Winning the Peace, Quietly

In fact, as I traveled around south-central Iraq, the biggest concern I heard was that the Marines were leaving. They are turning over their sector to Polish, Bulgarian, Spanish and other coalition troops. "Don't go," numerous Iraqis implored the "Devil Dogs." (In partial answer to their pleas, the Marines delayed their pullout from Najaf after the recent mosque bombing .) I don't want to sound Pollyannaish. Clearly major problems remain in Iraq -- not only a surfeit of terrorism but also a shortage of electricity, fuel and jobs. The rebuilding of the country is still in its early stages, and much needs to be done. But we shouldn't exaggerate today's security woes -- or, even worse, try to address them by repeating the mistakes of Vietnam.

Many voices, on both the left and right, are now arguing that we need more troops in Iraq. Precisely the same thing was claimed in Vietnam. But there, as our troop commitment escalated above 500,000, the war was steadily Americanized and the South Vietnamese became less capable of fending for themselves. That's not a model we should follow in Iraq.

Every U.S. officer I talked to said that the 150,000 soldiers we have in Iraq now are sufficient. What's required is not more troops, they said, but better policing methods. Both the 101st Airborne and the Marines are disdainful of some of the heavy-handed tactics, such as large-scale "cordon and search" operations, employed by Army units in Baghdad and the surrounding areas. They argue that the focus should be on getting better intelligence and training Iraqi security forces to police their own country. That process is now underway, but it will take time to create a new army and police force.

The biggest problem I saw in Iraq was not with the U.S. military but with the civilian arm of the occupation -- the Coalition Provisional Authority run by L. Paul Bremer III. One well-intentioned CPA project, to hire agricultural laborers to clear canals, caused a riot in the southern city of Diwaniyah when the ditch diggers weren't paid for three weeks. More often, the CPA is guilty of sins of omission. Its television station, the Iraqi Media Network, is not received in the north, thus ceding the information war to anti-American satellite channels like Al Jazeera.

The problem is that the CPA lacks both personnel and money. In the north, the 101st Airborne deploys 21,000 soldiers; the CPA has no more than a couple dozen employees there. And what few people the CPA has don't last long. Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police chief, arrived in Iraq at the beginning of the summer to run the Justice Ministry, and already he's going home.

Instead of sending more troops, the administration needs to beef up the CPA and decentralize its operations. Congress needs to provide more funding because, as Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne, told me, "Money is ammunition." But neither the CPA's woes nor the well-publicized terror attacks should distract us from the substantial progress that's been made in the four months since the war ended. As long as we keep our nerve, we will prevail. As in Vietnam, so in Iraq: Only defeatism on the home front can stop our soldiers.