“Iraqness…one of the strngths of this country?” Whiskey tango…Condoleeza Rice is supposed to be a historical scholar (albeit of a different region), and yet she demonstrates no conception of the historical formation of Iraq? There is no “Iraqness,” no historical ties, no common sense of unity. Iraq is purely a political formation with borders arbitrarily drawn through traditional ethnic territories with little regard for the ramifications.
You know, it’s one thing to undertake a difficult, unlikely-to-succeed noble challenge with eyes open and a willingness to sacrifice in order to meet a worthwhile goal. It’s quite another to lie to one’s self and everyone else as to the likelyhood of success.
Utter absurdity combined with blithe ignorance, add a little ethnic strife and religious fevor, and the result is a nasty civil war. Yet another feather in America’s cap of great nation-building exercises.
MY problrm with the statements they made today is that they said that (paraphrased by me) “we have no obligation to waste any more lives or treasure on Iraq”.
Yes, we do. When you break something you have an obligation to fix it. You can’t just shrug your shoulders and walk away, ignoring the reality that you broke it.
Why not? The majority of Iraqis don’t want us there. Our 3 main reasons for going in there (Iraqi WMDs, Hussein seeking uranium for weapons, Iraqi goernment complicity in 9/11) have proved to be false. So why can’t we?
I can understand there are arguments as to why we shouldn’t just walk away. But there are certainly arguments as to why we should.
I think we have to when the time comes that our presence is a hinderance. And I think that time will certainly come.
I don’t think the Shia want to give the Sunnis a share in the government so we will be seen as siding with the Sunnis. The Shia will run the government, at least as long as we are there so we will be seen as siding with the Shia.
Neither Shia nor Sunni really want the Kurds to have anything at all to say about the government but they must do so as long as we are there. So we will be seen as siding with the Kurds.
I think Stranger is right. I believe that Iraq was held together by repression during British occupation and even more repression by Sadaam.
It’s a bit of an ethical quandary, isn’t it? If we leave and let them nave at each other we will be responsible for precipitating a civil war. If we stay we end up in the middle of a civil war. One that, I might add, we are responsible for in either case.
We can leave and let them work it out for themselves, which sounds like the ideal solution. Unfortunately, how many more will die in that case? We cannot absolve ourselves of the responsibility no matter how we justify it.
There’s no good answer, and guilt won’t allow me to just wash my hands of the whole thing. Just because it’s the right thing for us doesn’t make it the right thing.
That we must bear the shame for inflicting this catastrophe on Iraq has no bearing on us leaving or staying. The catastrophe remains, no matter what we do. There is no realistic expectation of rosy outcome either way.
I don’t disagree with your senitments, but unfortunately, I don’t think we can fix the situation, either. By being in place we remain as a focus for insurgency. There are two ultimate resolutions; the long-persecuted Shi’ite majority will take control and bend everyone else to their will under a repressive, theocratic government a la Iran, or the nation will be balkanized into three or more different, oft-warring sections. There are fundamental disagreements between the Shi’a and Sunni branches of Islam that are not going to be overlooked by either faction, and nobody wants the Kurds to have any say in government. (Never mind the Druse, minority Christians, and other minor sects.)
The best thing we can do for Iraq–and unfortuantely, the Administration approach to international relations has all but eliminated this option–is to seperate the warring factions via an international peacekeeping force for the indefinite future as was done in Yugoslavia. This will, of course, require the cooperation of other nations in the region, including Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, which is unlikely to be forthcoming.
There is no “win” to this situation, though to be fair, had Saddam Hussain died of natural causes or been assassinated, we’d see a similar situation, albeit one in which the US could not be viewed as a directly culpable party. Our stupidity was getting involved in the first place, and moreover doing so with barely a hint of international concordance.
Well, if all we did was break it, I say we put Saddam back in power, enforce his rules until he has stability again and give Iraq a few billion in compensation since we can’t bring back the dead. I am sure Saddam will spend the money wisely. If giving the Iraqi people the means to rule themselves independently means we broke it because they are messing up then I think we have no other choice but put it back the way it was the best we can and get the fuck out of there.
It’s certainly arguable that the Iraqs are better off than they were under Hussain, but it’s also clear that the nation is unprepared for what we think of as democracy. Religious demogoguery triumphs the peaceful governence of a democratic or representative republic. Any solution that can be summarized in a few short paragraphs or a politican’s speach offers not even the most shallow assessment of the issues at hand. This situation will be (and I said this before we invaded) a protracted and arduous effort for everyone involved. This has been exacerbated by what seemed to be a deliberate attempt to alienate other nations (though to be fair, some nations, such as France or Germany, were unlikely to voluntarily offer support, regardless of the situation).
I agree with Doors that we have a responsibility for the situation. I also see that our continued presence simply adds to the conflagration. I don’t see a simple or effective solution other than to seperate–by force–the warring parties.
First, the practical one - if it becomes apparent that the Iraqis are dragging their feet on setting up a government etc because they know the U.S. military will buy them the time, then perhaps the presence of the U.S. military is more of a hindrance than a help, in which case it may be time to go.
The second issue is one of where the responsibility lies for the state of the country. So long as the problem was external meddling, terrorism by an insurgency, and al-Qaida, then the U.S. has an absolute moral requirement to stay and ‘fix what they broke’. However, if the bulk of the problem changes from that into regional fighting, organized crime, and the settling of scores, then more of the moral blame shifts to the Iraqis themselves, and becomes their responsibility.
Finally, what’s going on here is more of a diplomatic manoever than anything else - The U.S. is laying down this marker to make it clear to the foot-dragging Iraqi leadership that their time is not unlimited, and that they had better get their act in gear and get their country stabilized and moving forward before the U.S. loses patience with them. The threat itself may help bring about the right outcome, and is therefore a part of ‘fixing what you broke’.
This is the strongest argument yet for staying. The problem is, at the moment we’re breaking it worse. I don’t think either we or the Iraqis can afford three more years of screwing up.
We should let the Iraqis decide. If they ask us to leave in a fair referendum, we can do so with the minimum of moral injury.
Man, politically that would be the best scenerio imaginable. Bush could save face, claiming to wash his hands of the whole matter, war opponents could make noises about knowing it all along without creating any big dissention, someone could pass a House resolution officially telling Iraq to eff off, and we could all go back to the business of arguing whether science belongs in biology textbooks. Strategically, not quite so good for us, but it’s hard to argue that we have a secure foothold in Iraq anyway.
Of course, one must take into consideration the looming spectre of Iran. The problem with being an international presence and engaging in military adventurism is that it makes you such a ripe target for someone looking to prove their own strength.
Do you have a cite for this, or is it your opinion? Because while I might agree that there are other factors at work in Iraq (tribal, regional, religious, etc), that its not a true statement that there is NO ‘Iraqness’, by which I take to mean Iraqi nationalism. Certainly historically Iraq was one of the cookie cutter European fuckups that kludged together pieces of the old Ottoman Empire and bestowed nationhood on them…but they HAVE been a going concern for quite a while, and under Saddams loving guidance there WAS a sense of ‘Iraq’ as a nation…and certainly at least a low level of Iraqi nationalism.
I agree with you that Rice thinking that they would come happily together post election was a bit optimistic, and that clan/tribal ties are much stronger (to many, perhaps most) than nationalistic ties to the concept of ‘Iraq’.
Its not exactly uncommon though…especially for ivory tower types (like Rice).
Well, I agree that the US isn’t uniquely suited to nation building. We simply don’t have the ‘empire’ mindset, nor the attention span…we distract and frustrate easily. Still, compared to other nations who supposedly had much better idea what they were doing and much MUCH more experience (I’m looking at you Brits and French :)) our fuckups have been pretty small potatoes (and one of our nastier ones actually came to us FROM our French bretheren). Cold comfort to the folks we have meddled with of course…
Whats the debate here btw? That Rice and the administration were idiots? You could have put THAT question in GQ…
Is this true? Although “Iraq” as a country has no long historical existence, hasn’t that area been at least administratively unified for hundreds of years, going back to the Ottoman empire? It’s not like Iraq was cobbled together from different countries like the old USSR, or even Yugoslavia.
I think the case for the US giving up is weaker now than it was 6 months ago. Attacks on US soldiers (although still common) have been declining for that period as the insurgents take on softer targets and units of the ISF. Does anyone really think that the violence in Iraq would lessen if we pulled out precipitously now?
I still would like us to lay down a definite timetable for withdrawl, but now is not the time to bug out.
Given how good this administration has been at ignoring facts and warnings and skepticism that diverge from their rose-tinted views, this would be like tossing meringues into the Grand Canyon.
A rather complete history of Iraq can be found here. The Ottoman Empire Era is well down the page.
I have only skimmed the Ottoman empire part so far. The site states that the Ottoman’s separated Arabian Iraq from Persian Iraq which is largely Iran. Arabian Iraq consisted of three provinces Mosul, Baghdad and Basra with the northern province of Mosul being largely non-Arabic.
So it would appear that little unified government or culture was in place before 1918.
Although the Ottoman’s maintained administrative control over the area now known as Iraq (and before them, the Mongols), that’s hardly equivilent to any kind of national identity. After the dissolution of the Turkman federation and prior to WWI, much of Iraq was occupied by nomadic tribes which controlled and occasionally fought over overlapping territories. The rise of various factions of Islam and other Judeo-Christian-Muslim faiths in Persia, Mesopotamia, and the Arabian Penninsula reinforced the fractured control. (If you’ve read T.E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom or see the film Lawrence of Arabia which is loosely based upon it, you’ll get…well, at least Lawrence’s much-biased perception of tribal affiliation and control.)
In short, there’s no long standing notion of national idenity or, as Ms. Rice puts it, “Iraqness,” on which to appeal for unity. Hussain attempted to create that sense, both by setting himself up as an ideologue/despot and defacing Islamic icons and mosques and otherwise driving Iraq society to a more secular (and presumably less divisive) existence; doing this by oppression, however, merely fed the undercurrent of fundamentalism which has now risen in the guise of warring factions.
This isn’t an aboslute showstopper–many of the current European nations such as Greece, Germany, and Italy are comprised of former fiefdoms and city-states which were drawn together to form a national identity–but it’s going to take much, much more than a few blasé statements about “Iraqness” and a single election to make that happen. If we’re to remain in Iraq and stabilize the government, we have to be committed to doing so for the long term; not years, but decades. This isn’t wrong (although it would be much easier if we had an international consensus) but it’s not the plan that was sold to the American people. This Administration talked of invasion in terms of weeks, “Shock and Awe”, turning the government over to the “Iraqi people” in the scope of months. That was never going to happen. And the notion of “Iraqness” is a convenient fiction, not a historical reality.
Wake up on the wrong side of bed this morning, eh?
