Dan K. Thomasson: A 'decent interval' policy in Iraq a dangerous route

The unofficial decent interval policy tacitly acknowledged the inevitable success of the North Vietnamese but provided for a respectable time between the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the collapse of South Vietnam. In essence that is exactly what occurred.

While there are major differences between that situation and the current one -- the American and British forces made short order of Iraq's official military after all -- there are striking similarities, including the need to assuage a public that polls reveal as increasingly uneasy about the death toll and the huge financial drain, particularly on the eve of a presidential election. The Bush administration can only hope that there is a "decent interval" between the withdrawal of coalition forces and what many Mideast experts regard as inevitable -- a violent struggle among political and religious factions for control of the government.

Even those of us who have a hard time understanding our own politics let alone the Byzantine, religious, family and clan oriented machinations of the Arab world are bright enough to realize that the cultural and historic obstacles to successfully transforming Iraq from a dictatorship to a functioning democracy in little over a year are enormous and probably insurmountable. Try 600 years, as one former diplomat suggested.

This seems especially true given the White House's failure to have a postwar reconstruction plan well in hand before the fighting began, one that realized the necessity of employing far more troops to keep the peace than it did to win the war, if that indeed is what we have accomplished which seems questionable considering the accelerating insurgent activity.

While it is true that democracy can't be instilled at the point of a gun, there seems little doubt that a benevolent force large enough to assure that the average Iraqi could live without fear and to assure that his vital services were quickly restored and maintained would have gone a long way toward making it easier. It is understandable that no recent general has suggested the need for increasing the troop strength despite the president's assurances that all one need do is ask. The previous two military officials who did, Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki and Army Secretary Thomas White, had their careers lopped off.

The president clearly decided to move the process along when the CIA reported to him that even those Iraqis, mainly the majority Shiites, who weren't unfavorable to the United States were beginning to lose patience with the situation and might join the Sunni Muslims in opposition.

In reality, those wise in the ways of such things view Iraq as a far more difficult problem than Vietnam ever was. Leaving Vietnam was in retrospect a piece of cake compared to a premature exit from Iraq, which could further destabilize the entire volatile region. What then would this war have accomplished besides the dethroning of a tyrant without actually eliminating him? Perhaps that is enough.

As it has turned out, Saddam Hussein may be a larger threat to our national security now than he ever was. There is little evidence that the justification for this war, the looming threat of weapons of mass destruction, or even a link to international terrorism, was real. If this actually was an exercise to redraw the lines of the Middle East and in the process to eliminate a vicious, repressive butcher who the world could no longer tolerate, we should have said so. That should have been the unapologetic basis for this action.

Now our continuing failure to apprehend him is a serious impediment to our reconstruction efforts. Not only is Saddam a symbol for Iraqi nationalism even among some of those he so mistreated, he may be masterminding the insurgency that is costing both military and civilian lives in Iraq and support for George Bush at home. Finding him should be a prerequisite for any plan to quit the country.

It is difficult to imagine that Bush is interested in the "decent interval" concept, that political considerations would come before assuring that this has not been a failed exercise. That would be the height of cynicism. Iraq probably never will be the democratic jewel of the Mideast, but now that we're there we must do what is necessary to assure that we don't leave it in a state of anarchy.

Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.