wants to reduce the American presence in Iraq as much as possible before the voters decide whether or not to give the President another four years in office. To do that by transferring power to an ill-defined Iraqi legislative council and holding actual voting before next November seems highly unlikely. That’s what United Nations experts have concluded after a quick visit. Iraq still has no census, voter rolls and specific plan to choose a new Governing Council. Just how the various ethnic and religious groups would reach agreement on a national election is yet to be defined. But it is clear that if the Shiites, with 60% of the population, had their way, an election under present conditions would be theirs for the taking and that would be a recipe for disaster; perhaps a civil war. Iraqi Realities:: Giving the Iraqis the means and the will to vote are far from the only problems. In a fascinating documentary aired on PBS (November 12, 2004), Frontline producers Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria traveled the length of Iraq from the northern border town of Dohuk in Kurdistan to the town of Salwan on the Kuwait frontier. They talked both to Iraqis and to U.S. Army officers, avoiding the Iraqi capital in a five week journey entitled “Beyond Baghdad.” If you missed the original broadcast, it is still possible to see it on the Frontline website. I would be re-miss if Scott Anger, the cameraman, was overlooked. His pictures truly helped to make the documentary as compelling as it was. As I watched the tracking of the 101st Airborne Division, I had a flashback to Vietnam when I reported on the “Screaming Eagles” in the Ashau Valley where men old enough to be the grandfathers of today’s warriors were up against the toughest combat troops of the North Vietnamese army. A lot of blood was spilled back then as it was when the airborne fought so heroically in World War II in the Battle of the Bulge. However anyone may feel about the policy that put today’s airborne in Harm’s Way, the intelligence and insights of the men and women on the ground were remarkable. Major General David Petreus, the commander of the 101st is a Princeton Ph.D, taught international relations at West Point and spent a year as a nation-builder in Bosnia. As the senior officer overseeing most of northern Iraq, he conveyed the impression of an officer who had gotten a quick fix of the complexities his troops had to encounter. He is headquartered in the Sunni Arab city of Mosul where his troops came under attack on a daily basis. But this was neither the Ashau Valley or the Battle of the Bulge where combat was the “Screaming Eagles’” pre-occupation. Their challenge in Iraq was not only to fight when attacked but to grasp the politics and factionalism of people they were trying to help. Smith and colleagues also followed the commander of the 173d Airborne Division in the town of Kirkuk, Colonel Bill Mayville. Says Smith: “He spent the past year of his life trying to convince the Kurds,Arabs and Turkomen of Kirkuk to lay aside decades, if not centuries, of struggle and suffering to work together toward a new Iraqi future. That’s no small task in a place of overwhelming history, a history of great bloodshed, numerous vendettas, countless betrayals.” After watching the program, it was evident that the policy makers in Washington profoundly and consistently failed to understand and to convey to the American people the potentially explosive components that permeate the Iraqi landscape. If U.S. forces do withdraw in sizeable numbers and leave the Iraqis to resume their ancient feuds, civil war is inevitable. If American men and women are kept in Iraq in any sizeable number through the presidential election next November, the backlash inevitably will be felt by the man who sent them to war in the first place. Smith, who has produced some of the most compelling documentaries in the history of the superb “Frontline” series,” sums up the problem this way: “Whether the U.S. military can or should be taking on the tasks that candidate Bush himself derided as inappropriate in 2000 is an issue that Mayville and other officers are eager to debate. Some accept the mission with enthusiasm. Others are quite bitter about being handed a thankless job for which they were never adequately briefed or trained. They are critical of the “politicians”who sent them. But then, what else is new in war? Soldiers are used to following orders, even if they are vague and ill-conceived…even if the job of “nation-building” has fallen on the shoulders of the U.S. military because the architects of the war in Washington had no real postwar plans.” I can remember the repeated assertions by the Pentagon and many senior officers who served in Vietnam that the U.S. Army would never again fight in a war that did not have the full backing of the American people. What was clear then, as it is now, is that undeclared wars always seem easier starting than finishing.