I’ve been working on a reasoned response to John Quiggin’s arguments on al-Sadr, but I’ve been distracted by the latest bit of spooge from Yglesias. Quiggin most recently makes the claim that
…the bloody campaign to destroy Sadr was both morally indefensible (as well as being politically stupid). I restate the point I made when the fighting was at its peak.
Almost certainly, the current fighting will end in the same sort of messy compromise that prevailed before the first campaign started. Nothing will have been gained by either side. But 2000 or so people will still be dead. Sadr bears his share of the guilt for this crime. The US government is even more guilty.
As I’ve noted, I think he’s wrong both in his political and moral analysis but I certainly owe some kind of an argument to support that claim.It’s in the works.
Then I read Matt Yglesias weighing in on the same subject.
To put this another way: Who wants to die for Iyad Allawi? Certainly I don’t. If people do, they should consider forming a new Abraham Lincoln Brigade and shipping out.
Now personally, I don’t argue that those who care more than Matt or I do about, say – genocide in Darfur, or the Hutu/Tutsi conflict – ought to saddle up and head out to personally do something about it. I accept that they’re a legitimate part of our polity, and that these are issues we need to decide on together, and costs that we will bear together. Matt thinks that the only way one gets to play is to be willing to go fight.
Does this mean we can simply turn this election over to the troops? I’m willing to if he is…
But I’m getting effing tired of giving any moral authority at all to people who think that’s a clever argument.
[Update: I edited out a sentance I wrote out of bad temper; Yglesias doesn’t deserve to be called names, and I’m embarassed to have been the kind of person who did. Sorry to all concerned.]
John Quiggin from the link wrote:
bq. “The only remotely feasible option is to make a place for Sadr and his supporters in the political process, and to hope that he is moderated by the attractions of office, as has happened in many cases before.”
“Speech from Al-sadr to American people and world.”:http://www.roadofanation.com/blog/
bq. “Generally I am unwilling to get a position or to be a member at parliament or or presidency and if wish I can get that easily but I want Genera.”
I believes this presents a bit of a problem for John’s option.
Cool Hand Luke didn’t deserve to die either.
Two different issues.
1) Risk of death is NOT the same as sacrifice; M. Moore’s question, would you “sacrifice” for X, is diliberatly false. But there IS truth — in a war, some die.
2) Is Freedom, or anything, outside of America worth fighting for?
If it never is, then (1) doesn’t matter. The Left is hiding its answer that Freedom is not worth it.
Looks like Allawi has a different “plan.”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A105-2004Aug14.html
“but I want Genera”
Is something misprinted here?
The rest of the quote, as I read it, merely says that Sadr doesn’t want to hold office himself. Leaving aside the fact that aspiring politicians all over the world routinely make such statements, this is consistent with the view that Sadr’s followers would go into politics leaving Sadr himself to issue guidance without getting personally involved in the grubby day-to-day stuff – this is a fairly standard Shi’ite view.
I am not concerned so much about whether its right to do for freedom as about the view that it’s OK for the US to kill lots of people (many of them uninvolved bystanders) in order to promote its particular view of freedom.
bq. “this is consistent with the view that Sadr’s followers would go into politics leaving Sadr himself to issue guidance without getting personally involved in the grubby day-to-day stuff…”
The reality is he has rejected this option by his and his followers actions.
John,
In your last exchange you advocated the view that it was the proportionality of the US response to Sadr’s militia that was an issue. You conceded that Sadr and his militia were bad people (having razed villages and all), but just didn’t think that this should provoke the response it did. When challenged, you failed to prove your claim that the US response would “wipe out Najaf” in order to defeat Sadr’s militia. At that point, your argument was, at best, unsupported.
You also refused to address the issue about the type of (illiberal) government Sadr and his militia seek to put in place. This re-emerges in a different form here: “I am not concerned so much about whether its right to do for freedom as about the view that it’s OK for the US to kill lots of people (many of them uninvolved bystanders) in order to promote its particular view of freedom.”
This, I can only assume, is a slippery way of inserting the equivalence concept again (“its particular type of freedom”); as if Sadr and his militia are promoting freedom of a different brand. They are not: they are proposing a brutal form of Islamic fascism.
I’ll say it again: if the Left does not retain the ability to discriminate between the political-moral favourability of liberal democracy over illiberal forms of government (either due to miscontrued philosophical post-modernism or its historical affinity for dictatorship), then it is utterly useless to practical human affairs.
I think it’s really neat that a post entitled “some make arguments…” doesn’t even attempt to counter the argument that I make. The point is not that “the only way one gets to play is to be willing to go fight.” Rather, the point is that, in my opinion, the battle against Muqtada al-Sadr ought to be a low priority for the United States of America relative to other threats we face. I think this is perfectly clear from my post, and I don’t really understand why A.L. is deliberately misrepresenting what I’m saying while calling my argument “spooge,” though I’m not quite sure what “spooge” means.
So, again, in case it wasn’t clear. The United States faces a serious threat from al-Qaeda and affiliated Sunni jihadists. I think we should be focusing our energies on that threat, not on fighting Iraqi Shiite nationalists. Establishing a democracy in Iraq would be something worth fighting for, but right now our troops are operating in service of a looming Allawi dictatorship, so what’s the point?
“I think we should be focusing our energies on that threat, not on fighting Iraqi Shiite nationalists.”
This is a gross mischaracterization of Sadr and his militia. Sadr isn’t agitating for a democratic Shiite homeland: he’s using violence to establish a brand of Islamic dictatorship, with himself as its theocratic ruler. This directly conflicts with one of the stated goals of the war, which was the implementation of Iraqi liberal democracy. As such, Sadr and his militia must be defeated, either through peaceful means or through force of arms. Arguing about the proportionality or priority of the response makes more sense once this is recognized.
You guys are talking past each other.
Yglesias’s basic assumption is that Allawi is not the torchbearer of liberal democracy, he’s yes another in a long line of middle eastern dictators. If you want to rebut Yglesias’s arguments, you have to either accept or address this premise.
Matt –
I’m not addressing your argument at all; it is in fact a somewhat paler version of the argument Quiggin makes. I was (and am) ticked at your gratituous swipe in lieu of argument that I quoted.
It’s a renewal of the chickenhawk claim, and intended – as all such claims have been – to silence opponents rather than engage them or defeat their arguments.
That’s the ‘spooge,’ in case I wasn’t clear enough in simply quoting it.
A.L.
Well, AL, I think you focused on what was admittedly provacative language on MY’s part. But his basic argument, you haven’t addressed.
As for the Sadr mess, well, here’s what I think.
M. Moore’s question, would you “sacrifice” for X, is diliberatly false.
And 100% absurd. Moore’s question gives two possible answers:
“Yes”: I would see my child killed – no perhaps, no maybes – just dead.
“No”: I would keep my child safe.
How many parents are going to answer ‘yes’ to that question?
Re: Allawi as nascent dictator, Sadr as participant in a democratic process, substantive argument, etc.
Recall that the first requirement for participants in a democratic process is not that they take office when they are voted in.
It is that they leave office when voted out.
To those who would accuse Allawi of dictatorship and would promote the democratic enfranchisement of Sadr instead of his military defeat and civil arrest, I would ask: are you really arguing that Sadr (or the Sadrists generally) would be more likely to accept electoral defeat than Allawi? Does anyone really believe that upon winning one election (unlikely as polls would indicate), Sadr would ever hold another?
As for the substance of Yglesias’s argument:
Is it not the case that his connections to America’s primary enemies are, at best, tertiary (i.e., he gets some support from some elements in the Iranian government and some elements [possibly the same ones, possibly others] have sometimes turned a blind eye to al-Qaeda activities), and more likely provoked by the US campaign against him, than forestalled by it?
He goes on to answer ‘yes’.
Sadr’s initial uprising was not spontaneous. That sort of things takes preparation – 10,000-15,000 armed men don’t just make their way to regime targets of their own volition, nor sustain a fight against the coalition with the limited ammo they carry to battle.
If al-Sadr is an Iranian tool, he is their sword-arm – hardly a tertiary connection. The tone of tertiary connection infers a small, fairly irrelevant connection. But Hezbollah also has a tertiary connection to Iran. That both are Iranian allies is reason enough to assume they are threats. But their actions are the real reason.
why is the plurality of American national security resources currently dedicated to fighting him?
Assuming by “plurality”:http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=plurality you mean majority, well, we have 400 SF in Greece, unknown numbers in Sudan, 10,000 in Afghanistan, several thousand elsewhere in Iraq… If you mean majority, you’re overstating your case quite significantly.
If you simply mean a large number, a more defensible position, what’s your problem with that? You contest that fighting al-Sadr is an error. But now that we’re doing it, I assume you wouldn’t want it done with less troops than is necessary? And I’d prefer a direct answer, as opposed to a comment about Rumsfeld’s plan for Iraq.
Information regarding the US order of battle in Najaf can be found here (via this WoC Iraq Report). Bottom line, 2400 combat soldiers. You could call that about two percent of the troops in Iraq, but that would be a mistake, since they aren’t all combat troops. But the basis for Yglesias’ claim of “plurality” is not yet clear.
Is it not the case that his connections to America’s primary enemies are, at best, tertiary (i.e., he gets some support from some elements in the Iranian government and some elements [possibly the same ones, possibly others] have sometimes turned a blind eye to al-Qaeda activities),
The implication here is that al-Qaeda is the primary enemy, any state sponsor(s) (ie, Iran) a secondary enemy, and any group used by those sponsors (ie, al-Sadr) a tertiary enemy.
I guess the most obvious point is that they are enemies nonetheless and, especially since we have no regular troops in Iran, we have the resources to fight all of Iran’s proxies, and al-Qaeda. Those 2,400 (thanks, lewy14) troops might as well be used for something.
The primary, secondary, tertiary, etc, breakdown is also pretty artificial in this instance. If al-Sadr’s group aided a local Shia gang, I assume that would make that gang a, er, quarterary (?) enemy. If that gang attacks Iraqi gov’t forces and the coalition, should we infer that the U.S. should do even less about that than we are against al-Sadr?
This breakdown is problematic. And when we start caring about how many parts removed a certain group of RPG-wielding thugs is from Osama Bin Laden, we might as well give in.
“Assuming by plurality you mean majority, well, we have 400 SF in Greece, unknown numbers in Sudan, 10,000 in Afghanistan, several thousand elsewhere in Iraq… If you mean majority, you’re overstating your case quite significantly.”
Call me wacky, but my assumption is that when Matt wrote “plurality,” he meant “plurality,” not “majority.” Why would you assume he meant otherwise? It’s not as if he was unclear, or incorrect (in that usage).
(If we’re picking on words, you mean “fewer troops” here: “…you wouldn’t want it done with less troops….”)
Gary Farber:
The dictionary gives different definitions of ‘plurality’, so I made differnt responses to two of the possible meanings, one of which is ‘majority’.
(If we’re picking on words, you mean “fewer troops” here: “…you wouldn’t want it done with less troops….”)
Ok, that’s fair enough 🙂
Respectfully, you have to look “plurality” up in a dictionary to know what it means? It means, as your cite says, “an amount or group (as of votes) that is greater than any other amount or group within a total but that is not more than half.” This is not an obscure word. It never means “majority” save if misused. It’s perfectly obvious that Matthew meant “plurality” to mean “plurality.” (Whether he was fair or accurate is another question, but I don’t understand the importance of that question, either.)
Gary Farber:
Respectfully, you have to look “plurality” up in a dictionary to know what it means?
Well, apparently so 🙂 I don’t recall having had to use it before.
After our last discussion, I can see why you’d think I’m stupid – I can’t quite express how embarrassed I am about it.
By the way, I’m fairly thick-skinned, but a ‘respectfully’ doesn’t prevent the rest of that post from dripping with disdain.
_”One of the the definitions for insanity is doing the same thing over and over hoping for different results.”_
I see you are going crazy Eddie again, A.L.
There is no possibility of intelligent discussion or debate with the likes Matt Yglesias on war policy or tactics.
Anything that is a win for America is a win for George W. Bush so he is against it. Even if the result is the elimination of an Iranian tool and sock puppet like al-Sadr.
The ony thing you need to know about al-Sadr or Matt Yglesias is how to beat ’em.
“After our last discussion, I can see why you’d think I’m stupid – I can’t quite express how embarrassed I am about it.”
I don’t think you’re stupid, and I’m sorry I came across as dripping with disdain. “Dripping with befuddlement” would be far more accurate.
The ony thing you need to know about al-Sadr or Matt Yglesias is how to beat ’em.
I think a useful trait of any analyst is the ability to distinguish between domestic critics and foreign enemies.
Apology accepted 🙂
Good post, Praktike.
At least both Praktike and Matthew Yglesias actually seem to point to actual facts on the ground. From there, they then argue that optimism, is overstated, and not to do certain things.
Of course, the objection then is, they are, in an intelligent fashion, advocating giving up. And people here rightfully point out that when you “give up”, it’s sort of hard to go back and, er, not give up, I guess. Because the power vacuum tends to entrench itself.
As Matthew Yglesias points to, even the professional Iraq guy at Healing Iraq – who is most on the side of the US helping Iraqis create a democracy in Iraq – condescendingly calls Allawi, “mayor of the Green Zone”.
To the crux of Matt’s question – what is the going to be the “glue” that will bring Iraq together, and even more importantly, into a democracy? Just continue doing the same thing?
I wouldn’t say I’m advocating giving up. Maybe speeding up elections and redifining success to some extent. I’d say that most I’ve all I’m advocating being realistic about what we can achieve through the means at our disposal. Matt may well be advocating giving up, but not me. One thing I certainly anti-advocating is attacking the Imam Ali shrine.
I see you are going crazy Eddie again, A.L.
Pedantry seems all the rage on this thread, so allow me to indulge: if this was a literary reference (viz Niven & Pournelle), then “Crazy Eddie” properly refers to innovative and untraditional thinking that humans take for granted but the Moties (aliens), bound into ingrained, repeating cycles of history, cannot conceive of. A “Crazy Eddie” is a Motie who thinks outside the box and, in Motie mythos, symbolizes the futility of trying to break the cycle by trying another way.
Not unlike certain elements of American foreign policy, that, so perhaps the reference was not misused, merely misdirected.
The problem that the left in general, and Mathew in particular, has on this issue is that of underestimating Sadr. Our officers scheduled to go to Iraq were were learning about and training to fight Sadr within a few weeks of the initial invasion and fall of Baghdad.
Sadr was known to have a large well armed resistance and was seen as very dangerous to the coalition and to the prospect of democracy as a whole. Things have been managed very carefully both politically and militarily to both isolate Sadr and reduce his influence, before he could finally be taken down without a genuine wide spread uprising. An operation like what is happening now could not have happened at the beginning of the occupation without serious consequences.
To call Sadr inconsequintial now is to ignore the threat he posed initially and the extreme skill and cunning with which he was brought to the point he is at today. By making this argument you are, in effect, congratulating our armed forces for a job well done.
Chads
It’s possible that, if he won an election, Sadr would refuse to hold another. It’s equally possible that the same is true of Allawi (or that he will manage to hold on to power without ever having an election). I don’t know and neither do the commenters here. I certainly wouldn’t vote for either if I had a choice.
But I’m not advocating a campaign to kill Allawi and as many of his supporters as possible. Mark and others are advocating precisely this in relation to Sadr.
“To call Sadr inconsequintial now is to ignore the threat he posed initially and the extreme skill and cunning with which he was brought to the point he is at today. By making this argument you are, in effect, congratulating our armed forces for a job well done.”
Yes, clearly things are swell. Quite a cunning plan.
John,
Of course Allawi’s a thug. But he’s our thug. That’s why I would advocate killing Sadr and not Allawi. I’ve heard the argument that supporting thugs has failed in the ME, and I don’t buy it. The Egyptian Islamists that weren’t wiped out have (or at least feel compelled to claim they have) joined the political mainstream. Supporting our thugs in Algeria prevented an Islamist theocracy there. It hasn’t worked in Saudi Arabia because those thugs have been in bed with the Islamists from the get-go. And yes, I’m aware that at one time Sadam Hussein was our thug. At that time, we did what we had to do. Iran was the bigger threat to us, and Sadam kept them busy. And yes, I’m aware that we supported thugs in Afghanistan some of whom later became Taliban. Again, at the time we did what we had to do. Supporting anti-communist thugs was one way we brought down the Soviet Union. And I think the big mistake we made in Afghanistan was not continuing to support our thugs after the Soviet Union fell. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a relatively pro-American and somewhat-more-benign-than-Sadam thug is the best we can hope for in Iraq. If we get that, I’ll consider the war a success.
“It’s possible that, if he won an election, Sadr would refuse to hold another. It’s equally possible that the same is true of Allawi (or that he will manage to hold on to power without ever having an election).”
John,
I don’t believe this is a reasonable assertion. Please provide evidence for it.
This is simply another attempt to smuggle in an equivalence argument. Sadr = Alawi = Saddam = Baathists = resistance = freedom fighters. You need to make this equivalence argument because anti-war leftists have to believe there is little, if any, difference between political conditions under Saddam (or Alawi or Sadr) and nascent democracy under the Coalition. Should this position be defeated, you’d have to confront your support for a genocidal fascist (Saddam).
I’ve explained why the crude post-modernist equivalence argument is internally inconsistent on other threads in which you were a participant. What makes you think I’ll fail to notice your use of it here?
I think Allawi deserves the benefit of the doubt for now.
Gary
The point is, at this point he *can* be brought down without a popular uprising. If we get it over with.
That wouldn’t have been possible in the begining. And yes, things aren’t maybe perfect in Iraq. But, I beleive, if we handle Sadr decisively, we have a good chance of ending a lot of the open resistance. Of course, there’s a lot of buts.
Chads
aside from any ad-hominem exchanges, what Josh Yelon said. the real question, now that the “Iraq is not a quagmire everything is fine now shut up shut up shut up!” contingent has finally shut up, is whether to embrace the realpolitik advocated by Fred in this thread or the realpolitik advocated by Da Thug over at Matt’s place.
Fred sez:
yeah, well there’s that. the upside being that adopting that posture allows us to bring the unrestrained force of the US Navy, Air Force, and defense-intelligence structure down on anybody who opposes Allawi and almost certainly destroy them. the downside is that then we can kiss any semblance of international law and multilateral non-proliferation efforts goodbye for at least a generation. we will, quite clearly, no longer be the good guys. psychologically speaking, dirty proxy wars against the USSR are very different from invading a sovereign state and installing a puppet. you may not think it’s a big deal to be (or at least be able to plausibly pretend to be) the good guys, but it will have truly dire economic consequences if nothing else. and you may not think the existing anti-proliferation efforts are any big deal either, but if you were one of those people who didn’t want to wait for “proof in the form of a mushroom cloud” regarding Iraq you might want to take a look at your position on NNP to see if it’s consistent.
Da Thug over at MY’s says:
and he’s got a point. democracy only flourishes when debate is possible, and it’s pretty clear that that won’t happen unless multiple factions have a stake in orderly (and repeated) elections. the problem is that while it’s all well and good to point out that we did what we went in to do and if Iraqis want a democracy they can damn well build one themselves, that poses very serious and legitimate threats to US security in the meantime. abandoning Iraq means a possible death-blow to US non-military influence in the ME, period. that includes Israel and SA and even Turkey. because if Iraq “fails” as a state, nobody in the region can afford to stay out of the ensuing fracas, such that national, regional, and factional alliances will suddenly become much more important than relations with the US. does pulling out still sound like a good idea?
we’ve basically “made” Sadr by choosing a Baathist as our agent and opposing Sadr so aggressively. if we kill him we’re stuck with option #1 and if we don’t we’re severely hampered in option #2 (because there’s basically no way he and Allawi can coexist long enough to allow US troops to depart in an orderly fashion). the middle road would be to stick around for long enough to make a clean getaway, but not prop up Allawi (or whoever emerges) as a counterweight to the Shiites, and work seriously towards democracy. not only will that be horrifically expensive and delicate, but there’s plenty of reason to doubt that under those circumstances we could do any better than winding up with an Islamic Republic closely allied with Iran. which will NOT make Israel happy, no sirreebob.
damned if we do and damned if we don’t.
now watch this drive…
I’m just wondering what do we do about the anti-Sadr militia?
Well it is all moot any way. The SOB is going to get taken out no matter what and every one has their position covered in advance. Every one is against it but no one is lifting a finger to stop it. Politicians!!
Besides did any one see his wish list?
The guy has delusions of grandeur. In his current situation I believe it is a life threatening disease.
BTW I’m all for promoting our version of peace and freedom vs Lennin’s or Sadr’s. Osama wanted to unite the ME. I think it our job to assist him. We just have a slightly different government structure in mind. Most unfortunate.
I can’t believe Matt said this:
What’s the implication of “Iraqi Shiite nationalists,” if not an isomorph of Vietnam? Clearly Allawi is preferable to Sadr, isn’t he? I mean, even if there’s some doubt that Allawi would be able to block elections without US approval and support, the stance of Kerry is appropriately characterized as the sort of “Missouri Compromise” that has been the standard sort of meddling preference in favor of “stability” that the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations typically promote. So, given that, an Allawi dictatorship is far more likely to be tolerated by a Kerry administration than by a Bush one.
Shouldn’t you really be opposing this “stability compromise” rather than the Bush policy… for the sake of consistency, I mean? Holding his feet to the fire, at least? And, of course, as Lou points out, the American troop investment in Najaf is rather light. Indeed, the whole exercise might well be worth the trouble simply as a “real life” training exercise for the Iraqi Civil Defense Force. (I think one can assume that they’ll have to conduct things without a news blackout, which is a lesson that’s probably already dawned on them.)
Again, what I want to know is why you aren’t choosing a consistent “partisanship” on the side of liberal democracy? Is it that you don’t believe in the necessity, the possibility, or both? (I guess you’re “consistent” in terms of the history of your position. What I’m saying is that your position isn’t consistent with a liberal vs. an illiberal foreign policy bias. And I’m fairly sure that you wouldn’t proudly describe yourself as illiberal.)
For the closest example of what we are dealing with check out America’s war against the Natives.
It too 60 years to pacify the continent.
We had pitched battles, guerilla war, atrocities, kidnapping, hostages, etc. Every thing we see in Iraq.
The way you beat these guys is that every time they rise up you slap them down hard until they decide to accept your authority. It is how the West was won.
America is civilized because there is one accepted authority.
Radish,
I’m absolutely not one of those racist lefties who think Arabs are incapable of democracy. I’m a racist reactionary who thinks Arabs are incapable of democracy. Actually, cultural chauvinist would be much more accurate than racist. Believe it or not, though, I hope you and Da Thug are right. I hope events throw egg all over my cultural chauvinist reactionary face. I just see no evidence that it’ll happen. I believe that, as the bard put it, “the past is prologue.” I sincerely hope I’m wrong, but if I were a bookie, I’d give pretty long odds I’m not.
Fred,
If there are enough democrats they will subdue the indians.
The evidence that there may be enough is that after every bombing spree, the number of people in line for Army and police jobs increases.
Well, at least that observation is ideologically conistent with liberalism, superficially anyway. In the subsequent paragraph Radish seems to have argued his way out of that bag though. Genuinely wrestling with the problem… not sweeping it under the rug. But I submit that we’d have significantly more influence over Allawi than Sadr, and could therefore more or less demand that he either maintain proper elections and peaceful transition of power, or get the hell out. That is, we would conduct things that way unless we leave Iraq policy up to the State Department.
And that’s where the real policy battle lies. It isn’t really between Dems and Reps (both A.L. and I are Dems). It’s between those who see foreign policy in terms of the static stability that autocrats bring, or those who see things in terms of the dynamic stability that liberal democracies bring. And it’s not even between those two ideals, because I’m sure both camps prefer liberal democracy, especially if it were costless. The battle is over where those forming policy place their priority and what coherent vision they have for the role of democracy, or at least polyarchy, in the “War on Terror.”
The opportunity here is that “liberals” have a conservative administration making a political commitment to liberal democracy as a foreign and even a war policy. And in response many of the people who have been grousing most vociferously for years over the stability compromise of the cold war have now, inexplicably, decided to reverse sides and become all-but reactionary. It’s a fascinating political about-face, but damned unconvincing for anyone who cares about this kind of thing.
Our goals are all over the place, so of course we can’t agree what to do.
Goals:
1. Iraqi democracy.
2. Iraqi secular government.
3. Iraqi stability.
4. deny bases to terrorists.
5. US bases to attack iran & syria, threaten kuwait, saudi arabia, egypt, turkey, kazakhstan, etc.
6. control middle east oil.
7. deny WMDs to all middle east nations except israel.
8. destroy every conventional middle-east military that might threaten israel.
9. Prove to the world that no one can stand up to us militarily and that we have the will to crush our enemies.
#5, 6, 7, & 8 all require a puppet government, not a democracy. A democratic iraq might possibly agree to bases we could use to attack their neightbors, but they wouldn’t be reliable.
#2 might require a puppet government; if too many iraqis in a democracy want school prayer or prohibition or whatever then they’ll get it.
Conflicting goals. We probably can’t have all of them.
We think we can’t lose militarily, and that’s probably right. We have more than ten times the population and a thousand times the GDP, if we have the will we can fight in iraq forever. And if we don’t lose militarily can we lose at all?
Imagine this scenario — we get the shi’ites good and mad at us, and they take to the streets. A hundred thousand of them in one city, a million in another. They can be ghandi-nonviolent or only mostly nonviolent. They can throw rocks. They demand the puppet government disband, and the puppet government disbands. We can’t control them. We lack the will to kill 3 million iraqis to cow the rest. They stop traffic. They don’t let our supplies through. We can build roads around their cities, we can line the roads with razor-wire and minefields for safety. At some point we have to admit we aren’t doing any good there.
If we had the will to napalm hundreds of thousand people, if we had the will to use nerve gas, or even cluster bombs, we could disperse them. We could even do it on the ground, just machine-gun them and drive over the bodies to get to the next batch. Show them we mean business, kill 50,000 or so in each city and a lot of them would run away. But we don’t have that will.
We said we were there for the iraqis, we don’t have what it takes to turn around and suppress the clear majority of them so we can have our bases and staging areas and oil.
So my thought is, if we can’t get #4 through #9, let’s make a solid try at #1. A democratic iraq wouldn’t do everything we wanted, but it would be a good thing. We made promises, we should keep them.
Iraq has a lot of what they need for democracy. Lots of armed groups, no one of them strong enough to win. Recent experience showing what happens when they can’t get along. If they can make political alliances instead of military ones, and only massacre the ones who won’t join in the politics, it could work.
Maybe they’d wind up with three democracies instead of one. That isn’t so very bad. We wouldn’t have to do a whole lot toward helping them get a democracy, we’d mostly have to not stop them from doing it. Don’t support somebody who wants to take over. I doubt anybody has the strength to take over without our support. Maybe they’d get busy killing each other. But then, if they do too much of that we could wait until they were real tired and then move back in and take over, and they wouldn’t be so deadset against us, having seen the alternative.
So we ought to honestly give them their best shot at democracy. And only suck them into our empire if the democracy doesn’t work.
J Thomas,
Very reasonable. The only problem is that we’re not dealing with a very reasonable part of the world. I believe #2 would require a puppet government and a rather brutal one at that. I believe #1 would result in a bloody civil war that would kill hundreds of thousands and end in an Islamist theocracy or some other form of dictatorship or maybe one Islamist theocracy (Shi’ite), one secular dictatorship (Sunni) and one semi-authoritarian regime (Kurdish). Letting them try and fail sounds like a good idea, but the consequence of such a failure would be Afghanistan on steroids. Imagine the Taliban with oil revenues.
I meant #3 would require a brutal puppet govt.
Fred, you might be right. How can we find out?
Say we keep the iraqi national army weak — as we are doing now. Allawi could purge that army of shi’ites and maybe kurds, and he would have a relatively small, poorly-armed militia. He won’t be tempted to try to crush other militias unless the US arms his troops better or the Marines go in and crush them for him.
So, say they actually try a democratic government that’s actually representative. The voting gives a rough estimate of relative militia strength. It will be clear that no one militia or coalition of militias can expect to take over the whole thing. So the trick is not to pass laws that a large minority would feel obligated to fight and die about. Maybe they’d manage that.
Democracy broke down once in the USA leading to a bloody civil war. It can happen anywhere. But it isn’t inevitable.
If the nation does split up, they can expect bloody wars to establish the borders. Iraqis *know* those wars would be bloody. They’ve already seen well over a year of chaos. They’ll have an incentive to get along — unless the central government passes bills they can’t live with.
They just might be sensible. Let individual provinces argue whether they want religious laws in those provinces. No need to impose shia law on sunnis and kurds etc.
Democracy is what we say we’re going for. Why not do our best to promote that? What do we really have to lose? (Well, we could lose our permanent bases, control of the oil, staging areas to invade iran and syria, etc. But we haven’t admitted those are our real goals.) Sure, we might fail. Wouldn’t it be even worse to give up on democracy, try to establish a brutal puppet government, and fail at that?
J Thomas,
The Civil War didn’t really result from a breakdown of democracy as much as a disagreement about the nature of democracy. The North fought for a government centralized in DC with the right to forcibly retain states in the union. The South fought for local self-determination (unfortunately, slavery was the primary right they wanted to locally determine, but the controversy over local vs central power was not completely resolved and lasts to this day). So I don’t think that’s a terribly apropos analogy. Your arguments are very reasonable, but unfortunately, and paradoxically, that’s the problem with them. The Iraqis may well know how bloody a civil war or series of civil wars will be, but can we count on them to react to that knowledge in a way we in the West would consider rational? Given the tribal structure of their society, their respect for raw power even if that power is used to brutally oppress them, their concern with “face,” and their propensity for religious and/or ideological fanaticism, I don’t think so (yes, I know RACIST! BIGOT! etc). As for your last paragraph, I don’t see how the consequences of a failed democracy would be any different than those of a failed dictatorship. In both cases we’d have Afghanistan on steroids and amphetamines. And I think a dictatorship is much less likely to fail. As I said before, I could be wrong. All I know is what I read, see on television, and gather from listening to people who should know what they’re talking about. And as I’ve also said, I hope I’m wrong. But nothing I’ve seen, read, or heard makes me think so.
Fred, I regard the american civil war as a breakdown of democracy. The participants couldn’t find a mutual position they could live with, the government broke down, and they fought.
As for enforcing a dictatorship, Saddam inherited a functioning army and secret police from a political movement that a fair number of people had actually believed in. And the public was largely disarmed.
Allawi is trying to build those institutions on a limited budget, with limited american help. We don’t want him to have armor, warplanes, or artillery. (Much less poison gas or WMDs.) People might join a proto-democracy with some enthusiasm, but if they think it’s a dictatorship then aren’t they going to join mostly for the chance to get their share? (Before we pulled the plug on vietnam about 40% of the aid we were sending was getting siphoned off one way or another….) Join the iraqi army and you get five times the average monthly income. That’s an incentive to join. It isn’t much of an incentive to go into battle against your fellow citizens.
And a whole lot of ordinary citizens now have AK47s. Iraqi army trucks are not armored. Iraqi police cars are not armored. I doubt unmarked iraqi secret police cars are armored. There isn’t much body armor to be found — there’s a worldwide shortage at the moment since the world has seen that the stuff sort-of works.
If we try to install a dictator we’re going to be in there killing dissidents for him for at least a couple of years. How is that going to go over with american voters?
Who wants the US to stay stuck to the iraq tar-baby? Iraqi militias don’t have money to buy advanced weapons and smuggle them into the country. Any foreigners who have the money can send them the stuff, though. We’ve been facing just AK47s and RPGs and IEDs and mortars. Get some black-market TOWs in and we’ll be hurting. We did it to the russians in afghanistan. Is there anybody who’d do it to us?
It looks to me like democracy is our best chance. It’s what we said we wanted. It’s a much easier sell to the public. There’s a *chance* the fighting will die down to a level that the iraqis can suppress. It might *work*. People might give it real support.
I don’t see a dictatorship working at this point. Certainly not with the kurds. (Would we bomb kurdistan into submission for the new dictator?) Probably not in the south. They’re armed, they’ve compared notes about the people they lost to Saddam, they’re ready to say Never Again. And what good is a dictator who only controls the sunni middle? No oil, no access to turkey or any port — supply our forces through jordan? Grim.
If we want an iraqi dictator, we’d do better to can Allawi and bring Saddam back. He has name recognition. Except what would it do to our army’s morale? What would another dictator do to our army’s morale?
I don’t think these people have thought it out.