Chris Allbritton has some thoughts on the recent elections in Iraq:
Bear in mind it was just one day. The hard part is still ahead of this country, and Jan. 30 marked not only the closing of one chapter, but the opening of another. It is still being written. To tamp down this insurgency, the country was placed on total lockdown for three days. And the insurgents still managed to cause mayhem, if not at the scale they promised. If that's what it takes to secure this country, there's still a big, big challenge ahead.
The insurgency is not over. The Sunnis and middle-class former Ba'athists are still resentful and suspicious. An old friend of mine who was a Ba'athist, but mainly so he could get a job, is bitter and morose, feeling that now there are two occupations. “One from the Americans and one from the Iranians,” he said. The Sunnis are terrified of their old enemy, and List 169, the Sistani-blessed list, does have a number of people on it with serious ties to Iran. The country is still a mess, with deteriorating services like water and electricity. This is not to say they can't be overcome, but this is not a time to declare victory.
Be sure and mention all this to the war-boosters, who are, dorkily, coating their fingers with blue ink as a sign of solidarity “with the Iraqi people.” Hm. I don't remember them doing that for Afghanistan... Why don't they just 'fess up and say they're giving the finger to us doubters? This is not solidarity; it's a taunt along the lines of, “We were right, nyah nyah!” instead of a celebration of democracy.
Oh, there's no doubt about this. The ConservaBorg are in Full Gloat mode, as if this one day has proven everything right. They say they're proud of the Iraqis and respect what they're doing, etc., etc. As Holden over at First Draft points out, these are the same people who were advocating various forms of carpet bombing (or turning the whole place into a radioactive parking lot) at various times within the past year or two. Allbritton continues:
Make no mistake: Sunday was not a validation of Bush's policies. Most Arab states would like to have democracy, yes, but not at the barrel of a gun, which is how it came here. If the choice is being invaded, occupied and force-fed controversial elections that might lead to civil war versus working at democratic reforms at their own pace and in their own way, I suspect most Arabs would choose the latter. And who could blame them? Iraq is not an example to emulate.
Regardless of what the media cheerleaders showed us the other day, there are still many unescapable and inconvenient facts. One is that the insurgency and the associated casualties are growing, not shrinking. Two is that the people set to take over the government are the exact sort of radical Muslims who have a bad habit of fostering terrorism (in Iran and Saudi Arabia), much worse than anything Saddam ever did. Third is that these same people seem to be pretty much taking marching orders from Iran, which is apparently the next target on our list. Fourth is that we're still building bases there, intending to establish a very large, permanent military presence, and there is no way that the average Iraqi is going to be happy with that, ever.
Posted by Observer at February 1, 2005 02:40 PMComments on entries can only be made in pop-up windows while those entries are still on the main index page. Sorry for the inconvenience this causes, but this blocks about 99.99% of the spam the blog receives.
Iraq is a real mess, and has been since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after WW1.
The status quo is what it was under the Ottomans. The Sunnis were in power, and with the charming intolerance that seems to mark most sects the world over, oppressed their neighbor (and only slightly different in religious practice) Shiites. The Sunnis enjoyed considerable benefits while doing this, and it is the way things have been in that area for centuries.
The Brits and (to a lesser extent) the French, who drew the international boundaries in south-west Asia after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, chose to draw the boundaries to suit the groups that helped them defeat the Ottoman Turks, and they rewarded those groups by making them the ruling families of various kingdoms new-minted sort of in the British image. The rulers were *not* chosen with democracy in mind; it was done in the style of the Victorian divide-conquer-and-set-up-client-states management that they had done in the 19th Century. Iraq ended up ruled by Sunnis. Subsequent events saw the kingdom replaced ultimately by Saddam Hussein's totalitarian state, but the Sunnis remained in charge, with the Shiites and Kurds firmly under a very heavy thumb.
(Sunni Ottoman Turkey always mistrusted Shiite Persia, that is, Iran, more or less as long as both states existed. The Iraq-Iran border more or less is where the Ottoman-Persia border was in 1918. Iran remains Shiite-controlled. The Saudis are Sunni, and the House of Saud remains in power by allowing their extremist clerics to do any anti-Western -- and anti-Shiite -- thing they want.)
Democracy sounds like a good idea to the more-numerous, historically oppressed Shiites in Iraq, and a very bad idea to the historically dominant Sunnis. It's unclear what the Kurds think, and whether they expect/hope to fare any different under a Shiite government compared to Saddam Hussein's. You can only maintain power if you keep yourself well armed, and sure enough the Sunnis are going to keep the heat on ... for generations.
The Shiite government in Iran hates the US because we kept the Shah in power for so long, and it's hard to argue with them for that, considering some of the things that happened there. On the other hand, there some liberalizing forces at work in Iran, though I think it'll get uglier before it gets pleasant for a North American there.
And this is the meatgrinder that rich money-pandering cretin asshole self-righteous fratboy Dubya got us into. He doesn't have to worry about his kids going there and coming home in body bags; he's only got two daughters.
Personally ... I think Saddam Hussein was the second coming of Joe Stalin, and the best thing that could happen to everyone is seeing him and every active Baath party member hanged from lampposts (Iraq being short on trees with branches) as quickly as it can conveniently be done. Yes, there were pro-forma Baathists just like there were pro-forma Nazis, and you don't need to hang those; but everyone who held a commission in his army, and everyone above a first-level manager in his government ... let them dance on air for crimes against humanity. But, it'll never happen.
Failing that, partition Iraq into states along sectarian and ethnic lines. (But that'll never happen, because Turkey will never allow a Kurdish state to come into existance ... they also have a restive Kurdish population to keep in check.) The national boundaries are artificial, and I see no need to preserve the Brits' mistakes in trying to keep them. Break it up, lock down the borders, and let each substate (s)elect its own government.
Posted by: Feff on February 1, 2005 04:53 PMI would rephrase that first sentence a bit there Feff. "Iraq is a mess and has been since before the breakup of the Ottoman empire..." Hell, any territory under the Ottomans was a mess from 1700 on, at least. Though they may have had some political stability, it was precarious at best and hinged on the support of foreign nations all eager to somehow control the area so they can walk through it. Nobody wanted it, but they didn't want the enemy to have it, that's for sure.
And Persia/Iran had it worse by not even having a government outside of Tehran, for the most part, after the crumpling of the Safavids. And it shows with the capitulations they were willing to make (and reneg on when the people got upset about it). And then, of course, they sold their petroleum rights and that region became much more interesting as oil grew in importance over coal.
But yeah, it's been rough there for a long, long time.
Posted by: Polerand on February 2, 2005 01:54 PMYou're right about that ... it was messed up long before the Ottomans collapsed. (Feff scrabbles around for his Asiatic history notes.) Seems like Mongols (twice) shredded the place, creating a long-term power and population vacuum from which it has never recovered.
Hmm. I wonder if Dubya wants to eclipse Hulagu Khan's mark of 800,000 deaths in Baghdad. Probably not ... I doubt he ever heard of the Mongols at all.
Posted by: Feff on February 2, 2005 06:00 PM