Iraq

We went into Iraq with the goal of creating a democracy where a tyrant had ruled. After a few hundred years of democratic republics, constitutional monarchy, free markets, individual rights, and a tendency toward egalitarianism, we may have come to miss some of the obvious factors that make for a successful nation. It seems so natural to us that we may have imagined it to be the normal, default setting for any society; any instance of tyranny must be due to some interference with the natural progress of freedom, and the removal of that interference would allow that progress to resume.

We may have elevated democracy above its natural priority. The purple fingers in January 2005 led only to months of wrangling, and the new constitution was not in place until October of that year. Actual formation of a permanent government was delayed until May 2006. There were few noticeable differences of principle involved; it looked more like squabbling over the division of loot and control over the state’s enforcement assets. Some of the various Iraqi militias became political parties without disarming, and the security forces often reported along party lines and mixed partisan violence with their supposed law-enforcement duties. Even those security forces ostensibly loyal to the central government are often too badly corrupted to function. Military supplies and arms are trucked in, and all that is needed is a few small bribes at the border. A democratically-elected but totally dysfunctional government is not much different from anarchy.

Solutions are difficult, but they at least require a good statement of the problem. Democracy, as defined by free and fair elections, has been established, yet the situation is clearly not improving. There is a cultural problem in the Middle East that democracy cannot cure.

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Jay Manifold’s discussion is a bit more detailed than Scott Ott’s but the latter has a certain simplicity.

Discuss this post at the Chicago Boyz Forum.

In response to Glenn’s request …

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Instapundit put up notice Gates was replacing Rumsfeld; I walked into class and, as an opening pleasantry, noted that fact. Everyone looked at me blankly. I explained it again – in these lit classes a good half are co-enrolled at the big school. I hadn’t needed to worry they’d try to figure out my position or want to talk politics. The only response was from a guy in the back: Why couldn’t they have taken Coach Fran to Washington instead? (The whole town appears down on him after last Saturday’s game.)

Anyway, suspecting that Chicagoboyz readers have a more mature set of priorities, I am offering a hot-off-the-presses link already woefully out of date. The November Texas Monthlys are hitting the stands with this cover story: “Can This Guy Save the Aggies? Robert Gates to the Rescue.” For those of you not from Aggieland, Paul Burka explains the man and his mission – well his mission until/if he’s confirmed.

Burka, their chief political writer, introduces the article with what now seems remarkable overstatement – after you’ve described Aggieland, what’s left to describe Iraq? But, then, the new chief’s previous tasks were’t small potatoes either.

Robert Gates helped win the cold war as director of the CIA, but that assignment was a walk in the park compared with his current one: bringing Texas A&M university’s unique but not always admired culture into the modern era and remaking the way the world views Aggieland—and the way Aggieland views the world.

Update: For those more serious, Mudville Gazette comments on potentially distracting hearings. He also links to Iran: Time for a New Approach from the committee Gates co-chaired with Zbigeniew Brzezinski for the Council on Foreign Relations in 2004. (Thanks Instapundit.)

Further Update: Gates is a good deal more colorless than Rumsfeld, a good deal more opaque. Some discussion is clearly projection, but which time will tell. Here’s Kaplan, who sees Gates as Clark Clifford. (I think we have surrendered to analogies with Viet Nam – that appears to be the only way people can intellectually deal with Iraq.)

Of course, the last to surrender is likely to be the always tough, Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson has read the Iran report and is not happy. He warns: “And we should remember a few things about the return of “realism” which is really just an academic veneer to the old isolationism.”

Post-Thanksgiving Addendum: Barone on Gates’ book & his sense of continuity.

Saddam Hussein has been sentenced by an Iraqi Court. The coverage on this side of the blogosphere has shared in the pleasure of the Iraqis; they are celebrating in the street, feeling justice has been done. Some also put the moment into perspective. For comments & many links, see Austin Bay, Iraq the Model, Gateway Pundit, Pajamas Media and Instapundit.

Perhaps the greater poignancy, though, is how the Iraqis are trying to find their way to the imperfect but relative order we have found in the rule of law. They have begun the difficult task of bringing order from disorder, the rule of law from the rule of blood. And we can reach back into our heritage and help them.

Instead some of us reject that very heritage. That some see this as timed for our elections is a bit discouraging. But worse is Ramsay Clark, once our attorney general. And we may well be concerned for our own future if views such as his prevail.

My students in American lit are reading in that great period of the American Renaissance and I am reminded again and again of the power of the vision that got us through April 1865. The vision that inspired the founders gave strength to those who saw something larger than themselves: elections were held in the midst of a civil war, a president was assassinated, that war ended. Lee’s surrender was treated with respect because Grant, Lee, & Lincoln acknowledged the value of democacy, law, respect for others.

Lincoln’s great fear was that should they lose their way they risked democracy itself: that unique American government, proven too fragile to serve as model, would demonstrate not its strength but its weakness. He (and others of his time as well as those of “fourscore and seven” years before) had a great sense of purpose. This faith has been lost by those like Ramsay Clark, who believe Iraq should not try its own, should not attempt the rule of law. One reason they give is the violence but it is because of the eternal threat of violence that such order should be constructed. A man who should understand doesn’t, diminishing what our ancestors sacrificed to give us.

That we have a history full of our mistakes is without question. If the founders had dealt with slavery, we might have been early rather than late comers to its abolition; slavery would not have destroyed generations of African-American lives nor would 650,000 men have been slaughtered in the Civil War. But we found our way out through the rule of law and a humility before the importance of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”