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Sifting Through Five Years of WarKanan Makiya takes readers' questions about Iraq.


Posted Thursday, March 20, 2008, at 3:20 PM ET

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Kanan Makiya: No. I was not referring to the Bush adminsitration.

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Helena, Mont.: I knew there were atrocities going on in Iraq long before 1990; the U.S. was complicit with Saddam on some things—like giving him chemical weapons. But it is not up to the U.S. to right wrongs in other countries—it is up to the people of those countries. The problem with Iraq is that those against Saddam could not cooperate with each other—the Shia could not cooperate with the Kurds, nor with disaffected Sunni. I hope and pray that we get out of Iraq as soon as possible and don't stay another five or 10 years.

Kanan Makiya: There are no obligations. But we live in a world that since WWII has increasingly felt itself connected with the fate of other peoples in far away lands. No one would have dreamed of intervening to stop gross abuses in the 19th century. Since then however the Red Cross, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch have appeared on the scenen, indicating that we are expanding our previsoly very narrow definitions of who we are and who the other is.

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Princeton, N.J.: You keep going on about Saddam's atrocities, but there were equally bad acts occurring in Rwanda, Congo, Darfur, etc. What about Saudi Arabia, where torture and beheadings are commonplace and woman are in virtual slavery? Surely even the acts of Saddam do not justify what we have done to the country of Iraq.

Kanan Makiya: The U.S. has not committed atrocities in Iraq that are even remotely comparable to what Saddam did.

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chamsticks: The only good thing to come from this war should be the realization that one nation can't do it by itself. I don't remember when the U.S. became the sheriff of the U.N. or we voted to spend our tax dollars on upholding U.N. resolutions. So many dictatorships, so much misrule. Only an international body of some sort can hope to deal with it; when one nation goes it alone it becomes so obscenely expensive in so many ways that the nation itself will become its own dictatorship, as we seem to be lurching toward. Saddam the torturer being fought by a nation newly won over to the virtues of torture ... I'll know it's well on the way if not already here if the Republicans are re-elected.

Kanan Makiya: In general I agree with you. But surely it is better that one nation tries to do good—even if it fails—than that we wait for this international body to come into existence. Unfortunately the U.N. let the people of Iraq down, repeatedly.

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Peaks Island, Maine: Do you believe that the benefits of the war will ultimately outweigh its costs?

Kanan Makiya: I honestly don't know at this point in time. It also all depends on how long "ultimately" is. I think of Iraq as a kind of Pandora's box, the lid of which the U.S. knocked open. The hope was that politicians could artfully manage the furies that were bound to emerge. That proved unfounded. The furies are now out there doing their terrible work. Eventually they will be tamed. The whole of history is evidence of that. But how long is "eventually"?

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Ottawa, Canada : Would you have supported the overthrow of Saddam and his government if he was replaced by another dictator more friendly to the U.S.? Do you think that if this had happened, the situation in Iraq today would be better than it is today?

Kanan Makiya: The U.S. did think of replacing Saddam with some army officers. At the time (2002-03) I bristled with anger at the idea. I still would not accept it. And yet I cannot deny that it just might have led to a situation that was better than the one we face at the present. The point however is that one can never know such a thing. One can only work with what one thinks is right, morally speaking, at the time. Consider also the fact that the army was in all likelihood incapable of assuming power in 2003. We did not know this at the time. But the way it just fell apart suggests that its erosion as an institution long preceded the war of 2003

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Richmond, Va.: Couldn't Iraq , pre-invasion, have been compared to Yugoslavia when Tito was in power, with a strong man holding three separate factions together? As soon as Tito was gone, Yugoslavia broke down into civil war, the same as Iraq did as soon as Saddam was gone. I remember hearing commentators before the war mention this as a possible scenario, so it was predictable. Thoughts?

Kanan Makiya: Yes it was a possible scenario. But it was not inevitable. Artful politics could have avoided it, as it could have avoided it in Yugoslavia. To change the course of a polity that has been 3o years in the making, is never a knowable enterprise. It is all about different possibilities that the behavior of individuals—Iraqis and Americans—effect one way or the other.

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New York: Thank you for chatting today. Tom Ricks, in a recent chat, said that he had come to the conclusion that more troops would not have helped at the outset of the Iraq war. He contends that U.S. troops' heavy-handed treatment of Iraqi citizens only drove them to the insurgency. More troops would have compounded the problem. Your thoughts?

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Kanan Makiya was born in Baghdad and now teaches at Brandeis University and directs the Iraq Memory Foundation, based in Baghdad. His books include Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq; The Monument: Art, Vulgarity, and Responsibility in Iraq; Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, and Uprising in the Arab World; and The Rock: A Tale of 7th-Century Jerusalem.
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