Just wanted to pile on the the Iraq discussion here. Long post, please excuse.
One thing that worries me in a general sense is that everyone--across the spectrum--tends to talk past the other side. It's way too much like the late 60's...a screaming match versus a true debate. And I was there as a budding journalist. I was in the middle of that, I hoped we'd never be there again, but lo and behold, we are. So my perspective here is simply to try to add a nuanced view....since things hardly EVER fall into black-and-white. It may piss everyone off, who knows.
First, my bias is liberal. The current Iraq policy and world political view from the White House is completely antithetical to my view. THAT BEING SAID...THAT BEING SAID (CAPS DELIBERATE, PLEASE HOLD THE FLAME MAIL)...is that I HOPE the president's policy succeeds. I really, really do, for three primary reasons:
1. It's the policy we have. Bush and his neocon advisors are not going to change it. So it's the policy we are going with.
2. At a philosophical level, I think the idea of introducing participatory government and some form of open elections and democracy into the Arab world is a good thing. These are in the main theocracies and dictatorships that are antithetical to the broader Western tradition of secular, representative government, so democracy as a concept is good. I worry about implemenation and the Law of Unintended Consequences, but the core idea is a good one.
3. The death of Arafat gives a little opening for movement towards reducing conflict around Palestine and Israel. This is THE EASY point that the Islamic radicals and terrorists pick on...it's issue #1. Arafat was an obstacle to peace..a thug and totally corrupt. Abbas is no huge friend of the West but I believe he is less dogmatic and willing to deal. Anything we can do to get the peace process moving there NOW is good. That window will close, beleive me. Abbas will only have so much control over Hezbollah, and Sharon will only hold back so long.
NOW....here's why I am scared sh..less that this policy will fail and leave us all in deep weeds:
1. Americans are never bound by history but we sure don't READ it. Britain colonized Iraq in 1925...it took less than two years for civil war and insurgency to break out. It happened to us in less than 6 months. These things don't happen out of the blue. There's a pattern here..Iraq, like many colonies, was a hodge-podge of ethnic and religious groups. Imagine that somebody came to the U.S. and said, "okay, we're partitioning the Western U.S. into a new nation--one-third Canada, one-third U.S., one-third Mexico." How would we react to it? That's pretty much what you have in Iraq with Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
2. The U.S. ALWAYS makes the foreign policy mistake of assuming that "the friend of my enemy is my friend." We did this around Communism--we'd put up with any tin-horn dictator, as long as they agreed to coorpate with the U.S. in fighting Communists. Batista, Somoza, Noriega, the Shah of Iran. In the name of fighting Communism we were aligned with some pretty bad dudes who did NOT win the hearts and minds of their countrymen. Were the Iraqis happy to see Saddam go away? You bet. Do they want the U.S. out of their country right now? You bet. And I even heard a report from Seymour Hersch (who conservatives hate but who has yet to be proven factually wrong in what he's written, from the Killing Fields of Cambodia up to today) that the administration is thinking about bringing back the son of the Shah for Iran, if we topple the current theocracy. Didn't they learn the first time? The Shah was HATED by all but a few who benefitted from his rule. So we've done this again in Iraq with Chalabi and others...we just keep backing people because they are conversative, they oppose the radicals and terrorists, and we assume that our support of them gives them political cover and legitmacy in their own countries. Ain't happening.
3. There's a fundamental process at work here that both the U.S. and the Al-Qaeda world are guilty of--demonization. It's the easy way to explain your enemy--they are infidels, the devil, evil, etc. And it works, in terms of whipping up a frenzy against the enemy. But that's just a technique. PEOPLE LEARN BEHAVIORS AND ADOPT OPINIONS OVER TIME.....they are not born inherently evil. Is Salman Rushdie evil? Is Abbu Abbas evil? No, because they are "good" Muslims. Well, the current nexus of radical Islam and terrorist activity did not spring up out of thin air. I do not have the citation in front of me (but I can get it if someone really doesn't believe me here) but I saw some startling numbers from author Laurie Garrett (Newsday) about world wealth distribution. The concentration of wealth in the developed world, primarily found in the U.S., is so staggeringly canted toward about 3% of the ENTIRE world's population, that it's no wonder that so many people in the world envy, resent and hate us. This concentration of wealth is unprecedented in any recorded history. I am NO COMMUNIST. I do not advocate a total world wealth redistribution. But just think from the perspective of MOST of the people of the world, a great number of whom are Muslim. We worry about terrorist attacks--most people worry about just getting food to eat and fighting off disease, or survivingn ethnic/religious conflicts to live another day.
All of this is a nasty, wicked witch's brew. It requires a willingness to reign in Israel a bit (a political Third rail in American politics); play sincerely to the Palestinians on the non-terror issues like jobs, health, and housing; balance off the deep global religious divide between Sunnis and Shiites; keep the Kurds happy but to independent, because Turkey may take precipitous action since they have a deep resentement of the Kurds; etc. etc. etc.
I just think that the Bushies do not have any sense of how to plan for these nuances and deal with them. Back to Unintended Consequences...if we truly believe in democracy, and the Arab states vote in theocracies which provide encouragement and support to Al-Qaeda, what do we do? Is that not the will of the people of a sovereign state? That's what we have in Iran. Remember, they have had elections that have been validated as fair, and the moderates have lost power to the rigid Muslim theocrats. This is how convoluted and nasty it can get. And if Seymour Hersh is to be believed, and again he is a THOROUGH reporter,whatever you think of his politics, the covert teams are already working in Iran....adding that to the mix is just really asking for it.
And I am scared to death that the Bush administration is completey unequipped intellectually and philosophically to deal with this successfully. Thus handing our soldiers, ourselves, and our heirs a flaming sack of you-know-what.
OK, Rant over. Fire away.
