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The dream of Iraqi democratization vs. the reality of Iraqi violence
A deeply sobering article on current conditions in Iraq appeared in Sunday’s Washington Post. The insurgency, with its savage murders and kidnappings of foreign aid workers, has extended beyond Fallujah and Najaf to much of the country, making it too dangerous for foreigners to go outside the areas occupied and guarded by the Coalition and thus bringing the Iraqi reconstruction efforts to a halt. In addition to the non-performance and mass desertions by the Coalition-trained Iraqi security forces, many Iraqis employed by the Coalition and the various reconstruction projects are now staying at home, afraid of being murdered by their fellow Iraqis for cooperating with foreigners. If these conditions persist, President Bush’s entire strategy for Iraq will be doomed. What has gone wrong? As I’ve been pointing out since last summer, the erection of a new government in Iraq presupposes that such government have a monopoly on the use of force in Iraq. Instead of striving to create such a government, we’ve been striving to create the mechanisms of democratic elections—imagining, in excited reverie born of our democratist ideology, that the cart of universal rights and democratic proceduralism could pull the horse of sovereign national existence. Thus, when challenged on the viability of Iraqi democratization on ABC’s “This Week,” Condoleezza Rice echoed the oft-expressed view of President Bush and leading neoconservatives that all people in the world want rights, that they want good things for their sons and daughters, and that they don’t want a knock on their door in the middle of the night—from which it supposedly follows that all peoples in the world are capable of a democratic form of government. The obvious problem with this Pollyannish notion is that the desire of individuals for those nice things, even the desire of the majority of the people in a given country for those nice things, does not necessarily mean that they will possess the collective will to suppress the lawless minorities in their midst and thus be able to have those nice things. It is not a sign of wisdom in our political and intellectual elites that they fail to see this elemental truth of political existence. Another way of understanding the situation in Iraq is that our leaders have disregarded the lesson of Vietnam: If you’re going to fight a war, either fight to win or get out. In the Iraqi context, winning means destroying the jihadist or Ba’athist forces that threaten the Coalition, and, as I said above, creating a successor Iraqi government that will have the force and energy to maintain its own existence. Instead of such a strategy, we’ve had the “stay the course” mantra. “Staying the course” does not mean victory. “Staying the course” means adhering to a policy that is not leading to victory and that is not even logically designed to lead to victory. As far as anyone can tell, “staying the course” simply means soldiering on and enduring the insurgents’ attacks as long as they keep coming at us. But what if the insurgents keep coming at us? What do we do then? What policy do we have in place to eliminate the insurgents—both those from within Iraq and those entering the country from outside? To my knowledge, this is a question that Bush has never addressed and never even been asked. The upshot is that we not only lack a policy aimed at victory in Iraq, we have not even had a national debate aimed at formulating such a policy. We have had a parody of a debate, in which the Left mindlessly screams, “Bush lied,” and the Right stolidly replies, “Stay the course.” Let us be brutally frank. If the administration had seriously contemplated these problems earlier, they might have concluded that the requisite victory could not be achieved in an Arab Moslem country. This realization would have led them to a total re-thinking about what to do with post-Hussein Iraq. As an example of such an alternative strategy, they might have adopted Daniel Pipes’s idea (first proposed almost a year ago) of putting a democratically-minded strong man in power, and then quickly withdrawing our forces. It remains the case that the indispensable condition for a democratic Iraqi government—or for any stable, pro-Western government in that country—is victory as defined above. If such a victory is not possible, then democratization is not possible, and some other approach must be found. Refusing to face this unpleasant choice, the Bush administration has situated itself between two stools: insisting on democratization as the absolute linchpin of our Iraq policy and even as the very basis of our own national security, while pursuing a “stay the course” mode that cannot, by itself, ensure the victory that is the very condition of democratization.
Let us hope that I am wrong, and that the insurgency soon collapses and the jihadist forces fade away, allowing the Iraqi people to continue forward to the “broad sunlit uplands” of freedom and self-government. But if that wished-for event comes to pass, it will have happened as much by good fortune as by any conscious plan on the part of the Bush administration. Comments
That I find myself agreeing with anything coming out of The Washington Post is newsworthy in itself. Mr. Auster, too, is right on the mark. The ugly reality of a total guerilla war—with massive enemy supplies and men streaming in from unguarded Syrian and Iranian points along the Iraq border—tells that we are, in fact, in for another Vietnam (where we can’t “see” the enemy, who attacks, then blends back into the countryside, killing our men every day). We have lost the control over a country we never really had control over. It was an illusion. The desertion of/collapse of the Iraqi Police we have been training and resignations of Governing Council members tells the story. Our military spread out all over the world tells another story. I state again, and it seems like a broken record that no one in our government appears to be listening to, that you (Bush) CAN’T win a pc war! In striving to be “nice” to civilians of the occupied country, you leave your military wide open. Our military was trained to break and kill things, NOT be “peacekeepers”. That bigwig heads haven’t rolled shows me that Bush is much too nice to be running the show. There should have been generals resigning, and idiots like Paul Bremer fired. There is no “fire in the belly”. Our military leaders, who previously looked brilliant under Gen. Tommy Franks, today look like nincompoops. I want to see heads roll. Bush, Rice and others in the Admin. seem to have this “pipe dream” about “Iraqis wanting freedom and democracy”. Bullpuckey! They want jobs but most of all, they want us OUT of their country! Until the Bushes and Rices of the world come to that realization—that the Iraqi people will NEVER accept a “puppet government”—they (and our military) are doomed to fail, but certainly NOT because of the lack of “good intentions”. “Good intentions”, though, are not what our enemy, the Islamo-fascists, have in store for our young men and women—and the foreigners who support us. Bringing back the Draft (and thus bringing in men and women we normally wouldn’t want in the military, those who are opposed to our actions in Iraq) while we lose good men and women who might have been considering a stay in the military or may have wanted to join to help in the fight, tells me that our future military is in real trouble. If we are expecting a full-blown Arab-American war (including non-Arab countries like Iran), we had better have a large and prepared military. From what I have read, we are nowhere near that point. As I recall, Bush ran on a platform that included substantial increases in military pay. Did that ever happen? I don’t think so. Our men and women are not dumb. They also saw the despicable “hospital” conditions of our wounded National Guard soldiers at temporary quarters on various bases in the East and South. It took some pretty explicit news stories before Bush cleaned that up. All this affects morale. The word gets around. Is Bush really “a friend” of the military man and woman? This being said, I believe very strongly that an exit strategy must be considered NOW! Instead, Bush is sending in more troops. His generals don’t seem to have a clue as to what to do. There seems to be a big “cya” going on within the military brass, with bigwig generals flying into Iraq while the situation is worsening by the day. Meanwhile, Bush was on vacation, shooting ducks with his big fundraisers…That doesn’t look good to our military men and women, either. Image IS very important. Reagan knew that better than anybody. Bush & Co. obviously do not. Posted by: David Levin on April 18, 2004 6:00 PM The idea that all the world’s peoples are the same - that they are simply interchangeable units that can be replaced or remolded to fit into the great corporare machine if provided with sufficient resources and the illusion of “democratic institutions” - demonstrates the incredible hubris and ignorance of the Bushite globalists and their neoconservative mouthpieces. The democratic institutions and rule of law these arrogant elites talk of transplanting into the lifeless soil of Islam developed and grew out of an English nation and culture that was informed and enlightened by Christianity - and came to fruition in Anglo-America only as the result of centuries of incremental development. As an aside, it is interesting to note that while waxing eloquent about freedom and liberty in their fantasy Iraq, Bush and the rest are busily dismantling the remains of the constitution and nation where the ideas they profess to love actually came into being. Posted by: Carl on April 18, 2004 9:18 PMI think this is just one of many examples where means and ends do not always match up. The long term goal of democracy in Iraq may require the opposite now, whether a local strongman or us. Likewise, the long term goal of a liberal Iraq will certainly require a great deal of liberalism now. This childish notion that consistency and authenticity must trump effectiveness is directly hurting our mission effectiveness. Posted by: roach on April 19, 2004 12:38 PMThat should be illiberalism in last sentence of first paragraph above. Posted by: roach on April 19, 2004 12:45 PMThat should be illiberalism in last sentence of first paragraph above. Posted by: roach on April 19, 2004 12:45 PMWhy would any Islamic country want Democracy? Hey, have any of you ever read the War Nerd’s columns? They deal with issues like this. http://www.exile.ru/188/war_nerd.html Posted by: Michael Jose on April 21, 2004 2:16 AMI thank Michael Jose for a fascinating site, “war_nerd”. It says at the top of the site, “Moscow-based alternative…” Is this guy an American Communist living in Moscow? Or, just an ordinary guy trying to stir up the pot? He’s kinda funny, yet strangely on the mark in the many points he makes about Iraq/Vietnam/Lebanon. Posted by: David Levin on April 23, 2004 6:06 AMI don’t know the War Nerd’s motives, but he says he lives in Fresno, in the browning heart of Mexifornia. HRS Posted by: Howard Sutherland on April 23, 2004 9:27 AM |