Ex-envoy says U.S. won't take nation building seriously

[Theophylact]

In the Boston Globe:

James Dobbins, a former State Department official involved in five of six nation-building exercises over the past 11 years, says the United States should be doing better in Iraq after all this experience.

''We don't seem to have learned much,'' says Dobbins, who served as U.S. special envoy in operations around the world.

In 1993, Dobbins led the diplomatic part of getting U.S. forces out of Somalia. In 1994, he helped arrange the multilateral intervention in Haiti. Just before the Kosovo conflict erupted in 1999, he became senior envoy for the Balkans and later headed the U.S. delegation to the Kosovo peace talks. In 2000 and 2001, he worked to organize international efforts to oust Slobodan Milosevic from Yugoslavia. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he was President Bush's special envoy for Afghanistan.

Dobbins, who has been working for the Rand think tank since his retirement from government last year, said in a recent interview the most successful operations, especially from the standpoint of postwar casualties, have been Bosnia and Kosovo.

In Bosnia, he says, the ratio of security forces to the population was 18 soldiers for each 1,000 inhabitants. In Kosovo, it was 20 per thousand. In Iraq, it is only seven.

In the two Balkan regions, he notes, there hasn't been a single postwar U.S. combat death. In Iraq, as of Monday, the figure was 32 American soldiers killed in hostile action since Bush declared major combat operations ended on May 1.

''If you go in with heavier force, you sustain fewer casualties and you inflict fewer casualties,'' says Dobbins, who believes the relatively small coalition troop commitment in Iraq has emboldened anti-U.S. militants to resort to violent tactics.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld seems to agree that coalition force levels 147,000 U.S. personnel and 13,000 from allied countries are too low. He said Sunday on NBC's ''Meet the Press'' that as many as 30 countries could be added to the current 19 now pitching in. Also, he said, the number of Iraqi police should be doubled to about 60,000 in the near term. Iraqi army manpower is increasing as well, he pointed out.

All this, Rumsfeld said, could lead to a reduction in U.S. forces in Iraq. Dobbins sees this as a good thing because the Iraq commitment has left the U.S. Army overextended, with virtually the entire 500,000-member force preparing to go to Iraq, already there or coming back.

''They are unavailable for other duties,'' he says.

It's hard to overstate the importance of establishing order, Dobbins says, pointing to the lack of security in Afghanistan as a major impediment to reconstruction there.

''Nothing happens without good security,'' he observes. ''International investors have to feel free to travel the countryside. Otherwise they won't invest.''

L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, said Tuesday American troops will need to remain in Iraq until a constitution and a democratic government are in place.

Dobbins says American patience in Iraq is essential, claiming that ''no nation-building operation has succeeded in less than seven years.''

That's how long postwar reconstruction of Germany took a half-century ago, Dobbins notes, recalling that the country was still in such a mess two years after the war that the Truman administration proposed the Marshall Plan.

Historians agree that the initiative played a vital role in German recovery even though that former enemy received only 11 percent of the $13 billion in Marshall Plan money. Funding for Britain and France was much higher.

Dobbins believes the United States has to begin taking nation building seriously because these operations probably will be a permanent fixture of U.S. foreign policy.

He says the problem is systemic because neither the State nor Defense departments regards nation building as a part of its central purpose.

''We need people available on short notice to staff these operations,'' Dobbins says. ''There has to be an ongoing doctrine on how to approach them. It has become an inescapable responsibility, but it's not acknowledged.

''We treat each of these as is if it were the first and also treat each as if it were the last.''

[Epidemic]

I am soooo confused
Nation building

We are too heavy handed and oppressive (liberal viewpoint 1)

We should not take on Nation building and let the Iraqis do it for themselves without us forcing our ideals (liberal viewpoint 2)

We do not take nation building seriously and do not devote enough manpower to our forces in Iraq (liberal viewpoint 3)

Life is too precious for war.
We should have left saddam in power because even one innocent life is too valuable. While saddam kills thousands every year of his regime.

We did not do enough to quiet the riots after sacking baghdad we should have controlled the population with our vast military resources (kill people and oppress them to save museum treasures)

It's hard to overstate the importance of establishing order, Dobbins says, pointing to the lack of security in Afghanistan as a major impediment to reconstruction there.

All the time while complaining we should be out of there and that we should allow them to police themselves.

We dropped the ball in Afghanastan I agree. We did not take control of the nation and deploy the troops instead we allowed the North to run the show after we won the major battles. I tend to think this was a politiacally motivated thing so as to appear as anything other than an occupying force.

I also tend to agree that we are stretched too thin in iraq and we should be taking more control until they can get their government off to a good start. UN forces would be nice to assist in this nation building exercise but they do not seem interested in attempting to insure a stable government forms in Iraq or Aghanastan.


All in all I am quite perplexed by what the liberal agenda is actually about.

To nail Bush.

[Epidemic]

That was my guess as well.

They stand on no moral ground with their arguments, no higher intellectual motivation. They care not for Iraqi, nor Afghani merely their power through hurting republicans through President George W Bush.

[CERuppel]

''We need people available on short notice to staff these operations,'' Dobbins says. ''There has to be an ongoing doctrine on how to approach them. It has become an inescapable responsibility, but it's not acknowledged."

But what about us? Aren't we the citizens the governments responsability? How does Detroit go about applying for these billions in rebuilding money?

I am very tired of hearing about how much the US is spending around the world in "rebuilding" countries that we were legitamitely at war with only monthes before. If there was reason for the war than there is no reason for us to pay off the other country. And yes, that is exactly what this looks like. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

Also, note that this man has been involved in several such operations, but only one in the middle east (Afganistan). Just what is his basis for any critisism of how the occuppation of Iraq is handled? How does he transalte the culture/history of the balkans region to the middle east? OK, I agree that the man must have enough on the ball to have thaought of this and done some sort of work in regard to culture, history, and local mores. Or am I like the only one not "over there" to have noticed that "over there" is different from "here"?

Sorry that this turned out so long, just wanted to vent a little reason at this sort of paid consultant, government trough sucking "expert". Get it right. He was the governments flunky on the scene, the "face" of the US in the papers. A "front" man. He was not the deep thinker, the planner, or the cultural expert. The ones that should be the paid consultants are still hidden behiund the "front" man, and probably still paid diddly.