Being slow and plodding myself, I can't help but being in awe of (also envious of) talented people like you, KB, and Dabum whose writing is so beautiful and flowing.
I'll say something else about you and I: with the possible exception of economics (I get passionate in my defense of Adam Smith "trickle down") we are intellectual soul brothers.
But, at times, your partisan passions, as well as your very talent at writing, get in the way. High Tolerance Plasticity "One of the most knee jerk conservative threads around"? No diversity?
Ed, you are unthinkingly and casually tossing out cliches and rhetoric. Like your earlier "fear, envy and distrust" reference which I unsuccessfully invited you to defend. But worse. Did you, for example, read the Richard Parker/ Laurence Tribe debate over the limits of judicial activism? Dynamite! KB generously offered it up to us several days ago for our intellectual delectation.
Your attack upon this thread was a threadbare, broad-stroked, partisan- inspired smear. To turn your words against you, "what's really scary about that"(the smear) is if YOU,upon reflection, don't recognize it as such.
.........
LET'S You and I Get TO SUBSTANCE (In inverse order of importance)
A. SADDAM'S REGIME
<<The "suffering" of the Iraqi people was, I suspect, just about as oversold as the existence of wmds. I'm not suggesting that they weren't oppressed; they were. What I am suggesting is that their lives weren't so bad that there was wholesale enthusiasm for a fight to the death to overthrow the Saddam Regime.>>
Ed, Is this your version of "blindered thinking"? The above IMO seems very much like an attempt to minimize the true abominations of this regime. Put aside the chemical warfare against his "own" Kurdish people. Put aside his attempted destruction of the "Marsh" Arabs, their culture and their water habitat. To my mind, the existence of a widespread network of prisons and torture chambers is as well documented now as Hitler's death camps. But put this aside too .... as this obvious fact has somehow been lost in the emotions of our own election.
Do you remember Ed, during the war, as American military vehicles approached Iraqi cities, seeing miles of lampposts each one with enormous Saddam portraits? The building sized statues of Saddam as a reborn Saladin? (Ironic because Saladin was Kurdish) These were only the outword signs of a personality cult that reached an intensity seen AT MOST two times in world history: under Stalin and Mao. You probably know that 20 million plus Kulak farmers died in the 30's during the forced collectivization of Russian agriculture. But did you know that 20+ million Chineese died in 1969-1970 during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution? An inevitable result of extreme personality cults? I believe so. Did you know know that 1 million people died in the Iraq-Iranian war? The war that Saddam began undeclared with a Pearl Harbor-type sneak attack?
I think you know something of Saddam's personal brutality: of his Baathist friends and comrades murdered after the success of his revolution, of the two fleeing sons-in-law lured back to Iraq on bogus promises only to be tortured and dismembered, of the hundreds of his officers whose body parts were delivered to their families as a message to future potential dissidents. But let's disregard even this.
Let's you and I focus on the unrestrained, capricious, life and death power that Saddam gave to his two sons, Uday and (?) Remember the men, such as the Iraqi Olympians, who were murdered on a whim? And there were many others. You have to go back to Gibbon and his description of the worst of the Roman emperors to find barbarism at this capricious a level.
You argued: " What I am suggesting is that their lives weren't so bad that there was wholesale enthusiasm for a fight to the death to overthrow the Saddam Regime."
Ed, this disturbs me. You seem to be arguing that the test of a "really bad" regime is if the people display "wholesale enthusiam" in fighting it. What disturbs me is not that I believe you are naive (I don't)but the inference that you have never read any of the "neo-con" position papers that set forth the intellectual justification for the invasion of Iraq.
The "neo-cons" point out the indisputable fact that totalitarian regimes in the modern age have become highly adept in the skills necessary for REMAINING IN POWER.
Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Mao have, so to speak, given a template to tyrants and dictators of later days on how to do it. (It is no surprise that Saddam was an admirer of Stalin....criticizing him only for softness.)Only part of the template involves technology and communication; indispensable elements are both ideology and terror/repression. Egypt is a good example: from Nasser to Sadat to Mubarrek, the country has had essentially one corrupt, tyrranical, incompetent regime in place for half a century with no real opportunity for the "people" to change anything.
Anticipating that you might cite Iran as an exception to the neo-con rule, I would debate this at length with you, but will only say now that Saddam would probalby argue that the Shah fell - not because of "progressive" elements(he was overthrown by conservative,religious reactionaries) - but because of insufficient "ideology and terror."
B. OCCUPATION OF IRAQ AND THOSE HATEFUL ARAB EYES
It's very amusing to me Ed, that you should accuse the Bush Administration of never having "studied enough history to have learned it." You are a very bright person; and I meant it when I said we are intellectual soul brothers ( and we're also fellow Vietnam vets- although I was not in one of your "twenty battalions"); but your grounding in history -and I don't want to be disparaging or condescending (but it will probably seem so) - is deficient.
You wrote: "..., but you can't create radical change in a culture, religion or people that haven't asked for your help and have shown no willingness, as a people, to fight and die for the values you think they ought to believe in. The impetous for such changes must be internal and the momentum must build over time. "
I wholeheartedly agree 100% with everything you wrote above. (you see, we are soul brothers!) Societies do -
over time - evolve, change and reach almost subliminal understandings on societal values.
The example I am going to use is the Soviet Union. If you read "Krushchev Remembers" you will begin to understand what a nightmare even Stalin's priviledged underlings went through.(See alsothe very recent, "Stalin: In the Court of the Red Czar.") It was far worse for the ordinary Russian: neighbor couldn't trust neighbor; failure to inform of a mild joke could itself lead to a "fiver" or worse. Without being told, Russians understood in their bones about the gulag and what a rotten system they lived under. When Krushchev opened up the subject at the Party Congress in 1956, and then personally intervened in 1958 to allow the publication of Solzhenitsyn's "One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich" a picture began to crystalize in the Russian collective mind. Later Soviet leaders - and their lietenants - knew how to maintain the system, but they gradually lost the heart and will to implement it.
Keynes wrote in criticism of classical economics: It works in the long run, but "in the long run, we're all dead." My criticism is the same of those who rely on "evolution" to bring change to countries under a tryanny: Change will come but you may completely sacrifice 2 or 3 generations in the process.
TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF EUROPEAN COLONIAL EMPIRE
You are certainly correct when you contend that an alien, foreign presence - such as ours in Iraq - will create a backlash in a proud people. But to suggest that it is not possible to cope with that backlash -especially on a temporary basis- is another example of "blindered thinking."
The British, the French and the Dutch had a template for colonial rule that on the whole "worked" for them very well in Asia, Africa AND THE MIDDLE EAST. That template involved 3 elements: (1) co-opting, protecting and giving privileges to a native elite so they have a stake in the colonial status quo; (2) using wherever possible a native constablulary; and (3) avoid at all costs intrusions into religious/cultural spheres.
After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following WWI, Britain and France quickly imposed a full-blown colonial regime on Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. (Egypt, while technically having an independent King and government, was to all intents and purposes controlled by the British from the 1880's; Saudi Arabia was likewise indirectly controlled.) They used the same template. In Iraq, as you probably know, around 1936 the Shiite clergy attempted a revolt. Using time-tested methods the British had little trouble putting it down. One thing they did do during this revolt was to elevate and give precedence to the Sunni people and leaders. 'Divide and conquer,'they say.
As you know, the European colonial empire was dissolved after WWII, in part under pressure from the USA, most especially from President Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, Allen Dulles. But it is important to note that the template never broke down from any internal "native" pressure - even Ghandi's. It broke down because no one believed any more in the philosophical underpinnings of the colonial system (the "white man's burden") and because Europeans no longer had the heart and will to impose that template. (It is off topic but it is my fixed opinion that the former colonies would have been infinitely better off if the Europeans had announced a fixed date for leaving 4 years or so hence and had then slowly began turning over more and more of the administration to the "natives"; instead, they abruptly left almost overnight.)
THE GERMAN OCCUPATION OF EUROPE IN WWII
In WORLD WAR ONE, the Germans used a heavy-handed, brutal approach in their invasion and occupation of Belgium. Not only was it counter-productive in that it antagonized the rest of the world, but it stimulated the Belgians to a spirited resistance that never was broken.
Institutionally, the Germans officer corps learned many valuable lessons from their defeat -always easier when you lose - among them lessons on occupation of a defeated enemy. Among those lessons: co-opt the aristocracy and the elite; leave in place the entire local police and administration; and severely control one's own troops with respect to native women and property.
In Western Europe(Norway, Holland, Belgium, France), where the German Army always ran the occupation, this "humanistic" approach worked amazingly well. It wasn't until late 1943 in Czechoslovakia (after Heydrich's assasination) and 1944 (after the Normandy invasion) that the Germans began to resort to brutal tactics like arbitrary selection of hostages to shoot. Read John Keegan's "History of WWII". In his chapter on partisans, he concludes generally that, the myth notwithstanding, the partisans never were a headache for the Germans until front lines grew close. Except for one first class division used in 1943-44 in Yugoslavia, occupation was the task of 3rd class divisions and 40-50 year old men.
The Eastern Front (Poland,Ukraine and Russia) is an entirely different story: occupation from the start was delegated to Gaulatiers/Nazi henchmen as personal fiefs and brutality and an attitude of racial superiority were the order of the day.
THE MISTAKES OF THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION
I hold Rumsfield responsible for the botched occupation of Iraq. Do you remember the pictures in the first several days of liberation when looters were running wild? I'll always remember Rumsfield's response when asked about it: he said (words to the effect) 'What can you expect from people who have been repressed so long?'
In my humble opinion, this looting we saw was only the tip of the iceberg. All police officers and all administrators were dismissed in a naive attempt to "cleanse" the system of Baathists. Below the surface, absolute anarchy reigned: non-political robbery, murder, kidnapping, settling of scores. No society and no people can long tolerate anarchy. I believe we did have the good will of the majority of the Iraqi people (the non- Sunnis) but lost it in the first week.
Pre-invasion, relative to most Arab countries, Iraq was relatively secular and the religionists were relatively under control. But it was in the midst of the above anarchy that the religious leaders stepped in to fill the void. This was the start of al Sadr's militia.
According to Woodward, it was the advice of the Saudi ambassador before the invasion to give the soon-to-be defeated Iraqi Army 6 months advance pay, and thus keep them in place for security duties that would have included keeping outside provacateurs from coming in. And off the streets where they had nothing to do but give vent to their wounded pride. Good advice that went for nought.
Apart from dismissing the police and army, there was another critical element missing in our occupation policy: toughness when needed. We wanted too much to be loved. Maybe this is an element that we as Americans lack in this year of our Lord 2004. When looting
broke out in the cities, we should have declared martial law, announced that there was a dusk-to-dawn curfew and that anyone (man, woman, child)seen on the streets would be shot. For heavens sake, the US Army shot Americans in 1906 following the San Francisco earthquake; why couldn't it have been done in Iraq? This lack of toughness is one problem - I am quite sure - Kerry is not going to be able to solve.
THE HATEFUL EYES OF 12 YEAR OLD ARAB BOYS
I knew the allusion to the "eyes" would sting you, Ed. And I'm almost done.
I concede that most Arabs dislike America - not Americans, but America. But this is no change from the Clinton years; they hated us then and they hate us now. Partly it's because of Israel and partly it's because we are big and powerful and they nurture the myth that if we would just leave them alone, they would quickly find an Islamic path to nirvanna. And all of their corrupt governments encourage that myth because they don't want the people to look inward for the reasons for their poverty and unhappiness.
Yes, I would concede that arabs are more vocal now. But give those 12 year old arab boys economic and political outlets in the next several years and I do unhesitatingly state that those "eyes" will have no more significance than that of German and Japanese boys 54 years ago.
(By the way, I make an exception to the angry eyes of 12 year old Palestinian boys and girls. Those eyes truly do frighten me.)
Ed, you state in your post that all people want "empowerment", but that this desire can be satisfied through the mouths of their unelected (many times hereditary) religious leaders. As John McEnroe says, "You can't be serious." Read any detailed analysis of today's Iranian/Persian youth and their feelings after 20 years of Ayatollah rule.
Bruce |
