They could never do enough, and always did too much.
That line often echoed in my thoughts as I traveled through Iraq between the fall of Saddam and the beginning of the serious "insurgency" a year later. At the time, I was thinking of Iraqi attitudes toward the Coalition Provisional Authority--on one hand, anger that the U.S.-led "occupation" couldn't immediately solve the nation's problems; on the other, resentment at what they perceived as American manipulation of their affairs. It struck me then, as now, as the verdict history will pass on America's post-Saddam reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
It is also a plaint that runs through Lawrence Kaplan's cover story in the latest New Republic, "The Last Casualty: the tragic end to a liberal Iraq." A strong supporter of the war, Kaplan has written a forceful, angry piece that deserves serious consideration and reply.
His basic point is solid. Squeezed between fascist terrorists and conservative religious parties, liberalism--or, a secular, pluralistic, progressive mindset (what Iraqi liberals themselves call "scientific")--has virtually vanished from the political spectrum. After visiting the heavily guarded Baghdad home of one leading moderate, Kaplan poses the rhetoric question: "How can there be liberalism in a country where liberals cannot leave their homes?" Later, he notes
The war has sucked the oxygen out of the liberal experiment. Iraqi opinion polls, for instance, which showed majorities favoring a secular state a year ago, show the reverse today--a poll by IRI [International Republican Institute] released last August reported that 70 percent of Iraqis would prefer an Islamic state.
This "Islamic state" is already taking form in Basra, according to reports. Add to this a Sunni minority who would prefer to see the reinstatement of the Nazi-inspired Baath Party and the peril to "scientific" politics is clear.
Kaplan blames the U.S. "Only stability can arrest these trends," he contends, adding,
When it comes to liberalism in Iraq, there's no getting around a simple truth: NGOs do what they can; Iraqi liberals do what they can; but, in the end, only the U.S. military has the ability to create stability--and hence, democracy--here.
In short, America's failure to stabilize the country after the fall of Saddam allowed an fascist insurgency and a religious uprising to take place in the center and southern portions of Iraq, crippling liberalism's chances to take root and flourish. Worse, Kaplan notes, the CPA did very little to fund existing liberal organizations. He notes that while certain NGOs have provided support for "scientific" organizations,
the U.S. Agency for International Development's signature $43 million program to support civil society has been tied up in bureaucratic knots for a year.
Worse, Iran has provided $20 million to Shia religious parties, while Washington has declined to pick favorites, attempting to remain neutral and "evenhanded" as possible. Writes Kaplan,
This may seem like evidence of high-mindedness. But the United States boasts a long history of favoring pro-U.S. political organizations abroad. The decision to do otherwise here reflects a broader logic of the U.S. mission: Democracy first; liberalism later.
In short, Kaplan implies, America may have spent its blood and treasure help Iraq transform itself into what Fareed Zakaria calls an "illiberal democracy."
I can attest to much of what Kaplan says. Human rights activists I spoke to in Baghdad and Basra frequently complained that the CPA offered them no funding, despite their many requests for aid. Others--the Communists in particular--simply viewed the administration as favoring Iraqi exiles and corrupt religious and tribal leaders ensconced in the old Governing Council. This, in turn, fueled suspicions among "scientific" Iraqis that the U.S. only wanted to establish a pliable Iraqi government that would offer access to the oil spigot.
Still, as much as I respected and admired Iraqi liberals, I can't fully agree that the U.S. should have poured millions of dollars into financing their political ambitions. To begin with, our military presence enraged thousands of Sunnis: did we want our economic aid to alienate the Shia, especially their religious establishment--and, most importantly, Ayatollah Sistani? We may not have "won" the Shia hearts and minds in this war, but we didn't exactly lose them, either. By acting as a rival--or even an adversary--to Sistani's influence over his followers, we might have hardened the Hawza's line toward the U.S., and strengthened the hand of rebellious clerics such a Moqtada al-Sadr.
But let us take Kaplan's prescription for liberalism to its logical conclusion. The U.S., after establishing peace and security, funds "scientific" parties which then out-poll the Shia and Sunni religious parties in the January 30 elections to form a government. What then? Iraq has a regime that every nation in the Middle East and Europe, as well as conservative religious groups from Najaf to Detroit, immediately stamp as an extension of American foreign and military policy. The suspicions of U.S. hegemony over oil-rich Muslim states takes on even more valence, intensifying anti-American sentiment and providing the world additional excuses not to assist the Iraqi people.
While the U.S. did make serious errors mistakes in liberating Iraq--too few troops being the worst--another, perhaps more important reason, exists for parlous state of liberalism in the country: Iraqis aren't liberal. This is a difficult matter for the neo-liberals of the New Republic to accept. (In an editorial Peter Beinhart once criticized me for suggesting that rank-and-file Shia were "ungovernable" because of their religious fanaticism. We shall see...) Kaplan makes a pass at the point, noting that Iraqis are
burdened by the fact that, in a country with no liberal tradition, liberalism itself is a foreign concept. The peculiarities of Arab culture, decades of life under Saddam Hussein, ethnic and religious rivalries--all have been offered by way of explaining why it is that, as State Department Iraq expert Alina Romanowski has put it, "Iraq present as unpromising a breeding ground for democracy as any in the world."
In many ways, Kaplan understates the case. As I point out in In the Red Zone, Iraqis have a poor concept of the give-and-take and compromises that form democracy. Worse, their sense of national identity is weak--for at least a quarter century Iraq was Saddam, and Saddam was Iraq; when the tyrant fell, a void opened in the national psyche. To the surprise of we neo-cons, America found itself with a prostrate country not simply in need of "nation building"--but "identity building." "The Iraqi mentality today is too much like the old Saddam mentality," said Haana Edwar, director of a Baghdad women's center. "It is an agressive, broken mentality, unfit for democracy."
Moreover, Kaplan overstates the practical capabilities of liberal Iraqis. Even with all the funding in the world, I doubt that many of the "scientific" leaders I met could do more than rent out more spacious headquarters, print fancier programs or hire larger fleets of cars. As Juliani Yussef, editor-in-chief of Al-Ahkbar newspaper in Basra told me, "Secular parties have big membership lists, but few programs."
Furthermore, aside from the Communists, liberals simply had no idea of grassroots organizing. How could they? Iraqi society has no grassroots. There are few voluntary associations or clubs; labor unions are practically non-existent; political parties only in their infancy--the whole society is an "armed camp," as a Kurdish man once told me. "Saddam turned the Iraqi people in a bomb," a Baghdad cabbie said to me once. "When he was removed, we exploded."
Like it or not, Shia Islam is the best, or at least most effective, organizing principle currently operative in Iraq. This is why we should thank Allah that a man with the sagacity and maturity of Ayatollah Sistani happen to dominate Najaf at the time of our invasion. Make no mistake: this man is no liberal, no Western-style advocate of individual rights--he is a conservative. But he is no tyrant either, and he understands that Islam is not the solution to all the problems Iraq now faces.
As for Basra, yes the situation there is unpleasant: religious parties hold sway, women are forced to wear black hejab, Christians are increasingly unwelcome. But to extrapolate conditions there throughout the country is a mistake. Iraq is too diverse, the tradition of secularism too ingrained in the Iraqi people (thanks, in many ways, to Saddam and the Baath Party) and the Kurds too jealous of their secular autonomies for the country to morph into another Iran. George Bush may not find himself dealing with the kind of new Iraqi leadership he planned for or wished, but that in itself may be a guarantee of sorts for success in Iraq: no reasonable observer will be able to charge that the new Shia-dominated government in Baghdad is a puppet regime.
Neo-liberals like Kaplan wish America to intervene in Iraq's politics while somehow avoiding the taint of imperialism. How is that possible? In his own way, he is like Iraqis I met who demanded that the U.S. fix the infrastructure problems of their nation while simultaneously ending the "occupation." Both present a no-win situation where America can never do enough, and will always do too much.
UPDATE: Belmont Club has more thoughts on this subject, via Reuel Marc Gerecht and the Weekly Standard.
