For most of the last year, the U.S. response to the corruption, incompetence and intransigence has been to attack it head on. This is how things are done in the Middle East. Except for Israel and Turkey, there are no working democracies in the region. It's all bullies and police state politics. The locals understand a good hit up side the head. So tell the Shia Arab politicians who are currently trying to run the country, that we want them to do certain things (like more effective policing and less stealing), or U.S. aid will be cut, and American troops will begin leaving. That's more brutal than it sounds, because recent opinion surveys indicate that more Sunni than Shia want the American troops to stay. Why? Because the Shia want to slaughter the Sunni Arabs and drive the survivors out of the country. Only the presence of U.S. troops prevents that. The Shia politicians don't want this mass murder to take place, even if most of the people who elected them do. The politicians realize that mass murder is wrong, and would be impossible to explain away to the world community. But to all the Shia and Kurd families who have lost someone, the world community's feeling don't figure into the equation. Besides, you can just blame the Americans, and most of the world will agree with you.
This rough love approach has been used in the past in similar situations. How soon we forget that, before World War II, U.S. troops (soldiers and marines) were all over the place doing peacekeeping and nation-building. Some of the current back-to-the-future techniques include simply paying off some local leaders to keep them quiet. This was done in late 2001 in Afghanistan, as part of the two month campaign that had 300 U.S. troops and CIA agents organize the fall of the Taliban. That sort of money politics is generally frowned on in the United States, except when you're desperate (like in the wake of September 11, 2001). U.S. troops have taken direct control of more aid and reconstruction operations. Large jobs program for Iraq's unemployed young people gives them an alternative to working for gangsters or terrorists. Giving the money to the Iraqi government risks having most of it stolen.
More American troops are now embedded with Iraqi police and military units. Partly they are there to advise, but mostly they are there to spy. When incompetent or corrupt officials are spotted, the American troops can either turn them around or turn them in.
There's no guarantee that this "war on corruption" will work, but things will remain bad if you do nothing. The Arab world is a mess because of the corruption. Not just all the dictatorships, but an economy that under-performs the rest of the world (including many areas without natural resources, like oil). There's an "Arab Reform Movement" operating throughout the region, but so far all they have been able to do is bring the problems out into the open. That's progress, but not a solution.
We need solutions, but too often, most American politicians are more concerned with political correctness. That isn't always bad. For example, there has been enormous emphasis, in Iraq, on keeping American casualties down. This has been a success, with the casualty rate being about half what it was in Vietnam, and at a record low level historically. This has amazed military experts the world over, but was accomplished by adopting tactics that limited what American troops could do. That is, most U.S. troops were engaged in "force protection", not going out hunting for bad guys. The effort saved lives, but the Department of Defense never got much credit for it. To the media, each death was an unforgivable tragedy, because the war had become a political football.
The basic strategy in Iraq is, historically, sound. You help the locals get organized so they can take care of themselves. That means elections and help to rebuild local institutions. But there's never a guarantee that will work. The U.S. Marines were in Haiti for nearly 30 years (from 1914), and the country still reverted to dictatorship and poverty when the marines left. This exposes a truth that many refuse to acknowledge. Fixing countries isn't easy. The "civil society" that we in the West take for granted, cannot just be conjured up. The harmonious relationships that enable some democracies to work, are not a given. Those relationships often require a lot of bad habits to be changed. This is not easy. Just check a history book.
Iraq, and most of the countries in the Middle East, are broken. They have been for a long time. We in the West have generally ignored it, because there were no workable solutions that were easily available. Then came the latest wave of Islamic terrorism. This got worse, until September 11, 2001, and the prospect of mass murder in our own backyard became a reality. Then, the West became divided over the solution. Do we keep treating the terrorists as a police problem, and wait them out? That is known to work. But the threat of even deadlier terrorist attacks made more dramatic moves attractive. So here we are in Iraq, confronting the Arab problems up close and personal. It ain't pretty. But unless the Arab problems are solved, the ugly aftereffects will still be there, and so will the threat of mass murder on the street where you live. A comment on this; Preventing genocide? The Iraqi's are involved in that already. Increased terrorist attacks at home? Talk to the people of Great Britain about that one. Prevent new terrorist bases? As if they already don't have those...Somalia, Tribal area of Pakistan, Indonesia, Northern Iraq (ask the Turks)...the list goes on. So what is the real point in continuing the military experiment in combating terrorism. I just don't see where America's interests and the Iraq War intersect. If someone can tell me that ---without the sloganeering!--I'd be very happy.