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Inside the Labyrinth
Ms Shock and Awe looked as if she was on a Hollywood
set. From under a black space helmet a few golden curls peeped out—but the
set was real and the place was frontline Iraq. With microphone in hand
CNN’s Jennifer Eccleston had joined edgy US troops “clearing” guerrillas
from house to house; had seen a tank shell a supposed hiding place nearby;
then watched as Iraqis with blood on their faces staggered out and
collapsed, a man on the ground crying “Why us? We are not the enemy!”
Melvin Laird, a former Secretary of Defense who
extricated the US from an earlier war, has written in Foreign Affairs
strongly urging rapid Iraqization because he feels this sort of thing
would be better handled by Iraqis themselves. American military force is
too provocative; the army’s footprint too large. That is also the message
now coming from Laird’s modern counterpart Donald Rumsfeld, who said in
June that "If the insurgency does go on for four, eight, 10, 12, 15
years, whatever … it is going to be a problem for the people of Iraq”:
they are evidently expected to handle it themselves in the long term.
But setting aside Mr Rumsfeld’s cavalier “15 years,
whatever”, would an action like this fare any better or worse with Iraqi
troops in charge? Today domestic sectarian hatred is at least as great as
hatred of the outsider. If the householders were Sunni, would they welcome
being shelled by Shia troops?
The soldiers themselves had seen it all before, one of
them telling CNN’s reporter that it was hard fighting a war where
civilians and combatants were inextricably mixed. As if we didn’t know.
The clip ended before there were too many scenes of householders
confronting the troops with their injured and their dead. After that the
frustrated, angry, well-meaning and sturdy “nation-builders”, weapons in
hand but unable to tell friend from foe, fearful, confused, hating their
task and doubting their president, went stumbling on.
A good idea at the time
Democracy at gunpoint never seemed a good idea.
But it seemed not too bad an idea if there really
were WMDs, and if Saddam had to go, and if change in this part of the
world would come no other way, and if western oil interests had to be
defended, and if contingency plans had to be made to buttress the House of
Saud, and if mere containment after 9/11 was not an option.
American optimism is infectious, and by and large the
world needs more of it. So why not take out Saddam? And if that works why
not take out the rest? Let’s have democracy from Morocco to Mindanao, from
the shores of the Red Sea to the heights of the Hindu Kush. Thus was born
a dangerous but bewitching plan.
Realists warned—in Walter Lippman’s words—that “Without
the controlling principle that the nation must maintain its objectives and
its power in equilibrium, its purposes within its means and its means
equal to its purposes, its commitments related to its resources and its
resources adequate to its commitments, it is impossible to think at all
about foreign affairs.” But what the hell? We all know about realism.
Some said if terrorists flooded into Iraq, who cares?
We’ll kill them as they come! (Easier there than here.)
Doubters prophesied that invading Iraq would double their number, perhaps
treble, perhaps quadruple. And now that’s what seems to have happened:
pouring in from other lands and eager to join the jihad, the
prophecy is self-fulfilled. It is less than three years since it started,
but those who have forgotten the beginning cannot see the irony of the
end. “President Bush is right on target”, said a former CIA operative on
Fox News the other day, “Iraq is proving to be the center of terrorism in
the world.” Translated: what we now have is a full-scale guerrilla war.
Though as the bombs explode who can tell how many enemy
there really are? Estimates range between 20,000 and 100,000. And where
are they coming from? According to Robert Baer in Newsweek a Syrian
official reported that of 1,200 suspected suicide bombers arrested by
Syrian authorities since 2003, 85 percent were Saudis. An interview with
Iraqi guerrilla leaders showed a more serious threat than living bombs:
two mature ex-military men determined, in their words, to fight ‘until the
last American soldier is dead’. The rhetoric was unoriginal; but their
patriotic resolve was chilling. The existence of guerrilla commanders like
these would seem to make it largely academic whether or not there’s a rift
between Zarqawi’s killers and the rest. Zarqawi might disappear tomorrow.
But the commanders will not.
Incredible political progress
Meanwhile President Bush was still talking of
“incredible political progress” early in October, though sectarian
tensions were mounting, scores were dying each day, and pessimists talked
of civil war. A similar optimism inspires Front Page Magazine,
though speakers at its regular symposia help the editors stay in touch.
One of these gatherings explored the mind of the suicide bomber, Theodore
Dalrymple explaining for anyone who would listen that
The act of killing oneself for a cause, in the
process taking a few 'enemies' with one, is an apologia pro vita
sua. Let us not forget that we in the West have a long and inglorious
irrational tradition of supposing that the lengths to which people are
prepared to go in the furtherance of a cause is
itself evidence of the moral worth of that cause.
* * *
At another symposium held early in August 2005, “Iraq,
a Report Card”, panellists were asked to rate the progress of the
Coalition. Some conservatives gave the war an A, but the journalist Steven
Vincent, who was in Iraq and knew the situation on the ground better than
most (was he talking by telephone from Basra?), gave it a B–.
American military tactics have
widely alienated the very people we liberated.
Something’s not working right… Yes, there’s an elected government, but
when Baghdad lacks power and water, and the road to the airport is a
life-threatening crap shoot, and I can’t leave my hotel here in Basra
without Iraqi protection—I can’t see much nation building going on.
Insurgents win by not losing. If they keep Iraqis
living in misery, then no matter how many we dispatch to Paradise Amir
Zarqawi gets the prize. In assessing the war effort, then, we must also
include the quality of Iraqi’s lives. Want a
grade for that? F.
The symposium adjourned, and by time it reconvened
Steven Vincent had been kidnapped and killed. But he had managed to make
another point before he died. Asked about the motives behind the unending
killings, most of the dead being Iraqi themselves, he said:
Perhaps its time we consider that
there is no answer, that the killing has no
point, beyond archaic notions of tribal honor
and revenge.
Tribal honor and revenge
But “archaic notions of tribal honor and revenge” are
things Washington doesn’t understand. Nor does it grasp the psychology of
tribal cultures that would rather die than switch. Nor can it see that
Iraqi religious obsessions are entirely beyond the reach of ballot boxes
and equable public discussion. As for the notion that the trial of Saddam
“will bring closure” to anyone inside Iraq—who is deluding whom? Anyway
the men and women who talk about freedom, democracy, constitutions, and
market economies (all of them things I strongly approve of) don’t seem to
understand—or realise the wild destructiveness of the emotions now
unloosed.
As western tempers fray some call for a stiffening of
the will, others look for straws in the wind. When things are not going
well “if onlys” multiply. Why wasn’t the Syrian border mined to prevent
incursions? If only this had been done those Saudi suicide bombers might
have been stopped. Too many people have been influenced by Lady Diana’s
campaigns against a perfectly sensible weapon. Were it not for her crusade
against anti-personnel mines the border could have been sealed long ago.
If only liberal and progressive Islamic scholars would
speak up… But they don’t, says Ahmed H. al-Rahim in the Wall Street
Journal, and as a result “the battle against Islamism—and also for the
heart of Islam—has become a battle for the West to fight.” Mr Rahim is a
sometime teacher of Islamic studies at Harvard. He says it is shameful
that there are no mass Muslim protests. “Why not a ‘Million Muslim March’
on Washington, of law-abiding Muslim citizens clamouring to reclaim their
faith from those who would kill innocents in its name?” Why indeed?
Some find grounds for hope in reported divisions within
the insurgency. Bernard Haykel says that “Mr Zarqawi’s war on Shiites is
deeply unpopular in some quarters of his own movement.” There are supposed
to be growing splits among the jihadis, some of whom feel on-camera
beheadings are counter-productive. Meanwhile, back home in Washington,
there is increasing doubt as to whether the most sacred doctrine of the
Coalition—that democracy will automatically reduce the country’s divisions
and usher in peace and freedom—will in fact have that effect.
Perhaps it will only sharpen the divisions. Or
galvanize the antagonists. Or precipitate civil war. It is unclear from
conflicting statements from the White House, on one hand, and from the
generals, on the other, whether there are now thirty battalions of Iraqi
troops able to go “in the lead” against the insurgents, or only one. It is
quite possible that none of these morally torn, divided, and fearful men
are capable of going it alone. Some strategists want more troops in Iraq.
Others want fewer. As Macaulay wrote, those behind cry “forward!”, and
those before cry “back!”
From labyrinth to conflagration?
Which legend best describes our situation? James
Carroll writing in the Boston Globe prefers one from ancient Crete:
“The myth has it that a person entering the maze will never find the way
out. As if that were not terrifying enough, inside the maze lives the
beast whose special appetite is for the young. The maze is a cluster of
tricks, paths to nowhere, the realm of dead ends. There is no escape. The
young must fear being eaten alive, but an eternity of false exits
threatens everyone.”
Then there is the legend of Laius, who is told by the
oracle that his own offspring will kill him, and no matter what he does,
no matter what action he takes, events move relentlessly toward that fated
end. Or does this really belong with the legendary law of unintended
effects, by which even the most enlightened acts may lead to disastrous
consequences—consequences no-one could foresee? The introduction of
democracy leading to civil war, and that to a general conflagration
throughout the Middle East? Though the west continues to talk about the
desirability of Saudi democratization, Robert Baer, an experienced
observer familiar with Saudi popular sentiment, gave this opinion back in
2003:
If an election were held in Saudi Arabia today,
if anyone who wanted to could run for the office of president, and
if people could vote their hearts without fear of having their heads cut
off afterward in Chop-Chop Square, Osama bin Laden would
be elected in a landslide.
* * *
It would be nice if we could have democracy all the way
from the Red Sea to Afghanistan. It would be nice if the Palestinians
could learn to love Israel, and vice versa. It would be nice if Shia could
learn to live with Sunni and both could learn to co-exist with Kurds. In
brief, it would be nice if backward lands could become forward lands with
civilized debates in houses of parliament instead of uncivilized shootouts
in dreary desert wastes for which men on each side must die. Believe me, I
favor all those things. But I don’t think they will happen anytime soon.
Not at gunpoint. Not delivered by infidel armies of occupation on Islamic
soil. Not with most of the Arab world cheering Saddam in court.
Mr Taranto and Mr Polk
Recently James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal
had this to say: “The reality is that President Bush's legacy will be judged on two things:
whether America is successful in Iraq, and, if so, whether success in Iraq
helps promote democracy and discourage terrorism elsewhere in the Arab and
Muslim worlds. If the former happens, history will recognize Bush as a
near-great president; if the latter, as a great one…”
Both predictions seem to me unlikely. Rather more
realistic was the assessment given by William R. Polk last January in an
article with the title “A Time for Leaving”. Iraq, he wrote, is a
shattered country. Few of its people have useable drinking water. Seven
out of ten are unemployed. Society has been torn apart, up to 100,000
Iraqi have died, and “dreadful hatreds have been generated”. As Polk sees
it, we are now in the middle of a classic guerrilla war, similar to that
in Algeria in the 1950s, where although relatively few men may be fighting
for the “insurgency”, many more who do not fight support them.
Polk is a former member of the U.S. State Department’s
Policy Planning Council, when he was responsible for the Middle East. He
was also a founder of the University of Chicago’s Center for Middle
Eastern Studies. Most Iraqis, he wrote last January, regard the present
government as an American puppet, and he himself sees little point in a
constitution that “is not anchored in the realities of Iraqi society.
Absent the institutions that give life to a constitution, it will be
simply a piece of paper as was the one the British provided 80 years ago.”
He sees three options available for America—Staying the
Course, Iraqization, and getting out now rather than being forced out
later. The first means digging an ever deeper hole. Of the second he says
that “the idea that America can fashion a local militia to accomplish what
its powerful army cannot do is not policy but fantasy.” Everything we have
seen so far of action by Iraqi troops suggests that this is true.
Regarding the third—a truce and a pull-out—he says that “time is a wasting
asset; the longer the choice is put off, the harder it will be to make.
The steps required to implement this policy need not be dramatic, but the
process needs to be unambiguous…” Ultimately it will need a decision by
President Bush “as courageous as General Charles de Gaulle was in Algeria
when he called for a ‘peace of the brave’.”
I am not as optimistic as William Polk when he says
that following such a bold initiative “fighting would quickly die down”.
The political forces unleashed both nationally and internationally now
have a momentum of their own. But with Donald Rumsfeld talking publicly of
a 15-year war, and both George W. Bush and his Coalition partners bereft
of ideas, the alternative may mean wandering in the labyrinth forever. As
the months turn into years, and the years into a military epoch, we may
live to find Ms Shock and Awe—her curls greying, her helmet
dented—reporting the “incredible political progress” she has seen the
preceding week. [Recommended reading: Night Draws Near, by Anthony
Shadid.]
November 2005
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