RE: Some people just want to fight
As I read Eugene Gholz’s post below I could not help but feel the same unease I have felt in recent months as I have listened to some supporters of the Iraq war attempt to make the case that the Iraqis are at fault for the disaster that is their country. Many of these supporters essentially claim that we gave the Iraqis a shot and they blew it – they were not ready to build a democratic, pluralistic society. Charles Krauthammer wrote in the Washington Post that “We have given the Iraqis a republic, and they do not appear able to keep it.” Eugene makes a very similar point when he writes:
“This is a point that I have blogged about before — that peaceful settlement of sectarian disputes comes through acceptance of a political process (see a blog entry, here). We have a process that more or less works in the United States; war-torn countries like Iraq (and Lebanon and Somalia) do not. And the locals in those countries have to get tired of fighting and to see that they are unlikely to achieve their goals through fighting before they will make the political decisions needed to resolve disputes another way. No amount of American power can insulate Iraqis (or Lebanese or Somalis, etc.) from that fact.”
Such an argument is premised on the notion that the United States provided the opportunity for the creation of an Iraqi republic and its people chose conflict. Such a conclusion is based, I believe, on an incomplete analysis of key decisions made in post war Iraq. The United States could have succeeded in Iraq but the Administration made a set of bad decisions that have had major consequences.
Fareed Zakaria, in the Washington Post, reflected on this when he noted on Monday that:
“In the months after the American invasion, support for the Coalition Provisional Authority topped 70 percent. This was so even among Iraq’s Sunni Arabs. In the first months of the insurgency, only 14 percent of them approved of attacks on U.S. troops. (That number today is 70 percent.) The rebellious area in those early months was not Sunni Fallujah but Shiite Najaf.”
Zakaria went on to note that these numbers were in place before the Bush Administration made a raft of terrible decisions including, but not limited to, the disbanding of the Iraqi army.
So are the Iraqis blameless? Of course not. But are they primarily to blame for the disaster that has befallen them? No. The fault lies with the Bush Administration.
Why do I feel that it was necessary to use my valuable posting room to respond to Eugene and others on this matter?
Simply because it is more important than ever that we are honest in our assessment of our foreign policy decisions and their consequences. 2006 saw the Bush Administration make poor decisions on a raft of issues from Latin America policy to the role of international institutions to Somalia. These decisions have negative consequences both short and long term.
Those of us who wish to see a better U.S. foreign policy suitable to meet the challenges of the 21st Century need to ensure that the lessons of the Iraq disaster are absorbed and are used to inform future decision making. The lesson from Iraq is perhaps best summed up in the conclusion of the Zakaria column when he notes that “[the Bush Administration] thoughtlessly engineered a political and social revolution as intense as the French or Iranian one and then seemed surprised that Iraq could not digest it happily, peaceably and quickly. We did not give them a republic. We gave them a civil war.”
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