What has to be done

There are really only two choices: (1) Win the war in Iraq, or (2) accept defeat. And don’t deceive yourself: That’s the debate that has now begun.

Of course, politicians being politicians, “defeat” is never called “defeat.” Diplomatic sleights-of-hand are preferred instead. People talk of “internationalizing” the conflict, of turning it over to the United Nations or NATO, of empowering free Iraqis to fight on their own against the Ba’athists and their foreign Jihadi allies. Serious people know that if the world’s only superpower can’t win this war, no lesser power will be up to the task.

If we accept defeat in Iraq — as we accepted defeat 10 years ago in Somalia and 20 years ago in Lebanon — we should not deceive ourselves about what will follow.

The atrocities of September 11 were the consequence of Washington’s earlier decisions not to seriously fight back against the terrorists who had attacked us again and again in the 1980s and ‘90s. Surrender in Iraq will save the lives of some soldiers today. But it will cost the lives of civilians tomorrow. How many, no one can predict.

If we make up our mind to win, what do we have to do? Quite a lot.

Although Pentagon planners undoubtedly have been thinking about the challenges posed by “low-intensity conflicts” for years, it appears their Iraq battle plan has not survived contact with the enemy. Battle plans seldom do.

After toppling Saddam Hussein, President Bush did predict that Iraq would remain a “dangerous” and “difficult” place. But the enemy’s strength — and his ability to play the Western media like a violin — was obviously underestimated.

Surely, our military planners knew there were thousands of enemy combatants whom we had not managed to kill or capture. Surely, they knew that those combatants had ample stores of weapons and cash. Surely, they knew that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad had sworn to turn Iraq into “another Beirut” and that preventing Iraq from becoming free and democratic also would be a foreign policy goal of Saudi Arabia, Iran and several other countries in the region.

And surely, they must have known that we had inadequate intelligence networks set up within Iraq. That could only mean that it would be difficult for our troops to find the terrorists. By contrast, it would be simple for the terrorists to find our troops.

The lack of adequate intelligence in Iraq and other parts of the world is the most severe disability the United States suffers today in Iraq and in the broader war on terrorism. This disability is, in turn, the consequence of a series of bad decisions that began as far back as the 1970s. A debate should be taking place — on the campaign trail if nowhere else — over how we now, belatedly, begin building an intelligence capability second to none the world has ever seen. Without that, we can’t hope to win the war we are fighting.

The problem is not that we have too few high-tech satellites that can read license plates from outer space. The problem is we have too few low-tech spy handlers and “assets,” people who are street-wise — even when the streets are in Tikrit, Damascus, Karachi and Kabul.

It appears that U.S. intelligence failed to penetrate Hezbollah after it attacked us in Beirut in 1983, failed to infiltrate al Qaeda prior to September 11, failed to slip inside Saddam’s inner circle before or after the first 1991 Persian Gulf war.

No one is saying that such spying is easy, but it’s possible and necessary. Americans did manage to enlist in al Qaeda in recent years — those Americans just didn’t happen to be working for the CIA. And it appears that those allied with terrorists have managed to penetrate Guantanamo. That should tell us something.

In the short run, we can — and must — utilize Iraqis as intelligence assets. Such individuals should have been recruited and trained long ago. Now, one can only hope a furious effort is being made — appealing to patriotism in some cases and using less savory means when required.

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