Clive Davis

HOW TO SAVE IRAQ?

If you read only one article today, it ought to be Fareed Zakaria's essay on how to keep Iraq from plunging further into chaos. Zakaria doesn't downplay the achievements of the war - Saddam is gone, the Kurds are building a decent society, Arab politicians are grappling with concepts of democracy - but he recognizes that everything will be lost unless there's a drastic change of course.

Consider the parallels, he says, with another unpopular conflict. No, not Vietnam:

For Americans, the Korean War was not a defeat—the United States had gathered a coalition to resist aggression—but it was certainly not a victory. After three years of fighting and 4 million dead, Korea remained divided—the North a communist bulwark, the South itself turning into a nasty dictatorship... Something like the close of the Korean War is, frankly, the best we can hope for in Iraq now.

But that doesn't mean all coalition troops should head home. If that were to happen, the consequences would be devastating. We are, after all, dealing with a state in meltdown:

The most revealing statistic about Iraq is not the spiraling death toll but the unemployment rate, which is conservatively estimated to be around 30 to 40 percent, and has not moved much in the past two years. Given that conditions are almost normal in the Kurdish north, that means the rest of the country has an unemployment rate closer to 50 percent. Whatever we have been doing in Iraq, it is not translating into peace, normalcy and jobs. In parts of the Sunni Triangle, reports suggest that unemployment is more than 70 percent. If you think that Iraq's tumult is a product of its culture, religion and history, ask yourself what the United States would look like after three years of 50 percent unemployment.

As for improving security, here's Zakaria's main suggestion:

The United States should begin drawing down its troop levels, starting in January 2007. In one year, we should shrink from the current 144,000 to a total of 60,000 soldiers, some 44,000 of them stationed in four superbases outside Baghdad, Balad, Mosul and Nasi-riya. This would provide a rapid-reaction force that could intervene to secure any of the core interests of the United States when they are threatened.

To preserve the basic security of Iraq and prevent anarchy, U.S. troops must also act as the spine of the new Iraqi Army and police force. American advisers should massively expand their current roles in both organizations, going from the current level of 4,000 Americans to at least 16,000, embedding an American platoon (30 to 40 men) in virtually every Iraqi fighting battalion (600 men).

One more thing. He warns against over-estimating Al-Qaeda's strength in the country, or its popularity:

The fight in places like Anbar is largely not a jihadist crusade against America, but a Sunni struggle for control of the country. The chances of Iraq's being taken over by a Qaeda-style group are non-existent. Some 85 percent of the population (the Shia and Kurds) are violently opposed to such a group. And polls have consistently shown that the vast majority of Sunnis dislike Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The real jihadists in Iraq are a small and unpopular band that relies on terror and violence to gain strength. They do not have heavy weapons—tanks, armored vehicles—and cannot hold territory for long. Were a deal between the Shia and the Sunni to be signed, Al Qaeda would be marginalized within months. In the meantime, U.S. Special Forces could harass and chase Qaeda terrorists just as they do in Afghanistan today.

BIG APPLE TREES

I was rummaging through some old snapshots at the weekend. This one of Central Park was taken the morning after I arrived on a brief trip in 2004. I was so jet-lagged, I'm surprised the picture didn't come out blurred too. (BTW, this is the first time I've ever managed to crop a photograph. I finally read the software instructions last night. One small step for a blogger...)

THEATRICAL DYLAN - THE VERDICT

Oh dear, that new show seems to be taking a hammering from the Broadway critics. Terry Teachout [subscriber-only] tried and failed to find a silver lining:

The buzz on "The Times They Are A-Changin’," the new Twyla Tharp-Bob Dylan jukebox musical, was devastatingly negative. Such omens of impending doom are usually right, but I hoped for the best anyway. Mr. Dylan is one of the greatest songwriters of the postwar era and Ms. Tharp one of its most admired choreographers, so how bad could it be? Now I know: "The Times They Are A-Changin' " is so bad that it makes you forget how good the songs are....

Dylan blogger, RightWingBob, is off-duty. No doubt he'll be rounding up when he gets back.

NOTEBOOK

There is a tale of a writer who died and was allowed to choose between going to heaven or to hell. Cannily, she asked St Peter if she might tour both regions before deciding.  Led down into hell, she saw row after row of writers chained to desks, sweat running down their torsos, while demons lashed them with barbed whips.  "Dear me, let’s go and look at the other place!" Ascending into heaven, she met with the sight of row after row of writers chained to the desks, running with sweat, and lashed by demons wielding barbed whips. "But this is just as dreadful as hell!" "Oh no, it isn’t," said St Peter. "Here, your work gets published."

D.J. Enright, Injury Time: A Memoir.

LETTER FROM LONDON

The future of books, and the advent of mischief-making webcaster 18 Doughty Street… My column in today’s Washington Times.

TERRORISM, IN PRINT

Thriller writer Gerald Seymour makes his choice of the novels which do the best job of taking us inside the mind of terrorists:

Black Sunday,  Thomas Harris.

Most Secret, Nevil Shute.

The Whore-Mother,  Shaun Herron.

The Little Drummer Girl, John le Carré.

The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth

WHAT'S FRENCH FOR "THE FIRE NEXT TIME"?

The ever-readable Rod Dreher has punted a question my way about the pessimistic view of Europe's future contained in a Brussels Journal interview with the German writer, Henryk Broder:

He urged young people to get out and "move to Australia or New Zealand. That is the only option they have if they want to avoid the plagues that will turn the old continent uninhabitable."

Now, I don't know Broder's work at all, so I can't comment on his experiences or expertise. But I have major problems with websites that continually use headlines such as "The Rape of Europe". Somehow, that starts bells ringing, much like the sight of a Confederate flag in my rear-view mirror.

All I can say to Rod is that I agree that Europe faces major challenges over assimilation, and that we've been lax about Islamist extremists. No question about it. What I don't care for is the way that certain American conservatives  - Rod isn't one of them - are so eager to forecast an imminent apocalypse. (Is all this supposed to be compensation for the fiasco in Baghdad? I wonder sometimes.) There's a big market for Euro-meltdown books but, as I've noted before, the doom-mongers have a habit of drawing the worst possible conclusions. Here's NRO's Stanley Kurtz again:

Islamic militias tear capital apart. Country may soon be divided....No, not Iraq. I’m talking about France. Europe continues its descent into...what shall we call it? Civil war? Intifada? Call it what you like, but take it deadly seriously.

And then there's Mark Steyn's prognosis:

It’s very hard to persuade the British just how fast things are moving. But I wouldn’t mind betting I’ll be sponsoring... my various relatives all over Europe for U.S. immigration before 2015, 2020 or so.

I don't pretend to be an authority on French politics, and I have no idea whether riots will break out again this autumn. But I recommend this Brookings discussion featuring Christopher Caldwell, who happens to be a regular contributor to the Weekly Standard, and so couldn't be dismissed as a soggy liberal. If you read his comments in the full transcript, it’s obvious that Caldwell isn’t starry-eyed about French society or the demographic question. But it seems to me he’s a long way from declaring martial law. Or, if you don't have the time to wade through all that, read the op-ed by Matthew Kaminski, Paris-based editor at that well-known pinko rag, the Wall Street Journal. Again, he points up the fractured nature of French society and of Europe. Yet he sees the nuances too.

The French approach to assimilation, with its insistence on strict secularism and its dirigiste firmness, does not make for an American-style melting pot. But it may well carve a better path to civil peace, over time, than could undertake a major economic reform. Remarkably little has been done, even in the year since the riots, to loosen up the restrictive labor codes that do so much to keep poor immigrants--not least poor Muslim immigrants--from finding work and integrating themselves into French life.

The Times’s Paris correspondent, Charles Bremner takes a similar stance [Via Comment Central]:

The local authorities also feel let down. Claude Dilain, the long-serving Socialist mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois, has struggled to improve conditions over the past year and he has even written a book on his pride in his town. He blames the state for failing to deliver promised funds. "People here feel that they are on the edge of the Republic," said last week. "After the emotion passed last year, the political debate shifted away from the banlieues.... All the conditions are there for it to blow up. If people feel nothing has changed, we cannot tell them that they are wrong.

The last point I'd make to Rod is that the jeering, Europe-is-for-wimps tone of the Mark Steyn school of journalism is about as irritating as the Americans-are-all-lardbutts drivel that comes from the other side of the divide. (Hurricane Katrina gave that phenomenon a new lease of life, you may recall). Rod writes eloquently about how the insufferable arrogance of the GOP machine has turned him off party politics. All I'd ask him to consider is how, just at this moment, things look to pro-American types like me who are listening in from a few thousand miles away. After all, even a hyper-power needs a few friends.

PUNK ROCKERS READ BOOKS TOO

The Clash's Mick Jones, caught in the act by King Dork author, Dr Frank.

NEMESIS

"Iraq today is as far-removed from a peaceful settlement as it was in the spring of 2003…" Given that Con Coughlin was an unabashed supporter of going to war against Saddam, his essay in today’s Telegraph makes all the more painful reading. As for the consequences for the Anglo-American partnership, well...

A former high-ranking British intelligence officer who was also involved in the planning for post-war Iraq was even more critical of Washington's attitude. "We were completely and utterly stuffed by the Americans. We should never trust them again, or at least until we see a change of attitude from the Bush administration. Forget what they say, it's what they do. They simply didn't take any notice of any of the advice we gave them. They just did what suited them.

And this assertion is sure to stir all sorts of responses:

One of the more unpalatable characteristics of the neo-cons, many of whom have close associations with the hard Right in Israel, was their disregard for the wishes of the Iraqi people. Their principal Iraqi contact before the war was Ahmed Chalabi, an exiled politician who had fled the country as a child in the 1950s and was unknown inside Iraq. Chalabi had seduced his neo-con admirers with the promise that, under his leadership, Iraq would establish diplomatic relations with Israel, a far-fetched proposition given Iraq's long-standing role as the standard-bearer of Arab nationalism.

HOPE

William Shawcross hasn’t given up yet. His latest piece includes this analysis from Duncan Anderson, head of war studies at Sandhurst. Worth quoting, even though I have a horrible feeling I’m grasping at straws:

Like everyone who loves Iraq, he is worried about it. But he is not panicked. He points out that it took the British army four years to get its tactics right in Malaya, then another seven years to defeat the insurgency there. Similarly, in Oman there was a learning curve in the 1970s.

"The US Army and the marines have transformed themselves in the last two years," he says. "They set up their own counter-insurgency school and all officers down to platoon level pass through it. It is a far more effective force than it was in 2003."

The Iraqi Army has improved as well. "In January 2005 there were only four battalions which were any good," Anderson says. "Now we can think in terms of several divisions that can be relied upon. Many of them are very highly motivated: they know what their enemies will do to them if they win."

Last week the Iraqi Army was able to take back from insurgents the southern town of Amarra. Anderson thinks the most effective way of improving the army faster would be to post many more experienced foreign military advisers with different units. This could be done by the redeployment of US officers already in Iraq.