Author: Daniel Pipes
Publication: Jerusalem Post
Date: November 19, 2003
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1316
Stay the course - but change the
course. That was the meaning of the sudden, sharp, and understated change
in Washington's Iraq policy last week.
After the American civilian administrator
of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, made a hurried visit to the White House, President
George W. Bush said he wants "the Iraqis to be more involved in the governance
of their country" and offered some ideas toward that end. Two days later,
the Iraqi Governing Council announced that the formal occupation of Iraq
would end by June 2004, becoming at that time a mere "military presence."
Ambitious plans for an early constitution
have now been shunted aside; instead, reports the Associated Press, Bremer
will "name an interim Iraqi leader with authority to govern the country
until a constitution can be written and elections held."
The military will be "Iraqified."
The new emphasis is less on establishing a Jeffersonian democracy than
on shifting power and responsibility to Iraqis, and doing so pronto.
This welcome shift marks a victory
for the Defense Department's realism and a defeat for the State Department's
dreamy hope (as the Wall Street Journal puts it) "to re-create the Philadelphia
of 1787 in Baghdad." Sure, it would be wonderful if Americans and Britons
could, in leisurely fashion, educate Iraqis in the fine arts of governance.
But Iraqis are not children eager to learn from Western instructors. They
are proud of their history, defiant toward the outside world, suspicious
of Anglo-Americans, and determined to run their own country. Attempts to
tutor them will surely fail.
Iraqi today is deeply dissimilar
to Germany or Japan post-1945, primarily because a very different equation
exists.
Germans and Japanese were each defeated
as a people, ground down by a multi-year total war, and so they accepted
the remake of their societies and cultures. In contrast, Iraqis emerged
almost unscathed from a three-week war designed not to harm them. Feeling
liberated more than defeated, Iraqis are in no mood to be told what to
do. They take what serves them from the occupation and fend off, through
violence and other forms of resistance, what does not.
Conversely, not having gone through
a long and brutal war with Iraqis, Americans
display limited concern about the
future course of Iraq.
In brief, Iraqi determination is
much greater than that of the occupiers, severely limiting what the latter
can accomplish.
Washington's sensible new approach
is in keeping with my call in April 2003 for a "politically moderate but
operationally tough - democratically-minded Iraqi strongman," as well as
my recommendation to let Iraqis run Iraq.
That's not to say that I want American,
British, Polish, Italian, and other troops to abandon the country; no,
they must remain but limit themselves to a lesser role.
Presence: Boots on the city streets
should be Iraqi, not foreign. Remove coalition forces from the inhabited
areas, transferring them to the deserts (which are ample in Iraq).
Power: Guarantee borders, oil and
gas lines, and the government in Baghdad. Hunt down Saddam Hussein and
his henchmen. Otherwise, Iraqis should maintain order.
Decisions: Let Iraqis make internal
decisions (security, finances, justice, education, religion, etc.), keeping
only foreign and defense policy in coalition hands.
Iraqis should - with only distant
coalition oversight - be given the chance to make a go of it on their own.
When a government has proven itself over an extended period, it deserves
full sovereignty. Should things go wrong, those troops in the desert can
always intervene.
And, make no mistake, Iraqification
offers ample opportunity for things to go wrong. The Iraqi record of self-rule
over the past 70 years has been disastrous; realistically, we must expect
the future leadership to be less than exemplary. But so long as it poses
no danger to the outside world nor brutalizes its own population, that
should be acceptable, for Americans and Britons gave their lives in the
spring war less to fix Iraq than to protect their own countries.
Iraq is not likely to serve the
Muslim world as a model of democracy anytime soon. But if the Bush administration
stays the course with its excellent new policy, a new Iraqi government
has the chance of developing over years and perhaps decades into a decent
country with an open political process, successful economy, and flourishing
culture.
