TJP

The US Needs a Peace Czar, not a War Czar

Byron A. Ellis

If the aim is stability and peace in Iraq, the choice should have been a peace czar and not a war czar. Naming of a war czar signals a continuation of US war posture, which has been rejected by the rest of the world and now by many at home.

Will the new war czar influence the insurgents or will he create a more favorable ground condition in Iraq and Afghanistan? It is doubtful that one new man can infuse new life in the battlefield or make the contest winnable.

The administration’s approach ought not to be a continuation of what has not worked, but to examine workable alternates. Therefore, some relevant questions that they should ask are:

1)    What do the Iraqis want and how can their wants be satisfied without harming the US national interest?

2)    What do stakeholders in the region want?

3)    What processes, aside from military, need to be in place to curtail civil strife?

4)    How can the US work with all Iraqis to neutralize foreign terrorist?

The position of a war czar is unlikely to be about achieving peace and stability, rather it appears to be more of the same policy, pacifying the Iraqi population by subjugation. However, the subjugation method has not worked. Thus, the administration should examine organizational justice theory and attempt to apply it within the Iraqi framework.

Organizational justice describes the role of fairness within a given environment and offers a framework to explore and understand the Iraqi citizens reaction to the US invasion. Thus, it incorporates the methods of change with stakeholders’ perceptions. Clearly, Iraqis’ perceptions of fairness influence their level of involvement and commitment to support the insurgency or the Americans. Unfortunately, fairness perceptions as interpreted by Iraqis and Americans seldom coincide, because of cultural differences and invader status.

The justice literature identifies four types of justice that may affect Iraqis in a quest for stability. (1) Procedural, which deals with participation in the decision-making process to adopt, design, and implement strategies to stabilize Iraq; (2) distributive, which deals with fairness of outcomes (i.e., distribution of oil wealth and government positions, compensation, benefits, etc.); (3) interpersonal, which deals with the quality of treatment given to the Iraqis by the invading force and their leaders, and (4) informational, which deals with the justifications/explanations used to invade Iraq and to continue to subjugate its citizens. Both, interpersonal and informational are subsumed under interactional justice.

To mitigate the Iraq quagmire the administration needs an aggressive peace advocate, not a war czar.