In my never-ending battle to tear down the construct that cripple’s America’s political dialogues — the whole phony conservative-vs.-liberal shtick, which sometimes presents as a morbid tendency to identify with one or the other major political party — allow me to point out the following rather obvious truths:
- George Will is a conservative.
- George Will, because he is a conservative, has always viewed our involvement in Iraq with at best a jaundiced eye.
- His column on today’s op-ed page sets out a classic conservative argument.
Folks, I’ll say it again — wanting to nation-build in Iraq is not a conservative impulse. Iraq has been, since the beginning, a liberal exercise, rooted in a great optimism about what good ol’ American know-how — set as a fulcrum between good intentions and raw military power — can accomplish in this world.
Conservatives don’t do things like this. It’s too risky. The fact that so-called liberalism got all bollixed up in America by Vietnam, to the point that it became as conservative as anything else when it came to the use of military power, doesn’t change what words mean.
Now — just to help you through the next step — this does not mean that, because I support our enterprise in Iraq, I am a liberal. Like most rational, thinking people, I embrace conservative approaches to some situations, and liberal approaches to others. It just so happens that this is one of my liberal positions.
Ever wonder why Bush has so much trouble doing Iraq right? It’s because nation-building doesn’t come natural to a "conservative."
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Remind me of our goal in going into Iraq and our goal for Iraq now.
Then that means Mr. Bush is a liberal, at least when it comes to war. Because he might have believed that the overthrow of Hussein would allow the Iraqis to overnight overcome years of oppression and poor education (at least for the Shia majority), reject absolute power (the only form of government they know), embrace democracy and capitalism, and become our fast friends. I don’t think anyone else believed that fairytale. And I am suspicious that he was encouraged to believe the WDM myth as a reason for going into Iraq. Now, why would less credulous, more cynical conservative people in power be willing to invade Iraq? Oil? Contracts? And might not this have worked, if only Powell were the Sec. of Defense instead of Rummy? And if only we’d had some kind of plan about reconstructing Iraq? It seems to me that the biggest failure here on behalf of both ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ was a failure to understand the culture and the faith divisions in Iraq. Once the Sunni were overthrown, The Shiites were determined to grab power. Unfortunately, it’s the Sunnis who have the experience and education to run a government (or a large business). The Sunnis are also much more likely to appreciate the benefits of capitalism (at least Iraqi Sunnis). But, since we are trying to establish a democracy, we have the overwhelming majority, who are Shiite, determined to use their collective might to make sure things go their way. Unfortunately, their religious leaders take a very dim view of our culture, and the great majority of the Shiites in Iraq lack the education and experience to even question said religious leaders. So there we are. The longer we stay the more we are hated. But if we leave, we are likely to have precipitated one of the worst civil wars in history. If we leave it is quite likely that Iran and Iraq Shiites will join together to run out or kill anyone who is not Shia. That will make the rest of the Islamic world, which is mostly Sunni, furious at us. So our ‘liberal’ hubris, which leads us to believe that everyone wants to be just like us, and our ‘conservative’ hubris, that tends to think that our economic system is so great that we can turn a great profit if we can just get in there, have combined to leave us up to our tushes in alligators, without the equipment to drain the swamp.
Well, Karen gives a pretty good synopsis of our present circumstances and how we got here. (I would, however, argue with her implication using the term “WMD myth.” I know from firsthand experience just how strongly the case was made by the intelligence community and how many resources were expended and lives risked and lost in the honest effort by that same community and its supporting assets to get out in front of the lines in order to find and secure the truly expected WMD. But that’s another discussion.)
The question begs, though, now that we’re where we are, what should we do? She makes a strong case stating the downside consequences to withdrawal, but offers up no alternatives, nor does she seem to advocate “staying the course.” As it is, I happen to concur with her about the likely consequences to withdrawal.
However, beyond just “staying the course,” we must take a more proactive stance in the entire region, making the case in both words and deeds for the liberalization of Arab cultures and societies. Karen is, I believe, correct when she says that “the biggest failure… was a failure to understand the culture….” We continue to make this same mistake, however, “understanding” is not the same as “acceptance.” Here her argument breaks down.
She calls it “hubris” that we should desire a world more where cultures are more liberal in both their politics and economics. That is an unjust criticism. We are not wrong, as a society, to desire such an outcome, and in fact, commonality in all the things that make us parts of the same whole is the essence of “society.”
She, and many others in the West especially, seem to take the position that our efforts to effect change in other societies is, in any and all cases, somehow morally wrong. This is simply not correct. While there may be much that is admirable in Middle Eastern Arabian cultures, there is absolutely nothing wrong with our desire to make those same societies more like our own in order to secure and ensure our own wellbeing and prosperity.
As to claims that most people in the world do not actually want to be more like the United States, these are also wrong. One has only to look at the choices that the common people in other parts of the world make, of their own freewill when given the opportunity, to see that that most will chose liberal politics and economic and religious freedom every time over the status quo. The most vocal opponents of liberal Western culture are the ones in power with the most to lose, and not surprisingly, these same opponents are the ones who have the local influence to maintain their hold over their citizens.
That is what the civil war in Iraq is being fought over. It’s about power, having it and keeping it. It is not about what the common people of Iraq need or want.
Absolutely, SGM. And you raise a pivotal question, one that I should post as a separate thread:
Is liberalism (properly understood, as the Western system of free individuals living in open societies) worth fighting for? Or should liberals (in the international sense, once again, not the stupid way it’s used in domestic political arguments) decide that oppression is just as good, and just as acceptable, and just as tolerable, as their own way?
Invading Iraq, and bungling the post invasion occupation – or nation-building phase as you call it was neither a liberal nor conservative act. It was a stupid, ill-informed act carried out by conservative ideologues with a self-serving agenda. The true conservative you cite is the George Will who argued that the military didn’t kill enough Bathists and Iraqi soldiers. He also argued that Grant destroyed too much property and didn’t kill enough Confererate men during his famous march. The conservative positions he espouses favor no mercy extermination of those enemies that might cause trouble after hostilities cease. Call me a liberal,please!
SGM,
You cannot convince someone of your moral superiority by killing him/her. That convinces their family to find an effective way of killing you and your family, especially in the middle eastern value system (and in the hearts of most people, I think). Where we see political freedom, they see anarchy; where we see religious freedom, they see blasphemy and violence (Bush’s unfortunate use of the word ‘crusade’ put it under their noses); where we see cultural pluralism and individuality, they see licentiousness. And sometimes, in certain senses, they may be right. I don’t have any sure way out; maybe partitioning would work, but I’m not sure. I have to stand with that guy so long ago who, when he would have been defended by his friends, cried “Enough! No more of this!” ordered his friends to put up their swords, and allowed himself to be taken. The violence was horrible, and he took it all, rather than be an active participant….Actually I wouldn’t stand with him, I’m too chicken, but I wish I were brave enough to. My point is that we cannot make people believe in our moral, intellectual, spiritual, or economic superiority by bombing their country, killing their children, destroying their government, torturing prisoners, and leaving them with a broken infrastructure, and broken hearts.
Hey, it worked with the Nazis back in 45.
Not that I’m recommending it as a cure-all in all cases. I’m a Just War adherent. Pacifism doesn’t work for me because it’s just not true that war is never the answer. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s the only answer.
No, Brad. Its the only way to ensure that the hatred continues through the following generations. If It were the answer, the Christ could have raised armies.
It worked for them for awhile. Not forever. And may I point out, they were the invader, just like we are, now. They attacked a lot of countries who were inferior technologically. Just like we did. They tortured, just like we did. Check the mirror.
Read Rory Stewarts, Prince of the Marshes,, and then you will better understand why we could not get it straight in Iraq.
Karen, I look in the mirror all the time. I also look out the window. That gives me two places to look for my enemy. And when I’m the one to blame, I know it. But I don’t fool myself into blaming myself for everything.
Unfortunately, too many good and kind Americans of sensitive character do.
The Nazis invaded Poland, and France, and several other countries — including Russia, to their great regret. Sometime after those invasions, for reasons arising from a treaty agreement, they declared war on us. So you know what we did? After invading North Africa, Sicily, the Italian mainland, France, Holland and Belgium, WE INVADED GERMANY. And we were completely justified in doing so. But Germany never invaded us.
Saddam’s Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the Saudis felt threatened. We, in keeping with our own international agreements, went over to Saudi Arabia, and then proceeded to kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait. We refrained from invading and occupying Iraq for the next 12 years, in keeping with agreements that Saddam repeatedly and constantly violated.
In 2003, in keeping with a United Nations resolution, we went in and efficiently dismantled our enemy’s regime, and then promptly botched the aftermath.
Yes, I know that there are those who become exquisitely indignant at any comparison between today and 1944, but I have an observation that perhaps they won’t find TOO offensive:
It absolutely floors me that a country that had the experience of this nation in 1945 and thereafter could not figure out how to manage the aftermath of this small-scale war. Don’t you suppose there are buildings in Washington filled to the brim with the details, page by page by page, that showed how we managed to turn two hostile, oppressive, fascist nations into vital democracies?
Yes, Iraq is profoundly different. But what we did in Germany and Japan was different from anything that we or any other nation had done in history before that, and surely we have enough of that noble creativity left that we could have adapted the basic principles of that revolutionary experience to achieve, if not a similarly dramatic success, at least a better result than we have at present.
But somehow I get the impression that nobody in the Bush administration felt like digging through the filing cabinet and figuring out how to do the job. Too much like homework, I guess.
Anyway, back to my original launching point — it’s all much, much more complicated than who invaded whom. That’s true today, and it’s true also of that earlier conflict to which We Are Not Supposed to Make Comparisons.
War is neither all good nor all bad. It has its profound evils in abundance, but it also, under the right circumstances, has its virtues.
Brad,
That’s what George Will is saying. Some wars are necessary and some are wars of choice. Bush made a wrong choice and I hope the next president shows better judgment. However, like Morgan Freeman’s character told Jessica Tandy’s character: “You took that wrong turn with me. And you’re the one who’s holding the map.” The Congress had all the facts (and the power of the purse) and chose to let Bush invade Iraq. What do we do now and how do we not blunder again?
When is war necessary? Was the American Revolution necessary? Was the Civil War necessary? If the Civil War is over, then why is the Confederate Flag flying from a flagpole on the Statehouse grounds? What should Lincoln have done (before his assassination) to win the hearts and minds? What should Grant and Sherman have done to fight the battles?
How long does it take for a war to be over? Are the Shia and the Sunnis fighting over incidents that happened thousands of years ago? Or are they fighting over what happened yesterday, last week, 5 minutes ago, whathaveyou? And are the Sons of Confederate Veterans trying to fight the Civil War over again or are they engaging as a special interest group in our current political process?
We need to figure out when war is necessary and when it is not. Are we willing to go to war to stop Taiwan from seceding from China? Or is Taiwan its own country already and thus a possible China invasion is akin to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait? Are we willing to go to war with Iran or North Korea to stop them from developing (more, in NK’s case) nuclear weapons?
These are difficult questions, and we are better off for discussing them and for listening to good opinions, regardless of their political orientation. George Will, Thomas Friedman, and Leonard Pitts are genius writers, and we should always listen to what they have to say. Thank you for running their op-ed pieces.
And please keep fighting to get the Confederate Flag down from where it is absurdly flying from a flagpole on the Statehouse grounds. What’s the plan? Let’s get it moving. Thank you.
Regards,
Michael Rodgers
Columbia, SC
Brad,
Japan and Germany were in 1945 were much more homogeneous societies than the American South was in 1865 and than Iraq is now. We botch the aftermath, or reconstruction, if you will, when we are confronted with multi-ethnic/racial/religious societies and we do so because we continue to botch diversity in our society. We’re doing better than ever in a lot of ways with our internal diversity, and I am always optimistic and full of hope. I think getting that flag down will help — es[ecially if we do it in a way that respects soldiers and their families.
Regards,
Michael Rodgers
Columbia, SC
Well you can spin your apologies for American empire-building and Oil usurpation all you want. The bottom line is, and the difference between the hostilities in the 1940s and the hostilities since 2003 is: Germany was the aggressor then and we are the aggressor now.
War is, at best an admission of fear and a failure of diplomacy. It goes down hill from there. The positive results of WW II stem not so much from the war, but from how we built the peace. If I remember correctly (and I may not, my pre-conception memories tend to be fuzzy), after we declared war on the Japanese, Germany declared war on us as part of a treaty they had with Japan. And as you said, Germany was busy gobbling up every country it could find, or trying to. In Iraq, we were close to the only country who thought the UN resolution should be enforced at that point. And we invaded. Iraq wasn’t after anyone at that time. I suggest to you that our administration’s failure to have a post war plan was the direct result of its failure to decide why we were actually there to start with. It’s the indirect result of a president who is so inly blind that he fantasized an heroic result with himself as the major hero, and led us to invade a country whose leader had tried to have his father killed, a country that was of interest to others because of its oil, a country that was probably considered the most vulnerable, because it was still recovering from a recent previous war. I don’t think this leadership had a rational plan beyond, go in and kill/capture Hussein; therefore, here we are. And it’s gonna be hard to find a workable plan at this point, because we have no structure to build on.
Brad, I feel it necessary to challenge your assertion that “nobody in the Bush Administration felt like digging through the filing cabinet” to adapt the basic principles used in the rebuilding of Japan and Germany post-1945.
On the contrary, I think Bush and his neo-con cronies were all too eager to assume those post WWII experiences could easily be put to use in the post-Saddam phase in Iraq. Like you, they might have casually acknowledged that “yes, Iraq is profoundly different” and then still gone on to assume that the basic model of reconstruction could still apply.
Japan and Germany both had semi-democratic traditions (fledgling, yes, but there nevertheless) dating back years prior to WWII. For about 75 years Japan had had a regime that sought to completely embrace models of Western civilization. Japanese society was (and still remains) one of the most culturally homogeneous on the planet. There are a gazillion other ways in which the two scenarios are completely unrelated…others can enumerate them below if they wish.
The point is, those of us who opposed the Iraq invasion in the first place did so in part because we knew that “botching the aftermath” as you put it was a predictable, inextricable, and unavoidable consequence of embarking on such a bizarre and misguided deviation from pursuing anti-terrorist and anti-Al Qaeda measures. The empowering of Iran was one such easily foreseeable consequence.
Incidentally, had there not been a serious geopolitical and yes, nuclear threat from Stalinist Russia post-WWII (yes, I’ll say it—a much more authentic threat to the US than Al Qaeda was or ever will be), you can be sure that the enormous resources expended on the Marshall Plan would never have been allocated on such a scale.
Karen provides a rather sobering view of the situation in Iraq. By her own reckoning we can neither stay nor leave. The proof that our continuing to stay in Iraq will only fuel more violence and create serious animosity among the Arab people has almost certainly been proven beyond any doubt. In a few months everyone will recognize the utter failure of the surge and we’ll back at square 1 in the continuing “now what” for the stay the course crowd. Thus I concur entirely with Karen on the down side of staying.
But I must respectfully disagree with Karen’s assessment of what will happen if we leave. The completely honest answer to that is simply that we do not know what will happen. Just about everyone who wants to stay suggests that chaos and instability will reign supreme and that Iran will fill the power vacuum. Perhaps they are right. But what if they are wrong? There really is no evidence to suggest the region will become MORE unstable than what it already is. History suggests that when an imperialist power leaves a country the people find their way nicely. Iraq certainly didn’t become less stable have the British left in 1932.
Everyone should take a deep breath when it comes to Iraq, evaluate all the evidence, history and the fact that the U.S. is by far the most powerful nation on earth. After due consideration the only conclusion one can reach is that our best option is to set some sort of reasonable time table for a complete withdrawal of all our military assets from Iraq. That will allow the people enough time to chart their own course on their own terms. Will bad stuff happen? Probably some. But that happens anytime a major disruption takes place in a region. We can deal with it. Our military and intelligence is quite capable of defending America from any two-bit despot that may come along.
There really is no reason for this irrational fear that keeps cropping up in discussions about Iraq. In order to move forward we simply have to stop worrying about what MAY happen. Instead we should consider what IS happening and try to guide events toward a positive outcome that CAN happen. Staying the course is clearly the worst of all options.
Bud, I agree with you that the best thing we can do right now is to get out of Iraq. Although we should fix what we broke, the fact is, we can’t right now. Yeah, we’re in an impossible position. I think the current Sunni-Shia partisanship is going to cause problems, but our staying there isn’t going to do anything but drain our resources. Maybe, after awhile, things will calm down enough for us to start making the peace with whatever has emerged in that area of the world. I can only hope that we elect someone who is interested in dealing honestly with the rest of the world, instead of making macho gestures or machiavellian moves. Lets get someone in whose view of the world has a closer relationship to reality than this administrations.