Eminent scholar of Islam and Islamic history, political pundit, and "a member of the presidentially-appointed board of the U.S. Institute of Peace", Daniel Pipes, writing for the New York Sun but linked here via Frontpagemag.com, asserts that the U.S. should withdrawal from Iraq after installing an Iraqi strongman to rule the country.

You can explore the writings collected in Daniel Pipes' website here to see that Pipes is no dove or acolyte of the Left. After all, it is Bush who appointed him to the Institute of Peace. Pipes is someone who is deeply hated by many Muslims who misunderstand him to be anti-Muslim. Quite the contrary, Pipes is someone who respects the Islamic religion and its traditions.

That is why it is all the more startling to find that Pipes taps into his considerable erudition and informed respect of Islam to suggest that Bush's plan to democratize Iraq is doomed to failure. And, while Pipes most certainly supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, this is not the first time he has warned of American failure in Iraq.

The current insurrection in Iraq was discernable a year ago, as I already noted in April 2003: "Thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites chanted 'No to America, No to Saddam, Yes to Islam' a few days ago, during pilgrimage rites at the holy city of Karbala. Increasing numbers of Iraqis appear to agree with these sentiments. They have ominous implications for the coalition forces."

So Pipes was sounding the alarm when Americans, like myself, were optimistic, if cognizant of coming difficulties, that the U.S. would succeed in implementing a democracy in Iraq. How is it that optimists like me perhaps got it so wrong? Pipes explains one premise to be entirely false.

[T]he quick war of 2003 focused on overturning a hated tyrant so that, when it was over, Iraqis felt liberated, not defeated. Accordingly, the common assumption that Iraq resembled the Germany and Japan of 1945 was wrong. Those two countries had been destroyed through years of all-out carnage, leading them to acquiesce to the post-war overhaul of their societies and cultures. Iraq, in contrast, emerged almost without damage from brief hostilities and Iraqis do not feel they must accept guidance from the occupation forces. Rather, they immediately showed a determination to shape their country's future.

Two things stand out here. Pipes' insight gives credibility to the lie that Saddam was no danger to America. That is, he had no standing military the size and power of the Nazis and Japanese militarists that would have required an all-out war and the complete destruction of Iraq. This in turn implies that only through such heartless and, in the case of Germany and Japan, necessary destruction would a devastated Iraq be pliable enough to become a democracy under American auspices. The anti-war lobby, then, can assert that the whole project will fail precisely because it wasn't necessary to begin with.

The quickest answer one can give to this hypothetical objection in light of Pipes' assertion is that a tyrant today, in the world of WMD and terrorism, no longer requires a military complex the size of Hitler's to do real harm. For another, Bush never claimed the threat from Saddam was imminent but that something must be done about him before that threat becomes imminent. The whole rationale of pre-emption is to prevent another Pearl Harbor or, for that matter, September 11th.

Pre-emption does not require annihilation of the enemy, but his neutralization. Incinerate Baghdad like Berlin? Like Tokyo? Not necessary, especially with today's laser accurate technology to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible. War today is more political than ever in intention, but it might be less effectively political in practice. Why? Because Pipes points out that, short of utter destruction, the enemy need not unconditionally surrender but leave town as Saddam did. He is now a caged animal ready for trial. His "reich" does not lie in ruins. It is ready for a Sadr or some other thug to take over.

The Ba'athists are gone only to be replaced by perhaps a more implacable foe of the Iraqi people themselves, who were not subdued the way the Germans and Japanese were and can thus rise up to defy the American occupation. This fact gives the lie to the anti-war faction that believes America invaded Iraq to crush the Iraqi people the way it did its enemies in WWII. How else to explain the growing revolt against the American occupation? Yet, the very fact that the Iraqi people are beginning to rebel against the American occupation proves that their will has not been crushed. Pipes comes to his second point to clarify this contradiction.

[A]s a predominantly Muslim people, Iraqis share in the powerful Muslim reluctance to being ruled by non-Muslims. This reluctance results from the very nature of Islam, the most public and political of religions.

To live a fully Muslim life requires living in accord with the many laws of Islam, called the Shari'a. The Shari'a includes difficult-to-implement precepts pertaining to taxation, the judicial system, and warfare. Its complete implementation can occur only when the ruler himself is a pious Muslim (though an impious Muslim is much preferable to a non-Muslim). For Muslims, rule by non-Muslims is an abomination, a blasphemous inversion of God's dispensation.

In other words, the Iraqis were never pummeled into submission the way America's enemies were in WWII. You want Iraq to be contrary to Muslim history? Try saturation bombing. I keep making comparisons to the Second World War because it was the one connection I kept making in my misguided belief that Iraq, with Saddam gone, would be like Germany and Japan in 1945.

Pipes again:

As Europeans rulers conquered Muslim lands, they found they could not crush the Islamic religion, nor win the population over culturally, nor stamp out political resistance. However suppressed, some embers of resistance remained; these often sparked a flame of anti-imperialism that finally drove the Europeans out. In Algeria, for example, a successful eight-year effort, 1954-62, expelled the French colonial authority.

Nor was the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq the first Western undertaking to unburden Muslims of tyrannical rule. Already in 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte appeared in Egypt with an army and declared himself a friend of Islam who had come to relieve the oppressed Egyptians of their Mamluk rulers. His successor as commander in Egypt, J.F. Menou, actually converted to Islam. But these efforts to win Egyptian goodwill failed, as Egyptians rejected the invaders' proclaimed good intentions and remained hostile to French rule.

The European-run "mandates" set up in the Middle East after World War I included similar lofty intentions and also found few Muslim takers.

What is most interesting about Pipes' argument is that he touches upon the Leftist assumption that if you don't understand other cultures just how can you change them? This assumption was invoked by the Left before America invaded Afghanistan - the dreaded graveyard of empires from Alexander the Great to the British to the Soviets, only to be proved wrong with the departure of the Taliban and the routing of Al Queda's central hub. Surely regime change would be impossible as the Taliban, far more ruthless than wimpy democracies, would meet the enemy head-on and turn back the Americans. The opposite proved to be true.

Again, annihilation of the country was not necessary to achieve America's political objectives there. Though the situation in Afghanistan is dicey, to say the least, the people are not showing serious signs of rebelling against the American presence. For all the differences between them, I wonder what Pipes would have to say about a Muslim nation like Afghanistan so far putting up with the American presence on its soil. Since Pipes' argument hinges on his knowledge of Islam and its history, what about another Muslim country also once beset by autocratic rule and currently occupied by an infidel power?

It is a very important question to ask and perhaps Pipes will answer it because his conclusion is the following:

This history suggests that the coalition's grand aspirations for Iraq will not succeed. However constructive its intentions to build democracy, the coalition cannot win the confidence of Muslim Iraq nor win acceptance as its overlord. Even spending US$18 billion in one year on economic development does not improve matters.

I therefore counsel the occupying forces quickly to leave Iraqi cities and then, when feasible, to leave Iraq as a whole. They should seek out what I have been calling for since a year ago: a democratically-minded Iraqi strongman, someone who will work with the coalition forces, provide decent government, and move eventually toward a more open political system.

I'm not sure what to make of this. Pipes' reasoning is cold, anti-idealistic, and highly informed. In short, it is probably the most accurate if disheartening. What is Bush to do? Obviously, he will do the exact opposite and push forward with his laudable dream of Iraqi democracy. For Bush to follow Pipes' counsel would probably bring down his presidency. An about-face would be traumatic to say the least. It would mobilize the Left and Liberals in a way not seen since Watergate. While his enemies now carp about Bush going into Iraq in the first place, for Bush to renege on his promise to make Iraq a democracy would have them, who never supported a democratic Iraq in the first place, to cry foul. How could Bush leave Iraqi democracy to the evolutionary process of a strongman to bring about law and order and, eventually, a more open society?

If that sounds hyperbolic, then consider what the Democrats are doing with the September 11th commission. It seeks to blame Bush for not being hawkish enough against our enemies before September 11th when they constantly badger him about being hawkish after America was attacked. Bush detractors will say an ounce of prevention would have prevented Bush's pound of cure. Well, so would have Clinton's eight years of prevention.

Another question for Pipes: does his assertion hold true if we assume that it will be Muslims who will take over on June 30th? Any more than America did not repeat history in Afghanistan, would it be true to claim that America is essentially trying to do what the European colonists failed to do in the Muslims world, namely, to rule it? Pipes certainly understands America's intentions in Iraq: to create a democratic state that will be an ally, not an enemy, of the United States in its continuing fight against Islamic extremism and the terrorism it breeds. Only, as the experience of J.F. Menou demonstrates, Pipes does not believe America's intentions in Iraq, no matter how noble, will succeed.