A lot of ink has been spilled in the last few days, both real and virtual, over what America should do about the occupation of Iraq. Most of it seems to be centering around the idea that we have been patient enough and that Iraqis must stand up and do the heavy lifting for themselves now - or conversely that America broke it so America should fix it. All of it misses an essential point.
How can we expect Iraqis to "stand up" against their own indigent civil feuds and insurgency if we will not give them the respect of being able to "stand up" in other matters except where it suits their occupying nursemaids?
Where's the plan to give Iraq true sovereignty rather than the kind where a foreign head of state can drop in without forewarning or where Iraq's PM can announce a plan for national reconcilliation without one of its key provisions being over-ruled by a foreign ambassador? Where's the plan to give Iraq the kind of military infrastructure it needs not just for internal security but also against external threats?
It seems to me we can either 1) really treat Iraq as a sovereign nation, give it what a sovereign nation should have as our final act of contrition for the FUBAR we've made so far and leave it the hell alone without further meddling or we can 2) admit it is a Satrapy and administer it as such.
However, to date we have tried to give the appearance of the former while actually doing the latter.
Jusr yesterday, a moderate conservative blogger was able to write, without real challenge:
given that we have no interest in establishing a colony in Iraq
I think it is wrong to assume that's a given. Just based upon actions rather than rhetoric. Yet this assumption is the norm among mainstream commenters and among politicians of both sides - despite the lack of real evidence for it. Suggesting otherwise seems to put you out in "tinfoil hat" territory.
As for the rhetoric: the Bush administration, the neocon "pushers" of regime change and the GOP, by continually putting off facing criticism of their Iraq policy through the use of multiple Friedmans - "don’t judge us on what is happening now, wait six/twelve/eighteen months and it will be better" - have created a truly tangled problem.
How do you unravel a Gordian Knot if the sword will not work?
The truth is that no-one, from any side, has any real idea. All the plans for unknotting have the potential, nay certainty, of creating new and just as troublesome knots of their own. All begin with an arrogant implicit assumption that America broke it, so America owns it. Whether America should now "stay the course" or alter strategy in trying to fix it seems to be the main point of debate. The notion that we should give the Iraqis the means to fix it the way they want it fixed and then leave them the hell alone to do so never occurs to the pundits and experts, from Bush on down.
The Iraqis will make mistakes, possibly disasterous ones. That's their perogative and we have no God-given right to take it away from them. The situation may well even end up worse for America's "national interest". Tough. That's the price you pay for incompetent meddling. It will take decades of careful and diligent ethical foreign policy - not just policy that is aimed at domestic vote-winning but is inflicted on foreigners - to untangle even the easiest parts of the knot. That, my friends, is George W. Bush's legacy.
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