Iraq: Stability or Democracy?

Here’s my latest highly abbreviated form of the Iraq Index, published and updated twice a week by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution:

Americans Killed in Action, Iraq (monthly average)

2003: 32
2004: 59
2005: 56
2006: 40
March: 25

Americans Killed in Action, Vietnam (weekly average)

1965:* 30
1966: 97
1967: 177
1968: 263
____
• = First U.S. combat troops arrived in Vietnam, 5.3.65
Vietnam table compiled by Galen Fox using Defense Department sources.

Note please—the Vietnam KIAs are weekly, not monthly, averages.

Crude Oil Production (m. bbls./day)

Prewar: 2.50
Goal: 2.50
actual: 2.00 (3/06)

Electricity (megawatts)

Prewar: 3,958
Goal: 6,000
actual: 4,100 (3/06)

Asked of Iraqis (1.31.06): “Do you think that Iraq is generally headed in the right direction, or the wrong direction?”

“Right direction”: 64%

Gen. Anthony Zinni, who headed the military’s Central Command (which has direct authority over Iraq) at the end of the Clinton administration, has written a book about Iraq, Battle for Peace. He was on “Meet the Press” yesterday. A good Army man, Zinni strongly and effectively made the case for firing Rumsfeld because he wouldn’t put the recommended high number of troops into Iraq the Army knew were needed to combat any insurgency that grew up in the aftermath of Saddam’s overthrow. Had we established and maintained order, Zinni said, we could have headed off the current Sunni-based insurgency.

Zinni also argued that we should be pursuing stability in Iraq, not the democracy the (second) Bush administration seeks to establish. Here Zinni lost my sympathy, as he talked about the need to have an “educated electorate,” to have government first and democracy later instead of the reverse, and as he ridiculed an Iraqi voter who asked a poll worker who she should vote for. When the official responded by reading the names on the ballot and had reached the seventh of 160 parties, she said, “That’s the one!” Presumably Zinni preferred she listen to all 160 names before voting.

Zinni said it takes time, and investment from the “stable world,” to build a democracy. Guess Zinni somehow never visited India, the world's largest democracy, while running his Central Command.