The democratic countries must courageously show a willingness to apply the principles on which their internal system is based to the global sphere
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Iron Mike, have you missed something?Whose question is it?
In the 19th century the British always talked about the "Irish Question". It never struck them (indeed still has not struck many), that there was actually a "British Question" which different irish people were answering in different ways. Some saw complete British disengagement as the solution, some wanted partial disengagement ( on the lines of the IFS) and others wanted the British to stay. The point being that any resolution had to be good for Ireland and the Irish. The effect on Britain could be considered but only as a secondary issue. Because the British were unable to see this, they have haemoraged blood and treasure ever since. This is the blindness of the US right. They see Iraq as a problem for the US. Consequently they are only able to consider solutions which will mean it will no longer be a problem for the US. In fact it is the Iraqis who have the problem - a splintered nation and a massive and brutal military occupation. For most Iraqis it not a matter of whether or not the Americans leave, it is a case of when and how. Those Americans who still cling to the notion of turning Iraq into an onside market economy are re-living the same kind of delusion which cost the British so much.
Submitted on Fri, 2008-04-11 21:01
reply Expecting Instant Solutions
bonr; Founding Fatherism does not have a history of finding instant solutions. The US is a good example. Following the American Revolution, the 13 colonies operated under a loose system known as the Articles of Confederation. It simply didn't work. Division existed in America then just as it exists in today's Iraq. Those problems threaten to split America apart. After 14 years, a convention was called to create a better system which would hold the country together. One of the biggest problems for the 13 colonies was representation in a federal government--the same problem facing Iraq. Power sharing was the key issue. The smaller colonies feared joining a federal system dominated by the larger colonies. The convention threatened to break apart on this issue. It took patience to come up with the present formula of a House Of Representatives (in which a state representation is based on population) and a Senate (in which each state, regardless of size, has two senators) to govern the country equitably. The Iraqis will come up with a similar formula. BTW. Comparing British failure at nation building to the problems facing Iraq is just apples and oranges.
Submitted on Sun, 2008-04-13 20:17
reply On tt's 'History Lesson'
From my blog site posted June 14th, 2004: Dangerous Ignorance President Bush advocates Democracy much like a classic 19th century patent medicine salesman: “It’s good for what ails you!”. Like some snake oil, spread it on, let it penetrate, and all will be well. Well maybe, if you are extraordinarily lucky. But George doesn’t understand that, or doesn’t care. At the press conference welcoming the newly announced Iraqi government Tuesday, June 1, 2004, and referring to the speech he would give the next day at the Air Force Academy graduation, he offered: “I’ll remind them the Articles of Confederation was a rather bumpy period for the American Democracy.” In other words, stick with it, and, after a little time and some understandable difficulty, all will smooth out, and Iraq can sail “straight on to morning”. As we did with the U. S. Constitution and the American future. I do not doubt this President believes he was making a valid historical analogy. It reveals a profound ignorance about the history of his own country, not to say of the historical progress of democracy around the world. Building on a tradition of “the Rights of Englishmen”, extending back into the mists of history, through the slow evolution of the body of English Common Law and through Magna Charta (500 years[!] earlier), the America of 1776 had been working at the process and processes of self governance for something in excess of 150 years. Point by point, place by place, town meeting by town meeting, elected legislature by elected legislature, we had learned in our bones how to govern ourselves, and do quite well in the process. By the middle of the 18th century we had become so manifestly successful – i.e. prosperous - that England’s attention was drawn to seriously reaping the rewards of a colonizer. They were shocked (Shocked!) to learn we had other ideas. Some real measure of self-governance had, by then, become the defining reality for Americans, and we weren’t about to yield it up. Yet the arc from the American Revolution through the Articles of Confederation to the U.S. Constitution, whereby we took a bed rock/grass roots accomplishment to a national level, encompassed some fifteen years. And, over the next several decades we were graced with the active guidance of our founders – perhaps the greatest generation of them all. In Iraq - at great cost - in a reality so stunningly different from Revolutionary America that the human imagination can scarcely encompass it, George has locked us into hoping for (even requiring) a success for “Democracy as snake oil” in the veritable blink of an eye – a few years at best. Allow Democracy to seep in, penetrate down to the roots, be assimilated, then grow back out as something fully assimilated, and you may succeed. But that takes time, and good "growing conditions". And it can be interrupted. We might recall that Italy and Germany in the twenties of the last century were democracies, but gave way in the 30’s to Hitler and Mussolini. We might recall, but George won’t – he doesn’t clutter up his mind with things that don’t serve his purpose. Dangerous Ignorance!
Submitted on Sun, 2008-04-13 20:37
reply An Boner of Historical Proportions.
bonr; You are right about Italy and Germany up to a point. Both countries had difficulty with democracy and both fell into dictatorship prior to WWII. The US helped bring back democray to them after WWII. The US want to make it three in a row with Iraq. Thanks for the history lesson.
Submitted on Sun, 2008-04-13 21:46
reply TT, What did you learn?
Let's see, From tt: Reason = Right American Revolutionary History = Post War German and Italian History = Iraqi History. Life is SO simple.
Submitted on Mon, 2008-04-14 00:08
reply oranges are not the only fruit - or are they?
TT [quote]BTW. Comparing British failure at nation building to the problems facing Iraq is just apples and oranges.[/quote] So the British were "nation building" in Ireland? Never in my entire life have I heard the most republican of Irishmen to the most orange of orangemen describe what the British were doing in Ireland as "nation building". The Irish wanted a nation - the British wanted to prevent it! In any case it is the mind set of the oppressor that I was comparing, not the details of the two different historical events. I suggest you find someone who actually understands English to explain the difference between the two concepts to you. But the real jaw dropper is the "apples and oranges" quip. You have just compared the Iraqi experience to the development of the US from a British colony (both you and Ron left out the genocide which made it possible by the way) . It seems to have escaped your notice that Iraq was already a sovereign nation before it suffered this brutal invasion. It is not an imperial colony feeling it's way to nationhood. It is a nation. It's problem is not establishing a national identity but getting rid of the foreign power which is attempting to destroy that very identity. I suspect you do not understand the word irony but then, looking at your record with the English language, I doubt if you know the difference between apples and oranges either.
Submitted on Mon, 2008-04-14 11:56
reply 
 Interesting Article
I've been out of town on business all last week, so only now finding time to crawl out of my inbox long enough to return to OD for a sanity check. Overall, I find the article quite hopeful. And I don't think it is counting chickens before they are hatched to acknowledge that successes have in fact been made in security and political reconciliation. But Petraeus and Crocker repeatedly acknowledged the fragility of the successes. So I'm not sure who's wearing the rose colored glasses. [quote]I will admit, as well, another matter I raised earlier, the export of the ‘Sunni’ awakening model to more ethnically mixed and complex regions outside of Anbar, appears to be evolving positively beyond what I would have described as reasonable expectation. I did not anticipate – it would have been difficult to do so – when all Iraqis, Sunni and Shia alike - would become so fed up with the wanton violence as to say ENOUGH, or that arriving at that conclusion would fortuitously coincide with the Awakening. [/quote] You're a big man to admit you were wrong and it takes an even bigger man not to gloat. Unfortunately, I'm not that big and I'm cheerfully basking in my victory since you and I discussed the spreading effect of the Awakening extensively and not to be crass but, I TOLD YOU SO!!! Okay, hopefully, that was not too crass. ;-) As I read the Founding Fathers paragraphs, the early days of the American experiment also came to mind. While BigC makes a good point about the significant cultural and historical differences between the American Revolution and the Iraqi Awakening, I think it is a valid observation to note the common difficulties in establishing a new state...sort of like making sausage. Different cultures, but no less difficult. Despite the historical groundwork noted by BigC, it STILL took a significant time to come up with a constitution. Yet the democrats insist the Iraqis set aside generations of tribal affiliations and make political reconciliation and establish a constitution in a FRACTION of the time? And therefore refuse to acknowledge that positive movement in that direction really IS a momentous accomplishment ESPECIALLY understanding where they are starting from.
Submitted on Mon, 2008-04-14 19:49
reply Credit where credit is due please
Iron Mike, [quote]Despite the historical groundwork noted by BigC, it STILL took a significant time to come up with a constitution.[/quote] The first 'Historical' was tt's myopic one. The second, as a corrective, was mine from 2004. [quote]Yet the democrats insist the Iraqis set aside generations of tribal affiliations and make political reconciliation and establish a constitution in a FRACTION of the time?[/quote] From my 'corrective': [quote]In Iraq - at great cost - in a reality so stunningly different from Revolutionary America that the human imagination can scarcely encompass it, George has locked us into hoping for (even requiring) a success for “Democracy as snake oil” in the veritable blink of an eye – a few years at best.[/quote] The trouble here is apples and oranges. I am addressing the whole megilla of democratic accomplishment, while we are asking the Iraqis only for some effective up and running higher level co-ordinating structures.
Submitted on Mon, 2008-04-14 21:44
reply More for the discussion
Iron Mike, Consider this from Mark Benjamin in Salon: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/04/09/petraeus_crocker/print.html A few exerpts: [quote] Claim: The surge is working.
Petraeus: "Though Iraq obviously remains a violent country, we do see progress in the security arena."
Crocker: "One conclusion I draw from these signs of progress is that the strategy that began with the surge is working."
There is truth to this, depending on how "real progress" is defined. Petraeus once again came to Congress, as he did last September, armed with a dizzying array of graphs to make his point. The multicolored charts show that "security incidents" are down -- but only to mid-2005 levels. Civilian deaths are down, too -- but only to February 2006 levels. Most security experts agree there is still a civil war going on in Iraq.
There is no evidence to indicate that Petraeus spoke inaccurately. So, the real question to help guide U.S. strategy and tactics (including troop levels) is: Why is violence relatively down?
In answering that question, even Petraeus and Crocker didn't much emphasize the increased number of U.S. troops in Iraq. Instead, they talked much more about cutting deals. In the so-called Sunni awakening that started before the surge in late 2006, substantial Sunni communities have agreed to a cease-fire with U.S. forces and to fight against al-Qaida in Iraq. Meanwhile, Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr's decision in August 2007 to declare a cease-fire is widely regarded as being a substantial factor in the reduced violence in Iraq.
Meanwhile in some areas, including Baghdad, neighborhoods have been partitioned along sectarian lines -- at the barrel of a gun. Shiites aren't killing as many Sunnis in Baghdad, for example, because many neighborhoods don't have any Sunnis anymore. They have been forced out, and their homes have been taken over by Shiites. As Petraeus put it, "Some of this decrease [in violence] is, to be sure, due to sectarian hardening of certain Baghdad neighborhoods." Claim: It is still possible to turn Iraq into a shining beacon of democracy in the Middle East. Crocker: "Iraq has the potential to develop into a stable, secure, multiethnic, multisectarian democracy under the rule of law." The number of credible national security experts out there who believe that Iraq is going to transform into a Jeffersonian democracy anytime soon can probably be counted on one hand. With room to spare. As mentioned above, perhaps the most hopeful things in this whole picture are the various cease-fires and handshake agreements among various sects. This is the "bottom-up reconciliation" you hear so much about from the White House these days. But given the deep sectarian fault lines remaining in Iraq, many experts wonder whether we shouldn't be using the bottom-up progress to foster something less than a shining beacon of democracy in the Middle East and more of a partitioned, heavily policed situation, as was done in the Balkans. This might be a more realistic goal than trying to make Iraq into post-World War II Germany. Claim: Iran's influence in Iraq is really bad; the Iranians are arming "special groups," or rogue militias that are a threat to the Iraqi central government.
Petraeus: "Together with the Iraqi security forces, we have also focused on the special groups. These elements are funded, trained, armed and directed by Iran's Qods force, with help from Lebanese Hezbollah."
Crocker: "Iran continues to undermine the efforts of the Iraqi government to establish a stable, secure state through the authority and training of criminal militia elements engaged in violence against Iraqi security forces, Coalition forces and Iraqi civilians."
Iranian meddling in Iraq is one of the murkiest and most difficult parts of the picture to assess. The United States has made various claims about direct Iranian involvement in military activity in Iraq, although evidence of such involvement has been unclear. But there can be no doubt about Iranian influence in Iraq more broadly: For example, the Iranians, not the Americans, reportedly brokered the recent cease-fire in Basra. And the Iranians have significant ties to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, led by Shiite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a crucial member of the coalition keeping Maliki in power. As Crocker admitted on Tuesday, "Iran has a dialogue with everyone in the Shiite community."[/quote]
Submitted on Mon, 2008-04-14 21:51
reply Special Groups?
[quote]Petraeus: "Together with the Iraqi security forces, we have also What's so special about them? And if the Iranians are supplying then why do they not have anti-tank weapons ( like the ones Hezbollah used to gub the Israelis) or shoulder launched anti-aircraft weapons? This is all a lot of made up nonsense aimed at the gullible fools who believed the WMD scam. Is this the warm up for the attack on Iran?
Submitted on Tue, 2008-04-15 14:15
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You might begin with this from David Brooks:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/opinion/08brooks.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
[quote] The U.S. brought no shortage of misconceptions into Iraq, but surely the longest lasting has been what you might call: Founding Fatherism. This is the belief that peace will come to the country when the nation’s political elites gather at a convention hall and make a series of grand compromises involving power-sharing and a new constitution.
The Bush administration has been pushing the Iraqis to make this sort of grand compromise for years — to little effect. The Democrats happily declare that there has been no political progress in Iraq because this grand compromise is the only kind of political progress they can conceive of.
The grand compromise model would be appropriate if Iraq were a Western country living in the shadow of the Magna Carta. But Iraq is not that kind of country.
As Philip Carl Salzman argues in “Culture and Conflict in the Middle East” (brilliantly reviewed by Stanley Kurtz in The Weekly Standard), many Middle Eastern societies are tribal. The most salient structure is the local lineage group. National leaders do not make giant sacrifices on behalf of the nation because their higher loyalty is to the sect or clan. Order is achieved not by the top-down imposition of abstract law. Instead, order is achieved through fluid balance of power agreements between local groups.
In a society like this, political progress takes different forms. It’s not top down. It’s bottom up. And this is exactly the sort of progress we are seeing in Iraq. While the Green Zone politicians have taken advantage of the surge by trying to entrench their own power, things are happening at the grass-roots.
As Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations observed in his Senate testimony last week: “This does not mean sectarian harmony or brotherly affection in Iraq. But it does mean that cold, hard strategic reality increasingly makes acting on hatred too costly for Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias Iraqis are growing more optimistic. Fifty-five percent of Iraqis say their lives are going well, up from 39 percent last August, according to a poll conducted by ABC News and other global television networks. Forty-nine percent now say the U.S. was right to invade Iraq, the highest figure recorded since this poll began in 2004.
More generally, the Iraqi people are sick of war and are punishing those leaders and forces that perpetrate it. “A vital factor in the security improvement is public backlash against the chaos and extremism of the past five years,” declared Yahia Said of the Revenue Watch Institute in written testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
And, as one would expect, the local clans have taken control. Iraqi politics have become hyperlocalized, Colin Kahl, a Georgetown professor and Obama adviser, has observed. The most prestigious groups in Iraqi society are tribes and Awakening Councils. Many of these councils earned legitimacy by fighting during the height of the violence and have now come out in the open as local authorities.
These groups have created a fluid network of fragile truces. They squabble over money, power, ideology and sectarian issues. But they have incentives to keep the peace. Sunni leaders have come to realize that they can’t win a civil war against the Shiites. Shiite militia leaders recognize their own prestige and power drops the more they fight.
The surge didn’t create the network of truces, but the truces couldn’t have happened without the surge. More than 70,000 local council members are paid by the Americans. They rely on the U.S. military to enforce bargains and deter truce-breaking. Thanks to these arrangements, ethno-sectarian violence dropped by 90 percent between June 2007 and March 2008. That’s the result of political progress, not just counterinsurgency techniques.
It has become common to belittle these truces. After all, they are not written by legislators on parchment. And indeed there’s a significant chance that they will indeed collapse and the country will devolve into anarchy.
But in certain societies, this is the way order is established, through what Salzman calls “balanced opposition.” As long as the network of truces holds, then the next president (Democrat or Republican) will have an overwhelming incentive to nurture the fragile peace.[/quote]
A caveat in re Brooks. Only one oil rich state conforms significantly with the model now proposed for Iraq – the ‘unique’ state of Saudi Arabia. All the rest have higher order political and economic structures in place, and those are considered essential to long term political viability and maximization of the oil potential. This, in turn, indicates the current situation in Iraq is likely a metastable one, and we had better be aware of that.
Brooks has made a significant argument, so consider as well two successive Charlie Rose programs for April 8 and April 9, 2008. The second, in particular, featuring John Burns and Dexter Filkins, two NY Times reporters with l-o-n-g experience in Iraq, offer positive testimony supportive of Brooks.
http://www.charlierose.com/home
Both shows indicate substantial agreement with Brooks contentions. This is clearly good and hopeful news. In particular the growing awareness of the ultimately futile nature of Islamic Radicalism is encouraging. It has been my contention (see ‘The Surge is Working’: flip side’, posted some 5 weeks ago - March 1, 2008) that the overall reality, however, was all to likely to be more complex and far more full of careful calculations of self interest than the simplistic ‘we have discovered Al Qaeda are bad guys’ story that has been offered. I see no reason to abandon the cautions to which that understanding led me.
I will admit, as well, another matter I raised earlier, the export of the ‘Sunni’ awakening model to more ethnically mixed and complex regions outside of Anbar, appears to be evolving positively beyond what I would have described as reasonable expectation. I did not anticipate – it would have been difficult to do so – when all Iraqis, Sunni and Shia alike - would become so fed up with the wanton violence as to say ENOUGH, or that arriving at that conclusion would fortuitously coincide with the Awakening. And, of course, I did not anticipate WE would be paying so many to do what they are doing.
As is to be anticipated, the Bush administration, and its water carriers, including the members of the Republican House and Senate committees examining Petraeus and Crocker April 8 and 9, are energetically spinning Brooks et al into its favored ‘rose colored glasses’, ‘count your chickens before they are hatched’ scenario. For them it is never the glass is half full, but that there is water in the glass at all becomes reason enough to blow the trumpets and beat the drums - and distract us from seeing just how full it is. Doesn’t it strike anyone as curious – at this remove from 9/11 – that exactly ‘how full’ the glass is or is not hasn’t become central to all our thinking?
It is to the credit of Petraeus and Crocker that they repeatedly emphasized that such progress as has been made is fragile and reversible and the ‘champagne remains well in the back of the refrigerator’.
Another point. One senator (Russ Feingold I think), proposed a pet talking point of the Bush spinners, that Bin Laden has repeatedly proclaimed how important Iraq could be to their cause, that Iraq is also, win lose or draw, effecting another announced al Qaeda objective – get us where they can bleed us and keep on bleeding us.
Oh Yes, there is always 'THE Question April 2008':
[quote]What is the break down of the contending armed forces in Iraq? Who are the players, what numbers do they command, what levels of arms do they control, and above all, what is the assessment of their likely loyalties and allegiances?[/quote]
An analogy to the administration’s current case might be made by observing someone go into a zoo, release all the wild animals and then insist things cannot be left that way.
And, of course, NONE of this obviates the observation that spreading the understanding the Radicals have ‘nothing to offer beyond a pyrotechnic nihilism and stagnation in a life closed to all of the opportunities that open to people in the modern world’ was rendered more difficult by this misadventure in Iraq. Nor does it obviate the still more damning reality that such understanding - ultimately decisive to our cause as well as Arab and even Israeli interests - could have been cultivated without this unnecessary and hideously costly war.
The wisdom to act is not wisdom in the actions chosen.