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ARTICLE: “Iraq Set To Unify Security Forces To Battle Chaos: Smaller U.S. Role Is Seen; A Single Commander and Uniform Are Planned for Baghdad Patrol,” by Dexter Filkins, New York Times, 11 May 2006, p. A1.
“Chaos” has to be the single most overused and overhyped word in the U.S. news media. Everything seems to be in chaos all the time.
Chaos is the absence of all authority. That isn't the case anywhere in Iraq. What we have are competing authorities, which of course is quite dangerous and often deadly.
What is clear in Iraq is that the political patchwork shouldn’t be mirrored by military/security patchwork, and that Iraqis themselves need to drive that centralizing project. American government grew up and out in times of war, and our military kept pace. Absent such a development, the market will provide in the form of militias and mafias.
In normal development and recovery, the growing accumulation of wealth by average people creates a stakeholder mentality where people pay more and more and demand more and more in terms of security. But Iraq is lacking that recovery, so this process is being driven by pain, death and fear, and in most societies that gets you the Man on the Horse who brings stability at a cost most are willing to pay.
Progress yes, but along the worst possible pathway because we screwed up the postwar.
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