Stuart on this thread kindly answered some specific questions I had asked in this response post. I'll quote it here in its entirety:
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do you think that there is a clear and specific mission plan in place
The goals are pretty clear, and specific to a degree: A free Iraqi democracy will act as an example and an alternative to the current array of authoritarian and oppressive governments in the middle east which, for a variety of reasons, have given rise to international militant Islamist terrorism.
The mission plan changes and adapts to the situation on the ground, but the general outline consists of doing things to promote and enable the formation of a democratic Iraqi government - things like rebuilding infrastructure, organizing government ministries and programs, providing security while training Iraqi defense and police forces to provide it in the future, etc.
Yes, the security situation is a huge problem. It is probably our greatest obstacle. But I think most of the Iraqis who are mad at us are mad because they aren't safe, not because they think we're infidels or imperialists or we want to steal their oil. If things were calm, Iraqis would be more patient and receptive. That sounds obvious, because it is obvious. It's obvious to the various factions who don't want to see us succeed, too. I don't think many of the people fighting the coalition are doing so out of concern for the welfare of Iraqis. They don't want an arab democracy in the middle east. The easiest way for them to attack our progress is through terrorizing the security situation, so that's what they're doing. They're not preaching the merits of a theocracy, or arguing the particulars of the interim constitution, or denouncing the coalition for it's abuses and mistakes and demanding orderly justice be served. They're blowing shit up. They're blowing up coalition soldiers, and Iraqis who cooperate with us. They're threatening administrators of schools and telling them not to accept reconstruction assistance from us. They're terrorizing businesses that don't put posters of al Sadr in their windows. I'm not saying all this because I need to convince anybody that these are bad guys. You all know that. My point is that what we're seeing is the best and only tactic they have against us. If they just stood back and waited for the populace to revolt, it would never happen. If they antagonize the system from every possible angle, and make as many people in Iraq as miserable and angry as possible, and hope people elsewhere see that misery and anger and lose confidence in the mission, only then do they have a hope of defeating us.
do you think that that current mission is succeeding
Like I said, the lack of security is a big obstacle. It's our job to overcome it, and I think we can. We're making lots of progress all over Iraq in ways that don't get reported on or stressed much. On one hand I hate that because people don't necessarily see the big picture and think everything is going to shit. On the other hand, if those Women's Centers were all over the papers and the tv news, they'd probably get blown up within a week.
I think we're also making progress against the insurgents themselves. It's urgent and key to find them and take them out faster than they can sway new recruits. I think we are. I don't think they have a large enough perpetual supply of manpower because, like I said, their goals aren't in sync with the general welfare of Iraqis. Al Sadr's hired gang was made up of impoverished street kids for a reason. The insurgents are still dangerous, though, and they're receiving assistance and supplies from who knows where, but they're not winning.
Short term measures of long term progress aren't easy to make. It's a matter of perspective, I guess. I think we're winning, but I understand how someone could disagree. They're equally valid conclusions, based on different assumptions. Anyway, it's the long term that matters. We can't win in a matter of months. We could only lose that fast if we just gave up. Whatever mistakes we make, however fallible we are in living up to our own standards, I think we're better than the guys we're fighting - better for us and for the Iraqis, despite our flaws. If we're better, and our intentions and our capabilities are better, and we apply constant pressure to improve our flaws, then all it takes is the right strategy and constant will. I think we have a strategy that'll work. We have to keep an eye on it, and adapt it and adjust it, and if it doesn't work we'll replace it. It doesn't matter how good the strategy is if the will to implement it is missing, though. We've got to keep watch over both.
Meanwhile, head Stratfor analyst George Friedman has offered up his own thoughts on the question of strategy and mission recently. As there is no direct link available for nonsubscribers, I will quote extensively but not completely from this post, made on May 17, here:
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We normally try to figure out what is going to happen, what other people are going to do -- whether they know it or not -- and explain the actions of others. At times, people confuse Stratfor's analysis for our political position. This time -- this once -- we will write for ourselves -- or more precisely, for myself, since at Stratfor our views on the war range even wider than those among the general public.
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The essential point is that the invasion of Iraq was not and never should have been thought of as an end in itself. Iraq's only importance was its geographic location: It is the most strategically located country between the Mediterranean and the Hindu Kush. The United States needed it as a base of operations and a lever against the Saudis and others, but it had no interest -- or should have had no interest -- in the internal governance of Iraq.
This is the critical point on which the mission became complex, and the worst conceivable thing in a military operation took place: mission creep. Rather than focus on the follow-on operations that had to be undertaken against al Qaeda, the Bush administration created a new goal: the occupation and administration of Iraq by the United States, with most of the burden falling on the U.S. military. More important, the United States also dismantled the Iraqi government bureaucracy and military under the principle that de-Baathification had to be accomplished. Over time, this evolved to a new mission: the creation of democracy in Iraq.
Under the best of circumstances, this was not something the United States had the resources to achieve. Iraq is a complex and multi-layered society with many competing interests. The idea that the United States would be able to effectively preside over this society, shepherding it to democracy, was difficult to conceive even in the best of circumstances. Under the circumstances that began to emerge only days after the fall of Baghdad, it was an unachievable goal and an impossible mission. The creation of a viable democracy in the midst of a civil war, even if Iraqi society were amenable to copying American institutions, was an impossibility. The one thing that should have been learned in Vietnam was that the evolution of political institutions in the midst of a sustained guerrilla war is impossible.
The administration pursued this goal for a single reason: From the beginning, it consistently underestimated the Iraqis' capability to resist the United States. It underestimated the tenacity, courage and cleverness of the Sunni guerrillas. It underestimated the political sophistication of the Shiite leadership. It underestimated the forms of military and political resistance that would limit what the United States could achieve. In my view, the underestimation of the enemy in Iraq is the greatest failure of this administration, and the one for which the media rarely hold it accountable.
The United States must begin by recognizing that it cannot possibly pacify Iraq with the force available or, for that matter, with a larger military force. It can continue to patrol, it can continue to question people, it can continue to take casualties. However, it can never permanently defeat the guerrilla forces in the Sunni triangle using this strategy. It certainly cannot displace the power and authority of the Shiite leadership in the south. Urban warfare and counterinsurgency in the Iraqi environment cannot be successful.
This means the goal of reshaping Iraqi society is beyond the reach of the United States. Iraq is what it is. The United States, having performed the service of removing Saddam Hussein from power, cannot reshape a society that has millennia of layers. The attempt to do so will generate resistance -- while that resistance can be endured, it cannot be suppressed.
The United States now cannot withdraw from Iraq. We can wonder about the wisdom of the invasion, but a withdrawal under pressure would be used by al Qaeda and radical Islamists as demonstration of their core point: that the United States is inherently weak and, like the Soviet Union, ripe for defeat. Having gone in, withdrawal in the near term is not an option.
That does not mean U.S. forces must be positioned in and near urban areas. There is a major repositioning under way to reduce the size of the U.S. presence in the cities, but there is, nevertheless, a more fundamental shift to be made. The United States undertook responsibility for security in Iraq after its invasion. It cannot carry out this mission. Therefore, it has to abandon the mission. Some might argue this would leave a vacuum. We would argue there already is a vacuum, filled only with American and coalition targets. It is not a question of creating anarchy; anarchy already exists. It is a question of whether the United States wishes to lose soldiers in an anarchic situation.
The bulk of Iraq's population lives in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. To the south and west of the Euphrates River, there is a vast and relatively uninhabited region of Iraq -- not very hospitable, but with less shooting than on the other side. The western half of Iraq borders Saudi Arabia and Syria, two of the countries about which the United States harbors the most concern. A withdrawal from the river basins would allow the United States to carry out its primary mission -- maintaining regional pressure -- without engaging in an impossible war. Moreover, in the Kurdish regions of the northeast, where U.S. Special Forces have operated for a very long time, U.S. forces could be based -- and supplied -- in order to maintain a presence on the Iranian border.
Iraq should then be encouraged to develop a Shiite-dominated government, the best guarantor against al Qaeda and the greatest incentive for the Iranians not to destabilize the situation. The fate of the Sunnis will rest in the deal they can negotiate with the Shia and Kurds -- and, as they say, that is their problem.
Certainly, as a psychological matter, there is a retreat. The United States would be cutting losses. But it has no choice. It will not be able to defeat the insurgencies it faces without heavy casualties and creating chaos in Iraqi society. Moreover, a victory in this war would not provide the United States with anything that is in its national interest. Unless you are an ideologue -- which I am not -- who believes bringing American-style democracy to the world is a holy mission, it follows that the nature of the Iraqi government -- or chaos -- does not affect me.
What does affect me is al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is trying to kill me. Countries such as Saudi Arabia permitted al Qaeda to flourish. The presence of a couple of U.S. armored divisions along the kingdom's northern border has been a very sobering thought. That pressure cannot be removed. Whatever chaos there is in Saudi Arabia, that is the key to breaking al Qaeda -- not Baghdad.
The key to al Qaeda is in Riyadh and in Islamabad. The invasion of Iraq was a stepping-stone toward policy change in Riyadh, and it worked. The pressure must be maintained and now extended to Islamabad. However, the war was never about Baghdad, and certainly never about Al Fallujah and An Najaf. Muqtada al-Sadr's relationship to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the makeup of the elders in Al Fallujah are matters of utter and absolute indifference to the United States. Getting drawn into those fights is in fact the quagmire -- a word we use carefully and deliberately.
But in the desert west and south of the Euphrates, the United States can carry out the real mission for which it came. And if the arc of responsibility extends along the Turkish frontier to Kurdistan, that is a manageable mission creep. The United States should not get out of Iraq. It must get out of Baghdad, Al Fallujah, An Najaf and the other sinkholes into which the administration's policies have thrown U.S. soldiers.
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In broad outline, these seem to sum up to me what the US's current situation -- and current, immediate options -- are, ie staying the course or a radical recommitment within Iraq. I am not saying that either option is the most morally correct -- or that either of them are -- or that they are the only choices available, but both strike me as the most likely things that could happen at the present time.
I am interested in your thoughts.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 21:56 (twenty-two years ago)
― lucinda williams, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 22:13 (twenty-two years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 22:53 (twenty-two years ago)
I disagree. And "defeat" is a misleading term--the mujahideen in Afghanistan "defeated" the Soviet Union, but hardly threatened its existence. Nor does al Qaeda threaten ours (I live in the US) in fact--but it has already had an incredible effect on our country, our budget, our freedoms in that it has provided an excuse for facism. (Okay, that's extreme but I can't find a synonym right now.)
I live in DC. I don't know anyone who was killed in the WTC or the Pentagon. Less than 5000 people were killed, yes? And that is VERY BAD. And things should be done about it and to prevent it from happening again. But the things that have been done do not solve the problem. W talked about "swatting flies" but all he has done is create more. Howard Dean was castigated for saying that Americans are no safer now than before Saddam Hussein was captured BUT IT IS TRUE. The rest of the world was castigated for voting the U.S. the "biggest threat to world peace" when A STRATEGY OF PRE-EMPTIVE WAR IS OBVIOUSLY NOT PEACEFUL.
Withdrawing from Iraq might mean a civil war there. Likely, but hard to say. The Turks wouldn't be happy with an independent Kurdistan, but one would think that the West has pressure to apply to them. But: if we withdraw from Iraq, if we adopt an evenhanded position on Israel/Palestine, if we DON'T ACT LIKE A FUCKING BULLY, then why would terrorists bother with us?
The strategy in Iraq should be to hand things over to Iraqis--any Iraqis--now. Help them out, offer money, whatever. No one likes to be occupied, and we clearly don't have the will to do it right. If the USA had any street cred at all, it has surely been wasted by the Abu Ghraib fiasco. As Ray from Achewood might say, have some self-respect.
ps sorry i'm kinda drunk and upset and all cliches aside want to move to canada
― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 23:42 (twenty-two years ago)
― don carville weiner, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 23:43 (twenty-two years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 23:47 (twenty-two years ago)
― aimurchie, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 23:54 (twenty-two years ago)
I think I brought up the article that I linked to when it came out last year, but it hasn't been online yet. It's a pretty good read.
― dan carville weiner, Thursday, 20 May 2004 00:19 (twenty-two years ago)
Does anyone think it's possible to create a democracy? Or is it like attempting to change an individual - better left to happen organically? Is the difference between a liberal democracy and a despotism a matter of social structure or is a society shaped by the attitudes of the individuals who make it up? Is capitalism a necessary prerequisite for democracy?
Does the first view (long termism, I guess) believe that the coalition had a plan for after the fall of Iraq, and is that the plan currently being followed? Or has the plan been made up as we go along? If the latter, is this a criticism? Is it possible to have real plans in war? If the former, why has there been so much criticism of the coalition lack of preparedness for 'post-war' Iraq?
Do proponents of the latter view believe it is at all likely that the power vacuum left by the coalition withdrawing will be filled by a representative democracy? Does it matter - do we have a moral duty now to ensure what is best in Iraq? How does the actions of the political class create a duty on the behalf of the rest of the population to sacrifice their sons and resources?
Sorry, there are too many questions there to be answered, so just answer any you feel are important (maybe none at all). I'm playing devil's advocate with some of these questions, but for now I'll keep my opinions out of this...
― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 20 May 2004 01:30 (twenty-two years ago)
― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 20 May 2004 01:31 (twenty-two years ago)
"The western half of Iraq borders Saudi Arabia and Syria, two of the countries about which the United States harbors the most concern. A withdrawal from the river basins would allow the United States to carry out its primary mission -- maintaining regional pressure -- without engaging in an impossible war. " This is maybe the most important thing I have recently read about the occupation.
"Muqtada al-Sadr's relationship to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the makeup of the elders in Al Fallujah are matters of utter and absolute indifference to the United States."
Al-Sadr had no respect in the mainstream UNTIL Fallujah. al-Sistani has always been a bit press shy (in comparison). I don't see any relationship... and al-Sadr's troops are major factors in the extremist/moderate question. The Sunni-Shia collaboration is a result of the occupations mistakes. The split is historic, and under the Ba'ath party the Shiites were oppressed. But now they are together in their rebellion against the occupation. al-Sadr is the key. al-Sistani is a cleric - he tends to be politically neutral, al-Sadr is entirely political.
I started this reponse two hours ago and got some phone calls and forgot what I was saying.But I remember your post in fact, just read it again, and I remain impressed.
― aimurchie, Thursday, 20 May 2004 02:15 (twenty-two years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 20 May 2004 02:16 (twenty-two years ago)
― aimurchie, Thursday, 20 May 2004 02:25 (twenty-two years ago)
― aimurchie, Thursday, 20 May 2004 02:32 (twenty-two years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 20 May 2004 03:06 (twenty-two years ago)
well democracies don't just spring up out of vaccuums. And obv. post-WWII Japan and Germany come to mind of imposed-from-without ones.
― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 20 May 2004 03:08 (twenty-two years ago)
― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 20 May 2004 03:44 (twenty-two years ago)
But since the neocons are -- or at least fancy themselves -- not just the same old Realpolitik Cold Warriors willing to cut deals with any thug or sycophant who promises to toe the line, but rather brave new idealists, they also wanted to accomplish all this by way of an actual free Middle Eastern state. Now, it would be their kind of free state, of course -- with a Steve Forbes flat tax, a thoroughly privatized and corporatized commodities market, and free trade agreements with the West -- but it would be a free state, not just another U.S.-supported murderocracy.
The problem is, creating a genuinely U.S.-friendly state that is also genuinely free proves to be extremely difficult -- much, much more difficult than any of the little Wolfowitzes imagined. This is, of course, because the ideologues running this particular show fundamentally misunderstood the terrain they were entering. Blind to the culture, ignorant (or at least ignoring) of the history, blithely assured that the rest of the world would see their mission as nobly as they themselves do (never mind that the rest of the world might not view the idea of a New American Century with quite the same enthusiasm as American policy wonks), they blundered onward until the onwardness became overwhelmed by the blundering. And so here we are.
This is all still up in the air. I don't think any of these guys really has a clue what they're doing at the moment. They have no idea who they're handing power over to, how much power to give them (enough to make the U.N. sign on, but not so much that the U.S. actually loses control), or what the hell will be happening in Iraq in 12 months. All -- all, every single one -- of their pre-invasion assertions and assumptions have fallen ka-thunkedly by the wayside. And yet they still cling to their imagining that somehow this is all going to work out -- somehow Iraq will sprout a free, liberated populace that will be happy to have their oil industry operated by Mobil or BP or whoever (not Yukos, I guess), their borders patrolled by regular flyovers of American planes taking off and landing from heavily fortified U.S. bases scattered around the country, their deregulated economy a model not only to the "Arab world," but (ta-dah) to the regulation-happy West as well. And that the whole world will gaze on our works, and be both awed and afraid. That was the plan, and, at some level, as long as this particular crew is around, it will remain so, however far afield from it events actually wander.
― spittle (spittle), Thursday, 20 May 2004 04:41 (twenty-two years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 20 May 2004 11:29 (twenty-two years ago)
OK - I was up until the wee hours, posting, and I just woke up and am posting. Wake up - post - coffee-post - check e-mail - post. I think I should go outside or something. Maybe I'll go shopping. that would be quite the patriotic act, eh?
― aimurchie, Thursday, 20 May 2004 12:10 (twenty-two years ago)
This is the main concern.
It's all well and good going on about high minded things like freedom and democracy but when things are markedly worse under the occupying forces than under a bloodthirsty, murderous genocidal maniac then something is very very wrong. Now it's all very well saying there hasn't been enough time, bgut it's been over a year and whether that's enough time or not for the average Iraqi a year of deteriorating, awful conditions is a long time especially when there seems no sign that things are getting better.
How the coaliton should procede is another matter. I think it would send completely the wrong message if bases were left in iraq when all is finished but that is clearly going to be far down the line. Priority should be given to keeping the remaining stable areas of Iraq stable and pushing very very hard at building civil society in these areas. It's going to be very hard with a war essentially being waged in neighboring provinces but this has to be a priority. Schools, hospitals, banks, shops, markets have to be able to operate. industry needs to be restarted.
In order to do this I think the coalition has to stop fighting. Make peace with those who will make peace and try and keep those who won't at arms length. If this means pulling back from Najaf and Fallujah and some areas of Baghdad then so be it. The copallition will just have to wait to be invited back in. The Red Crescent, NGOS and UN will probably go in first.
And that lies at the heart of it. Maybe the US should be channeling it's fund for both security and reconstriuction through a more impartially body such as the UN. It's quite clear that the US has lost the trust of the iraqi people and maybe someone else in charge would improve the situation.
I think the US should stop looking at Iraq in terms of Strategic gains and look toward the strategic gains to be made from cutting down on energy consumption; from forcing israel into a peace settlement that demonstrates respect for the palestinians; from showing a little humility.
― Ed (dali), Thursday, 20 May 2004 12:35 (twenty-two years ago)
don't you think that's a bit of an exaggeration? The occupation has been botched, that's very true, but still less Iraqis have died this past year than under a typical year of the Hussein regieme (not that I think that the Hussein era should be the yardstick...).
― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 20 May 2004 12:53 (twenty-two years ago)
Didn't I say I was going outside or something? Thanks for letting me rant away - I will defend all of the above, but I think I should take a break right now. it's 70 degrees and the birds are chirping. I'll go rant to them.
― aimurchie, Thursday, 20 May 2004 13:52 (twenty-two years ago)
no, it's the second largest in terms of estimated reserves, but you have to be able to actually produce oil to be considered a producer.
― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 20 May 2004 13:53 (twenty-two years ago)
One thing about this sort of debate - this should have happened before the war (among the political class, that is). Bush should have been able to answer questions about the war, which he refused to face. Had he said that we went to war to liberate Iraq, he should have been able to answer 'why Iraq? Why not any of the other countries under repressive regimes' etc. Of course, the fact that the reason for entering the war was a lie and the coalition are now scrambling around looking for reasons for having gone to war means that there are bound to be huge flaws in any explanation given. I dunno...this was kind of a dumb post...
― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 20 May 2004 14:36 (twenty-two years ago)
― aimurchie, Thursday, 20 May 2004 14:42 (twenty-two years ago)
― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 20 May 2004 14:44 (twenty-two years ago)
― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 20 May 2004 14:45 (twenty-two years ago)
― aimurchie, Thursday, 20 May 2004 15:00 (twenty-two years ago)
Paying for the war and occupation - my tax dollars - is pretty sick. Especially when it is more lucrative to be an American truck driver in Iraq than an Iraqi truck driver - or engineer - or architect.
― aimurchie, Thursday, 20 May 2004 18:18 (twenty-two years ago)
― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 20 May 2004 18:22 (twenty-two years ago)
Is there any reputable source of what the Iraqi death toll is in the year since "mission accomplished"? Is it even possible to get one? I'm as suspicious of the "hundreds of thousands" claimed by the anti-invasion activists as I am of the US government's "official" numbers.
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Thursday, 20 May 2004 18:52 (twenty-two years ago)
When strategy goes wrong (yeah I've been posting this all over the various threads but it bears saying -- the National Review inadvertantly sums it all up back in 2002):
It is a mark of Chalabi's character that he has gained such a large band of volunteer advisers and supporters not only among Iraqis but also in England and the US. And despite being as fractious a group as any set of exile political figures, and quite diverse, the Iraqis who have joined the INC have continued to keep Chalabi as their clear leader despite the year-long effort of the State Department to find an alternative under the cover of "broadening and unifying the opposition."
Chalabi's admirers today also include leading academic experts on the Middle East who have known him well for many years, such as Fouad Ajami, a Lebanese Arab who is the author of the much-admired book The Dream Palace of the Arabs, and Bernard Lewis, probably the premier scholar of Islam in the world. A number of U.S. senators have also come to know him, including Joseph Lieberman and Trent Lott.
Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz all know from their personal contact with Chalabi — and their own checks of his background — that the State/CIA view of him as a small-time exile opportunist of shady character is wrong. They believe, on the contrary, that Chalabi is a man who has the character, vision, and strength needed to become an outstanding leader who can help move the Arab world away from the path of anti-American and backward-looking tyranny and toward a path of struggle toward modernity and democracy. If their assessment of him is sound, Chalabi could be the key figure in the success of President George W. Bush's new policy against terrorism, tyranny and threats of biological and nuclear war.
Differences of emphasis and nuance in the judgment about key facts and personalities are natural, but the gap in understanding between State and CIA on one side and Chalabi's admirers on the other is impossibly wide.
One side or the other must have the facts wrong. And the question of which group is correct about Chalabi is crucial for U.S. policy. Bush should do whatever he needs to do to decide who is right and to make a policy decision about whether the U.S. is going to support Chalabi. We cannot afford to take the chance of sacrificing such a decisively valuable potential partner out of reluctance to come to grips with an uncertainty, especially one that seems to be the product of bureaucratic enmities and Saudi fears of what would happen if a great Arab democrat came to power nearby.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 20 May 2004 19:15 (twenty-two years ago)
― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 20 May 2004 19:21 (twenty-two years ago)
President Bush's approach to Iraq and to the Middle East in general has been greatly influenced by a group of foreign-policy thinkers whose defining experience was as hawkish advisors to President Reagan and the first President Bush, and who in the last few years have made an explicit comparison between Middle Eastern regimes and the Soviet Union. These neoconservatives looked at the nest of problems caused by Middle East tyranny and argued that a morally unequivocal stance and tough military action could topple those regimes and transform the region as surely as they believed that Reagan's aggressive rhetoric and military posture brought down the Soviet Union. In a March 2002 interview on CNN, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, one of the main architects of the Iraq war, argued that the moral judgment that President Bush made "very clear, crystal clear in his State of the Union message" in which he laid out the Axis of Evil is "exactly the same kind of clarity, I think, that Ronald Reagan introduced in understanding the Soviet Union." In a speech last year, Defense Department advisor Richard Perle made the comparison even more explicit: "I have no doubt that [Bush] has the vision that Ronald Reagan had, and can envision, can contemplate change on a very large scale in Iraq and elsewhere across the region."
This dream of engineering events in the Middle East to follow those of the Soviet Union has led to an almost unprecedented geostrategic blunder. One crucial reason things went wrong, I believe, is that the neoconservatives misunderstood how and why the Soviet Union fell and what the West did to contribute to that fall. They radically overestimated the role of military assertiveness while underestimating the value of other, subtler measures. They then applied those theories to the Middle East, a region with very different political and cultural conditions. The truth is this: It took four decades of patient engagement to bring down the Iron Curtain, and 10 years of deft diplomacy to turn chaotic, post-Soviet states into stable, pro-Western democracies. To achieve the same in the Middle East will require similar engagement, patience, and luck.
"Moral clarity," President Bush said in his 2002 commencement address to the U.S. Military Academy, "was essential to our victory in the cold war. When leaders like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan refused to gloss over the brutality of tyrants, they gave hope to prisoners and dissidents and exiles and rallied free nations to a great cause ... We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name. By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem, we reveal a problem." Never mind that the regime the administration was most intent on confronting was the one in the region that had perhaps the least to do with the events of September 11 or the immediate terrorist threat.
And the neoconservative goal was more ambitious than merely toppling dictators: By creating a democracy in Iraq, our success would, in the president's words, "send forth the news from Damascus to Tehran--that freedom can be the future of every nation," and Iraq's democracy would serve as a beacon that would ignite liberation movements and a "forward strategy of freedom" around the Middle East.
This rhetoric is undeniably inspiring. We should have pride in our history, confidence in our principles, and take security in the knowledge that we are at the epicenter of a 228-year revolution in the transformation of political systems. But recognizing the power of our values also means understanding their meaning. Freedom and dignity spring from within the human heart. They are not imposed. And inside the human heart is where the impetus for political change must be generated.
The neoconservative rhetoric glosses over this truth and much else. Even aside from the administration's obvious preference for confronting terrorism's alleged host states rather than the terrorists themselves, it was a huge leap to believe that establishing democracies by force of Western arms in old Soviet surrogate states like Syria and Iraq would really affect a terrorist movement drawing support from anti-Western sentiment in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and elsewhere.
Perhaps most fundamentally, the conditions of the Middle East today are vastly different from those behind the Iron Curtain in 1989. And the fact is that the Soviet Union did not fall the way the neoconservatives say it did.
What the West supplied to the people of the East was, as former Solidarity leader and Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek told me, very simple: hope. They knew there was a countervailing force to the occupying Soviet power which had repressed them and subjugated their political systems. Democracy could reemerge in Central and Eastern Europe because of a several decades-long dance between popular resistance and cautious Western leaders who moved ever so carefully to provide support and encouragement without provoking the use of repressive force by the Communist governments in reaction or generating actual armed conflict between East and West.
So, when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire," or stood before crowds in Berlin and proclaimed "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," he was reaching a receptive audience on the other side of the wall. The neoconservatives persist in seeing a vast difference between Reagan's policy of confronting the Soviets and previous American administrations' tack of containing it. In fact, it was precisely those decades of containment and cultural engagement that made Reagan's challenge effective.
Bush, of course, has accompanied his invasion of Iraq with similarly bold and eloquent rhetoric about the prospect of peace and democracy throughout the Arab world. But it is hard to exaggerate how differently his words and deeds have been received in the Middle East, compared to Reagan's behind the Iron Curtain. While heartening some advocates of democracy, Bush's approach has provoked perhaps the fiercest and most alarming anti-American backlash in history. To take but one example, a March poll conducted by the Pew Center found that the percentage of people in Muslim countries who think suicide bombings are justified has grown by roughly 40 percent since the American occupation of Iraq. Even the most Western-friendly, pro-democratic media outlets in countries such as Jordan and Lebanon now openly question whether the Americans are anti-Islamic crusaders bent on assisting the Israeli occupiers of Palestine. This is a long way from Prague, circa 1989.
Seeking to intervene and essentially impose a democracy on a country without real democratic traditions or the foundations of a pluralist society is not only risky, it is also inherently self-contradictory. All experience suggests that democracy doesn't grow like this. But we are where we are, and we must pull together to try to help this project succeed.
First, and most obviously, we need to avoid an impending disaster in Iraq. The current situation there is not only alarming in itself, but may also be creating a negative rather than positive dynamic for democracy in the Middle East. In the short term, we must significantly increase U.S. troop strength to restore and maintain stability. In the medium term, our European allies must share the burden--which will only happen if we share decision-making with them. And in the long term, we must draw down U.S. troops. A massive American military presence in the heart of the Middle East, after all, can only increase support for terrorism and undercut the position of indigenous pro-Western reformers.
We must also recommit ourselves to a real peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. We should measure success on the progress we make, not merely on final resolution. We must also recognize that here, the neoconservatives had it backwards: The "road to Jerusalem" didn't run through Baghdad at all; rather, until real progress is made towards resolving the Israeli-Palestinian issue in a way that respects both sides, all American efforts to work within the region will be compromised.
We need to take the American face off this effort and work indirectly. But there are some American faces that can be enormously useful. Among our greatest assets during the Cold War were immigrants and refugees from the captive nations of the Soviet Union. Tapping their patriotism toward America and love of their homelands, we tasked them with communicating on our behalf with their repressed countrymen in ways both overt and covert, nursing hopes for freedom and helping to organize resistance. America's growing community of patriotic Muslim immigrants can play a similar role. They can help us establish broader, deeper relationships with Muslim countries through student and cultural exchange programs and organizational business development.
We can't know precisely how the desire for freedom among the peoples of the Middle East will grow and evolve into movements that result in stable democratic governments. Different countries may take different paths. Progress may come from a beneficent king, from enlightened mullahs, from a secular military, from a women's movement, from workers returning from years spent as immigrants in Western Europe, from privileged sons of oil barons raised on MTV, or from an increasingly educated urban intelligentsia, such as the nascent one in Iran. But if the events of the last year tell us anything, it is that democracy in the Middle East is unlikely to come at the point of our gun. And Ronald Reagan would have known better than to try.---
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 20 May 2004 22:18 (twenty-two years ago)
― metfigga (metfigga), Thursday, 20 May 2004 22:18 (twenty-two years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 20 May 2004 22:19 (twenty-two years ago)
― metfigga (metfigga), Thursday, 20 May 2004 22:29 (twenty-two years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 20 May 2004 22:30 (twenty-two years ago)
"In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption," he writes. Zinni explains to Kroft, "I think there was dereliction in insufficient forces being put on the ground and [in not] fully understanding the military dimensions of the plan."
He still believes the situation is salvageable if the U.S. can communicate more effectively with the Iraqi people and demonstrate a better image to them. The enlistment of the U.N. and other countries to participate in the mission is also crucial, he says. Without these things, says Zinni, "We are going to be looking for quick exits. I don't believe we're there now, and I wouldn't want to see us fail here," he tells Kroft. Also central to success in Iraq is more troops, from the U.S. and especially other countries, to control violence and patrol borders, he says.
Zinni feels that undertaking the war with the minimum of troops paved the way for the security problems the U.S. faces there now - the violence Rumsfeld recently admitted he hadn't anticipated. "He should not have been surprised," says Zinni. "There were a number of people who before we even engaged in this conflict that felt strongly that we underestimated...the scope of the problems we would have in [Iraq]," he tells Kroft.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 21 May 2004 15:37 (twenty-two years ago)