Serving Bread

I’ve been doing some thinking and reflecting on why Iraq is not going too hot. Some folks would argue that I’m making a subjective statement. Perhaps! Even if it’s unfair to go so far as to call Iraq (our policy) a mess, the elections earlier this month brought a gain for the Democrats, with the top issue being a referendum on Iraq. Here are my 10 reasons why Iraq is such a mess:

1. The war was fought on false premises: I know that back in 2003, most political leaders believed that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction. The war was sold to us on that premise. Best case scenario: bad intelligence made it sound like Iraq was a threat with their wmds. Worst case scenario: the Bush administration lied, knowing full well the evidence for the wmds was sketchy. Either way, the war was fought a premise that was false.
2. Criticism or open discussion was/is not tolerated: The Bush administration had to do what it had to do to sell the war, but even internal voices who questioned the way the administration was handling the decision were not tolerated. The voices of Rumsfeld, Rice and Wolfowitz were much louder than others (like Powell). And until today, the administration is very reluctant on having a dialogue on what to do in Iraq. (Remember Valerie Plame!)
3. Learning is not a value: When it became clear that Iraq did not possess the mass stockpiles of WMDs, the Bush administration just changed what the war is about. Rather than encourage and enter into a learning process of what happened and what we can learn from it, people were just blamed and silenced.
4. Who is the enemy?: In a war, you need a recognizable enemy. Who is the enemy in Iraq? It certainly is not Al Qaeda in Iraq (as some people claim) as the organization is much smaller and weaker than Sadr’s militia. Is it Sadr? (Demonize him, and you have yourself political suicide.) Bush folks will probably say, “The enemy are people who hate our way of life.” True, that is an enemy, just not recognizable enough to wage war or a “successful” war.
5. Government is being imposed top down: Most successful democracies flourish as they become a grass roots movement. By coming in as westerners and imposing a new form of government (even a superb form of government), it won’t work. We may have the right intentions and the right ends, but terrible means. We could argue that Japan is a picture of success of imposing a form of government top down, but Japan also had the blessing of its emperor, and the old regime was not demonized and kicked out. The key people running Iraq were all in exile during Saddam’s regime. Anyone who was associated with Saddam was black-listed.
6. Our government trusted the wrong people: We were told that the Iraqis would greet us with flowers when we rolled into Baghdad. It was the wrong people (i.e. Ahmad Chalabi) who told us that. We trusted the wrong people who were eager to get Saddam out because they wanted to rule.
7. We’re not very loyal: To piggy-back off of point #6, the Iraqi leadership does not trust us because we have proven to turn our back on friends. Chalabi was a friend of the US, but was then demonized and warrants were out for his arrest, but then all charges were dropped and we tried to be his friend again.
8. We neglected the world-community: Our friends (i.e. France and Germany) told us it’s not a good idea to invade Iraq. The Bush administration thought it had enough friends in the “coalition” (Poland, Spain, Australia, Italy, Britain, Ukraine, Thailand, etc…). Rumsfeld further insulted them by calling them “Old Europe”. Even if our friends and allies do not have the wisdom, we need the stronger powers to be with us 100%. We thought we could do it without them.
9. We neglected/neglect the regional powers: Geo-politically, this was an awful war because we are not friends with Iraq’s strong neighbors–Syria and Iran. Those two countries (plus Turkey) will be key to the stabilization of Iraq. Probably with a literal snap of fingers, they can help make Iraq stable or chaos. We demonize those countries, when we need their help. I believe that without their help, we can have the best weapons, strategy and moral imperative, and will never make a dent toward establishing something successful in Iraq.
10. We “played” the UN: All the important players, but the United States, wanted more time for the inspections to work. We had a much better opportunity to work with the UN and build a strong coalition to not just weaken Saddam’s Iraq but to no longer make it a threat to the world community. Yes, it is possible to get rid of threats without removing the leadership and the governing structures. Would Saddam still have been a threat and brutal to his people? Yes, but probably no worse than a quarter of the countries in the world.

Hindsight is 20/20, but most of these points were brought up on the front-end of our war effort and most of those things are still true and still unaddressed.

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