Winning and losing

You can only conclude that Bush is deluded. He is the last man alive who thinks that Iraq is "winnable". Even Blair realises it's a morass.

Bush's talk about helping a young democracy survive would make some sense if he had intervened to support a democracy under pressure from definable forces, preferably exterior. Fighting the Germans in WWII provided a simple aim because they were so visibly exterior.

But the problem with Iraq is Iraq. It's not someone from outside stirring up the shit. Iraq is shit. It's an illusion that there even is an Iraq. It's a patchwork of fiefs and city-states, an ongoing power struggle, an ethnic war, a criminal enterprise. The one thing it isn't is a "young democracy".

What would "winning" look like? The idea that it can be a stable state, ruled by Western-style law, with a compliant, peaceful population, is fanciful at this point. The ISG's solution is to train up the Iraqis, hole up in a few bases and beg everyone else to fix the mess. Anyone familiar with the end of French rule in Indochina will recognise how that goes, although the Americans have the advantage over the French that they do not face a unified nationalist army (rather, they face dozens of militia that only attack Americans if they present themselves, and are generally content to kill each other if there are no Marines around). Iraq would, quite likely, become slightly more peaceful if the Americans followed those recommendations; at least, it could be sold that way, if only because fewer Americans would be getting killed.

The other suggestions, that Iran and Syria should be involved, are smart but seem a little naive. Iran and Syria already are involved. They are quite contentedly fuelling the fire. They have no interest at all in a resolution to the crisis in Iraq, and they'll need to be bribed, and heavily, to do anything to bring one about. (There's some similarity between Iraq and Palestine in this regard. Arab leaders appear in public crying out for a solution to the Palestinian problem, but they do not want, and have never wanted, one. Keeping Palestine the focus of Middle East analysis very much suits leaders such as Mubarak and Asad, who, as do dictators everywhere, prefer attention to be focused outwards rather than inwards. It doesn't hurt either to have Israel embroiled in a crisis that it has badly overreacted to, so that it has become the world's premier villain, rather than just another villain in a lineup that gets a lot uglier. One could expect the Syrians to agree to help resolve the Iraqi crisis while doing everything in their power to prolong it. That would be perfect for them.)

The problem with Iraq remains that there is no solution, no way to "win". We made a terrible mistake in invading Iraq in the first place. We didn't have a plan because our leaders were overconfident that they need only roll into Baghdad and a democracy would spontaneously erupt. It didn't help that we appointed corrupt administrators, who proceeded to dismantle whatever hadn't been destroyed by our invasion, throwing many men onto the dole and alienating many others: deBa'athication was a disastrous policy because it ignored the close identification of the Ba'ath party with Sunni interests, and didn't seem to understand that it would be interpreted as "persecute the Sunnis"; disbanding and reforming the armed forces were hideously stupid, making unemployed the trained military without disarming them; ending the fuel and food subsidies was just insane. There were a lot more mistakes but they all stemmed from the first big one: getting in there in the first place. Could it have been different? Perhaps. With a truly overwhelming military force and a plan rapidly to reconstruct the infrastructure of Iraq under the supervision of the UN and some idea of where we would head politically... it sounds easy when it's sketched in a few words, but the task was huge. Iraq is not a real place that needed rescuing. It's a construct, a mishmash, a disaster waiting to happen. Which happened.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:58 am