[The writer is a historian and author of "Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War."]

It's not uncommon these days to hear talk of "lessons" learned in Vietnam and their application to current U.S. conflicts. Unfortunately, most observers have ignored the uniqueness of the Vietnam War, picking and choosing the lessons learned there with little regard for their application to the present.

This is particularly true with the current buzz over the "clear and hold" concept, which has gained popularity in some circles. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice invoked it during Senate testimony in October, and columnist David Ignatius reported in his Nov. 4 op-ed that many Army officers are reading historian Lewis Sorley's book "A Better War," which argues that the United States could have prevailed in Vietnam if the military had used Gen. Creighton Abrams's ideas earlier in the war.

This simplistic notion may resonate in Washington, but it means little to troops on the ground. Marines in Fallujah or soldiers in Baghdad or near the Syrian border will tell you that they have been "clearing" areas for more than a year now, but "holding" them is a different matter. That takes a lot of troops, not small teams.

So much for simple lessons from Vietnam. But for better or worse, Vietnam is the most recent example of American counterinsurgency -- and our longest -- so it would be a mistake to reject it because of its complex and controversial nature. Stripped to essentials, there are three basic lessons from the war. All must be employed by any counterinsurgency effort, no matter what shape it takes.

First, there must be a unified structure that combines military and civilian pacification efforts. In Vietnam that organization was called CORDS, for Civil Operations and Rural Development Support. Formed in 1967, it placed the disjointed and ineffective civilian pacification programs under the military. This was accomplished only at the insistence of President Lyndon Johnson, who took an active interest in seeing the pacification process function smoothly under a single manager: Gen. William Westmoreland. CORDS gave the pacification effort access to military money and personnel, allowing programs to expand dramatically. In 1966 there were about 1,000 advisers involved in pacification, and the annual budget was $582 million; by 1969 that had risen to 7,600 advisers and almost $1.5 billion. This rapid progress was possible only because of CORDS's streamlined system under Defense Department control.

In Afghanistan, the provincial reconstruction teams have viewed CORDS as a model, but there is no truly integrated system yet. In Iraq, the old Coalition Provisional Authority suffered from the same problems that caused the formation of CORDS, in particular a dual chain of command that failed to coordinate military and civilian efforts. Not enough has been done since the CPA's dissolution in 2004 to integrate nation-building into military planning....

The second lesson involves attacking the enemy's center of gravity. An insurgency thrives only if it can maintain a permanent presence among the population, which in Vietnam was called the Viet Cong infrastructure, or VCI. ...

Finally, it is crucial to form militias in order to raise the staff necessary to maintain a permanent government presence in dangerous areas. This is the only way "clear and hold" has any hope of working. Even an eventual U.S. troop strength of more than 500,000 and a similar number of South Vietnamese soldiers were not enough to take the countryside from the insurgents. But the early creation of a territorial militia helped return a government presence to the countryside....

In the end America failed in Vietnam, and it is difficult to convince the public or policymakers that there is anything to learn from a losing effort. But the U.S. military did make important headway in pacification, and it would be foolish to let that experience slip away....

... Parliament requires a 2/3s vote to elect a president, who must appoint a prime minister from the coalition with a simple majority. I figure 2/3s as about 184 votes. Allawi and the Sunni Arabs probably won't have more than 50 or 55 seats all told, leaving around 220. The Kurds will have about 50. If we subtract them, we come down to 170. Therefore, an Allawi/Sunni boycott would force the Shiites into another coalition with the Kurds if they are to form a government, and the Kurds can extract promises moderating Shiite fundamentalist policies before they agree. Since the Rejectionist Conference is alleging fraud in "northern cities," probably a euphemism for Kirkuk, it may in fact push the Kurds to ally with the Shiites again, since both have an interest in protecting their electoral victories in their provinces. On the other hand, if the Kurds and the Shiites can do business, then the Allawi/Sunni boycott would become meaningless and would simply deprive them o f a vote in parliament.

Once a Shiite-dominated government is formed, the United Iraqi Alliance could simply vote down its rivals by simple majority, though it would risk a presidential veto if it failed to get a consensus. The president (who likely will be a Kurd and likely will be Jalal Talabani) and the two vice presidents (likely a Sunni Arab and a Shiite) each can exercise a separate veto over legislation for the next 4 years. If the Kurds and the Shiites can find a pliable and complaisant Sunni Arab to serve as vice president, though, they could just run roughshod over the Sunni Arab and secularist minority.

Generally speaking, in parliamentary systems boycotts usually backfire and a poor political strategy. If the Sunni Arabs and secularists were smart, they'd make themselves swing votes in parliament and use their economic power to lobby for policies they want, thus leveraging themselves into great influence. The Sunni Arabs and ex-Baathists were used, however, to ruling by the iron fist from above, and so are hardly canny parliamentarians, and don't know how to make themselves indispensable as a minority. ...

[Historian Geoffrey Blainey, in The Multicultural Experiment (Macleay Press, 2002).]

CULTURAL diversity can have great claim and vigour, but extreme diversity, as modern history shows, can also be risky to a self-governing nation.

A nation has two main functions. One is to maintain or foster a good life for its citizens: a good life, materially, culturally, socially and politically. The second function is to defend the citizens and, if necessary, their liberties and way of life when the nation is in peril. It is true that diversity can help foster the good life, whether in restaurants or the performing arts, but there are nations possessing such a level of ethnic and cultural diversity -- and disharmony -- that the quality of their national life suffers. Likewise, extreme cultural diversity can weaken a nation's ability to defend itself.

The celebrating of diversity within a nation is, by and large, a relatively recent trend. It is still an experiment, a Western experiment. The encouraging of large and inward-looking Muslim enclaves in Western nations is a bold experiment. It is not paralleled by the setting up, in Muslim nations, of Christian enclaves in which Christians have full citizenship rights.

These Western experiments may eventually serve a valuable purpose internationally. Within Western nations, the experiments could well succeed in the long term, though that is too early to predict. The terrorist attacks on the US, however, were a shock to those who had lauded diversity as an automatic recipe for harmony. Diversity is a two-edged blade. It seems appropriate in good times. In a national crisis, however, ethnic and cultural diversity can be explosive.

[Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University www.niallferguson.org.]

... the forces bedevilling the Middle East today are fundamentally the same ones that tore Europe apart in the mid-20th century. If I had to offer a concise explanation for the extreme violence of that era, I would blame the three Es: ethnic conflict, economic volatility and empires in decline.

It was the ethnic diversity of populations, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, that made new nation states so unstable after 1918, as majorities lorded it over minorities, who in turn looked abroad for support. It was the extraordinarily erratic performance of the European economies in the 1920s and 1930s that drove millions to embrace extreme political ideologies, such as communism and fascism. And it was imperial weakness - British overstretch, in particular, but also the internal instability of the German, Austrian and Russian empires - that made full-scale war so hard to avoid.

Europe a century ago was the continent through which the world's biggest geopolitical fault-lines ran. Like the Middle East today, it had the allure of natural resources (coal and iron, not oil). Like the Middle East today, it had a rapidly growing population that was deeply divided along ethnic lines (though the majority were Christians, not Muslims). And like the Middle East today, it was where the tectonic plates of empire met.

The historical link from then to now is provided by the Ottoman Empire. As it metamorphosed into the Turkish nation-state we know today, the Ottoman Empire left behind it a litter of lost provinces. These the British and French sought to fashion into dependencies. Iraq, Jordan and Palestine (complete with "a national home for the Jewish people") joined Egypt in the British sphere of influence; Syria and Lebanon went to the French. Cleverly, the United States staked a claim in the region by backing the House of Saud in Arabia.

Many commentators like to blame all the problems of the Middle East today on these imperial manoeuvres, as if the British somehow invented the ancient fissures between Shi'ites and Sunnis, or wilfully encouraged Jewish settlers to colonise Palestine. In truth, the post-1918 order - which endured into the late 1950s - was successful in preventing Arab nationalism from becoming a source of support for the Axis powers during the Second World War. No small feat.

The subsequent American dominance of the region was based on an unlikely combination of special relationships with Wahhabism (Saudi Arabia) and Zionism (Israel). Though it managed to check Soviet ambitions in the region during the Cold War, the United States has struggled to keep the peace. There have been several small wars between Israel and the Arab powers. Defeated in battle, the Arabs have resorted to terrorism. Meanwhile, Iran has plunged out of control since 1979 and is now the principal menace to the stability of the region, sponsoring suicide bombers and spewing out anti-Semitism.

After the Iranian revolution, the Americans played the balance of power game, treating Saddam as a useful counterweight. But dissatisfaction with this murky strategy prompted the so-called neo-conservatives to devise a new strategy. The region could be stabilised (and Israel's security enhanced) by means of a forcible democratic revolution, beginning in Iraq. It was a strategy based more on political science than on history. The "democratic peace" theory states that two democracies are always and everywhere less likely to go to war with one another than two dictatorships or a democracy and a dictatorship. The neo-cons inferred from this that a more democratic Middle East would be a more peaceful Middle East. President Bush has trotted out this line in numerous speeches.

Last Thursday's election in Iraq is being interpreted in Washington as evidence that the neo-con approach may yet work. Certainly, the high turn-outs recorded - especially in the Sunni areas - are the nicest pre-Christmas present Mr Bush could have wished for. Moreover, opinion polls show that ordinary Iraqis are looking forward optimistically to a democratic future. Are Iraqis sorry Saddam was overthrown? Harold Pinter, please note: 80 per cent of people in the mainly Kurdish provinces and 58 per cent of people in the mainly Shi'ite provinces think the United States was "right to invade Iraq"; 70 per cent of all Iraqis approve of the new constitution and almost as many expect life to be better a year from now. Yes, two thirds want the Americans to go home. But most Americans feel the same way.

Yet history offers a salutary warning. Even a complete success in Iraq would leave an awful lot of non-democracies right next door, notably Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran. In any case, what the democratic peace theory doesn't tell you is the number of countries that have plunged into civil war in the aftermath of democratisation....

The United States wins in the sense that Iraq has now successfully held two elections and a referendum. But the US also loses because democracy lays bare the deep differences between Shi'ites, Kurds and Sunnis. You end up not with a democratic peace but with a democratic war as the Kurds take up arms to fight for independence, and the Sunnis do likewise to reassert their traditional dominance over the more populous and oil-rich Shi'ite provinces....

[Frederick W. Kagan, a military historian and coauthor of While America Sleeps, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His Blueprint for Victory appeared in the Weekly Standard of October 31, 2005.]

IS RETREAT FROM--or withdrawal from--or defeat in--Iraq inevitable? Almost all opponents of the Bush administration say it is. As Rep. Jack Murtha put it in mid-November, when demanding the "immediate redeployment of U.S. troops" consistent with their safety, "The United States cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring the troops home." This was echoed more recently by Democratic chief Howard Dean: "The idea that we're going to win this war is an idea that, unfortunately, is just plain wrong." Advocates of withdrawal point to continuing attacks on coalition and Iraqi targets and to the steady, somber flow of U.S. casualties, as well as the increasing fear that our Army will break under the strain of prolonged occupation.

Administration supporters of course share these concerns, and some seem (privately) to share the view that the war may be unwinnable. Even a few inside the administration may have their doubts. In any case, the administration clearly believes that it has to promise a significant reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq--"conditions permitting"--in 2006. Reports are circulating that preparations for troop reductions have already begun.

The irony is that demands for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces do not spring from any particular recent bad news from Iraq (there has been little) or justified alarm about the Army's ability to sustain itself (high levels of retention continue to make up for problems with recruitment). On the contrary, the most recent news from Iraq is promising. American strategy has improved, and prospects for success are better than they have ever been.

Since early September, coalition efforts along the Syrian border to clear towns of insurgents have not generated anger, violence, and outbursts--on the contrary. The clearing of Tal Afar in mid-September by a combined American and Iraqi force followed a request by the citizens of that town for an American intervention. Operations in villages in the upper Euphrates since then have generated limited and sporadic resistance, mainly from cornered insurgents. The lessons of the October referendum are very clear, moreover: Dramatic and aggressive joint action by U.S. and Iraqi forces to preempt and defeat the insurgents' attempt to derail the election worked spectacularly well.

There is at this point at least as much evidence that the aggressive use of coalition forces is effective as that the presence of those forces is--as U.S. critics insist--harmful. Desirable though the withdrawal of U.S. forces is from both the American and the Iraqi perspectives, therefore, it must not be the first goal of U.S. operations in Iraq. The truth is that calls for a precipitous retreat from Iraq, or for setting arbitrary deadlines or milestones for withdrawal, now threaten to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

A Baseless Urgency


THE URGENCY of an American withdrawal from Iraq is no greater now than it has been for some time, and those most loudly demanding immediate withdrawal have no convincing evidence to support their demands. In his passionate speech, Murtha quoted selectively from the statements of CENTCOM officials to present a picture of Iraq in which resentment of U.S. forces appeared to be growing and to be deepening the insurgency. "I have concluded," said Murtha, "the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress. Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, the Saddamists, and the foreign jihadists." In response to questions, he repeated: "It's time to bring [U.S. troops] home. . . . They're the targets. They have become the enemy! . . . We're uniting the enemy against us!"

But these assertions are simply wrong.

Coalition forces have always been the primary targets of the insurgents, but over the past year Iraqi security forces and Iraqi civilians have borne a larger share of insurgent attacks than they did before the first battle of Falluja and the revelation of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Recent spectacular attacks on Iraqi police and security forces and assassinations of Sunni political leaders participating in the election underscore this point. Nor are the insurgents any more "united" than they have ever been. On the contrary, growing numbers of Sunni Arab leaders are joining the political process in defiance of the terrorists within their communities. It is even possible, according to recent news reports, that some Sunni Arab insurgent groups have put out feelers to the Iraqi government about the possibility of themselves joining the political process.

The reaction of Sunni Arabs to terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi's repeated calls in September for civil war against the Shiites was also significant. Although a handful of Sunni Arab clerics denounced Zarqawi for raising issues that distracted attention from the fight against the Americans, most kept silent, tacitly accepting the priority of the struggle against the Shiites. This silence does not necessarily bode well for civil order in Iraq, but it certainly suggests that the radical Sunni Arab clerics do not identify the American presence as the major problem they face. On the contrary, it is another argument for the importance of continued American involvement in this struggle in order to avert civil war.

MURTHA AND HIS ALLIES, then, ignore the fact that, while the Americans are a common enemy of the insurgents, the Iraqi government is also a common enemy--and a much more threatening one for most of the rebel groups. The presence of U.S. forces in Iraq is simply not the primary problem in that country, and the removal of those forces would therefore not end the insurgency.

Data about insurgent attacks in Iraq do not support any sense of urgency about withdrawing either. The October constitutional referendum saw significantly fewer attacks than the January 2005 elections: 299 attacks on January 30 generating 213 casualties, versus 89 attacks and 49 casualties on October 15. Insurgents attacked only 19 election sites in October; in January they struck 88. Although the significance of such data is not clear, and other trend lines are less promising than this, there is certainly no case to be made that the situation is worsening enough to support urgent demands for immediate withdrawal. On the contrary, it appears that significant progress is being made.

Another of the central arguments Murtha and others, including some CENTCOM leaders and Bush administration officials, have used to support a shrinking U.S. footprint in Iraq is that a reduction in American forces will "incentivize" the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own security. This argument would make sense if there were Iraqi military and security organs ready and able to take control of the fight against the insurgents, but there are not. James Fallows has recently described (in excessively dark terms, to be sure) the plight of the Iraqi army, and it is clear that the Iraqis cannot now control the insurgency by themselves. The preparation of Iraqi police forces has been lagging far behind that of the army; what is more, and it will be still longer until they are ready. More responsible advocates of withdrawal allow for the possibility of maintaining American support troops and contractors in Iraq, to make up for the near-total inability of the Iraqi army to support itself. Murtha would remove even those (he declared: "Setting an exit-strategy with some kind of event-driven plan doesn't work because they always find an excuse not to get them out"), allowing the Iraqi military to crumble instantly, as it surely would. We cannot "incentivize" the Iraqis to take responsibility before they are ready to do so.

Nor do the Iraqis need much in the way of incentives. Evidence both statistical and anecdotal underlines the determination of the new Iraqi army to participate in the counterinsurgency on its own. Iraqi units have planned and conducted their own operations on numerous occasions, and in 2005 there have been no instances of Iraqi army units running from combat. U.S. officers repeatedly express pride in the Iraqi troops they are training and fighting with--and offer numerous stories to back up that pride. The Iraqis are fighting and will continue to fight without the "incentive" of being required to take on tasks for which they are unprepared.

Perhaps the most serious argument made by those who advocate reductions in the American presence in Iraq is that the U.S. Army is in danger of breaking. General Barry McCaffrey recently warned that the "wheels are coming off" the Army. Andrew Krepinevich accepted this assumption as one of the key bases for his argument that the United States should simultaneously reduce its forces in Iraq and adopt an "oil-spot" strategy of focusing on the security of a small number of key locations and spreading that control gradually over the country. We will return to the wisdom of the "oil-spot" approach momentarily, but we must first consider the assertion that the Army is in imminent danger of collapse.

It is difficult to measure, in truth, how close the Army is to "breaking." The bare numbers are not very revealing--the Army missed its annual recruiting goal last year by 7,000 soldiers (out of a recruiting target of 80,000 to support a force of over 500,000). The pipeline of "deferred accessions," those who have volunteered and been accepted but whose reporting to basic training units is delayed, on the other hand, has dried up, so that subsequent recruiting shortfalls may be effectively much higher. The Army appears to be having more difficulty in filling certain essential specialties than it has before, although units deploying to Iraq do so with full complements of soldiers on the whole.

The most worrisome aspect of the problem is that the Army is now relying on an extremely high retention and reenlistment rate to make up for recruiting shortfalls--the more soldiers who "re-up," the fewer new recruits the Army has to find. McCaffrey, Krepinevich, and others worry that as the war goes on, retention will fall--and then the wheels really will come off. Students of the British war in Northern Ireland second these fears. Most U.S. soldiers have experienced only one or two deployments to Iraq, but retention in the British Army did not begin to suffer until soldiers went back for their third and fourth deployments.

The strain on the Army is no secret. The administration's consistent refusal--since taking office, since 9/11, since Afghanistan, and since Operation Iraqi Freedom--to increase the size of the active force continues to be both inexplicable and inexcusable. But no one knows when or even if the Army will break. No one, indeed, has any very clear idea of what "breaking" would mean today--the term refers to the Army of the post-Vietnam period which was suffering not only from prolonged combat, but from the effects of defeat in war, rejection by American society, and the sudden conversion of a draftee force to an all-volunteer force. It does not seem that the Army of today will face many of those challenges, so the validity of the analogy is suspect.

Neither is it clear that there is nothing to be done about this problem other than withdrawing from Iraq. The "broken" Army of the 1970s suffered from serious recruiting problems, which the Reagan administration fixed in short order by increasing recruiting bonuses, improving recruiting strategies, and adding a presidential call-to-arms. The Army has been feeling its way toward such solutions today, but cautiously and without the benefit of public presidential or significant financial assistance. It would be wise to try fixing the Army without giving up on Iraq before accepting defeat there as the price we must pay for the institutional health of the Army.

It is not clear, moreover, that the United States should prioritize the institutional health of the Army over success in Iraq. Withdrawing from Iraq prematurely would almost certainly lead to the collapse of civil order there, the failure of Iraqi democracy, the dramatic rise of al Qaeda and other forms of violent Islamic radicalism, and possibly the expansion of intra-Iraqi conflict to involve other countries of the region. It is likely that many of these scenarios would see American force reengaged in the region in large numbers and in short order. The terms of the conflict would then be worse, the stakes higher, and the dangers of "breaking" the Army even greater. So it is almost certainly the case that withdrawing from Iraq now to save the Army is as short-sighted as it initially seems to some to be wise and far-seeing. Those concerned about the health of the Army--to say nothing of the well-being of the nation--should give first priority to success in this mission.

In Search of a Strategy

SENATOR JOSEPH BIDEN recently declared, "If the administration shows it has a blueprint for protecting our fundamental security interests in Iraq, Americans will support it." He is quite right. One of the reasons for the decline in domestic support for the Bush administration's policy in Iraq has been the absence of any such clearly articulated strategy for victory there. CENTCOM has long argued that the key to success is a small American footprint and training Iraqi soldiers to take over as rapidly as possible. CENTCOM commander General John Abizaid has frequently stated that he believes the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq is one of the major catalysts of the insurgency. President Bush has repeatedly declared that "as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." And so Murtha and others have faithfully repeated these proclamations in support of demands to withdraw.

But the hope of turning the problem over to the Iraqis is an exit strategy, not a strategy for success. We could, as Murtha points out, accomplish this goal tomorrow (or at least in six months), if we didn't care about what happened in Iraq the next day. The goal of winning in Iraq requires a much more complicated plan that does more than prepare the Iraqis to continue the fight, and until recently the administration had failed to present such a plan in any detail.

The recent release of a National Security Council strategy document, and recent speeches by the president, have only begun to fill this void. The document lays out the administration's general approach to the problem and rightly stresses the need to coordinate military, political, and economic activities. It does not explain how that coordination will occur considering the fractured nature of command arrangements in Iraq. Even worse, it still does not explain clearly what role American forces must play in Iraq apart from training the Iraqi army--namely, continuing to fight the terrorists, both foreign and Iraqi, but fighting the Sunni Arab insurgents as well; working to encourage the Sunnis to opt for politics over violence; and providing a continuing model of military professionalism to the young Iraqi forces. This lacuna damages both attempts to combat the withdrawal-mania that is gripping Washington and the conduct of the war itself.

Until the administration explains why U.S. forces are needed in Iraq, beyond training the Iraqi Security Forces, it will be very difficult for the administration to defend any particular troop levels there. Even accelerated training could take place with far fewer than the 160,000 soldiers in Iraq now if that were all they were doing. As long as CENTCOM continues to state that the presence of American forces is a major catalyst for the insurgency and that the Iraqis should be doing the fighting, it is hard to see how those arguments will suffice to defend troop strengths at the relatively high levels CENTCOM clearly believes are still necessary.

And those higher troop levels are, in fact, vitally necessary, because U.S. forces have a critical role to play beyond training the Iraqi Security Forces. For if American forces did begin to leave Iraq prematurely, the insurgency would grow. First, many insurgents would believe that they had a greater chance of military success against the Iraqis than they have had against the Americans, and so would be newly encouraged to engage in a struggle that many of them now find daunting. Second, they would be right. The Iraqi Security Forces would inevitably operate at lower levels of skill and efficiency than the coalition troops. Presenting the insurgents with less-capable government forces would give them opportunities they do not now have. They would work to seize and exploit those opportunities aggressively, if their past behavior is any guide, and the inexperienced Iraqi troops would be hard pressed to respond efficiently.

It is also likely, moreover, that the Iraqi Security Forces themselves would become more brutal as Americans withdrew. Because they have been rushed through training that is cursory compared with the training American forces receive, the Iraqis are inevitably less professional, and professionalism is one of the key shields standing between military forces and the abuse of prisoners and civilians. In addition, the Iraqi troops respect and seek to emulate their American mentors. They know that U.S. forces strongly disapprove of atrocities, and so are less likely to commit them when American forces are around. As U.S. forces left, the strength of that restraint would diminish, and more Iraqi troops would be likely to slip their leashes.

The fact that the Iraqis would find fighting the insurgents by themselves much harder than fighting them with American assistance, finally, would generate the sort of fear and frustration that also breed atrocities. It goes without saying that increasing atrocities committed by predominantly Shiite Iraqi Security Forces would help stir the insurgency and even heighten the specter of civil war. The mere presence of American forces helps to keep this problem to a minimum, and is an important reason to insist that any coalition withdrawal be gradual and paced not only to the pure military capabilities of Iraqi forces, but also to their nascent professionalism.

Above all, it is essential for the coalition to drive the Sunni insurgency down to such a low level that when the rebellion grows as U.S. forces leave, it will not grow beyond the point at which the less-capable Iraqi forces can handle it. The simple number of trained Iraqi troops or units has never been an adequate measure for determining the pace of withdrawal. Any timetable must consider not only that number, but also the probable post-handover strength of the insurgency relative to Iraqi capabilities. And it is vital in the meantime for the United States to be directly involved in the struggle against the insurgents in order to reduce their strength to a level the Iraqis are capable of handling. There are indications that CENTCOM is gingerly adopting this approach, but the military and the administration must publicly embrace and explain it. So far, they have been so concerned with minimizing our footprint and promising our withdrawal that they have not done so.

A New Approach: Clear, Hold, Build

THE ABSENCE of any clear articulation of an actual counterinsurgency strategy (as opposed to a strategy of training Iraqis to conduct counterinsurgency operations) has lent prominence to a few strategies proposed by outside experts, particularly the "oil-spot" strategy advocated by Andrew Krepinevich recently in Foreign Affairs. According to this strategy, the United States should abandon its efforts to fight terrorists throughout Iraq and instead focus on establishing a limited number of secured areas in which Iraqis can reestablish normal life. These areas could be expanded (like oil-spots) over time, gradually bringing all of the country under control. Krepinevich and others rightly point out that the coalition's failure to provide security to many Iraqis in the Sunni Triangle is one of the most serious problems in this war, and he advocates this approach as the best way to tackle this problem with a limited number of U.S. soldiers (Krepinevich argues, in fact, that the United States should reduce its commitment significantly in 2006 while adopting his strategy).

There are serious problems with this proposal, however. Recent American strategy, which some have derisively dubbed "whack-a-mole," has not prioritized controlling territory at all, but instead has focused on lightning raids to capture or kill terrorists and insurgents. This approach has the disadvantage of failing to create secure zones for Iraqi citizens. It has the important advantage, however, of preventing the insurgents from establishing their own safe havens for more than a few months at a time. This is an incredibly important advantage.

As we saw during the battles of Falluja and Tal Afar, allowing the insurgents a long period of time in which to control a population center and prepare to defend it dramatically increases the difficulty of clearing them out. It also allows them to establish training bases; to recruit; to stockpile weapons and supplies; and to export terrorists and equipment to other areas. (And al Qaeda in Iraq does offer training courses to its adherents, complete with blackboard illustrations and demonstrations, in how to make and use Improvised Explosive Devices, how to attack coalition forces, and so on.) By periodically wiping out such enclaves, the coalition dramatically reduces the range and sophistication of the insurgency--and U.S. commanders in recent weeks have repeatedly testified that the complexity of insurgent attacks is dropping dramatically, and that their effectiveness and lethality are also falling off. It would be unfortunate, while focusing on creating safe havens for Iraqi citizens, if the coalition also created safe havens for the insurgents, which the rebels do not now have.

The other problem with the "oil-spot" approach is that it would be less effective than the approach CENTCOM is using on the ground right now, and would, in fact, mark a step backwards in de facto strategy. For CENTCOM has finally figured out that it really does have to control ground in Iraq even while playing "whack-a-mole" with the insurgents, and it has found a way to do so with the existing size of coalition forces in Iraq. The failure to articulate the new approach clearly and dramatically leaves underappreciated the success it is now generating. As a result, there is a real danger that this new approach will be abandoned just when it should be expanded.

The policy often enunciated by President Bush--as Iraqi forces stand up, U.S. forces will stand down--is exactly wrong. As more Iraqi Security Forces become available, the United States should make use of them to pursue critical objectives that the paucity of American forces previously made impossible. As more Iraqi forces stand up, they should join American forces in fighting the insurgents. This is the approach that CENTCOM has been quietly adopting in recent months to good effect. Premature drawdowns--or even promises of drawdowns--of U.S. troops would make it impossible.

Since mid-September, the coalition has conducted a series of major and minor operations in Anbar and Nineveh provinces. They share a common pattern: Joint U.S.-Iraqi combat teams surround and then clear cities and towns with concentrations of terrorists; U.S. forces then withdraw except for small detachments, leaving behind significant Iraqi teams to maintain security; preplanned reconstruction and humanitarian assistance operations then begin, both to make good damage resulting from the combat (which is usually fairly minimal) and to improve the quality of life of the local population beyond its preoperation levels.

The increasing availability of Iraqi troops has allowed the coalition to pursue these operations, which end up securing cleared territory in a way that previous operations did not, without abandoning large areas of Anbar and Nineveh to the rebels as the oil-spot approach would. The result is an overall increase in the number of cleared areas that are being held by Iraqi forces and rebuilt, without the creation of rebel safe havens that store up crises for the future. As of mid-November, coalition and Iraqi forces had cleared and secured the towns of Husaybah, Karabilah, Hit, Haditha, Barwana, Haqlaniya, Saddah, Rawah, Amiriya, and Faris all along the Iraq-Syria border. Coalition forces in other operations cleared out Tal Afar, al Qaim, Ramadi, and other trouble spots. Much remains to be done, and a spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister recently noted that he needs more forces in Diyala province and elsewhere, but this is a very promising start for a new approach.

Unfortunately, CENTCOM may have adopted this correct approach for the wrong reasons. The focus of all of these operations, according to CENTCOM spokesmen, is to disrupt the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq by establishing coalition control of the towns of the Euphrates River valley through which they travel. Moreover, the need to provide security in the Sunni Triangle before the December elections has given this task greater urgency in CENTCOM's eyes. Although both considerations are important, they are short-term problems, especially the focus on the election. The danger is that CENTCOM, under pressure from those concerned with the Army's well-being and those who simply wish to give up on Iraq, will abandon these solid efforts just when they should be redoubled and expanded.

There is no question that the presence of foreign fighters in Iraq is an important element of the insurgency. Although al Qaeda's attacks make up a relatively small proportion of attacks overall, they tend to be the most spectacular and, therefore, the most damaging on the American home front. There is no question, moreover, that Zarqawi is a dangerous foe who must be hunted down and captured or killed, and the United States dare not take the pressure off him and allow him to reconstitute his increasingly ragged forces.

But, as the commander of Multinational Force West, Major General Stephen T. Johnson, recently noted, "The insurgents in Al Anbar province, north Babil province, are largely locally based insurgents; that is, the insurgent we fight here is from here, he's from those communities in which we are engaging them." He added that local Sunnis formed the "vast majority" of the rebels he was combating. It is by no means clear that the elimination of foreign fighters, mostly tied to al Qaeda, will suppress this local Sunni Arab insurgency, and efforts to focus on it run the risk of distracting attention from the problem that will ultimately determine the outcome of the Iraqi democratic experiment--bringing the Sunni Arabs peacefully into the political process.

The focus on preparing the Sunni Triangle for the elections is also necessary but problematic. It is impossible to overstate the importance of ensuring that Sunni Arabs can vote safely, of course, since that is a critical part of persuading them to abjure violence and embrace political solutions to their problems. But this week's elections will not solve the problem. The Sunni Arabs have so far pursued three different paths to regaining control over Iraq, which many of them feel is their birthright. They boycotted the January vote in an effort to delegitimize it. When that failed, they turned out in droves in October, hoping to vote down a constitution that they did not like. That effort also failed, and now many Sunni Arab leaders are calling for widespread participation in the December elections in the hopes of forming a powerful voting bloc that can reorder Iraq's affairs to their liking through the political process. The critical question is how the vote actually goes and how the Sunni Arab community reacts to the result.

It is possible, as some analysts argue, that the Sunni Arab bloc may end up being the second largest in the new parliament, giving the Sunni Arabs ample scope and considerable power in the new political system. Such a result could reduce the force of the rejectionist insurgency considerably. If the elections go otherwise, however, or if even a powerful Sunni Arab bloc is unable to make the desired changes in the constitution or get its way in other policy matters, or if hotheaded rebel leaders manage to gain the support of the population for any of a host of other possible reasons, then the insurgency could flare up dramatically despite a large Sunni Arab turnout at the polls.

It is therefore a mistake to see the elections as necessarily a turning point. American strategy should prepare for the worse cases, if not the worst, and be ready to handle an uptick in the insurgency over the next several months. If all goes well and it becomes clear that the insurgency really is dying down, then the few months' delay in beginning to draw down our forces will not be very significant to the Army or anything else. If all does not go well, then the United States will be poised to respond quickly and before things can get too far out of hand.

The presence or absence of sizable American forces will also play a vital role in determining whether the Sunni Arabs opt for violence or politics in the wake of the elections, and we must not underestimate this role. The more areas of the Sunni Triangle coalition forces have been able to clear and hold, the fewer the potential bases and safe havens for terrorists and insurgents. The more Iraqi troops are well established in those towns, the more likely they are to get early warning of potential problems and to be able to nip them in the bud, with or without American help. Now is not the time to set timetables or make promises about withdrawing forces to please domestic constituencies. Now is the time to make it clear that the progress of clearing and holding the Sunni Triangle will continue inexorably, and will even accelerate, as more and more Iraqi troops come on line. This is the best way to dash the insurgents' hope that we will withhold the coup de grace and let up on them just when we might have the chance to finish them off. It is the best route to persuading the Sunni Arabs that their only hope is in the peaceful political process.

CENTCOM thus far has been successful--almost unintentionally--in these recent operations. As it happens, the process of clearing towns of al Qaeda and holding them against foreign fighters also disables Sunni rejectionists (anyone with weapons or bomb-making materials is caught up in the sweeps), and the establishment of garrisons of Iraqi forces in the wake of these operations makes possible early warning against both kinds of attacks. But the focus on the borders is, in the long run, unfortunate, since there continue to be problems in the interior of the country. CENTCOM should maintain its new approach, but adopt a new target. The goal should be clearing and holding Baghdad and the entire Sunni Triangle at whatever pace the growth of the Iraqi Security Forces will allow, all the while continuing to attack al Qaeda and Sunni holdouts as necessary, even when "leave-behind" Iraqi troops are not available. It should be a top priority to clear both Baghdad and Ramadi as quickly as possible. If that means accepting greater risk of cross-border infiltration, so be it. It will almost certainly mean maintaining an undiminished American presence in Iraq for months to come, and it is worth accepting the risks involved in that decision as well.

THE SITUATION in Iraq presents a firmer basis for optimism today than it ever has before. The challenges remain great, and failure will continue to be a real possibility for months if not years to come. The greatest danger to success in Iraq now lies on the American home front, in the danger that misrepresentations of Iraqi reality, politically motivated policy demands, and simple fear, exhaustion, and confusion will undermine the commitment necessary to succeed. The other danger is that those who do want to succeed--the Bush administration, CENTCOM--will inadvertently undermine our commitment by continuing mistakenly to emphasize the damage the American presence does to the prospects for success.

The goal of a counterinsurgency is to defeat the insurgents militarily and politically. In the long run, of course, the Iraqis themselves will have to maintain order in their own land. That does not mean that they can defeat this rebellion alone. The U.S. military has capabilities to locate targets, move forces rapidly to their locations, strike them with precision while minimizing collateral damage, and begin reconstruction far beyond anything the Iraqi military will have for a long time. In addition, American soldiers and marines have a much higher level of professionalism and detachment from this struggle. They have been playing a vital role in suppressing the rebellion, and they will have to continue to play that role for the foreseeable future. Continued U.S. military engagement is needed for success in Iraq--success that seems now to be closer than it has ever been--if we hold fast to the sound strategy for victory that has recently emerged, and do not lose our nerve.

[The writer is an associate professor of history at the University of Iowa.]

School boards across the country are facing pressure to teach "intelligent design" in science classes, but what would such courses look like? Thankfully, we need not tax our imaginations. All we have to do is look inside some 19th-century textbooks.

The one science course routinely taught in elementary schools back then was geography. Textbooks such as James Monteith's "Physical and Intermediate Geography" (1866), Arnold Guyot's "Physical Geography" (1873) and John Brocklesby's "Elements of Physical Geography" (1868) were compendiums of knowledge intended to teach children a little of everything about Earth and its inhabitants.

These textbooks seem also to have been intended to provide solace for the existentially anxious. All of them offered in one form or another the reassurance that "Geography teaches us about the earth which was made to be our home." Earth by itself "could not be the abode of man," advised one. "Therefore, two indispensable agents are provided -- the sun and atmosphere." The entire vast history of the planet was summed up as the "gradual formation by which it was made ready for the reception of mankind." The lay of the land had been thoughtfully arranged for our benefit: "As the torrid regions of the earth require the greatest amount of rain, there are the loftiest mountains, which act as huge condensers of the clouds." Because the breezes that blew down mountainsides cooled the inhabitants below, the highest were located in the hottest parts of the world "for the same reason that you put a piece of ice into a pitcher of water in summer, rather than in winter."

Evidence of design was found in aesthetics as well. Behold "how greatly the scenery of mountains ministers to our love of the beautiful and sublime," one book counseled, "and how much would be lost in this respect if the surface of the earth were a monotonous, unbroken plain." Wherever we look we see "a beautiful world, which was made for the enjoyment and benefit of the whole human family."

What is wrong with such comforting thoughts? For one, if you've concluded that the world is designed for humans, there is no compelling reason to stop there. Why not a world made not just for your species but also for your race, your nation, your moment in history? For example, the designer's partiality toward the temperate zones was demonstrated by the fact that they were blessed with the useful animals, while "the fiercest Carnivora, as the lion, tiger, and jaguar . . . have their homes within the torrid climes of the globe." Too bad for the people of the torrid climes.

Another book explained that all the plants and animals that lived and died for eons did so precisely because humans, during their industrial era, would need the coal. The author observed that "the wisdom of this Plan is further recognized in the fact that the coal is found, mainly, in those parts of the earth that are best fitted for human habitation -- in the United States, Great Britain, Western Europe, British America, and China."

Of course, these observations contain germs of truth. The presence of useful animals affects social development. Mountains modify climate. Design arguments, however, reverse such practical explanations, replacing natural causality with supernatural predestination. In doing so, useful answers that open up further questions are replaced by answers that are emotionally satisfying but intellectual and practical dead ends. After all, once you know that mountains exist because they were meant to exist, what is left to do but to sit in your armchair and meditate on the wisdom of their design?...

According to wire services, Sunnis in Fallujah came out to vote:

' not only get rid of the Americans but to also get rid of the Shiite-dominated government.

"It's an extremist government [and] we would like an end to the occupation," said Ahmed Majid, 31."Really the only true solution is through politics. But there is the occupation and the only way that will end is with weapons."

Even in insurgent bastions such as Ramadi and Haqlaniyah, Sunnis were turning out in large numbers.

"I came here and voted in order to prove that Sunnis are not a minority in this country," said lawyer Yahya Abdul-Jalil in Ramadi."We lost a lot during the last elections, but this time we will take our normal and key role in leading this country." '

It is not actually a positive sign for the Americans that Sunni Arabs came out to vote in order to get rid of them, to see if they couldn't get rid of the current pro-American government, to underline that the armed struggle will continue, and to prove that Sunni Arabs (20% of so of the population) are a majority of the country! The American faith that if people go to the polls it means they won't also be blowing things up is badly misplaced.

Consider this news item from Northern Ireland in 1982:

' Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Provisional IRA, has won its first seats in the elections to the new Ulster Assembly.

Gerry Adams, vice president of Sinn Fein, took the Belfast West seat. It is the first time his party has stood for election since the Troubles began.

Mr Adams, 34, made clear that being elected would not stop the IRA's campaign of violence.

"The IRA have said that while the British army is in Ireland they will be there fighting" he said. '

Now let us consider this item from three years later, 1985:

' Thirteen people have been arrested in connection with a suspected IRA mainland bombing campaign uncovered by police two days ago.

The men - who are being held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act - include a 33-year-old from Belfast, suspected of carrying out the attack on the Conservative Cabinet in the Brighton Grand Hotel last year.

It is feared the IRA may have planted devices in a dozen seaside resorts around the UK - timed to go off at the height of the summer season - and a massive police hunt has been launched. '

Could the presence of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the militant Irish Republican Army, in the North Ireland assembly have had an effect on the peace negotiations in the mid-1990s? Sure. But my point is that these campaigns, the political and the bombing, can go on simultaneously for over a decade.

[Bevin Alexander is a military historian and author of nine books on military history. His most recent book, How America Got It Right, was published in summer 2005 by Crown Forum, New York.]

It’s becoming clear that the United States is in the process of withdrawing its troops from Iraq.

Iraq’s national security adviser Muwafak al-Rubaie said recently that more than 50,000 of the normal-level 138,000 Americans troops can leave in 2006. And the Pentagon is talking about pulling out three (of 18) brigades with about 15,000 troops around the first of the year.

These reports signal the growing realization in the Bush administration that American forces are playing little role in stopping the insurgency, which is now increasingly targeting Iraqi civilians and police, not U.S. troops.

The administration is beginning to see that the role of the U.S. military is different from what it was at the outset. Today that role is, on the one hand, to assist the Iraqi government in preventing takeover of Iraq by terrorists under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or by Sunni insurrectionists. On the other hand it is to foil the breakup of Iraq into two oil-rich regions—the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south—with the minority Sunnis in the middle left with no viable state and no oil.

Since American forces are not stopping the insurgency by their presence in Iraq, the real tasks of the Americans can be carried out with far fewer losses in lives by withdrawing U.S. troops and concentrating air power and Special Ops and other fast-reaction ground forces in Kuwait and a couple of the Persian Gulf states. From there they can move on 24-hour notice to assist Iraqi government forces any time they are subjected to powerful attacks. Such an arrangement would eliminate the casualties the insurgents are able to inflict on Americans inside Iraq today with roadside bombs and rocket and mortar strikes. This in turn would undermine the antiwar movement inside the United States.

American troops cannot end the insurgency. We are too visible and too much targets ourselves. Our knowledge of Iraqi society will always be imperfect as compared to that of natives, and we will always be at a disadvantage and always an easy mark while trying to patrol beats in the fashion of American precinct cops.

Our main activity at present—in addition to training Iraqi forces—is rooting out known insurgent and terrorist strongholds or hiding places and interdicting supply lines from Syria. This task will continue on into 2006, but it’s unrealistic to think that it can continue for long. Iraqi forces must take over the task. We cannot shore up indefinitely an Iraqi government that cannot protect its own territory.

Although it will take many months before Iraqi military and police forces become well-enough trained to quell the insurgency alone, the insurgents will never succeed in taking over Iraq. Their actions are so savage that they are alienating the overwhelming majority of Iraqis.

Accordingly, President Bush is correct in emphasizing that the way to end the insurgency and bring peace is the creation of effective Iraqi military and police forces. These forces will ultimately develop enough expertise and discipline to root out the fundamentalists and the insurgents and they will ultimately end the reign of terror. But it’s going to take time. And like many such insurgencies in the past, it’s not going to end with a bang, but a whimper.

Partisan or guerrilla warfare depends primarily upon the support of a significant portion of the native population. This support was described graphically in the early 1930s by the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, who said that guerrillas survive because they can swim—or can hide—in the “water” of the people. This “water” is rapidly evaporating in Iraq today. Supporters of the insurgents will finally be reduced to a tiny, radical, and more easily identified minority. When this happens, two other requirements of partisan warfare, the anonymity of most insurgents, and the existence of secret lairs where they can hide and keep their stores, will be much easier to uncover.

In other words, the final throttling of the insurgency in Iraq must be accomplished, not by American troops, but by native soldiers and native police using their superior knowledge of their own society. It will be messy, with little credit anywhere and little assurance of long-term stability.

Even so, we have learned our lesson about invading rogue states and attempting to turn them into gems of democracy. We know from Iraq and Afghanistan that it doesn’t work. Outsiders don’t solve problems, they create problems. We will most probably not topple another state in the Middle East. We’ll try to get our way by means of air power and occasional Special Ops strikes. If our European allies and the UN fail to deter Iran in its attempt to build an A-bomb, we will have to take out Iran’s nuclear installations by aerial strikes, not by invasion.

This leaves one final danger in Iraq: the threat that the Shiite majority will create an Iranian-style theocracy in the south that will lead to the breakup of Iraq, and more chaos. This danger is not likely to come to pass.

The Kurds might be drawn to the idea of allowing the Shiites to take over the oilfields of the south in return for their seizing the oilfields of the north. However, they would run up against violent opposition from the Sunnis and the United States. The Kurds know their existence as a virtually independent state depends upon the support of the United States. The Sunni Iraqis and the governments of neighboring Turkey, Syria, and Iran—with large Kurdish minorities of their own—would like nothing better than withdrawal of American support to give them the opportunity to shatter the emerging Kurdish state.

Likewise, the Shiites are savvy enough to realize that the Sunni insurgency is to a substantial degree fueled by fear that the Shiites and the Kurds are plotting to divide the oilfields between them, leaving them out in the cold. Thus the Shiite majority that is going to dominate the permanent Iraqi government elected on December 15, 2005, is likely to grant concessions to the Sunnis to end the insurgency. That means the Shiite clerics will have to abandon hopes of setting up a totalitarian theocracy—at least until some time in the future when the Americans have disappeared over the horizon.

© 2005 Bevin Alexander