This was to be the “Year of the Police in Iraq,” according to American military commanders. It’s probably safe to say that it’s taken on a meaning they never envisioned.
Twelve hundred Iraqi police officers were suspended recently – suspected of being complicit with sectarian death squads. It is a setback in the U.S. effort to turn over to Iraqis responsibility for their country’s security.
Some of the officers are suspected to have taken part in the kidnapping of 26 workers at a meat-processing plant and the executions of six of them. These officers are supposed to be keeping the peace, not destroying it.
The suspensions come not long after independent investigators found a $75 million U.S. effort to build the largest police academy in Iraq was so flawed that raw sewage seeped from the ceilings and at least part of the project may have to be torn down.
The “Year of the Police,” announced in March by coalition forces, was supposed to focus on upgrading the effectiveness of security forces and increasing Iraqi public trust in authority. But one has to wonder if Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s recent dark assessment of the time needed to quell insurgencies – he estimated it typically takes from five to 15 years – was less a historical lesson and more of a game plan. Rumsfeld made the comments in a Sept. 30 interview with CNN in which he also said that “there was not an anticipation that the level of the insurgency would be anything approximating what it is.”
Both pre-war underestimation of insurgency and any hope that Americans will tolerate such huge errors in judgment are wrong. The administration must accurately assess security problems in Iraq. Perhaps 2007 will be the “Year of the Realistic Plan.”
