MORE SCRUTABILITY:

A Notion at War (DAVID RIEFF, 12/14/03, NY Times Magazine)

President George H.W. Bush's big idea about Iraq, rolling back Saddam Hussein, gave way to President Clinton's big idea about Iraq, containment, which gave way to President George W. Bush's big idea about Iraq, Iraqi liberation. But as events have shown, the liberation of Iraq alone hasn't solved the problems there, so as is often the case in Washington, one reigning idea has gradually transformed into another reigning big idea: Iraqification, the notion that what is needed to improve the situation there (and bring American troops home) is a quick transfer of control over security and the political process to the Iraqis.

For many Americans old enough to remember the Vietnam War, the term Iraqification carries the same baggage of defeat and withdrawal that Vietnamization did a generation ago. For others, it simply seems like a sensible response to the difficulties the United States has encountered in Iraq in the aftermath of the ousting of Saddam Hussein -- a sensible midterm correction or readjustment of America's original postwar plan. Still others, notably within the Bush administration, insist that Iraqification was at the heart of the U.S. government's planning for a postwar Iraq from the start, even if the public emphasis had been elsewhere.

But if opinions are mixed about what, if anything, the recent enthusiasm in Washington for Iraqification tells us about America's success or failure in Iraq, there is little question that it has become the reigning idea about how Iraq's future will be organized. It is an idea, however, with a contradiction at its core.

The problem is less that different people use Iraqification to pass different judgments on the war but that the idea means so many different things to so many different people.

First the Left convinced themselves that George W. Bush was some kind of King Leopold, seeking permanent colonies, now they've convinced themselves that letting the colonials run their own countries is a reversal of policy. The alternative to these notions is the belief that the President wanted Saddam gone so that Iraqis could govern themselves. One view comports with exactly what he's said all along. The other requires you to disbelieve everything he's said even though he went ahead and did it. That seems not a problem with him, but with them.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 13, 2003 8:16 AM