I have an old high school acquaintance who I have relatively recently (via facebook) have renewed some of the debates with which we enlivened one of our classes our senior year. Debating with him was such fun, even if he had difficulty defending his progressive opinions back then. Come to think of it, he still does, in my humble opinion.
His current jag is that the war in Iraq was a failure and Bush was wrong and so it all was a waste … to the point that a) we should have left Saddam in power and b) the Iranians now are going to control Iraq (as well as Syria and Lebanon, I suppose). Well, with all due respect to the Don, once again I think he is wrong.
First, what were the reasons we and about 40 other nations went into Iraq in 2003 to enforce a host of U.N. resolutions?
Weapons of Mass Destruction? Partly … and yes, despite the conventional wisdom of today: a) the Iraqis did have some WMDs, did have the capability of producing more and did have plans to produce more, if and when the then-in-force sanctions regimen collapsed and was no longer in effect and b) that Saddam’s regime already had demonstrated against the Iranians in the 1980-1988 war that it was willing to use them against external enemies and against the Kurds and the Shi’a that it was willing to use such weapons against internal enemies as well.
The fact that he was a genocidal tyrant who was killing thousands of his people annually as well as torturing thousand upon thousands more.
The fact that he was blatant violation of something like 19 U.N. Security Council resolutions, many of which authorized the use of force to compel compliance.
The fact that he was fostering terrorist actions against not only Israel but other “enemies” (including the United States), including but not limited to training, financing and giving the families of anti-Semitic homicide bombers $25,000 USD if they bomber was successful.
It already was costing the US (and other countries involved, including the Brits), billions of bucks to maintain the U.N.-ordered “No Fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq to protect the indigenous people there (both basically unrepresented in Bathist regime) from military reprisals against them.
In addition, the Coalition had moved thousands of troops, billions of dollars worth of military supplies into the deserts of Kuwait and to a lesser extent eastern Turkey, in an effort to convince the Saddam regime that cooperating with the U.N. mandated inspections for weapons of mass destruction was in its best interest. An effort that was only marginally successful, as the U.N. inspectors complained that the Iraqis were not be cooperative, and were, in fact, being disingenuous.
All those are well documented reasons and really can’t be debated, unless you want just to deny reality.
Still, one has to be a realist and point out that however good the reasons 40-plus nations (for whatever reason you want to attribute) felt compelled to be involved, while the initial operation was a resounding success from a purely military point of view, its implementation and the subsequent efforts to help the Iraqis form a more perfect union definitely screwed the pooch as they say.
First, let me say that Gen. Shinseki was right … and Don Rumsfeld was wrong. Let me say that the Bush Administration (including POTUS and VPOTUS) made a host of atrocious decisions and assumptions that merely illustrated the American propensity to be extremely ignorant of things non-American.
But let me point out that one cannot just use the American presence as a scapegoat for what has happened over the last 10 years in Iraq. It is not from lack of effort by the Americans that bombs still are going off in Iraq and that much of Iraq’s infrastructure remains damaged. No, most (a vast majority and now all) of that is the result of Iraqi v. Iraqi violence and depredations.
It is, as it always has, been the choice of the Iraqis themselves to choose violence over coexistence and compromise.
Now, as for the point that the U.S. has handed Iraq to the suzerainty of Tehran: Ain’t happening, and ain’t gonna happen.
Why do I say that? How about a little reality check here:
First, Iraq is Arab and Kurdish; Iran is Persian and Kurdish (but dominated by the Persians). There is a reason why that stretch of water between the Arabian peninsula and the coast of Southwest Asia has two names, depending on which side you are on – The Arabian Gulf or the Persian Gulf.
Simply put, Arabs and Persians do not get along and haven’t for about 3,000 years. There is a very, very long history of conflict and conquest here in cultures that have very long memories. So, to expect Baghdad just to march in step with Tehran is to ignore reality.
Secondly, not only is their the Shi’a-Sunni divide (which is another source of conflict that stretches back about 1,700 years) but there is a Shi’a-Shi’a divide between the ayatollahs in Qum and the ayatollahs in Karbala. Needless to say that does not bode all that well for Iranian dominance there.
What is happening in Iraq today is little different that what we saw happen in North Ireland for 20-plus years, Lebanon for at least as long, or Bosnia or Kosovo, or Somalia, or Sudan/Dafur, or Uganda, or Namibia, or host of other places that could be named. It is a civil war between two ethnic/religious groups vying for political power and to dominate the economic pie.
Rather than share either, both sides continue to use whatever means possible to advance their own agenda.
Question: Is that that fault of the Americans? Hell, no. Do the Americans necessarily a responsibility to try to intervene? Well, we tried that with mixed results in various places, but in the end, the responsibility for whatever violence and chaos an area maybe enduring, whether it Afghanistan or Iraq or the Philippines or Sri Lanka or Nigeria or Norway, really is the responsibility of the people who live there. They have to make the decision whether it is better to live under a rule of law where they are essentially equal before the law or to live under some other system.
So, to fault the Americans for failing to create more perfect unions in Iraq and Afghanistan is to ignore reality. The Iraqis and the Afghans are choosing their own fates.
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