My understanding is that we (maybe not you, by "we" I mean neocons and those of us who were persuaded by neocons) decided that "disorder" was a good thing compared to dictatorial rule by such governments as the House of Saud and the Ba'athists.
Do I detect there a hint of disaffection with the neocon cause? Progress, perhaps….
The question of whether disorder will be better than Ba’ath has yet to be settled, and will depend largely on where the disorder leads. It also depends on what we mean by “better”: better for the Iraqis, better for us, or better for both? We must also, of course, factor in the consequences outside Iraq, particularly if we are trying to determine whether the outcome was better for us than various alternatives might have been.
This formulation also assumes that the only available courses of action were the one we took and complete inaction. This, as I think I’ve pointed out once or twice or a thousand times, is not the case.
I think that some among the neocons really did underestimate the potential for postwar chaos. I got the impression that some of them believed that as soon as the Iraqis got tired of dancing in the streets and hailing their liberators, they would buckle neatly down to the business of setting up a nice, orderly democracy. Those of us who suggested that it might not be so simple were accused of holding the racist view that Arabs are unfit for democracy.
That was ridiculous, of course. Democracy may be, as has been recently postulated, a universal value, but the road to establishing defined nations with democratic governments has never been easy. It took the US over 100 years to settle its boundaries and the key question of state’s rights vs. central authority. In order to do those things we fought several wars, conducted one of the most thorough and extended campaigns of genocide in modern history, and fought a civil war as bloody and vicious as most of Africa’s recent extravagances. Europe, the supposed cradle of Western Civilization, went through centuries of continuous warfare before accepting democratic governments and agreed national boundaries.
Why should it be easier elsewhere?
I mention boundaries for a reason. The national boundaries of Iraq, like boundaries in much of the developing world, are a legacy of colonialism, and have nothing to do with the natural affinities or rivalries of the people of the region. We have declared that Iraq’s territorial integrity must be preserved. We declare this because such preservation is in our interests, but why should the Iraqis be bound by our interests? Certainly the Kurds have a better claim to statehood than the Israelis ever did, and if the Kurds aren’t bound by some abstract need to maintain Iraq’s territorial integrity, why would anybody else be?
I’m not saying this because I support the dismemberment of Iraq. What I do or don’t support is quite irrelevant. I’m pointing out that it’s ridiculous for us to say that we have “liberated” Iraq, and then to turn around and say that Iraqi freedom is contingent on the preservation of territorial integrity, or that we will not tolerate the emergence of an Islamic state. Such restrictions are hardly compatible with freedom, and we are in no position to impose them in any event. Sooner or later we will leave, and the Iraqis will do as they choose. They may not handle their freedom in a way we like. Some people don’t: when the residents of the former Yugoslavia got their freedom, the first thing they did was to kill each other. The bottom line, though, is that ultimately the decisions about what happens to Iraq will be made by Iraqis. Does anybody really think that after pulling out of Iraq we will go back in to prevent the Kurds from seceding, or to prevent a mullah from taking power? |
