Right war, botched occupation
November 28, 2006, 11:24 pm |
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By Michael Rubin*
As U.S. troops entered Iraq, President Bush promised freedom and democracy. But rather than establish a stable democracy, today terrorists and militias tear the country apart. After billions spent and the sacrifice of almost 3,000 U.S. troops, it is right to ask whether democracy in Iraq was not a fool’s dream.
It was not.
President Truman faced similar questions about Korea. Critics accused him of embroiling America in open-ended war, ignoring his generals and losing touch with reality. They said democracy was alien to Korean culture. Time proved them wrong. Any juxtaposition of nuclear North Korea with democratic South Korea shows the value of Truman’s policy.
Bush was right to liberate Iraq. Saddam Hussein had started two wars, used chemical weapons and subsidized suicide bombers. He claimed to have weapons of mass destruction. Sanctions had collapsed; containment failed.
With military action inevitable, the White House was right to pursue democracy. Cynical realism created Saddam. Iraqis who fled their country, meanwhile, had no problem accepting democracy; Iraq’s problem was both its rule of law and its dictator’s unaccountability.
What went wrong? Iraq’s transformation was undercut by naive faith, not in democracy but rather in diplomacy. Instead of securing Iraq’s borders, the Bush administration accepted Syrian and Iranian pledges of non-interference. They believed the canard that Iraq’s neighbors sought a stable, secure Iraq. Both countries exploited U.S. trust.
Then, to win United Nations support, the White House defined itself as an occupying power. Overnight, liberation became occupation, and Iraqi democrats became collaborators. To appease Paris and Berlin, the Bush administration justified insurgent rhetoric.
Iraqis embraced democracy, but the wrong kind. U.N. experts sold the White House an election system based on party slates rather than on districts. Any system in which politicians are more accountable to party leaders than constituents, though, encourages ethnic nationalism and sectarian populism. Add militias to the mix, and the result is explosive.
Iraqis greeted U.S. troops as liberators, but the Bush administration fumbled the occupation. Blaming democracy does not address the cause of strife; rather, it absolves policymakers for poor decisions and implementation. Too much is at stake, not only for Iraq but also for U.S. national security, if policymakers learn the wrong lessons.
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
*USA Today
November 27, 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/1061
Cross-posted with permission
Related: Iraq, United States
December 1st, 2006 at 10:26 am
I agree with Michael Rubin when he says America’s unseating Hussein and his Baath party was the right war.
America however had no exit strategy, let alone a poor one. They should have remained if at all only long enough to hand over authority to the military and local police and left. Whatever regime replaced Hussein would know full well they had better not piss America off like Hussein did or America would pay them a visit.
Bush’s policy to democratize the Middle East as a way to defeat Islamic radicalism is pure wishful thinking and based on a lot of very shaky assumptions that an Islamic based democracy will be compatible with Western Judeo-Christian based democracy.
While Bush likely is right that Muslims that live in dictatorial nations in the Muslim Middle East do want freedom, he conflates the desire for freedom with a desire for democracy, especially a democracy like Western democracies.
Opposing parties in Western democracies offer the electorate different platforms and visions and ask the people to support their being elected to govern. Regardless of differences in political platforms in Western democracies, all platforms are conceived of within the context of Judeo-Christian culture and principles.
If Muslim Middle Eastern dictatorships somehow opted for democracy, the parties vying for power would determine their respective political platforms and visions based on Islamic cultural values and principles.
That would mean that while the people were free to choose their government, they and their democratically elected government would not necessarily have views and policies compatible with Western democracies. If the elected government and the people they govern hold fast to current Islamic beliefs and hatreds and suspicions of non-Muslims, not much will change.