How would you have rebuilt Iraq?

Great Debates
1

Let’s say that you were made the interim governor of Iraq after the invasion and your job is now to build a nominally liberal democracy (at least as liberal as, say, Turkey). What decisions would you make? You are not allowed to say I never would have invaded in the first place, nor are you allowed to say I would leave immediately. Let’s say, however, that you can generally get the money you need.

From what I have read, I think the first job was to lock down security. Saddam and Uday and Qusay were still on the loose, but I don’t know how many troops they could have rallied. I don’t know if there was any effective resistance from the RG or the army at that point. I believe that firing the army en masse was a mistake, but I don’t know if they could have been counted on to provide security. I wonder what would have happened if we could have summoned another 100,000 troops.

From there, infrastructure was a priority. Get the oil wells producing again, get running water restored, get electricity flowing and get the garbage picked up.

Reinforce the notion of an Iraqi nationality. Then plan an election.

There is obviously a lot I don’t know about the challenges faced by people in the field nor do I know much about how to implement these solutions. So what would you do? How do you build a nation?

Thanks,
Rob

2

Honestly, I think I’d have broken up the country into at least 3 new nations (maybe more). Allowed the Kurds to split off on their own (which would have pissed off both Turkey and Iran, as well as several other countries…fuck em, I’m the king :p). Then divided the rest between the Sunni and Shiia based on population density. Allowed a grace period of free travel, then allowed each new nation the ability to form their own government in a way they want, full stop. They want a dictatorship? Fine by me. Parliamentary government? Again, whatever floats their boat.

You can’t impose liberal democracy on people…they either have to come to it on their own or it won’t every work. And Iraq itself, as a nation state, is an artificial construct…that’s why the US invasion and attempt to impose democracy on them failed so badly. There IS no Iraq…there are various factions and tribes that live in the area called Iraq, but have their own goals, motives and vision.

3

XT has some good points.

When it comes to reconstructing the place, I’d hire Iraqis whenever possible instead of locking them out, and I’d hire corporations that are actually good at their jobs instead of funneling money to Bush/Cheney cronies. Just actually trying to reconstruct it would be an improvement. Taxes & regulations would not be slashed, not restrictions of foreign ownership of companies lifted.

Blackwater wouldn’t be allowed in Iraq at all, much less hired.

Torture would be absolutely forbidden, and violence by American soldiers would be as restricted as I can get away with. No driving through Iraqi streets shooting people as “possible threats” because they get out of a car or step out the door of their home. There would be no “embedded press”, and no suspiciously convenient “friendly fire” incidents against independent journalists.

There would be no period where criminals and mobs were allowed to run wild. Museums and archeological sites would be protected, not destroyed or allowed to be destroyed as part of the “wipe the slate clean” campaign. Nor would Christians be permitted to force local people to submit to baptism in return for water rations.

Come to think of it, “don’t do anything Bush & friends did” sums up a lot of my recommendations.

4

I would point out that the OP said you were the “interim governor”. Doesn’t that mean that “you” are an Iraqi and not an American, and as such have no control or say over what the American military or government do?

5

So did every informed observer. Instead the transition was managed by naive right-wing idealogues with no knowledge of the Middle East, who were just eager for an opportunity at Friedmanist experimentation. What a travesty.

The idea that the U.S. needed to “build their nation” is itself confused. Iraq was prosperous (before sanctions) and well educated. They had very ancient cultures and were not eager for imposed “improvements.”

I would have turned the keys to the country over to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a highly respected moderate leader (no need for the pretense of purple-finger balloting), with promises of support if he encouraged reconciliation with Sunnis and their incorporation into government. I would have used U.S. and Iraqi soldiers for initial protection from looting.

I don’t know if this would have led to a good outcome, but it could hardly have been worse than the event. (My Realpolitik solution would have been not to invade at all, but to apply pressure to force the Ba’athists to depose Saddam and install a less heinous dictator.)

ETA: The idea of dividing the country between Sunnis and Shi’ites ignores that these groups were intermixed geographically. Sunnis would have fled from Shi’ite areas, losing their property, and vice versa. (True, this is what happened anyway but the U.S. approach was a case study in unfathomably stupid blundering.)

6

You cannot build a liberal democracy in a region or country that has not earned it by their own blood sweat and tears.

Those of us in the West take liberal democracies for granted. However there is a long 900 to 1000 year history of princes taking power from (or limiting the power of) Kings, and then the common people in turn taking it from the princes. There was a lot of blood sweat and tears in the process and is why in the West once a government is voted out of office, they leave.

There is no such tradition there, and you can’t impose it. They put the parts and pieces in place but in the end is still a dictatorship. After all I believe Saddam was the “President” of Iraq as his official title.

7

Forgot to mention that one.

I don’t understand this one. Are you saying they were just shills?

8

No, you’re only a governor, like Bremer. Redividing Iraq would really piss off the Turks to the point where they might drop out of NATO. I don’t know if we really care about pissing off the Syrians and Iranians.

9

How did we do it in Japan? (Although I suppose it’s not the most liberal of democracies).

10

Pretty much, yes. They were there to parrot the government line, not to do actual journalism. And independent journalists were prone to suffering suspiciously convenient friendly fire, like being shot at checkpoints or a Hellfire missile impacting their hotel room.

11

We didn’t build a democratic government from scratch in Japan. We overlaid democratic principles on their existing government structures. Only a few governmental institutions, such as the military, were rebuilt from the ground up (and the peerage system was abolished). The parliament, the court system and the monarchy were left intact – changed, but intact.

12

I would probably have started by taking command of the Iraqi army, taking out the top 5-10% of the leadership and replacing it with Americans, with the stated primary mission of removing anyone corrupt or bullying from the remaining structure, and a big recruitment measure to fill those spots and promote anyone who seemed particularly honest and law-abiding up the ladder.

In parallel, I’d put it to the people to decide whether they wanted to become one country operating as co-existent states or split into separate nations, finding some strong advocates for the various sides, and put it to a vote after a month or two.

If the country votes to split, then I’d split the military accordingly, maybe keeping an independent group of non-radicals to patrol the borders, since it would still take a few months or years to set up the independent countries and in the meantime, I’d still want a free group to move around, other than just American military.

Then, I’d run another set of debates to decide the system of government(s) available, making sure everyone understood the benefits and downsides of each system, based on their starting point. But if they do choose a Democratic path, I’d probably do like the UK did with Hong Kong (I believe) and start it out as a government by Americans initially, with a transition plan to start feeding in Iraqis over time.

The Japanese had a pretty big tradition of a bureaucracy-driven governmental system and were very gung-ho for embracing Western methodologies during the internally-driven Meiji reconstruction. I believe that they already had a parliament and etc. before the end of the 19th Century. I don’t think they’ve yet fully wrapped their heads around the idea of a Democratic government. I think their politicians still fill something more like a samurai-era bureaucratic role, rather than a “representative of the common man” one, in the eyes of the populace and the government itself. Legislators are expected to do their own thing over in their own place, without oversite or interference from the common man. But it’s possible that before things like Whitewater and Vietnam, Americans had a similar view of their government. I don’t know how obsessed the common man was with the government before the 60s and 70s.

13

Then IMHO there is nothing you could do to prevent the sectarian violence that happened. Oh, you could probably make it less of a cluster fuck than the US and our allies did with Bush at the head, but it would have blown up no matter what. It probably would have blown up to a certain extent even if you divided the country, since the only stable part would have been the part under the control of the Kurds, but you could have perhaps minimized the fighting, or isolated it.

As for pissing off Turkey, bummer…the fact that they would have to deal with their own Kurdish problem is their look out (same with Iran, Syria and all the other countries with substantial Kurd populations). If that meant they wanted to drop out of NATO, well, I’d say it wouldn’t really matter that much from NATO’s perspective and would have more implications to them domestically…recall, they WANTED to be in NATO.

They were completely crushed and defeated by the time the US and other allies rolled in. Also, Japan is much more homogeneous than Iraq is…and they were actually a unified nation state unified by culture and history, unlike Iraq which was a European construct stitched together at the whim of Europeans for European goals and profit. That’s why my suggestion would be to allow the nation to fragment into more natural pieces. Wouldn’t be a perfect solution, but might have avoided he worst of the blood shed in the short term anyway.

14

To the OP’s question, it’s apparently pretty difficult to build a stable democracy. Most of the stable democracies we have came about under different circumstances. You can probably group a few of them together, like Canada, NA and Australia followed roughly similar paths, but most of the other ones had unique historical (and often violent) developments on their way to democracy.

But, with regard to Iraq, our State department had a lot of institutional knowledge on how to go about nation building, and actually had plans and recommendations for what to do in Iraq. These plans were ignored because of the ideology and the cronyism of the Bush administration.

But, here’s what I would have done:

  1. Float the Iraqi government while slowly transitioning it into a democratic one. This means everyone gets their paychecks. That includes the military and it includes state-run industries. If I’m getting a paycheck from the government, I have a pretty big incentive not to mess with the government.

  2. Allow most Baath party members to participate in the economy – maybe after a Truth and Reconciliation council. Because if the government is excluding me from the economy, I’ve got a pretty big incentive to mess with the government.

  3. Give each Iraqi over the age of 18 a fixed payment each month. This payment would be reduced by the amount of violence in the country. The more violence, the lower the payment. The payment would be in a hard currency, like dollars. After a period of 10 years, the payment would taper off. And thus, the payment incentives Iraqis not to participate in violence.

What I find funny (in a sad way) is that for all the Bush’s administration’s talk about capitalism, they seem not to have understood one of the basic assumptions of capitalism, which is that people respond to incentives. If you don’t want people fighting your transitional government, then create concrete, tangible, monetary incentives for them not to do so.

All of that would buy you time to transition the government and the economy into – well, I would pick a Scandanavian model, but at the end of the day, the Iraqis would have to decide what the model would be. In the meantime, you need to create various institutions that a democracy requires, such as an independent press or an independent court system (there’s a whole list of these, and I have my own opinion about what should be on the list, but that will blow out the post).

And then, finally, as suggested above, I would have split Iraq into a federation of 3 countries, with options for independence, but with guaranteed protection of minority rights. I would have set up an assistance program for anyone who wanted to move from a country where they were in the minority.

There’s some ancillary stuff also, like expanded visa allocations for Iraqis that I would have done, but this is the gist of it.

15

One of the big problems with the nation splitting along ethnic lines is that the oil is not evenly distributed. IIRC, most of it is in Kurdistan and most of the rest is in the Shia-dominated areas. That won’t sit well with the Sunni.

What were the State Dept. recommendations? What evidence do we have that they would work?

Thanks,
Rob

16

I’ll have to do some research here to come up with it. I think there are some really old threads on the board about it. In particular, though, I recall the Bush administration ignored all warnings that there was a potential for Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence, and refused to plan for it.

As for whether the plans would have worked, who knows? As I stated earlier, there’s no foolproof way to build a stable democracy. This is about risk mitigation. You try to minimize the risks where you can and hope for the best. The Bush administration ignored all the risks and didn’t plan accordingly.

17

I will grant you that that is true for Fox News. For other agencies who had embedded reporters, can you give examples of failure to report the truth?

I also am aware of journalists who were killed or injured by coalition forces. However, I was not aware that this was the fate of most or even many journalists. I was also not aware even of allegations that such independent journalists were killed in retaliation for their reporting.

18

[QUOTE=sweeteviljesus]
One of the big problems with the nation splitting along ethnic lines is that the oil is not evenly distributed. IIRC, most of it is in Kurdistan and most of the rest is in the Shia-dominated areas. That won’t sit well with the Sunni.
[/QUOTE]

Yep, that is certainly one of the big problems. I suppose that you could create a pool or trust that the oil producing parts of the company have to pay into wrt profits and then divide them amongst the 3 (or more) new countries after the costs for production are taken out for the countries doing the producing. Perhaps sweeten the pot for the Sunni by giving them grants or loans to help them build up other aspects. I guess it would all depend on what parts of the country each group got, but you also have to look at logistics, since the way oil moves today would change if new national borders were made. The Sunni could actually come out ahead even without oil depending on where they ended up and how they could use that in the future.

19

Re: the oil, I would need to be convinced that the average Iraqi actually gave a crap about how oil revenues where distributed. I mean, it’s not like I ever see any of the money from the fracking boom in the US. I’m sure that for the elite in Iraq, oil was a big issue, and it could be used to stir up the people below, but the distribution of oil revenue probably doesn’t make any actual concrete difference in most people’s lives.

Which is why I would have simply handed everyone a check every month. If you’re getting a check every month, you probably aren’t going to give a crap about the oil issue, which would make it easier to negotiate a settlement over oil revenues.

20

From Armed Madhouse, by Greg Palast:

“Plan A:”

In February 2001, a meeting organized by Colin Powell’s State Department was held in Walnut Creek, California, in the home of Falah Aljibury, an Iraqi-born consultant on Iraq’s oil industry. The “Three-Day Plan” they came up with was “an invasion disguised as a coup,” “kind of a Marine-supported Bay of Pigs.” Saddam was to be replaced by some Ba’athist general cashiered by him, possibly the exiled General Nizar Khazraji – “the secret group was already contacting Saddam’s generals to switch allegiance. Then, according to their playbook, there would be snap elections, say within 90 days, to put a democratic halo on our chosen generalissimo.”

“Plan B:”

But in November 2001, following the U.S. victory in Afghanistan, the Pentagon, dominated by neoconservative PNAC members Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Elliot Abrams, had other and very different ideas:

Plan “B” was the one they went with after the invasion. Best change: Scrap it, go with Plan “A”. It’s cynical, it’s corrupt, but it’s less meddlesome compared to the other.