AN AMERICAN'S VIEW ON THE WAR IN IRAQ

By Richard DeLamarter

Pending publication in Sobota, a (not-online) Slovenian weekly newspaper, the author has kindly given permission for the paper below to be published here.  

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So the fighting comes to an end.  It is still early but maybe we can make a few observations about the battle to liberate Iraq.

Let’s assume that the coalition is successful and a stable democracy is introduced.  The Iraqi factions, tired of dictatorship and well aware that they have been given a chance to run their own affairs settle for compromise and a democratic process.  The oil revenues begin to benefit the people rather than just arms merchants and palace makers.   Nice picture; but are those clouds on the horizon?  Maybe.

Maybe the Saudi royal family sees the pictures of crowds looting Saddam’s many palaces in a different light.  The thought - Could the same thing happen here? – must be going through the minds of the 5,000 plus royal princes in that kingdom.  And then there are the Kurds.  What if they build on their decade of democracy and continue it into the future – with basic rights like language and culture.  How will this look to the Kurds in impoverished southern Turkey where such rights are still a dream; or in Syria and Iran also with large Kurdish populations?   The Ba’ath party will be destroyed in Iraq; but continues to rule in Syria.   Will opposition forces within that country now be emboldened; especially when there will still be substantial coalition military forces next door in democratic Iraq?  And finally there is Iran.  It is going through a very difficult political process trying to define its government.  The population seems to want more freedom while the clerics hold tenaciously to power. If Iraq is successful, it could well embolden the democrats in Iran to push for real change.

There are lots of reasons why others might want this experiment to fail; and that is just among its neighbors.   Within Europe there were lots of politicians who salvaged failing careers by “standing up to US aggression”.   If their populations now see Iraq as a “liberation”  they may take a new and more critical look at these leaders.   For them maybe it would be better for the next phase to fail, giving them some sort of vindication.    It is interesting to note that when the UN ran the government in Kosovo, it was unable for months to even supply the gasoline for the garbage trucks, and the trash  remained on the streets.  Maybe some would like to trash Iraqi democracy also by prematurely putting the factious UN in the middle of the process.  

With so much riding on the outcome, it is hard to believe that the US administration will compromise in the rebuilding if it risks the success of the whole operation.   And what is success?  It is not the absence of problems – all countries have problems.  Rather it is the ability of the many factions to work together on solving them; on improving the lives of the people involved.  There will still be lots of shrill TV stories even if the exercise is a great success. 

A first problem is the curse of oil.  Rather than being a blessing it has been for most countries a curse.  The easy money seems to lead to dictatorship.  All agree that it belongs to the Iraqi people; but the devil is in the details.   How to structure this key industry so that it is efficient and benefits the people without completely distorting their incentives  to lead productive lives.    A nation on oil welfare is hardly a long term optimum. 

Another key area will be the impact of  the Iraq experiment on greater Islam.  In many of these countries people are very angry; and generally at the US.  How does one respond to this?  The process of political maturation has been stymied in many of these countries; lacking real power, the rage of the people has focused on the few permitted issues.   If Iraq changes the mold they will have lots of issues to become involved with; things like local schools, roads, sewers, and others that make up the core of self government.

Thus the paradox; joy over liberation while hatred of the US and its power.  You get the feeling that some of those protesting against the US are really angry that they have not also been liberated by the hated Americans.  What is the responsibility of the US for their anger? 

The big issues of the last century were empire, nationalism  and communism; the issues for the next are democracy and markets.  Why did so many Arabs misconstrue US intentions in Iraq?  They were afraid that Iraq would be made a colony because many Arab countries in the past had been colonies.   Once free of colonial power, nationalism was strong.  This was a problem since the arbitrary boundaries the colonial powers left them with, bore no relationship to the locations of peoples.  Lastly, communism preached a seductive message of justice while delivering murder and impoverishment.   But, and this seems critical especially to an American, none of these were made in America.   It was not a colonial power, and it supported freedom for those nations caught in empires.  Its creeds are inclusive, not an excluding racial and religious nationalism, and it fought communism until it was destroyed.

Maybe the rage comes from an unwillingness to support Arab- Muslim causes.  But America has a good record – it forced its allies to return Suez, it freed Kuwait, it saved the Muslims in Kosovo, and it brought democracy to Afghanistan.   Even in Palestine it has done more to try to find a solution than any other country. 

Why the rage against the US?  If the Europeans were confused about whether the issue was really “US aggression” or democracy and good government, is it surprising that the Arab world was also confused? Maybe all those demonstrators yelling against US aggression,  were taking their cues from the Europeans in trying to sort out these issues. 

Which then brings the question back to the demonstrators in the developed democracies of the world.   They enjoy the benefits of such a system; why were they unable to support it for others?   Why did they not all stand together and make the transition easier?   Why do they fear US power (not so much that they were willing to tax their people sufficiently to build a comparable military force  - remember the French can only work 35 hours a week.) and tolerate Saddam?   Could it be that they saw this issue through the lens of their own history and not through a sober look at the record.   Maybe what they were afraid of was that any country with power would do to them what they have done to other weaker states when they possessed such power;  an understandable fear given the bloody and destructive nature of much of European history.

And there is more; it may be one of the most long lasting results of the Cold War and its cynical and stale focus on redistribution and class war. 

I think the best way to understand this mistrust is to consider the following:  What if the US had joined the other side in world war II; had invaded Russia to help Hitler rather than invaded Europe to help Stalin.  The result would have been fifty years of Nazism with it only to fall to democracy in the 1990s.  During that period there might well have also been a Cold War between America and Nazi Europe.  The Nazi minions would have been hard at work finding every flaw in the US system, any time it failed to live up to its ideals, to enlist in the propaganda wars.  There would be right wing organizations in the US that supported these claims – either out of belief or for money.   But in this scenario the subjects of the accusations would be different – they would focus more on the mixed races in the US, on the lack of a clear leader (a furor), on its military power, etc.  Instead what we got were fifty years of communist accusations – just as self serving and historically inaccurate – but, by many,  just as believed.  So democratic America was the monster, not the communist Soviet Union, although it was not the Americans, but  the communists like  Stalin, Mao, Pol pot, etc, who killed on a horrendous scale.  America was imperialist  but it left, for example, the Philippines when asked, something the Red Army refused to do in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.  America exploited its increasing well of workers while the workers’ paradise saw falling standards of living for those not killed in the gulag, etc.   But, and here is the irony: although the evil empire is consigned to the dump heap of history as a failed idea, the criticisms of the US that it created and paid for, remain in the minds of many protesters.