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Iraq Watch. This week’s theme seems to be the state and the rule of law. Just as the rule of law disintegrates when the state is unresponsive to the will of the people, reestablishing the rule of law is essential to allowing the people to express their will peacefully. Sir Robert Thompson, the great British theorist of counterinsurgency, would likely have made the reconstitution of Iraq’s police the first priority, even before the army.

The best organisation to be responsible for all internal security intelligence work is the special branch of a police force rather than a completely separate organisation. It is a great advantage if intelligence officers have police powers and are able to call when necessary on other branches of the police for support and assistance for developing their intelligence work.”

Still, it’s encouraging to see such emphasis placed on the reconstitution of police, given some of the Badr Corp’s infiltration of them and the sectarian threat to the state’s legitimacy that could create. This New York Times article is a must-read. What it suggests is a continuing focus on bringing the rule of law to places where it had been broken for decades, thus allowing peaceful, popularly driven change to win out over violence.