Iraq Is Without Question Better Off. Except For All That...You Know, Worseness.
It's confusing.
People are debating about whether or not Iraq is better off, now that Hussein is in prison. I think we should rephrase the question to clarify things.
Is a brutal insurgency better than a brutal dictator? I think it's quite possible to answer 'yes' to this question. But let's not get carried away and think that the insurgency is THAT much better. It's been going on for several years and it's atleast legitimate to wonder if things have actually improved a significant amount. Keep in mind: Hussein was a secular dictator. There is no question that he was as bad as advertised- he was a mass-murdering tyrant- but Bush's inept invasion has done little more than give terrorists a new chunk of geography to move around in...specifically religious terrorists. Why is the secular/religious distinction important? The relgious terrorists in Iraq are 1. indifferent to the murder of civilians (the Iraqi government estimates that the insurgency has killed more than 12,000 civilians so far) , and they are 2. Wahabi extremists, i.e. possibly not down with women and basic democracy. This particular brand of extremism has turned Saudi Arabia and other locations in the Middle East into terribly repressive countries, and now it is free to spread in Iraq...a country already populated by a 60% fundamentalist (Shiite) majority. That, my friends, is a very bad combination, and one that Hussein made impossible during his terrible reign. Or, to put this differently: in a post-9-11 era, the last thing we needed to do was give our biggest enemy a new and receptive audience.
But, given Hussein's record, I don't necessarily believe that Iraq is worse off. In my opinion, the situation is in flux...it's a mess with the potential to become worse. The problem is that too many Bush supporters have actually bought into the Fox News assurance that a civil war there is unlikely. It seems to me that the one way to ensure things will get worse is to continue ignoring the very real possibility of a civil war. Our incessant whitewashing of Iraq is one of the key ingredients for destabilization...it prevents us from switching to better, more realistic policies.
Here is a little fact that I've heard no one, not the media, not even the anti-war crowd, mention in all of this debating: During the 1990's, the Iraqi Kurds themselves had a civil war. In '94, for example, rival Kurdish groups had a land dispute and one thousand people ended up dying in the resulting battles. That was sort of the appetizer. During the late '90's the leader of one Kurdish political party (Baranzi) secretly requested military aid from Hussein. When the oppossing Kurdish leader learned of this he, for his part, secretly requested military aid from Iran. Both guys prepared for a war...both guys got it, and several thousand Kurds died as a result. (Who was this second Kurdish leader? The current president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani. Nice).
Anyway, back to the question: is the insurgency better than the dictatorship? Who knows? I honestly have no clue how the situation should be framed. It ultimately depends on what happens with the insurgency, and it's difficult to remain optimistic when our president has been such a consistent failure as a leader. Remember his absurd little victory lap after the statue fell? Bush genuinely thought the war was over, and the result was that zero post-war planning took place. Bad move in a place with so many inherent instabilities. I just hope that, as a country, we can somehow improve our attention span and understanding of history... we sorely lack both...a criticism more true of me than anyone else.
thanks
People are debating about whether or not Iraq is better off, now that Hussein is in prison. I think we should rephrase the question to clarify things.
Is a brutal insurgency better than a brutal dictator? I think it's quite possible to answer 'yes' to this question. But let's not get carried away and think that the insurgency is THAT much better. It's been going on for several years and it's atleast legitimate to wonder if things have actually improved a significant amount. Keep in mind: Hussein was a secular dictator. There is no question that he was as bad as advertised- he was a mass-murdering tyrant- but Bush's inept invasion has done little more than give terrorists a new chunk of geography to move around in...specifically religious terrorists. Why is the secular/religious distinction important? The relgious terrorists in Iraq are 1. indifferent to the murder of civilians (the Iraqi government estimates that the insurgency has killed more than 12,000 civilians so far) , and they are 2. Wahabi extremists, i.e. possibly not down with women and basic democracy. This particular brand of extremism has turned Saudi Arabia and other locations in the Middle East into terribly repressive countries, and now it is free to spread in Iraq...a country already populated by a 60% fundamentalist (Shiite) majority. That, my friends, is a very bad combination, and one that Hussein made impossible during his terrible reign. Or, to put this differently: in a post-9-11 era, the last thing we needed to do was give our biggest enemy a new and receptive audience.
But, given Hussein's record, I don't necessarily believe that Iraq is worse off. In my opinion, the situation is in flux...it's a mess with the potential to become worse. The problem is that too many Bush supporters have actually bought into the Fox News assurance that a civil war there is unlikely. It seems to me that the one way to ensure things will get worse is to continue ignoring the very real possibility of a civil war. Our incessant whitewashing of Iraq is one of the key ingredients for destabilization...it prevents us from switching to better, more realistic policies.
Here is a little fact that I've heard no one, not the media, not even the anti-war crowd, mention in all of this debating: During the 1990's, the Iraqi Kurds themselves had a civil war. In '94, for example, rival Kurdish groups had a land dispute and one thousand people ended up dying in the resulting battles. That was sort of the appetizer. During the late '90's the leader of one Kurdish political party (Baranzi) secretly requested military aid from Hussein. When the oppossing Kurdish leader learned of this he, for his part, secretly requested military aid from Iran. Both guys prepared for a war...both guys got it, and several thousand Kurds died as a result. (Who was this second Kurdish leader? The current president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani. Nice).
Anyway, back to the question: is the insurgency better than the dictatorship? Who knows? I honestly have no clue how the situation should be framed. It ultimately depends on what happens with the insurgency, and it's difficult to remain optimistic when our president has been such a consistent failure as a leader. Remember his absurd little victory lap after the statue fell? Bush genuinely thought the war was over, and the result was that zero post-war planning took place. Bad move in a place with so many inherent instabilities. I just hope that, as a country, we can somehow improve our attention span and understanding of history... we sorely lack both...a criticism more true of me than anyone else.
thanks
posted by Samwick @ 10:58 AM
1 Comments:
At 2:55 AM,
Christopher said…
As you said in your piece, whether the avarage Iraqi is better off now than he was under Saddam is debatable. But to make life better for the average Iraqi by getting rid of Saddam and establishing democracy weren’t the stated reasons for the US to go into Iraq, which was to get rid of any weapons of mass destruction the Iraqis might have.
Having acsertained that the Iraqis have no weapons of mass destruction, the stated object of the US’s invasion has now been achieved, which means that US troops in Iraq should now already have left. So why haven’t they?
The obvious answer is that weapons of mass destruction were simply an excuse for the invasion, whose real objective was to overthow Saddam and establish a permanent US military presence in Iraq, since the Saudis has asked the US to close down its bases in Saudi Arabia. So where else could these bases be re-located, but to Iraq.
It is important to remember that had the object of the invasion been to overthrow Saddam and make life nice for Iraqis and to establish democracy there, and all of that, the US congress wouldn’t have authorized the invasion.
It probably isn’t an overstatement to say that the US army is slowly bleeding to death in Iraq. One million US troops have already been rotated through Iraq, and because the US army is an all-volunteer force, and therefore relatively small in numbers, there is a limit to how many times soldiers can serve tours of duty there, especially since 40% of the soldiers now there are National Guard and reserves.
Think also about the fact that recruitment and re-enlistments are sharply down, and that 100,000 more US soldiers are still in Iraq than were planned for this time (the current 150,000 vs the planned 50,000) the US army’s predicament becomes obvious. It is probably true to say that the sort of war the US is now fighting in Iraq can’t be fought by means of an all-volunteer army, but only through the mechanism of a military draft.
So the choice before the US is quite simple: Either re-establish the draft, or leave Iraq.
If the US should leave now, it would still get its oil, because whoever took over in Iraq, no matter how unfriendly to the US, would still want to sell oil on the world markets. So there wouldn’t be any less oil around than there is now. And the mess which the US leaves behind in Iraq would be a matter for Iraqis and their neighbours to clean up. And they would step into the breach and clean it up because they have a vested interest in doing so.
Just as the sky didn’t fall in when the US left Vietnam, so it won’t fall in if the US simply declares victory forthwith in Iraq, and leaves.
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