Iraq expert: tough times likely to continue

That was the crux of the sobering message from Bathsheba Crocker to an audience at the Moorings Park clubhouse on Monday afternoon.

"I think as we have all seen probably in the newspapers this morning with the shooting down of a Chinook helicopter in Iraq (Sunday) that killed at least 16 soldiers and wounded 20, that we are still in a very precarious situation in Iraq," said Crocker, the co-director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

"The security trend line is actually going negative rather than going more positive, and the danger to U.S. troops and to Iraqi citizens and to the U.S. and international civilians in Iraq only grows every day."

Crocker, who was a member of a reconstruction assessment team that went to Iraq in July at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense, said there is a growing resentment in Iraq among the segments of the population that initially supported America's toppling of the Hussein regime.

She said the Iraqi people need to become more involved in setting up a new government and constitution, with those involved in the effort representing the diverse Iraqi population as opposed to a group hand-picked by the United States.

She said the United States or United Nations could then revert to a more advisory role.

"I'm very afraid that if we continue down the path we are on now, not only will we continue to antagonize the international community, which will make it more difficult for us to get troops and other commitments that we want in Iraq, but we will also start to seriously antagonize very important and crucial parts of the Iraqi population that are now on our side," said Crocker, who has a Harvard law degree and has served as an executive assistant to the deputy national security adviser at the White House.

Crocker also said there was very inadequate planning for a post-war Iraq.

"As we saw with the massive looting that went on in Iraq immediately after the war, the U.S. military does not prepare for it. ... It was three or four weeks before the military finally started to step in and deal with some of looting problems. This has caused again lasting repercussions in the reconstruction effort."

She said the Defense Department is not generally good at post-war operations.

"The Defense Department is not an agency that has the capability, or the experience, to run these kinds of operations. And some of the problems we are seeing are definitely the result of the fact that the Defense Department has been a lead in this effort," she said.

She said there is growing evidence that terrorists now see that region as a prime site for attacks on Americans. She said the supposed links that the Bush administration talked about between Saddam Hussein and terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have been found to be very tenuous at best.

"But unfortunately, one of the results of the ongoing security problem and the U.S. military occupation in Iraq is that Iraq has in fact now become a magnet for terrorists, and a magnet for those who would like to undermine what the U.S. is doing," she said.

She said a better case needs to be made to the Iraqi people about the course of the rebuilding process.

"What we really are talking about here is a full-scale marketing campaign. We need to change the national mind-set in Iraq," she said. "We need to have a better articulation of what our vision is for Iraq. The Iraqi people do not know what our vision is. I'm not sure the American people know what our vision is in Iraq."

Crocker said the American military running the country is in many ways cut off from the average Iraqi population. She said this was clear to her when she was in Iraq.

"When you're there with the coalition provisional authority, you do not walk around the streets of Baghdad," she said. "You don't have daily interaction with the Iraqi people. You sit in a palace. You're in what they call the 'green zone.' It is very difficult for Iraqis to get into the green zone. And it is very difficult, in fact, for anyone who doesn't work for the U.S. government to get into the green zone. And one of the results of this is that the U.S. really does look like an occupation authority in Iraq. It is very cut off from the Iraqi people, which does make it difficult to do the task of reconstruction."

She said in the coming election year, there will be a lot of pressure on President Bush to reduce the number of troops in Iraq.

"We all remember Somalia, where it took one shoot-down of a helicopter -- Black Hawk down -- to pull U.S. troops out of Somalia altogether. The (Bush) administration is thankfully still saying that we will stay in Iraq, and that our will not be broken by this," she said. "But every time a U.S. soldier is killed, as we all know too well, it has repercussions at home. And it will become increasingly difficult for the president in this year to stay the course as we need to."

She said it would be a serious mistake to pull out of Iraq now.

"I very much do not want to see us fail in Iraq, and I very much do not want to see us make a precipitous exit there because the security situation continues to deteriorate. It is going to require a lot of commitment on the part of the U.S. people to see this through. If we leave, there will probably be a civil war in Iraq, and there will certainly be a situation in which there is such a vacuum that if we were ever worried about the war on terrorism, that we would have reason to be far more worried than we are now."