<Franks Orders Baath Party to Cease Existence>
There are 3 organizations who can hold the (non-Kurdish) ground in Iraq:
1. U.S. Army
2. Shiite clerics
3. Baath Party
I do not include the exile community, as they don't have the skills or contacts necessary to run the country. They may have support in the U.S. Congress, and they may say all the right things about freedom and democracy, but it is wishful thinking to hope they can win a competition for power with either the clerics or the Baath Party.
We may have outlawed the Baath Party, but they were the ones running the country. Every institution needed to make the nation function, was staffed at the top several layers of the heirarchy, by Baath Party members. That's how a Stalinist system works. They have a lot of successful experience, in keeping the clerics in their place. They have the desperately needed skills.
Having the U.S. military directly running things, is not going to work, except for a brief transition phase. Our army seems to understand this, so they are looking for acceptable surrogates, to run our new client state.
So, if we won't let the clerics take over, and we can't do it directly ourselves, then that leaves one choice: handing the country back to the Baath Party.
The way this will be done, is to de-capitate the Baath Party leadership, then re-hire the rest of the organization, to run the country for us. They are used to obeying arbitrary authority, and can quickly learn all the right slogans. Freedom! Democracy! Secular State! Order! Stability! Good Business Climate! Privatization! Starbucks on Every Corner!
These slogans will have no more content, with Franks as the Maximum Leader, than the slogans from when Hussain held that position. Perhaps there are some old how-to manuals, from the days of the Shah and Pinochet, that the CIA can reprint, to show how it's done.
The main problem with this solution, will be that the reincarnated Baath Party will have lost its nationalist legitimacy, a role that the clerics will now own. Since religion and nationalism are the two most powerful ideas in that part of the world, gentle persuasion will likely be insufficient. Elections will need to be carefully managed, and delayed till our clients are firmly entrenched. Probably, some other Stalinist methods will be needed. Like the methods being used at Bagram Air Base (I'm still waiting for the arrest of whoever beat those prisoners to death).
Operation Iraqi Freedom rolls on. |
