On How to Treat the Populace of Iraq After Their Insurgency

(Appearing before the Congress, Gen. David Patraeus spoke of) what should be done with the territories and cities of Iraq. These are the words he used, and the decision that the Congress reached, more or less verbatim, as (the resurrected ancient Roman historian) Livy reports them:

"Congressmen! What needed to be done in Iraq with armies and wars has, by grace of god and the skill of our soldiers, been done. Slaughtered are the enemy armies of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Republican Guard in Iraq. All the land and cities of Iraq, and the city of Baghdad in the land of the Fertile Crescent, either were conquered or surrendered, and are now in your power. As they keep insurging and putting America in peril, we must consult about how to secure ourselves, either by cruelty or by generously forgiving them. God has granted you the ability to deliberate whether Iraq is to be maintained, and how to make it secure for us indefinitely. So consider whether you want to punish harshly those who have given themselves to you and want to ruin Iraq and Afghanistan entirely, turning into a desert a country that has often supplied you with Muhajadeen anti-Soviet resistance fighters in dangerous times; or whether you intend to follow the example of our forefathers in ancient Rome. This would give you the glorious opportunity of expanding American democracy. All I have to say to you is this: The most enduring power is the state which has loyal subjects who love their Congressmen. But what must be deliberated swiftly, as you have many people hovering between hope and fear. You must free these peoples from their uncertainty and anticipate their every action, either with punishment or reward. My task was to ensure that this decision would be yours, and my task has been done. It is now for you to decide what is for the benefit of our republic.

The congressmen praised Patraeus' speech, and as the case in each insurgent city and territory was different, they agreed that it would be impossible to pass a general resolution, but that each instance would have to be considered separately. Patraeus specified the case of each of the territories, and the Congressmen decided decided that the Iraqis were to become unincorporated territory, and that any sacred or historical artifacts looted in the 2003 invasion were to be returned. They also made the Kurds, the Shiias, the Sunnis and the people of Kurdistan, the Assyrians, the Mandeans, the Iraqi Turkmen, Shabaks, and the Roma (some dispersed and living in the U.S.), while the people of Kurdistan (Sulaymânîyah Province) were allied to keep their privileges, their insurgency being blamed on a few individuals. The people of Fallujah, however, were severely punished for having been a home to many Jewish academies for centuries and under British control in the 1920's who nevertheless mounted an insurgency numerous times. To secure Fallujah, the U.S. had to depopulate the city and then send in new settlers, knocked out all the bridges over the Euphrates River, but later helped re-build all the mosques destroyed in the Battle of Fallujah.

It is clear from the judgment of the British passed on these insurgent territories that they strove either to win their loyalty through benefits, or to treat the territories so harshly to win their loyalty through benefits, or to treat, the territories so harshly that they would never need fear them again. The ancient Romans, unlike the British, regarded any middle way as harmful. In their resolutions, they chose one extreme or the other: benefiting those with whom they saw hope for reconciliation, and, where there was no hope, making certain Rome could not be harmed again. The ancient Romans carried this out in two ways: One was to destroy the city and bring the inhabitants to live in Rome; the second was either to strip the city of its inhabitants and send in new ones, or, leaving the former inhabitants in place, to send in so many new ones that the original inhabitants could never again conspire against the authority of Rome. The Romans used these two methods in the case of Latium in Italy, destroying Velitrae and providing Antium with new inhabitants.

I have heard it said that in our actions we should look to history as our teacher, which is particularly true for Presidents. The world has always been inhabited in the same way by men who have had the same passions: There have always been those who serve willingly, those who rebel and those who are punished. Should anyone doubt this, he has only to look at the incidents in the city of Fallujah in Operation Phantom Fury in November 2004 recapturing Fallujah. Even though the particulars of the insurgency and recapture of these territories was quite different, that fact of the insurgency and the recapture are the same.

If it is true that in our actions we should look to history as our teacher, it would be good if those who will have to judge and punish the territories of Iraq would follow the example of those who once ruled the world, particularly in a case where the ancients teach us in no uncertain terms the best course of action. Just as the Romans judged each territory differently, as the offense of each people was different, so must we now strive to evaluate the difference in offense in each of our insurgent territories.

If you were to assert that this is precisely what we have done, I would reply that we have done so only to some extent, but that we have fallen short in important ways. It is good that we allowed Kurdistan and many other Iraq Provinces to keep their assemblies, and that we indulged them, managing to reconquer them with benefits, because I equate them with the people the ancient Romans treated in a similar manner. But it is not good that the Sunni people of Baghdad, who acted in the same way as the ancient Roman cities of Velitrae and Antium, have not been treated the same way they were. If the judgment of Romans believed that rebellious populaces had to be either benefited or destroyed, and that any other course of action was dangerous. From what I see with Baghdad we have not adopted either of these two courses. One cannot claim that the Sunnis have benefited by having to come to the U.S. every day, their offices abolished, their sinecures wiped out, their being disparaged publicly and having soldiers quartered in their previously secure neighborhoods. And yet, one cannot claim, either, that we are securing ourselves against them by leaving their city walls intact and allowed five-sixths of their citizens to go on living there, not sending in new settlers who would keep them in check. In any future war that we might have to fight, we will have to face greater expenditure in Baghdad than we will in fighting the enemy. Experience taught us this in 2004, before Fallujah rebelled or we began our cruel reprisals. For when the al Qaeda troops assaulted al Anbar Province, we had to send our forces to Fallujah in order to keep the city stable, instead of using those troops in Ramadi in Anbar Province.

Nor would we have had to pull Reservists from home and send them back to Iraq as part of the "Surge." The Sunnis disloyalty resulted in our having to face considerably more peril and expenditure than if it had remained loyal. Hence, putting together what one sees now and what one saw then, and the conditions we have imposed on the Baghdadis, one can categorically conclude that if -- God forbid! -- the U.S. Green Zone were to be invaded by terrorists, Baghdad would either rebel or cause us so many problems as we tried to secure it that it would become an expenditure the U.S. would not be able to bear.

I do not want to neglect discussing the prospect of a U.S. terrorist attack, and the inevitable designs any state-sponsored terrorists have on Iraq and Baghdad, as at the moment this is a central topic of discussion. Let us not concentrate on the danger we can expect from any Sleeper Cells in the U.S. , but let us turn our sights on a peril closer at hand. Anyone who has observed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's course of action will note that in his strategy for extorting the states he has threatened, he never looks to U.S. alliances, having little esteem for the U.S. and Britain. One can only conjecture that he intends to create such a powerful state in Iran that he will be unassailable, making allegiance to him desirable for the leader of any nation. Should this be his design, then he is clearly aspiring to possess all of Iraq that he now infiltrates. There is no doubt that because of his boundless ambition, and the way he has drawn out negotiations with us without ever concluding any agreements. It now remains for us to se if the time is right for him to put his designs into practice. I remember hearing American historians say that among the many reasons one could call Presidents James Polk's expansion of U.S. territory into former Mexican lands, Lincoln's provocations at Fort Sumpter, President William McKinley's exposure of a battleship, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's strategy of rebounding from Pearl Harbor, is that they are experts at seeing an opportunity and seizing it. This view is proved by our experience of what they have carried out when they had the opportunity. If one were to debate whether now is an opportune moment for them to assault the U.S., I would say no. But one must consider Ahmadinejad can wait for the kind of moment in which he can be assured of victory, as time is on his side: Iran will eventually acquire nuclear weapons or para-nuclear weapons of mass destruction such as Polonium, and Ahmadinejad will grasp the first opportunity that presents itself and place his cause to a great extent in Fortune's hands.

A paraphrase of "On How to Treat the Populace of Valdichiana After Their Rebellion" by Niccolo Machiavelli (1503) translated by Peter Constantine, The Essential Writings of Machiavelli (The Modern Library, 2007).

My idea would have cost -not one American Casualty and WON the war on terror back in September of 2001.

We should have told all our friends to evacuate Iran and Syria and Iraq, then give ‘em 48 hours to clear out of their capitols and other cities... then flatten them with ICBMs. That process continues until we are satisfied that islam no longer is or will be a threat to US.

INSTEAD - we enter Vietnam Big Muddy redux.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 Iraqi looters ransacked the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad - see here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2942449.stm

Many of these items have been reportedly returned - see here: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060726/news_1n26statue.html

The translation of the sentence in Machiavelli’s “On How to Treat the Populace of Valdichiana After Their Rebellion” written in 1503 is as follows:
“(General)Furius Camillus specified the case of each of the territories, and the senators decided that the Lanuvians were to become Roman citizens, and that the sacred object taken from them during the war were to be returned.” The sentence you re-cite is my paraphrase of the above sentence from Machiavelli updated to the current Iraq War (not the pending war of ruthless ruler Cesare Borgia against the City of Florence which Machiavelli was writing about. I hope this clarifies the matter.

I think John Burns, the NY Time correspondent, was on to something when he reflected on his experiences living in Baghdad both before and after the war. He hypothesized that no one could have anticipated just how badly the fabric of Iraqi life had been shredded by Saddam's reign. It's like the joke where the manager replaces his right fielder with himself and then he too drops a fly ball. He then says: "He's got right field so screwed-up nobody can play it."

That may be where we are with Iraq. For thirty years surviving in Iraq for the oppressed meant lying, stealing, possibly selling out your neighbor. For the oppressors it meant robbing, killing, torturing and subjugating your fellow human beings. Neither background leaves you ready for "here's freedom - democracy, whiskey, sexy".

It may take another thirty years for societal standards to evolve to where the Iraqi people are on "auto-pilot". Someone once said where a society has good standards (he used the word mores), laws are unnecessary. Where they don't, laws are unenforceable. The latter is Iraq. They will need a couple of decades where the norm is to respect the basic human rights of your fellow citizens. That requires both a carrot and a stick. The average Iraqi needs a way to make a decent living without having to lie, steal or kill. They also need strong law enforcement to make the lie, steal, kill option not viable. Both are possible. Iraq has oil and fresh water. They can provide their people a decent living without the law of the jungle prevailing. They are also building up the stick. The Army and (currently corrupt) police force are getting big enough to maintain the peace.

If we made a major mistake in Iraq it was thinking the people could jump into a free, democractic republic in just a couple of years. We assumed the same with Russia. Wave the magic wands of freedom and capitalism and they'll be a peace-loving free country. Perhaps a better model would have been Japan, post WWII. Extreme makeover, country edition. Wonder what would have happened if the President said we're going to liberate Iraq but it's going to take twenty years. We'll install our own government for the first ten years until there's peace and prosperity and then we'll turn the country over to the Iraqis.

Thank you. I failed to keep clearly in mind that in your paraphrasing exercise you were operating simultaneously in two “universes,” so to speak.

That aside, it was, and is, inexplicable to me that our invading army was not tasked to impose security (i.e., stand guard) over key sites in Iraq, such as the national museum, major weapons caches, et cetera. We were going to be tagged as “occupiers” in any case, and might as well have acted the part at least to the extent of frustrating major troublemakers.

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