WHY DON'T THE ANTI-FASCISTS HATE ISLAMO-FASCISM?:

Peace is not the answer: Calls to end Iraq's bloodshed are hardly noble when those who would triumph slaughter teachers as children weep. (William Shawcross, October 9, 2005, LA Times)

IT SEEMS UNLIKELY that many of the so-called peace marchers who trooped through Washington and London two weekends back listened on Thursday — at least not with an open mind or sympathy — to George Bush's cogent explanation of why coalition troops are fighting and dying in Iraq.

You did not see in those demonstrations, after all, many banners reading, "Support Iraq's New Constitution," "No to Jihad" or "Stop Suicide Bombers." The crimes committed daily against the Iraqi people by other Arabs who wish to re-enslave them seem to be of little interest to Michael Moore, Jane Fonda and their followers. Rage against the daily assaults on children, women, anyone, by Islamo-fascists and ordinary national fascists is not fashionable. Only alleged American crimes are cool to decry. [...]

Iraq was always complex — it is now vibrantly so. Despite the terrorist campaign to kill it, the country has become a school for free expression and for government elected by the people. The dread silence of half a century has given way to millions of opinions — as in the U.S., or any society that sees itself as free.

Sunni negotiators have refused to accept the draft constitution. That is certainly a setback. Now Sunnis' grievances — many of which are valid — need to be addressed peacefully. Fortunately, political discussion never stops. Three hundred conferences on the constitution have been held throughout the country, allowing 50,000 people to express their views. The 150 new, uncensored newspapers, the scores of radio stations and half a dozen TV channels that have been set up are all talking about this and other matters of political progress.

The constitution may not be perfect. But, as the commentator Amir Taheri points out: "This is still the most democratic constitution offered to any Muslim nation so far."

That is thanks to the sacrifice of Casey Sheehan and others.

Mr. Shawcross's book, Allies, affords an especially good look at the degree to which Tony Blair and George W. Bush were driven primarily by moral concerns and at how little Mr. Bush cared about the WMD question, merely humoring Mr. Blair and Colin Powell in that regard.

MORE:
Welcome to the Occupation a review of THE ASSASSINS' GATE: America in Iraq By George Packer ( Gideon Rose, Washington Post)

How could the strongest power in modern history, going to war against a much lesser opponent at a time and place of its own choosing, find itself stuck a few years later, hemorrhaging blood and treasure amid increasing chaos? Americans will be debating the answer for decades, and as they do, they are unlikely to find a better guide than George Packer's masterful new The Assassins' Gate .

In the run-up to the 2003 war, three rationales were offered for the invasion: fear of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, links between Iraq and terrorism, and a desire to bring liberal democracy to Iraq and the Middle East at large. The first was essentially an honest mistake; almost all knowledgeable observers thought Iraq was hiding prohibited weapons programs, although they disagreed about how to handle the problem and the fears proved overblown. The second was essentially a dishonest one; there were never any good reasons to think Iraq was connected to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or likely to work closely with al Qaeda. The third rationale, meanwhile, was a high-stakes gamble. Saddam Hussein's tyranny was just as brutal as the Bush administration charged, and the Middle East's general economic, social and political stagnation had indeed helped fuel the rise of violent Islamist extremism. Yet few experts thought it would be possible to transform Iraq's domestic structures quickly or easily, to say nothing of sparking a regional democratic revolution.

In this book, Packer, a staff writer at the New Yorker, tells the story of this third rationale -- how it emerged, how the Bush administration tried to implement it and how things turned out on the ground. The United States would not have gone to war just to spread democracy in the Middle East (as even the war's intellectual architect, former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, acknowledged), but the case for democratization played an important role in buttressing the other two arguments and was the most exciting aspect of the endeavor for neoconservatives and liberals alike. When WMD stockpiles failed to materialize, moreover, the quest for democracy became the prime rationale for ongoing operations, gaining greater significance after the fact than it had beforehand. All this makes Packer's volume important and timely.

Actually it was WMD that was an afterthought and the most legitimate criticism of the Administration is that they didn't understand that to follow a war of liberation with an occupation was incoherent on its face. The failure to quickly turn over sovereignty and day-to-day governance to a transitional mainly-Shi'ite government was our biggest mistake.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 9, 2005 9:45 AM