Bruce Kesler
2007-02-26 08:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

Amid concerns about Iraqis assembling an effective government, New Republic senior editor Lawrence Kaplan adds that the United States “government can’t even mobilize itself.”

Kaplan’s criticism is aimed at the civilian agencies, particularly the State Department, which have been slow, understaffed and under-experienced to fill their needed role in the war in Iraq.

Eyebrows rose at a Senate hearing earlier this month that found the State Department requested the Defense Department to fill more than a third of the 350 new positions required from State in Iraq for expanded Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

There are currently about 50 State Department employees serving with PRTs, and a September 2006 audit report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found only 60 percent of the 128 civilian PRT slots filled.

A key ingredient of President Bush’s new strategy in Iraq is doubling of PRTs from the present 10 to 20. PRTs work at the local level in Iraq to support counter-insurgency operations — another key realignment of strategy — by helping build effective Iraqi civil leadership and coordinating U.S. military-civil quick help reconstruction activities.

Kaplan contrasts the level of civilian agency commitment during the Vietnam war to today in Iraq. Then, the comparable Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support teams were the pacification program.

Following the Tet Offensive in 1968, Gen. Creighton Abrams successfully shifted U.S. strategy toward counterinsurgency, as Gen. David Petraeus is tasked to do now in Iraq. CORDS were a key part of Abrams’ new strategy.

Kaplan points out, however, that “one of every 25 State Department/USAID employees was deployed to Vietnam in CORDS, versus roughly one out of every 300 today in the Iraqi PRTs.”

Three of the important recommendations of the Iraq Study Group stressed that State and other civilian agencies need to step up to the plate. Assignments of qualified staff to Iraq should be required, as during Vietnam.

Additionally, tours of duty during Vietnam were 12 months to 18 months. Today, they’re three months to six months, allowing employees to leave with just-acquired experience. The ISG recommended that State must “train personnel to carry out civilian tasks associated with a complex stability operation outside of the traditional embassy setting.”

The ISG did not just single out State, but stressed that “other key civilian agencies, including Treasury, Justice, and Agriculture, need to create similar technical assistance capabilities.”

The day after the president’s speech describing his new strategy for Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that a retired Foreign Service officer, with experience in Vietnam, had been named coordinator for Iraq reconstruction.

His qualifications and experience appear appropriate. However, the comparable position in Vietnam had ambassadorial status and was considered one of the three top decision-makers in country. Note, too, that State had to go deep into its bench to find someone suitable.

New Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, a veteran of many such posts, addressed the current graduating class of Foreign Service officers, of whom only four of 75 volunteered to go to Iraq.

Reflecting the careerist culture within State, Negroponte could merely suggest that it might be a good career step to undertake hardship posts. Recognizing the need to reorient Foreign Service, Negroponte observed, “We are just working this out. And I think it is going to take time.”

The extensive post-1968 CORDS program in Vietnam was fairly successful. As the Viet Cong was decimated in the south and units from North were pushed across the borders and their sanctuaries brought under heavier pressure, CORDS filled the opening by eliminating enemy “shadow government” and training more effective local government leaders.

The opening stages of the Iraq “surge” present a similar opening, as Sadr-Shia militias lay low and Baathist-Sunni al-Qaida diehards are uprooted from Baghdad and Anbar.

Three years into the Iraq war, almost four decades after the painfully learned and forgotten experience gained in Vietnam, State is just now trying to work it out and says it needs time.

It’s long past time that State and other civilian agencies took their responsibilities in Iraq more centrally and seriously than they have.

Bruce Kesler was a Sergeant in Marine Corp intelligence in Vietnam and blogs at DemocracyProject.com.