In the months preceding the intervention in Iraq, there were almost as many arguments within the "regime-change" constituency as there were between it and the "peace" camp. On both sides, indeed, some internal disagreements were subordinated to the main quarrel. The most enduring suspicion, among the Arab and Kurdish supporters of an attacking policy, was that elements within the American government would seek to keep them from harvesting an "Iraq for the Iraqis" victory. Hence the long tussle between Ahmad Chalabi and the CIA, and hence also the enduring memory among Kurds of the times when they had been used and dumped in the past. It doesn't take much to bring these old suspicions back to life and the appointment of Paul Bremer, latterly of the grand old firm of Kissinger Associates, to a proconsulship could almost have been designed to revive them.
To some extent, every faction in this debate has been looking down the barrel of a rifle that might backfire. If no weapons of mass destruction are ever unearthed, for example, that still doesn't mean that Iraq even attempted to comply with the terms of U.N. Resolution 1441 and it still makes nonsense of those who prophesied an apocalyptic outcome to any invasion. (This self-canceling propaganda has occurred before: Those who argued that the "real" reason for the removal of the Taliban was the building of a Unocal pipeline have yet to present any hard empirical evidence of such a sinister pipeline being laid, or even planned. Meanwhile, previous opponents of a U.S.-led presence in Afghanistan send me gloating e-mails every day, showing that the state of affairs in that country is far from ideal and that Washington's interest in it is lapsing. Unless this means that they prefer Afghanistan the way it was, as some of them doubtless do, I hope they realize that they seem to be arguing for more and better intervention there, not for less.)
It is, however, possible to be consistent and somewhat contradictory. If the U.S. occupation authorities had been shooting down looters and Baathist mercenaries, they would have been portrayed as repressive and cruel. If they fail to do so, they are indicted for negligence. OK, that's what happens when you assume the responsibility for someone else's country. No self-pity is allowable on Washington's part, and it doesn't matter that much of the criticism is itself inconsistent, or uttered in bad faith. It's not as if the occupation came as a surprise to those who had planned it.
This is what makes the reversal of policy on a provisional Iraqi government made up by, for, and of Iraqis so unjustifiable. It might have been all right to come right out and say: Forget about this until we Americans are the masters of law and order and providers of facilities. But that was not what was actually said. Dates were set, meetings were convened, and deadlines were announced. This also happened, as some forget, before the intervention, when a gathering of Iraqi oppositionists in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah was called off—not by the participants but by Bush's envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, and not for any political reason but on the ostensible excuse of "security." (Sulaymaniyah was no more or less "secure," as a location, than it had been before the original invitation was issued. Indeed, it was picked in the first place because it was as near to the frontier of Saddam's dominion as one could get.)
So, does the Bremer policy represent a change of plan, or the reinstatement of an original plan? Some might be tempted to argue that it's too early to say, and that anybody who judges by the latest headline is asking to be refuted in a few weeks. I speak as one who did not believe the preposterous "ring of steel," "Baghdadograd" stories in March-April, but who did believe the first accounts of the looting of the National Museum. Many of the latter turned out to be wrong, not just in point of fact, but wrong in every way a report can be wrong.
The debate over an Iraqi provisional government, however, seems to me to be important in a way that is independent of any stray or random, or indeed any recently verifiable, set of facts. It is an argument that has deep prewar roots, in the origins of the whole "regime-change" debate, which managed temporarily to split the difference between two groups in the nation's capital. There were always those who on their better days rather disliked Saddam but didn't quite trust the Iraqis and Kurds, and there were always those who truly hated Saddam and who thought that any Iraqi-determined outcome would be better than the Saddamized status quo. This was not, and is not, a difference of emphasis.
At the present moment, it seems that control freaks have assumed power. It's a defense of a kind to say that control freaks are better than Baathist megalomaniacs. It's a short-term defense to argue that water and electricity come first. It might even be a defense of a kind to say that control-freakery is preferable to factionalism and communal or intercommunal strife. But it's not a very persuasive defense, because there will never be an Iraq that is composed of docile citizens who all see the same things in the same way, and because the dispelling of that very fantasy was part of the point to begin with.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair
and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution. Remarks from the Fray:
…There is little else to say about a column that makes no specific criticism of American policy in Iraq, advances no recommendations as to a better policy, but still attempts to convey the impression that the current policy is wrong. Our problem in Iraq now might be summarized in the following way. For the war, the military planned for the worst case, but the for the peace the civilians overseeing the military planned for the best case. This is not to say they ignored clear warning signs that after the Baathist government collapsed nothing in Iraq would work; we don't have many precedents for this kind of situation, after all. Rather, the idea that a brief transitional occupation could be followed by the advent of a stable government chosen by Iraqis and a withdrawal of most US forces in time for the 2004 campaign rested on the assumption that absolutely everything that could go right, would go right.This assumption is never sound at any time, and is particularly unfortunate in this case. Wishing to appear magnanimous (a desire that already caused one disaster in Iraq, after the first Gulf War) and respectful of our own ideas of self-determination, the allies look confused and ineffectual. Better to have asserted Anglo-American authority with brutal clarity right from the start, and step back from it as conditions improved -- but having erred at first, the Bush administration is seeking to recover in the only way possible. Frankly, I doubt Christopher Hitchens really objects to this, and instead have the unworthy thought that what really bugs him is Paul Bremer's past association with Henry Kissinger. Too bad.
--Zathras
(To reply, click here)
i agree with christopher hitchens that its a shame the US will be involved in iraq longer than planned (whatever that means). but what are the alternatives? which of the following groups would you wish to have in charge if we left next week:
- unreformed ba'ath party members, some apparently guarding saddam and qusay until they can return to power.
- shi'ite clerics, who are already inciting mob arson directed at the businesses and homes of those they disapprove of.
- the kurds, who fall far short numerically and geographically from representing any significant part of the iraqi people.
- iraqi exiles returning after 20 years abroad, who wrote papers for think tanks and foreign policy journals, but provided nothing meaningful toward the overthrow of the hussein regime?
i don't see ANY of these alternatives representing democracy, religious tolerance, free markets, enfranchisement for women, or the rule of law. i would argue that several of the war's major objectives have yet to be attained:
1 - bringing the husseins to justice
2 - disarming the fedayeen, republican guards, and other militias/factions/thugs
3 - ensuring WMD don't exist…
let's not get ahead of ourselves and permit yet another repressive, intolerant regime to take power in iraq while all that potential for raining grief upon iraqi civilians and coalition forces remains to be resolved.
--baltimore-aureole
(To reply, click here)
The problem with criticizing the Bush administration with sloppy follow up is that it presupposes there was a better method of follow up available. It presupposes that there is a way to avoid mistakes when you are thrust into the role of rebuilding both a government and an infrastructure for a nation. Nation building is not quite so straightforward. The Bush administration has said repeatedly, to its credit, that a long tough road will follow - that this phase will not be easy. Of course, it is politically wise to express caution here, but on the other hand, the caution is justified. The Bush administration could not know how much damage would be done, what the full extent of the Iraqi economy would be like, who the new "players" would be, and what neighboring nations would do. Soldiers could not be prepared one day for war and the next for looting. They could not know where they would find good will and they could not know how much of that good will is splintered between rival factions. This is not to say the administration has not made any mistakes. It is instead to say that it is unclear that the mistakes made were avoidable, without the help of hindsight. Finally, if mistakes are indeed made, an effective decision procedure is needed to rectify them. The administration will be judged on its ability to adapt to the changes in the situation.
--TheQuietMan
(To reply, click here)
So now, at last, Hitchens is willing -- or forced -- to find some iota of fault with the war regime. Perhaps he's paving in advance the road he's soon going to have to take (let's call it "Crow Pie Lane") as one by one his predictions fall, domino-like, and his war justifications and sneering dismissals of war opponents get shown up for the rhetorical grandstanding we all knew they were….Hitchens really can't even seem to bring himself to admit that there's a substantive policy problem, positing it instead as a public relations issue. To wit, "If only we'd told them first that we were going to run their country indefinitely with Saddam-style despotism, all would be well."….Those of us who actually read the news will be curious to know just what…Hitchens is talking about with this mysterious "two camps" dichotomy in the Bush administration. Who is he talking about? Likely, the answer is as knowable as how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, because the whole premise is fatally flawed. That premise is that there was even anyone in the Bush administration (outside the State Department) who gave a rat's ass to begin with what post-war Iraq would look like. These guys hadn't planned for what could happen two days after their orgiastic little weapons display, much less two months. Hitchens, however, having failed to find sufficient material to warp all out of recognition, is forced instead to invent this alternate reality where he tells us there was an actual vigorous debate going on in the pro-war camp about how to govern Iraq.
--James
(To reply, click here)
Many critics of the war suggested at the outset that it was another Vietnam, one of the least radical critics Gen Barry McCaffrey, suggested 3,000 American casualties, Peter Arnett, anti-war activist/objective journalist, suggested in week two that US war plan wasn't working, of course in week three Iraq fell. A month into the rebuilding this same crowd, with equal certainty has pronounced the rebuilding of Iraq a failure. It took several years to rebuild Germany, one of the most advance countries in the world before the war, so I think it's fair to grant at least a few years before we pronounce Iraq hopelessly neglected. Incidentally, how can anyone reasonably expect Afghanistan to be rebuilt before the World Trade Center?
--captainsensible
(To reply, click here)
…To set the record straight, the vast majority of those opposed to the war were not concerned with US military defeat, a prospect that never occurred to anyone, either pro-or anti-war. It was the inevitability of violent chaos *after* the war that led some of us to fear a looming quagmire, not any prospect of defeat on the battlefield. And so far, at least, a quagmire is indeed what we seem to have gotten ourselves into. The possibility of real disaster looms ever larger. As for the Bush Admin's motivations for the war, the concerns were and are 1) that the allegations of wmd were overblown and being used to force a war that could've been avoided. No matter how Hitchens tries to talk around this point, the increasing likelihood that there were no wmd shows that 1441 had [or should have] worked as the Europeans intended, not as the White House wished, ie, the UN resolution [should have] served the cause of disarmament, not as a bald pretext for invasion; and 2) that the self-confident determination to "democratize" Iraq was also nothing but a pretext for an invasion that was desired for other, more political reasons, more "control-freaky" reasons. So what exactly are the US govt's intentions in Iraq? Maybe Kissinger knows. Funny that Hitchens would start mentioning Henry's name when he's grasping for justifications to double-back on his recent warmongering. He needs to be reminded that almost all the crimes of the Nixon/Kissinger regime were prompted by their obsession with secrecy and deception in the campaign to justify an unnecessary war. And as was pointed out by many observers at the time, the nine-month runup to this Iraq war was suffused by cloak-and-dagger bs from beginning to end: from the phony "documents" "proving" Iraq's attempts to buy nuclear materials in Africa to the hyped up wmd charges [for which, apparently, we have Hitchens' hero, Chalabi, to blame] to the fatuous claims of wanting to "save" the Iraqis and deliver them to a brighter future. Hence, Hitchens has no excuse for his blindness. If his head wasn't so bloated with media stardom, that is, if he was still a truth-seeking, critical-thinking journalist, he would've seen long before now what a bunch of liars his neocon "debating partners" really are.
--MarkHaag
(To reply, click here)
(5/28)
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Remarks from the Fray:
…There is little else to say about a column that makes no specific criticism of American policy in Iraq, advances no recommendations as to a better policy, but still attempts to convey the impression that the current policy is wrong. Our problem in Iraq now might be summarized in the following way. For the war, the military planned for the worst case, but the for the peace the civilians overseeing the military planned for the best case. This is not to say they ignored clear warning signs that after the Baathist government collapsed nothing in Iraq would work; we don't have many precedents for this kind of situation, after all. Rather, the idea that a brief transitional occupation could be followed by the advent of a stable government chosen by Iraqis and a withdrawal of most US forces in time for the 2004 campaign rested on the assumption that absolutely everything that could go right, would go right.This assumption is never sound at any time, and is particularly unfortunate in this case. Wishing to appear magnanimous (a desire that already caused one disaster in Iraq, after the first Gulf War) and respectful of our own ideas of self-determination, the allies look confused and ineffectual. Better to have asserted Anglo-American authority with brutal clarity right from the start, and step back from it as conditions improved -- but having erred at first, the Bush administration is seeking to recover in the only way possible. Frankly, I doubt Christopher Hitchens really objects to this, and instead have the unworthy thought that what really bugs him is Paul Bremer's past association with Henry Kissinger. Too bad.
--Zathras
(To reply, click here)
i agree with christopher hitchens that its a shame the US will be involved in iraq longer than planned (whatever that means). but what are the alternatives? which of the following groups would you wish to have in charge if we left next week:
- unreformed ba'ath party members, some apparently guarding saddam and qusay until they can return to power.
- shi'ite clerics, who are already inciting mob arson directed at the businesses and homes of those they disapprove of.
- the kurds, who fall far short numerically and geographically from representing any significant part of the iraqi people.
- iraqi exiles returning after 20 years abroad, who wrote papers for think tanks and foreign policy journals, but provided nothing meaningful toward the overthrow of the hussein regime?
i don't see ANY of these alternatives representing democracy, religious tolerance, free markets, enfranchisement for women, or the rule of law. i would argue that several of the war's major objectives have yet to be attained:
1 - bringing the husseins to justice
2 - disarming the fedayeen, republican guards, and other militias/factions/thugs
3 - ensuring WMD don't exist…
let's not get ahead of ourselves and permit yet another repressive, intolerant regime to take power in iraq while all that potential for raining grief upon iraqi civilians and coalition forces remains to be resolved.
--baltimore-aureole
(To reply, click here)
The problem with criticizing the Bush administration with sloppy follow up is that it presupposes there was a better method of follow up available. It presupposes that there is a way to avoid mistakes when you are thrust into the role of rebuilding both a government and an infrastructure for a nation. Nation building is not quite so straightforward. The Bush administration has said repeatedly, to its credit, that a long tough road will follow - that this phase will not be easy. Of course, it is politically wise to express caution here, but on the other hand, the caution is justified. The Bush administration could not know how much damage would be done, what the full extent of the Iraqi economy would be like, who the new "players" would be, and what neighboring nations would do. Soldiers could not be prepared one day for war and the next for looting. They could not know where they would find good will and they could not know how much of that good will is splintered between rival factions. This is not to say the administration has not made any mistakes. It is instead to say that it is unclear that the mistakes made were avoidable, without the help of hindsight. Finally, if mistakes are indeed made, an effective decision procedure is needed to rectify them. The administration will be judged on its ability to adapt to the changes in the situation.
--TheQuietMan
(To reply, click here)
So now, at last, Hitchens is willing -- or forced -- to find some iota of fault with the war regime. Perhaps he's paving in advance the road he's soon going to have to take (let's call it "Crow Pie Lane") as one by one his predictions fall, domino-like, and his war justifications and sneering dismissals of war opponents get shown up for the rhetorical grandstanding we all knew they were….Hitchens really can't even seem to bring himself to admit that there's a substantive policy problem, positing it instead as a public relations issue. To wit, "If only we'd told them first that we were going to run their country indefinitely with Saddam-style despotism, all would be well."….Those of us who actually read the news will be curious to know just what…Hitchens is talking about with this mysterious "two camps" dichotomy in the Bush administration. Who is he talking about? Likely, the answer is as knowable as how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, because the whole premise is fatally flawed. That premise is that there was even anyone in the Bush administration (outside the State Department) who gave a rat's ass to begin with what post-war Iraq would look like. These guys hadn't planned for what could happen two days after their orgiastic little weapons display, much less two months. Hitchens, however, having failed to find sufficient material to warp all out of recognition, is forced instead to invent this alternate reality where he tells us there was an actual vigorous debate going on in the pro-war camp about how to govern Iraq.
--James
(To reply, click here)
Many critics of the war suggested at the outset that it was another Vietnam, one of the least radical critics Gen Barry McCaffrey, suggested 3,000 American casualties, Peter Arnett, anti-war activist/objective journalist, suggested in week two that US war plan wasn't working, of course in week three Iraq fell. A month into the rebuilding this same crowd, with equal certainty has pronounced the rebuilding of Iraq a failure. It took several years to rebuild Germany, one of the most advance countries in the world before the war, so I think it's fair to grant at least a few years before we pronounce Iraq hopelessly neglected. Incidentally, how can anyone reasonably expect Afghanistan to be rebuilt before the World Trade Center?
--captainsensible
(To reply, click here)
…To set the record straight, the vast majority of those opposed to the war were not concerned with US military defeat, a prospect that never occurred to anyone, either pro-or anti-war. It was the inevitability of violent chaos *after* the war that led some of us to fear a looming quagmire, not any prospect of defeat on the battlefield. And so far, at least, a quagmire is indeed what we seem to have gotten ourselves into. The possibility of real disaster looms ever larger. As for the Bush Admin's motivations for the war, the concerns were and are 1) that the allegations of wmd were overblown and being used to force a war that could've been avoided. No matter how Hitchens tries to talk around this point, the increasing likelihood that there were no wmd shows that 1441 had [or should have] worked as the Europeans intended, not as the White House wished, ie, the UN resolution [should have] served the cause of disarmament, not as a bald pretext for invasion; and 2) that the self-confident determination to "democratize" Iraq was also nothing but a pretext for an invasion that was desired for other, more political reasons, more "control-freaky" reasons. So what exactly are the US govt's intentions in Iraq? Maybe Kissinger knows. Funny that Hitchens would start mentioning Henry's name when he's grasping for justifications to double-back on his recent warmongering. He needs to be reminded that almost all the crimes of the Nixon/Kissinger regime were prompted by their obsession with secrecy and deception in the campaign to justify an unnecessary war. And as was pointed out by many observers at the time, the nine-month runup to this Iraq war was suffused by cloak-and-dagger bs from beginning to end: from the phony "documents" "proving" Iraq's attempts to buy nuclear materials in Africa to the hyped up wmd charges [for which, apparently, we have Hitchens' hero, Chalabi, to blame] to the fatuous claims of wanting to "save" the Iraqis and deliver them to a brighter future. Hence, Hitchens has no excuse for his blindness. If his head wasn't so bloated with media stardom, that is, if he was still a truth-seeking, critical-thinking journalist, he would've seen long before now what a bunch of liars his neocon "debating partners" really are.
--MarkHaag
(To reply, click here)
(5/28)