I just read Three Views on Iraq, Three Years Later (Michael Young, Tom Palmer, and Leon Hadar; Reason.com; June 2006) as part of an attempt to get a better sense of the intellectual debates earlier in the Iraq War. I took notes on items that stood out to me. I don't wholeheartedly agree or disagree with any of the authors (though the first bullet from Michael Young is nearly tautological).
Why I Supported The Iraq War by Michael Young
- "The United States could make a [positive] difference if it played its cards right."
- "Rare were those who, like Paul Berman, Kanan Makiya, and Christopher Hitchens, saw Iraq as a new chapter in that persistent conflict that had resumed on September 11, 2001: an ideological war pitting liberal humanism against totalitarianism, disguised as murderous Islamism or Arab nationalism."
- "Democracy in the Middle East will not simultaneously break out in different places, as it did in Eastern Europe. It can only advance if the U.S. makes it a top foreign policy priority, shows a willingness to use a combination of incentives and coercion to bring it about, and consolidates and defends democracy in specific countries, before using these as platforms to push for transformation elsewhere. The effort requires patience, subtlety, and a willingness to accept that American foes may also profit from more liberty. Why should Arab democracy matter to the U.S.? Because of 9/11. Berman was right when he wrote, in his 2003 essay Terror and Liberalism: "In the anti-nihilist system, freedom for others means safety for ourselves. Let us be for the freedom of others.""
You Can't Bring Order To The Middle East by Leon Hadar
- This: "The Greater Middle East that stretches from the Balkans to the borders of India is what political scientists would describe as the most "penetrated" area of the world—one where numerous tribal, religious, ethnic, national, regional, and extra-regional political players combine and divide in a shifting pattern of alliances. Chaos and instability have been the rule, not the exception, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire."
Requires this: Containment ala the Cold War strategy attributed to George F. Kennan - "Those involved in the formulation and implementation of U.S. policy in the Middle East assume that people in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan think like them and want the same things they do. At a 2004 conference at the Pentagon, a U.S. Army colonel asked Thomas Barnett, a strategic thinker at the U.S. Naval War College who was trying to convince a group of military officers that American power could be used to democratize the Middle East, whether that assumption was justified. "Everyone wants a better future for their kids," Barnett said. "I've been around a lot of people who don't think like us," the colonel replied."
Six Facts About Iraq by Tom Palmer
1. Anyone who is certain about how things are going to turn out doesn't know what he's talking about.
"The number of variables is simply too great to foresee the outcome...the role of contingency and accident is enormous."
2. The war being fought in Iraq is unlike any other.
Not Vietnam
"Parallels with Vietnam are of limited use for the simple reason that the Communists were seeking to kick out the Saigon government and replace it, not to create a firestorm that would engulf the region."Comment: It is as though Iraq is what we feared Vietnam was rather than what it was. Instead of being the tip of the spear of the communist advance, Vietnam was arguably about nationalism.Not WWII
3. Kurdistan is radically unlike the rest of Iraq.
4. The police are substantially unreliable, whereas the army may be the only authentically Iraqi institution in the country.
5. It is hard for people in liberal democracies to understand the mentality of most Iraqis.
6. If the U.S. were to withdraw tomorrow, the country would be plunged into a bloodbath. But if the U.S. does not make it clear that foreign forces will withdraw, it is unlikely that Iraqis will be able to unite to defeat the terrorists.
Conclusion (my initial take away):
(1) This statement must be treated as nearly a tautology but also applicable to many issues today: "The United States could make a [positive] difference if it played its cards right." That being said, for many of the issues that really matter, "The number of variables is simply too great to foresee the outcome...the role of contingency and accident is enormous."
· Two Questions:
o How do I decide when and where to act?
o How do I act (aware of the complexity)?
(2) How do we approach the following:
a. “Democracy in the Middle East will not simultaneously break out in different places, as it did in Eastern Europe”
b. “I’ve been around a lot of people who don’t think like us.”
c. Fact #6: 5. It is hard for people in liberal democracies to understand the mentality of most Iraqis.
Each author recognizes the difficulty of the (arguably presumed) mission of developing a liberal democracy in the Middle East. But how is that surmounted? How did it really work in Eastern Europe? Decades of U.S. interest and attempted influence towards that goal? (This is not researched, but) The U.S. seems to only recently be interested in liberal democracy within the Middle East. It seems as though in areas already within the Warsaw Pact the U.S. pushed for legitimate liberal democracy whereas in the contestable areas the U.S. didn’t bother with ideals insofar as they attempted to ensure the countries would fall in lockstep. How do we create dialogue with those that do not think like us?
