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Sunday, September 07, 2003
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THOUGHTS ON IRAQ
Whether you agree with his politics or not, one must agree that George Will will make you think. And I've been thinking a great deal about Iraq lately.
I was reluctant in my support of the war. I supported it only as far that I felt that so long as Saddam Hussein and the Baáth party structure remained in power in Baghdad, war with the United States was an inevitabilty.Given Saddam's antagonism to the U.S, his regional ambitions and his continuing penchant for miscalculation, at some point, war would come. I felt it was infinately wiser for America to fight this war on their timetable rather than Saddam's.
Most people, myself included, felt that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in quantities sufficent to pose a signifcant regional threat. The fact that those weapons have not been found (and may, in fact, not exist) does not subtract from this consensus. The Iraqi military had used the weapons before, against both Iranian and domestic Kurd targets. Saddam's refusal to account for the destruction of these weapons (if in fact they were destroyed) was yet another miscalculation.
It is not fantastic to theorize that Saddam refused to prove the absence of WMDs as a means of keeping his neighbours, particularly Iran and Kuwait, off balance until the U.N sanctions could be lifted and he could reconsititute his weapons programs. Given French and Russian attitudes at the time, the sanctions regime was coming to an end. Iraq's neighbours, specifically the Saudis, felt that the United States lacked the will to topple the Ba'athist Party and preferred a policy of appeasement.
In conversations that I had a over a year ago, I stated that the military campaign would not be exceptionally difficult and that U.S forces would not suffer significant losses. I felt the war would last about 5 weeks (which it did) and that combat causualities would number fewer than 2,000 (the number ended up being 147.) At no time did I see a long term military conflict in Iraq.
But I did say that the United States was unprepared for what would happen afterward. The administration position of keeping Iraq's current borders and its promises of democracy to the Iraqi people are at odds with themselves. And they always have been. Iraq is not a natural country in the way that, say Egypt, is. Iraq was cobbled together by the British and French following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the close of the First World War. There are three distinct nationalities in distinct parts of the country. Iraq was created in the same manner (and, in fact, at the same time) as Yugoslavia. The experience of Yugoslavia is intructive to the problems the West now faces in Iraq.
Any group of nationalities with such different national aspirations can not long form a federation in any democratic framework. In Yugoslavia, so long as there was a tyranny, the country held together. Once that tyranny was toppled the country disintegrated into not one, but three different wars. Each of these wars, at various times, threatened to draw the former Yugoslavia's neighbours in.
Democracy in Iraq is an impossibilty. Firstly, there is no tradition of democracy in the Middle East. Secondly, democracy in Iraq necissarily means the dissolution of Iraq. Whether Iraq dissolves violently (as did Yugoslavia) or peacefully (as happened in Czechleslovakia), the country will not remain in its current form. This would then call into question the borders of Turkey and Syria, with their large Kurd minorities, and Iran, with a Kurd minority and Shia majority. The implosion of Iraq does not end at Iraq's borders. It could very easily throw the entire Middle East into war.
This leaves the United States with three options.
I) Stay in Iraq in perpituity as an occupying power to hold the country together. This will never happen due to a domestic lack of will.
II) Establish a non-democratic government in Iraq that respects the borders of its neighbours. If this is done, America will have to give security assurances to Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It will have to keep troop levels in the region sufficent to repel any future Iraqi aggression. This will be expensive and precisely what groups like Al-Queda would like to see, a large, stationary target that unifies radical islamist opinion.
III) Turn Iraq over to the United Nations and hope for the best. Suprisingly, the U.N has done a creditable job in both Bosnia and Kosovo. Muslim troops are going to have to be in the majority and will have to be a committed presence for perhaps decades.
No matter which course the U.S takes (and I believe it will be a combination of options II and III), the Administration should never have begun the rhetoric about establishing a democratic Iraq. That rhetoric has largely stopped now but the Iraqi people will remember it. And they will note being frustrated by the United States. How that frustration is vented remains an open question.
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