April 13, 2004
SELF-DETERMINATION:
Our Last Real Chance: The way forward: The administration has to admit its mistakes and try to repair the damage. Here's how (Fareed Zakaria, 4/19/04, Newsweek)
In order to make possible a long-term commitment in Iraq, Washington needs to correct its mistakes. First, it must make the lives of Iraqis more secure. The experiment with hasty Iraqification has failed. Iraqi security forces and police should be pulled off the streets and given proper training. In the meanwhile, the United States will have to bulk up its forces—and make those forces engage in patrols and crime prevention and provide a general sense of law and order. The Third Infantry Division should be sent back into Iraq. The option of mobilizing reserves or transferring troops from other theaters of operation should not be ruled out. And after July, if the transition to Iraqi self-rule is administered by the United Nations, it should be possible to get other countries' troops involved. Obviously, the numbers offered will be much lower than they would have been a year ago. But something is better than nothing.Next, the cpa must find a way to create a legitimate interim government. Ayatollah Sistani can provide that legitimacy. America will have to concede to Sistani's objections to the current plans: he is unlikely to endorse any transfer to the current Governing Council, or even a modestly expanded version of it. He has objected to a three-person presidency, and to giving the Kurds a veto over the constitution. He also wants restrictions on the powers of the interim government, and an understanding that the interim constitution can be amended. Many of Sistani's objections are valid, others less so. But in any event, right now his blessing is crucial.
This is not impossible. For now, the interests of Sistani and the United States are aligned. Moqtada al-Sadr is trying to assert power and sideline Sistani and the other grand ayatollahs of Najaf. Most of the other Shia leaders dislike al-Sadr. They need to come together and marginalize him, but they can't do so openly. If they help the Coalition and create a legitimate Iraqi government, al-Sadr will find little popular support for attacks against it. At that point, perhaps al-Sadr should be co-opted by giving his faction a seat at the table. All this will require extremely delicate negotiations, which will have to be carried out by the U.N.'s Lakhdar Brahimi, whom Sistani respects. It is ironic that an administration so hostile to the U.N. finds that it is at the mercy of the U.N. for its salvation.
To defang the Sunni insurgency, military operations will not be enough. Force alone has rarely been able to crush an insurgency with popular support. The U.S. must bribe, cajole and co-opt various Sunni leaders to separate the insurgents from the local populations. It's easier said than done, since there are few non-Baathist Sunnis of any stature. (They were all killed.) But the tribal sheiks, former low-level Baathists and regional leaders should be courted assiduously. In addition, money must start flowing into Iraqi hands. Too much of the money being spent in Iraq is going to American firms. Iraqi unemployment must keep falling fast if people are to believe that their lives are getting better.
Washington's grander plans for a new Iraq will have to be put on hold. The goal for now is to create a stable, credible, even popular Iraqi grouping to which Washington can hand over power.
If Ayatollah Sistani is the most important figure on the scene--seemingly undeniable--and his interests coincide with ours--which if they don't we should never have launched the war--but to co-operate with us tends to delegitimize anyone who does so, why not allow him to dictate terms to us? It would empower our ally while getting us off the hook--all we'd have to do is swallow a little pride. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 13, 2004 4:35 PM
Two words that I have absolutely come to loathe in the past year and a half are "legitimacy" and "destabilize". They are thrown around as if referring to them means something, when the arguments really are about things like WHAT is legitimate, and WHETHER stability of the status quo is desirable. Too often these words are used to skip over these important questions.
Posted by: brian at April 13, 2004 7:36 PMIf he's a Muslim, his interests cannot possibly coincide with ours. He's not even an Iraqi Muslim, for Pete's sake.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 13, 2004 7:53 PM"to co-operate with us tends to delegitimize anyone who does so..."
Precisely so.
And it should have been understood, and made clear, by the Bush administration from the start. (Though it's not easy to accept, people being what they are, if you're an American or Brit, etc., soldier who's gone in there and put your life on the line; or if you're someone who backs the effort---but this is also precisely why the campaign should have been stressed as a necessary job for the sake of American---and western, not that Europe might wish to recognize it---self-defense; since selling it as a campaign for Iraqi liberation, even if this is also true and part of the equation, is absolutely certain to invite bad feelings when the Iraqis don't appear to be grateful for the effort (and even if they are, too many can't "afford" to express it).... But that's how it is, and if you're looking for a general feeling of gratitude in the neck of the woods known as the Middle East, you're barking up the wrong tree).
Yep, that's the way it is. In fact, for Sistani (and any other in a similar position) to create as much legitimacy for himself as he can, you will find him, necessarily, criticizing America and Americans at every turn. Whenever, wherever. (Assasination attempts have already been made on Sistani's life and you can bet he's a marked man, though it should be clear that this is due less to his relationship with the US than it is on the nature of Iraqi power plays, and the insatiable strategic desire of Iran to pull strings and thwart Iraqi stability, so as to bog the US down in Iraq and keep them distracted from the mullah's nuclear program, while the latter throw a few bones to the Europeans and el-Bardawi).
Thus, one of Americans roles in this effort, loathe as we are to admit it, and much as we find it incomprehensible, is to provide Iraqis with the necessary focus of their anger, rage, disappointment, frustration. We, who have liberated them, must also serve as the safety valve of their anger.
Such is life. And who said it was fair?
But Americans have learned that it's results that count. And even if it would be nice to be thanked, or if not thanked, at least acknowledged,
if America can suck it up and say to herself that the outcome is what is truly important (and the hell with gratitude, cultural niceties and common decency); if America can once again rely on that sense of pragmatism that has made her a great nation, and be content that Iraq has
achieved some sort of stability and can move forward, then that sense of accomplishment, and not Iraqi gratitude, will have to suffice. That, together with having been able to thwart terror and tyranny.
Knowing that terror will not lie down and die, but will, like water, continually seek the path of least resistance to wreak as much death and destruction as it can. And is allowed to.
Not terribly hopeful, but that's the way it is. The WOT, really, has just begun.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at April 14, 2004 2:30 AMIf Muslims were in the gratitude business, they'd have thanked us for saving their children from the loathsome parasite Guinea worm -- which they'd have done pre-Sept. 11.
That said, there's a difference between lack of gratitude and being shot in the head.
I believe that of all intellectual capacities, the ability to understand strategic imperatives is the rarest.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 14, 2004 2:35 AMHarry:
Yes, the vapid would rather shoot back out of emotion than hold fire and determine the course of a nation.
Posted by: oj at April 14, 2004 8:07 AM