It’s a truism of counter-insurgency warfare that political and military strategies must be coordinated and reinforce one another. Traditionally, this meant that military operations should minimize harm and humiliation of civilians who could otherwise support the insurgency. It also meant that civilians who supported the regime needed to be protected from insurgents, who would otherwise compel them to support the insurgency either by cultivating their good will or through pure terror. Finally, it meant that political goods such as schools, hospitals, roads, and the like needed to be delivered to fence-sitters so that they would realize the benefits of loyalty to the government. This amounted to the classic combination of “carrot and stick.”

The military and political strategy of the allies’ counter-insurgency in Iraq has been unique. The usual provision of security, protection, and other essential government services by the US occupiers, and now the nascent Iraqi regime, has been far from adequate, consistently hampered by the security meltdown following the fall of Saddam’s regime. US troops are described as visiting certain locales every few months. Even in towns where US troops maintain a substantial presence, government supporters are routinely gunned down and terrorized in their unsecured urban neighborhoods. While US troops occasionally rebuild schools and engage in other laudable civil affairs efforts, the most important thing people expect from government, basic security, has been lacking since the fall of Saddam and remains lacking.

US troops, instead of clearing and holding certain terrain, are engaging in what amounts to attrition warfare against the insurgents, likely a necessity due to inadequate forces necessary for occupying large swaths of the country.

Allied efforts, however, have featured a unique and unprecedented political strategy. The regime’s democratic legitimacy has been the new government’s chief selling point. That is, instead of delivering the substantive goods the Iraqi people expect from any government–security, infrastructure, a legal system–their loyalty to the government is supposed to be cemented through an election, through a procedure. This strategy likely flows from the ideology of the Bush administration, most of whom believe that democratic regimes are inevitable, with unique claims to justice, and are therefore unassailable once in place. Hence, Bush’s mocking of anyone that suggests Iraqis and the rest of the Middle East may not be ready for democracy. Thus, it’s not the case that our forces have neglected military operations against insurgents in order to pursue a democracy; rather, it’s the case that our political strategy reinforcing our military operations is highly unorthodox, neglecting the usual features of “good government,” in order to pursue a purely procedural claim to legitimacy.

Even politically moderate and disinterested people may find a democratic regime to be too weak, too corrupt, and too ineffective to command their loyalty. The history of military coups against democratic regimes is a long one. Such challengers base their claims to legitimacy on effectiveness and results, not fidelity to any procedures. Indeed, such procedural niceties are often mocked as invitations to corruption and impediments to an effective military campaign. These were the claims of the anti-democratic movements of the Algerian ultras, the Argentinian junta, and Augusto Pinochet. This is to say that the Iraqi elections have, at most, bought the Iraqi regime time. If it cannot deliver on basic government services, it will find itself in jeapordy from the current crop of insurgents or some energetic faction within its own military.

The Bush administration’s strategy is to be faulted; instead of handing over a functioning government to the Iraqis that would be strengthened by a democratic imprimatur, the Iraqis instead received a non-functioning government, whose democratic foundation does little to improve its effectiveness. By receiving a nonfunctioning government, the democratic Iraqi regime began several steps behind, saddled with the weaknesses and inefficiencies that traditionally plague democratic governments during times of war.