Flying in a military C-130 through the dark Iraqi night, our civilian observation team had an unscheduled guest. At the last moment, an unidentified soldier had been brought aboard. He had been killed that day by a roadside bomb. It was a somber and clarifying experience about what was at stake.

That last week was the bloodiest week of the war, increasing the total American military personnel killed in action since the end of major combat in Iraq to 140. One reads about the four to six soldiers now dying every day and the 40 wounded--but it is just a statistic. But it hits home when you are riding through a war-torn land in a darkened aircraft with a fallen hero.

The Department of Defense asked me recently to join a delegation to learn more about Iraq's reconstruction. I had been opposed to United States ground forces in Iraq but was impressed that Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had insisted that the number of American troops on the ground be limited-only enough to win the war but not so many to become bogged down afterwards. Once the active war was won, his plan was to quickly turn control to the Iraqis. But, with the pressure from influential U.S. voices to increase troop levels substantially and to remain indefinitely until a functioning democracy could be created, I signed up for the rigors of the trip to the combat zone to learn whether the secretary's message had reached the troops.

The news from Iraq is good. The end of the U.S. occupation is in sight and the military and civilian leaders are moving enthusiastically and rationally to implement the plan. In fact, it appears that the military leadership in Iraq has been leading the Pentagon. For the indisputable fact is that American forces are stretched "to the breaking point," as one military leader in Iraq observed. A single rotation cycle of training, deployment and recover would exhaust the entire U.S. military force. He concluded that two years was the maximum strain that could be digested by his forces. The following day President George W. Bush announced that the number of troops would be reduced from 132,000 to 100,000 by April 2004.

On the ground, orderly preparations are being implemented. The scattered forces necessary for occupation are being consolidated in an operation "local standoff" so that they will become less vulnerable to attack, especially in dangerous Baghdad. One senior officer predicted that the number of fixed locations would be down to a handful by April in Baghdad and to a few score in the rest of the country. He flatly said the occupation would be over by the end of 2005, with the remaining coalition troops left in isolated and well-defended bases for emergency use.

In the meantime, the job is to provide security and government services. The turnover to local councils and police is already advanced in most of the country. The Iraqi army is being formed on an expedited basis. In hot-spot Tikrit, in the shadow of one of Saddam's largest palace-fortresses, we watched a new Iraqi battalion march its stuff in review. The soldiers we interviewed recognized the danger in which they had put themselves and their families in identifying with the Americans (in the exact same location we rotored into that day, a helicopter was shot down the next with all on board killed) but they seemed proud of their new status. One had already taught himself English and thanked us in our own language.

Authority chief L. Paul Bremer estimates that a new constitution could be formulated in six months by using the local councils to select delegates who could form a true Iraqi government. There is still no solution to the centuries-old division of the nation between the majority Shiite Arab and the historically-dominant Sunni Arabs in addition to a large non-Arab Kurd population that has long had as its bottom line autonomy from both of these, plus smaller endangered minorities of Turkomen and Chaldean, Assyrian and Armenian Christians. We met the most reasonable and forward-looking Shiite cleric in the country, Sayyid Farkad Quizwini, who proposed a remarkably moderate program. But he would not consider any autonomy for Kurds or Sunnis, who he said must abide by the decisions of the "democratic" majority-which, of course, is Shi'a.

This mix of ages-old cultural resentments virtually guarantees a messy outcome once power is turned to the Iraqis whenever that would occur. As power is transferred, American casualties will continue. As heart rending as is this process, recriminations regarding whether we should have entered the war to avoid the reaction are moot. The only rational course is to support the orderly transition now being implemented by our military in Iraq.

 

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Donald Devine, former director Of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is a columnist and a Washington-based policy consultant and a Vice Chairman for the American Conservative Union.