Bremer recognizes reality
Even L. Paul Bremer is acknowledging that the creation of self-government in Iraq requires more than happy-smile slogans and utopian pronouncements coming from U.S. politicians and neoconservative opinion writers—and that, as I said in my recent article at Front Page magazine, the Iraqis themselves must want it enough to fight for it. “Iraq faces a choice,” Bremer said in a stern address on Iraqi television. “If you do not defend your beloved country, it will not be saved…. These anti-democratic forces will not disappear by themselves. We in the coalition will do our part to restore security. But you must do your part too.”
All along, our policy has been based on the assumption that the construction of Iraqi democracy would be a more or less automatic process, requiring nothing more than a little facilitation on our part, since, as the neoconservatives constantly tell us, all human beings want the same things, and, since Americans want democracy, so do the Iraqis. This was getting reality backwards. In reality, the burden of proof was on those who believed that the people of a deeply divided, tribal, Moslem country had the collective will and capability to live under something other than a despotism, rather than on those who doubted that prospect. With Bremer’s comments, the burden of proof has finally been shifted to where it should have been all along. Comments
I am glad that Mr. Bremer has recognized the probability the the Iraquis seem fairly ungrateful for what we have done for them. Imagine how grateful the American people and Founding Fathers would have been if, rather than fight a long bloody Revolutionary War, some other country would have been able to quickly defeat the British and then handed to us, on a silver platter, our freedom and independence from Britton. In effect, that is what we are trying to do for the people in Iraq. Initially, at least some were happy for what we have done for them, but the appreciation even then was a bit underwhelming. I’m sure many Iraquis still want us to succede, but when 10% of the newly trained Iraqui Army suddenly SWITCH SIDES when they came under attack recently and another 40% ran away from the fight…..this bodes very poorly for our effort in Iraq and reveals a huge ambivalence on the part of many Iraquis towards any real appreciation for our efforts to help them help themselves. One interesting threat to Iraq: make the northern part where the Kurds are a new Kurdist State, then let the southern part alone to degenerate into civil was between the Sunnis and Shiites…I’m sure the Kurds will appreciate their new freedom and will welcome a friendly US Army base to be established there to help them keep their new found independence!! Mr. onofrio uses a bad analogy, I think: “Imagine how grateful the American people and Founding Fathers would have been if, rather than fight a long bloody Revolutionary War, some other country would have been able to quickly defeat the British and then handed to us, on a silver platter, our freedom and independence from Britton. In effect, that is what we are trying to do for the people in Iraq.” No, it isn’t. Part fo the reason why the Kurds have been so friendly, I think, is that for the most part we haven’t tried to control them as they form their civil institutions. Posted by: Michael Jose on April 25, 2004 11:19 PMWell… the reason we have left the Kurds alone is because they have developed civil institutions themselves (aided by ten years where we propped up their quasi-independence by bombing). The important difference between the Americans in Mr. Jose’s analogy and the Iraqis now is that we Americans had the cultural and intellectual resources to draw upon for our own constitutionalism. Posted by: Agricola on April 26, 2004 7:58 AMMr Auster, Congratulations on your sense of realism. Perhaps one effective method of familiarising oneself with the reality of the Arab-Muslim word is by consulting bloggers who actually reside on the spot in the countries in question Read ‘Healing Iraq’ (at http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/) to learn about what life is really like in Iraq. Read ‘The Religious Policeman’ (at http://muttawa.blogspot.com/) to learn about what it means to be a Saudi. Incidentally, TRP got a great write-up in yesterday’s ‘Sunday Times’, which I reproduce here (hope this isn’t too long for you guys): The blogger describes himself as a US-educated member of a senior Saudi tribe unrelated to the house of Saud and “not trusted by the royals”. Calling himself Alhamedi, he casts a sceptical eye on claims of antiterrorist success by Nayef’s interior ministry. In response to one claim that eight terrorist suspects had been arrested, Alhamedi wrote last week: “Call me a cynic, or has this come from the Ministry of Truth’s ‘Good news, not necessarily 100% correct, maybe even fabricated, but it’s good for morale’ department?” On another occasion he noted that terrorists who were initially said to have been “surrounded” were subsequently reported to have “slipped away”. He added: “There are some scurrilous suggestions that the security forces don’t want to catch the terrorists. American sources insist that last year’s Riyadh attacks persuaded the royal family it could not be soft on Al-Qaeda. Yet Alhamedi repeatedly cites official accounts of gun battles with police where “the ending is always the same – the terrorists escape”. He adds: “Many of us believe that we are witnessing a ‘fault line’ between the relatively moderate policies of Crown Prince Abdullah and the darker motives of other members of the royals, and parts of security forces themselves, who would like to see the terrorists succeed. And it’s very scary.” […] Hope all that isn’t too beside the point. Posted by: Mr Cathal Copeland on April 26, 2004 8:16 AMAgricola is correct that we haven’t interfered with the Kurds as much aftr the invasion because they have developed civic institutions. “What happened in Iraq would be more equivalent to this: Agreed, that is a better analogy. It points out the hopelessness of imposing freedom and democracy on medieval barbarians. The resentment towards the outsiders in 1773 would have been based largely on the knowledge that we were quite capable of handling the writing of our own constitution, etc. The resentment in Iraq is based on the knowledge that they are in fact totally incompetent to do so, which is provocative in a medieval honor/shame society. The Proposition Nation idea that we can set up anything like our form of government there is absurd. Posted by: Clark Coleman on April 28, 2004 8:52 AMContinuing the analogy with 1773, do you think that Americans would have reacted to French interference by destroying the country in the hopes that the country would turn into a disaster and the French would then grow tired of the place and leave? In other words, the 1773 equivalent of blowing up oil pipelines in Iraq? I wonder if the anti-war spin machine has had any insightful commentary on this aspect of the situation in Iraq. It does not fit the simplistic picture of Iraqis just wanting to run their own country and wanting us out, does it? Posted by: Clark Coleman on April 28, 2004 8:56 AMAs a member of the anti-war spin machine, I’ll offer this. The Iraqi resistance believes that control of Iraqi oil was one of the American war objectives. Whether we believe that or not is beside the point. The point is that they believe it and because they believe it they’re trying to deny that objective to the enemy. Pipelines and pumping stations can be replaced after the war, but for now, a scorched earth campaign against a long, undefended pipeline provides cheap propaganda victories and prevents the occupation from paying for itself. Note though that it hasn’t been all that successful. Oil production is now at 75-80% of pre-war levels, up from 25% last summer when there were daily attacks on the pipelines.
I am continually surprised by some of the strange terms of abuse attached by some at VFR to the Iraqis. The Iraqis are not immature, nor are they savages — far from being primitive, they are an incredibly decadent civilized people. As for medieval, they and the rest of the Middle East should be so lucky! The medieval west saw the birth of constitutionalism, parliaments and the origins of science. It was the most advanced and “progressive” society that existed up to that time. The decadent, stagnant, Oriental despotisms of the Middle East do not deserve such a favorable comparison. Posted by: Alan Levine on April 28, 2004 5:58 PM |