Over the past few months I have occassionally posted an email from a gentleman who is working with the Iraqi Government to set up their country and its infrastructure. To give you people a little background, this fellow is a liberal Democrat so he isnt sugar coating anything. This is his LAST EMAIL as he will be coming back to USA in two weeks. Here are his final thoughts as to the current conditions in Iraq. There is some info in here you wont hear anywhere else. jdn
I am down to my last two hours in Iraq. I apologize for slipping up on the letters home; work has been really busy in the last month with budgeting cycles and what-not. There really has not been much to report. It is a quizzical time for one to be in Iraq. I envy my colleagues the perilous privilege of being here for the referendum in two weeks.
The Tyranny of Fear. Many dread the up-coming elections that will either ratify the constitution or, failing that, to declare all out civil war. Most believe that the surprise success of the January elections of the Transitional National Assembly shall not repeat itself. Though many are dissatisfied, Sunnis are participating in this constitutional referendum. This development spells trouble since the insurgents are losing one of their key strongholds: the coerced cooperation of decent Sunnis worried in the short run by vengeance directed at them by sociopaths who love maiming and killing in service of anything convenient as well as in the long-term by the silent vengeance of discrimination by newly empowered Shi’ites and Kurds.
Having written about this view of mine many times in the past, I have neither the time nor the inclination to bore you with such details again. What is disturbing is the tyranny of fear. Rumors of a suicide bomber amidst a million person march for a religious pilgrimage results in mass panic, killing in excess of six hundred people. This point remains sad, truly sad. Only the whisper of a bomb kills more people than would have the bomb itself. Mass killing for religious reasons is, thankfully, alien to most of us.
That is why the West must win.
The constitution itself emerged as a hastily crafted compendium of compromises; it has the disjointed tenor of a school group exercise on which the study group budgeted to little time for refining the end product. Yet, this constitution represents a huge precedent for this region – a sincere effort to reconcile the modern political preference toward democracy with a static world view imposed by Islam. Like our founding fathers, these men and women of the new age of enlightenment grapple with shattering questions of the proper place of a deeply communal religion in the public discourse and public life. As I have said over and over: Iraq is all about shades-of-grey; we must count our victories by progress toward a hazy end, not perfection into a glorious end-state.
If federalism is to be the way – and it ultimately should be – one simple thing might contribute to long-term peace: proving the one hundred billion barrels of oil in Anbar. Then the Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds would each have their own resource-base. While the Sunnis would not benefit from this oil for many years, they could enlist the financial and technical assistance of other Sunni nations (and the U.S.) to accelerate the cash in-flows.
Instead of Shi’ite Iran intervening to face the Sunnis backed by their neighbors – in other words, a civil war morphing into regional, possibly global conflict – the neighbours of Iraq would show their partisanship in a positive manner to enrich all of the Iraqi people. The nascent democracy would mature, sending more shock-waves of change across a region littered with tottering dictatorships. People would be free; the tyranny of fear up-ended. Now, that would be a win-win-win-win ad infinitum.
Three Liter Showers. The only personal note to pass along is that I had to run down my private stock of non-potable water that I had stored in plastic liter-sized bottles over the last couple of weeks. I did this to safeguard against the loss of water should the insurgents take out the water supply or , more likely, the dilapidated water system in Baghdad give out completely. Since the wars over water in fifty years are likely to more intense than those over oil today – unless mankind up-ticks a notch or two in evolution – I did not want to waste the most precious resource over here, more-so than oil. Such forward thinking, however, led to a great many freezing showers!
This little anecdote points out the quizzical life here. Many of you have told me that I am living in history. Maybe so; but my biggest concern does not involve the future of mankind or man’s inhumanity to man but whether I can shoulder, with a shudder, the blast of cold-water in the morning.
I look forward to a long, hot, friendly shower in Kuwait.
A tribute to General Petraeus et al. Lieutenant General David Petraeus is an honest, brilliant man. Many criticize his actions here; I do not, liberal Democrat though I still am. General Petraeus had a mighty mandate to discharge: standing up the two hundred thousand troops for which Paul Wolfowitz forgot to account when he calculated what it would take (i.e., something like eighty-eight thousand troops) to boot Saddam into the dust-bin of history. The coalition simply lacked the man-power to seal the borders, particularly to Iran and Syria. General Petraeus had to develop those two hundred thousand troops from within Iraq while the army was dissolved, rightfully, and the police thrown into disarray through the shock of de-centralization. Since both organizations harbored servants of a terror-state, these radical measures were practical necessities.
By my reckoning at least – through scratching together resources and patching up de-moralized non-Ba’athist professional soldiers – General Petraeus performed a creditable service for his country and toward the prospect of a democratic Iraq, at least in the long run. It is difficult to accomplish in one year what will require a generation to effect. If the mission fails, it will not be the fault of many decent people like David Petraeus and his worthy successor, General Martin Dempsey.
As I leave Iraq, I want to make the following tributes to people I have worked with; like Charles Twichell, Mark Tuttle and Ben Sylvester of my Choate days, these are the very best that America can produce…and England and Australia, too. These are a handful of many, meant to be a representative sample population of all that is good in the coalition.
Colonel Louis Jurney. An activated reservist who is a chief financial officer of a Southern real estate developer, Colonel Jurney fits the ideal of Robert E. Lee – that of a citizen soldier. A class act in every regard, Colonel Jurney brings his patience, maturity and skills to the Ministry of Interior finances, which sorely needs them. The mission here will succeed because of reservists like Colonel Jurney who combine disciplined leadership with a wealth of experience.
Brigadiers Simon Caraffi and Bryan Watters. Both of these gentlemen soldiers from the United Kingdom bring experience in Northern Ireland to bear on an equally vexing situation in Iraq. Ironically, both have been among the most persistent champions of civilian leadership of the ,military and police. Though innately quite different, both men balance integrity of conduct with a long-term vision that spells perseverance.
Major Brian Lantz. The can-do American if ever there were one. Brilliant in his own right, Major Lantz could earn multiples of what he does in the Army. Yet he stays in, not for the pension, but for the service. Major Lantz dissents and sticks to his principles. He was the architect of a very successful budgeting cycle after a disaster last year for the Ministry of Interior.
Will Sands and Mike Moreno. Part of the “Junior Achievement” group (i.e., twenty-somethings catapulted to levels of responsibility beyond their years), both are incredibly bright and stand for what is great in America: the promise and prospects of our most talented young people.
Roger Calhoun, Anita Greco and John Hanley. Roger took time off from his normal duties as a senior Department of Treasury official to help the Treasury attaché in the Embassy try to get a financial system shattered by the joint dictatorship of Stalinism and sanctions up and running. Joined by two young, very bright people (Anita and John), Iraq’s treasury function is slowly striding toward freedom of markets and equality of opportunity.
There are so many others I wish to thank but I cannot. My ride awaits.
God Bless the United States of America.
Love always,
Ned. 202-361-3577 (cell in U.S.A.). |
