The Booby Prize
On the old TV game show “Let’s Make a Deal,” there was always that moment after the contest where the MC would say to the announcer, “OK, Johnny, tell him what he’s won…” Sometimes it would be a new car or a washer and drier set. Other times it would be some kind of goofy prize like a billy goat or a year supply of Spam. I think the American people are having a “Let’s Make a Deal” moment in the aftermath with Iraq, and are increasingly concerned with what they’ve found behind Door number three.
Over the weekend, there were several more attacks on American interests, including the rockets that were launched, “coincidentally,” at the hotel where heavy war honcho Paul Wolfowitz was staying – presumably in the honeymoon suite. These attacks and the various eruptions of rifle fire around the country are blamed on “Saddam loyalists,” and who knows, that may be true. But there’s lots of trouble laying in the weeds in Iraq besides the remnants of the old regime.
For starters, there are 32 flavors of religious fanatics: indigenous Sunnis, indigenous Shiites, Shiites that are connected to Iran and/or Hizballah, Wahabbists coming in from Saudi Arabia to cause trouble, either on their own, or possibly at the behest of the Saudi government. There are killer kooks from Al Quaeda and other shadowy terrorist organizations, some of which may or may not have ties to regional intelligence services (Syria, Pakistan, etc.). There are Kurds and Turcomen, probably a few ethnic Persians and Azerbaijanis, plus hill people with grudges that date back to the days of Abraham. There are the residual Ba’athist apparatchiks, plus splinter groups. There are carpet baggers like Chalabi and his crew, monarchists who want the return of the Hashemite dynasty (e.g., Jordan’s royal family), probably a few Palestinian terrorists who were cooling their heals in Iraq because it got too hot back in Gaza City.
All of these people hate each other, but they agree on a few important things. They have no use for the American occupation, and they see no value to any political system in Iraq that does not result in power for themselves. Most of them probably can’t wait to lock up the women and start building Madrassas to indoctrinate new followers, either. It doesn’t hurt their popularity with the common folk that America’s occupying army brings with it a bevy of camp followers including witless missionaries and unscrupulous Texas businessmen out to turn a quick buck, and that the war and occupation were famously planned by neoconservatives closely aligned with the policies of Ariel Sharon.
Stuck in the middle of this shark tank are two groups of unfortunate bystanders. First are the American troops, with big red targets painted on them. But the Americans have two important advantages: they have very big guns to fight back, and someday, they will leave. The second group is not so fortunate. This is the moderate Iraqi middle class (if not in economic terms, then certainly by education and outlook). These are the people we are ostensibly there to help – the people in whose name, according to the latest Bush Administration talking points – we went to war to liberate. And it is they who have the most to lose from the current situation.
The problem is simple. The moderate, urban, educated population has neither the means nor the will to defend its interests against the rogues gallery arrayed against them. Their agenda of honest government and power sharing serves the interests of none of the real power players, and their progressive values are despised by Islamists of every stripe. To the extent that Bush’s maxim that “they hate our freedoms” has any truth to it, it is in the loathing that the fanatics feel toward the thin layer of Iraqi society that truly embraces liberal democratic ideas – not as a means to self-enrichment, but as the way to improve the Iraqi nation. Unfortunately, every day that the American occupation goes on, their cause is discredited further by association with the ideology of the hated conquerors. Right now, it is hard to imagine they won’t be the first people up against the wall the minute the last American helicopter leaves the ground.
So we're left with a a classic Catch-22. Everyone with real power is angling for their own main chance once the Americans leave, which makes it stupid, if not suicidal, for anyone to stick their necks out for the greater good. The people we’re dealing are not big on compromise, especially if they think they’re holding the cards. And unfortunately, they are. US military force is not strong enough to break the power of all the factions with an interest in hijacking Iraq’s future. There are too many, they are too dedicated, and their means of operating are woven too deeply into the fabric of the culture. It is simply not feasible to ask a substantial segment of the population to abandon their understanding of religious duty, tribal identity, and traditional means of allocating power in order to create the kind of secular, democratic state that we would consider worth the cost of the war.
The Iraqi operators are counting on America’s will to weaken, which is a dead certainty if the attacks continue, the costs escalate, and the Administration finds it difficult to articulate why we went there in the first place. Thanks to our stellar diplomacy efforts, there is little appetite among our “coalition of the willing” to put troops on the ground in the event of an all-out civil war, which is looking increasingly likely. Pretty soon, someone will see it in their interests to touch off the powder keg, probably close enough to the US Presidential election to put considerable pressure on Bush to pull out the troops. In that event, who knows what kind of government or governments will emerge in Iraq, or what the “Iraqi people” will have to look forward to.
It doesn’t have to end badly, and maybe we’ll get lucky and avoid a total bloodbath and meltdown. But luck is what it will take. In the name of making ourselves more secure, we’ve created a situation where everything is lined up against success. Mopping up Saddam’s army and staging a photo-op victory party on the deck of a carrier was the easy part. And now, Johnny, show them what they’ve won…
The sick part about all of this is that none of it is particularly unexpected. Critics were saying this, and more, from the start, but the great thinkers of the Pentagon and the Project for a New American Century already had it all figured out. Well, kiddies, this is what happens when the cotton-candy fantasyland of Right Wing ideology meets the cold facts of the real world. We took a leap of faith – right off the cliff. Building a few schools and hospitals isn’t going to put this genie back in the bottle, to borrow a Baghdad metaphor. Hopefully, in 15 months, it will fall to a new set of policy makers in Washington how to undo the damage caused by this fool’s errand.
8:47:01 PM 
|
|
