We could have done it right, you know...

(Note: This entry was originally posted on Monday, May 08, 2006)

I am so sick of the Iraq "backstory." You know, the whole question of what did we really know, who knew it, and how was the decision made to press for war? I certainly have my own opinion about that---and I may yet decide to write about it at some point---but that's not the bee under my personal bonnet today.

No, what has me frustrated right now is that the general discussion seems to have missed maybe the most crucial point of all. As we see the debate (ad nauseum) as to whether or not we should have gone into Iraq, we seem to have lost sight of the fact that, having made the decision to go, we totally missed on how we should go, and (more importantly) what we should have done when we got there.

Part of the problem, of course, is that the advisors who created the strategy for the war really had no clue about Iraqi culture...and were absolutely determined to ignore it as irrelevant. This is the crucial mistake, and frankly, leads back to the subject I have promised not to discuss---how the decision to go to war was ultimately made. I still won't get into that, but it's germane to the overall strategy. You see, it matters a great deal what the administration was thinking, because it was that thinking that shaped the peri- and post-war strategy.

The Bush Administration was convinced---on ideological grounds---that giving the Iraqi populace self-determination would automatically convert their society to a (relatively) peaceful, democratic republic. Everyone would lay down their weapons, abandon their petty grievances, and agree to settle thier disputes in court and at the ballot box. Of course they would. Everyone wants democracy, right?

Well, it's not quite as simple as that. It is patently true that everyone loves democracy...so long as their own party is in charge and has no moral obligation to share power. However, you can't simply impose a multi-party democratic system on a society; the society needs to grow into it. The society needs to be ready for it.

The Iraqis were not, and it was no secret. I knew it, and I am no expert on Arab cultures or the middle-East. More importantly, just about everyone at the State Department knew it, every academic worth his (or her) salt knew it, and virtually every historian or religious scholar who has studied Arab culture past and present knew it too. Everyone the Bush Administration should have (and could have) asked would have told them the very same thing: the people of Iraq are simply not prepared to govern themselves peacefully. The culture does not permit it. They are tribal and sectarian, and the arabic perception of strong leadership demands absolute victory or eternal opposition. The culture does not tolerate weakness, and compromise is, by definition, weakness.

Now I need to be clear on something. I believe that the various Arab states will all become multi-party democracies...eventually. I believe that the scourge of extreme Islam will burn itself out and fade away (just as the activist Christian right will ultimately fade in this country), and the cultural imperative to conquer or die will weaken to the point where democracy can work in the Arab world.

But that time has not yet arrived, and the reactionary nature of Arab culture means that there are simply no shortcuts we can take in Iraq. Period.

Maybe we really did need to topple Saddam. I have known for many years that this was an evil man. I was in Israel during the 1st Gulf War, and was on the receiving end (near enough) of one of his SCUD missiles. I watched the news as he slaughtered his own people, a la Josef Stalin. I saw how he tried to construct a "super cannon" and to acquire weapons of mass destruction (though it seemed clear that he had fundamentally abandoned those ambitions). He was a bad man, an evil man, and you wouldn't have had to argue very hard to convince me that he had to go, and that only by military force could we depose him. In the end, I suppose I agree with all of that. I said so before the Iraq War, and I say so still.

I also say still the other point I made then: I am not sure that it is (was) the right time for this action. I didn't believe we had exhausted diplomatic options (even if they would ultimately be unsuccessful), nor had we built enough of a world concensus. But I wasn't opposed in principle to the notion that Saddam had to go, and that we were going to have to be the ones to send him packing. My president made that decision, and while I had plenty of misgivings, I could go along with him that far.

Removing Saddam and conquering Iraq turned out to be a cakewalk. I think most of us expected that, but maybe not how easy it turned out to be. For all of the fiery rhetoric we see, Arab culture does not really expect its soldiers to die in a courageous stand against an irresistable enemy. if anything, the idea is to get the bastards from that other tribe to do your dying for you; the most important thing is not the country or the king, but the welfare of my family and my tribe. When faced with overwhelming force, Saddam's armies evaporated like a desert mirage...and for any who read history, that has been the case throughout Arab history. No armies have ever been as ferocious---and merciless---in victory, or as unreliable (and even craven) when faced with an equal or greater foe. The military tradition of Arab culture is that of the bully: bloody his nose and he'll run like a rabbit.

Of course, these soldiers are not cowards. They will fight very courageously and die without regret for a cause that matters to them...but their rulers are never cause enough. They will stand and fight for their tribe, but not for their country. Indeed, Iraqis don't see themselves as Iraqis, but rather as members of their specific tribe and extended family. For this reason, they make excellent guerilla fighters, by the way...

In any case, our military victory was a foregone conclusion, and the forces of Saddam showed themselves to be an Arab army in the truest sense: they weren't about to let themselves be slaughtered in defense of a man and a regime that was not of their own tribe. They didn't mind seeing Saddam fall anyway. The fall of one ruler opens the door for the rise of another ruler. The end of a great tribe means the ascendancy of other tribes, and maybe their own tribe. The battle was never really with the American forces; they were conserving their strength for the true fight...against the other tribes of Iraq.

Which brings me to the ultimate point of today's gripe: we were in a position to do it right, but instead we chose to do it wrong...and maybe that was worse than not doing it at all.

The crucial task we faced---once we decided to go in at all---was what to do after we conquered the country. I agree that we needed (and still need) to set up a democracy there...but it needs to be a real democracy, with an electorate that will respect and support an elected regime, even if that regime is not in the hands of their own tribe. That Iraq does not exist, no matter how many elections they try to hold now. Our task was to create not only the structure of a democracy, but also the electorate to support it...and we never even tried. And there is a very strong political reason why we never even planned to do that:

It would have taken an occupation.

I'm not talking about what we have now; I mean a true occupation, with 500,000 troops, stationed there for 20+ years. We needed to completely disarm the populace, sweep the country for weapons from top to bottom, and declare martial law.

No, this is not my dream; it is more like my nightmare...but this is what it would have taken. We needed to commit to governing Iraq for many, many years. We needed to commit to reshaping the entire culture, and denying any Iraqi any power. We needed to create a benign dictatorship, and rebuild the Iraqi economy in an enforced peace. At the same time, we needed to establish a re-education program that would teach today's Iraqi children about democracy...about national unity and patriotism. We needed to grow an Iraqi democracy from the bottom up, rather than from the top down. Start by letting local communities elect leaders with very limited power, and immediately and forcefully stamp out the inevitable corruption...

As the elected leaders learned (slowly, I'm sure) to serve their constituancies, to be reasonably honest, we would then allow them more control, and allow the people to select state and regional reppresentatives. Any attempts to restore tribalism would be ruthlessly suppressed, until the Iraqis themselves realized that they are a single people, with common interests.

Eventually, this nascent democracy would grow meaningful political parties, and as each layer of self-rule was added, the people would see democracy in action; see the oil revenues of Iraq invested in the country and its infrastructure. No armies. No palaces. No Iraqi secret police. A government for the people, because its power is strictly limited to serving the people. Until finally, after the long haul, the American presence could slowly fade away, leaving a true democracy in its place...a government elected by a populace that was a true electorate.

This plan would have been hugely expensive. More than that, it might easily have taken 40 or 50 years, rather than the 20 I suggested previously. I understand that. I also understand that the American people would have refused to go along with this plan...and maybe rightly so.

But it is the only plan that would have worked; the only strategy that could justify the invasion in the first place. It would have been a painful process, and a controversial one. It may even have been extreme enough to derail the presidency and the invasion, which is why it was never an option for this administration.

But it is the right way to do this. It's how we helped rebuild Europe and Japan. It's the only effective way to reshape the middle-East. We could have done it right...