Rebuilding Iraq: No Job for a Coalition (washingtonpost.com)
I wasn't going to blog today but had to get a couple of things out or I'd bust.

I can already hear the military screaming over the idea of leading the rebuilding of Iraq. That's precisely why they should do it. First, as the woman who wrote this excellent article has noted, the Pentagon has run the only two successful post-WW2 reconstructions: Japan and Germany. Second, because it isn't their primary job they have an incentive to get it done -- and done well as they do everything -- and get out. That doesn't mean weeks or months, but a couple of years.

I recently heard that our military spent four years running Germany after WW2 and six years running Japan. That's a long time, but when they left the job was done. The UN and other organizations have an incentive to stay in place as long as possible whereas the Pentagon has other things to do. The UN has not ever successfully democratized a country. Not once. The military, which is itself not a particularly democratic institution, has done it twice and very well because they are adept at laying out goals and reaching them.

Let the screaming begin, but the U.S. military should own Iraq for the time being. It's the surest way to success.

The military has led the only two successful attempts at postwar democratization. In Japan and Germany, defense officials took full responsibility. Used to thinking strategically, they focused on overarching values and critical missions. The centralized defense structure allowed America's core values to remain consistent and penetrate every aspect of the mission. Yet, after setting and enforcing broad guidelines, they gave the Germans and Japanese great leeway in setting up their own governments. Perhaps most important, the military authorities did not want to remain. Unlike international organizations, whose entire job is to "help" other countries, the Pentagon has other work to do. It has every incentive to create a viable local government and then allow it the autonomy to function on its own.

Those who support multilateral reconstruction believe we can begin repairing rifts in the international system by diffusing responsibility for reconstruction. Yet under all proposed scenarios, America is going to run the reconstruction effort. Our detractors will still frame us as occupiers, while our attempts to placate international critics will sentence Iraq to a decade of uncertainty and limbo under international auspices.

Helping Iraq build a functioning democracy in which Iraqis can soon govern on their own is essential to our international legitimacy and crucial to the Iraqi people. The United Nations and other international organizations are staffed by many capable, intelligent, well-intentioned people. They should be encouraged to run humanitarian relief efforts in Iraq and should create a broad, multilateral coalition to control Iraq's oil revenue to expunge the accusation that this has been a war for oil. Yet in concert, they would fail to democratize Iraq and would prevent it from regaining its autonomy and sovereignty. The Pentagon has succeeded in the past, and it has the unified structure that will allow it to succeed again. Let it do the job.