Faced with a chore like digging a ditch, a typical American, [Rumsfeld] said, will grab a shovel and start digging. In Iraq now, however, the task is to step aside and get the Iraqis to dig their own ditches.
He warned against allowing the Iraqis to become too dependent on the U.S. military. More independence is what's needed, he said.
"That's the only way," Rumsfeld said during a meeting with top U.S. commanders in Tikrit, at the northern tip of the so-called Sunni Triangle that had been deposed President Saddam Hussein's bedrock of support. He called it the key to eventually getting the 151,000 U.S. troops out of Iraq.
In that meeting, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the senior ground commander in Iraq, made a similar point. He said Maj. Gen. John Batiste, whose 1st Infantry Division essentially rules north-central and northeastern Iraq, and who was sitting in the same meeting, must stop thinking of that as his area of responsibility and instead get local Iraqi commanders to take it as their own.
We can't be sidetracked by the frustration that the enemy has more money and more arms than we anticipated and therefore can continue resisting after their battlefield defeat. We need to track down the money and punish those protecting it, cut off the arms coming in, and root out the corruption in the UN that allowed Saddam and his minions to amass such a treasury.
This must ultimately be an Iraqi fight. They must field troops, develop leaders under fire, and build government institutions at the same time. We can only buy them some time. We can't win the fight for them.
