US “success” in Iraq– for or against?

I have a lot of respect for Juan Cole’s wisdom on matters Iraqi and Shi-ite. That’s why I have a permanent link to his Informed Comment blog on the sidebar to the right.) Today, though, he has a small reflection on the blog that gave me a deep pause for thought. His argument there is, “I want the US to succeed in Iraq, just as I think all responsible Americans do.”
H’mm.
First, of course, it depends what you mean by “success”. Second, I don’t like the moral bullying involved in declaring that “all responsible Americans” hold this view. If I should question Cole’s argument, does that make me an “irresponsible” American? Or perhaps even– pass the smelling salts!– “un-American”?
So first, I guess I’ll paste in the nub of his argument, then I’ll pose a few of my questions. Cole introduces the argument by challenging Wolfie’s never-credible assertions that Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda were somehow linked. Then, Cole continues:

    Look, I want the US to succeed in Iraq, just as I think all responsible Americans do. The war was not justifiable on grounds of an immediate threat to US security. But it still may have been a worthwhile enterprise if it really can break the logjam in the region created by authoritarianism, patrimonial cronyism, creaky national socialism in the economy, and political censorship and massive repression. [Not to mention just ending the US economic sanctions, which were hurting ordinary Iraqis and killing children.] If Iraqis can just do so much as replicate India’s success in holding regular elections and in maintaining a relatively independent judiciary and press, they would pioneer a new way of being Arab and modern… The US needed to redeem itself from earlier complicity in genocide against the Kurds and the Shiites (first against the Kurds in 1988 when the US was allied with Saddam, and then against both groups in spring of 1991 when the US stood aside and watched it happen even though they could have interdicted Saddam’s helicopter gunships).
    A little humility, a little seeking of redemption, a little doing good for others. Those things could make a convincing rationale for the current project. But not a war on terrorism.

So Cole has essentially given as his definition of US success that
Iraqis should end up being able to “replicate India’s success” in a building a working (if imperfect) democracy. Not, of course, that any democracies are perfect–including, as Cole well knows, that right here in the US of A.
And along the way, there’s the “redemptionist” undertone to what he writes. Yes, I am totally delighted that the “sanctions of mass destruction” regime that US/UK pressure maintained on Iraq for 12 long years has been brought to an end. We don’t know yet, though, how many Iraqi kids will die over the next 2-3 years–have died already– from totally avoidable causes brought about by the social and economic chaos into which the war has plunged the country… We may not be out of the woods yet on avoidable-but-not-avoided child deaths in Iraq, so I think it is premature to assume that we are.
But whether we are or not we are, I have a deep distrust of the proposition that “redemptionism”, a desire that is joined at the hip to guilt, can ever provide a productive motivation in human affairs. (A lot of my work on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda deals with the tragic results of just such a motivation having been at work in the desire of rich, secure western governments to establish that misguided and laregly dysfunctional institution.)
So okay, here are some of my other questions for Cole:

  1. He seems to be arguing that a state of affairs in which Iraqis can replicate India’s success” would, for him, constitute a US “success” in Iraq.  Does he have any reason to believe that that goal is the one that this US administration is actually pursuing there? In particular, does he have any reason to believe that the political empowerment of the Iraqis themselves is what the Bushites are aiming at?
  2. How does he assess the considerable weight of counter-evidence that there is out there, regarding this administration’s policies in Iraq, elsewhere in the Middle East (where “empowerment” of local pro-democracy forces seems nowhere to be on the effective agenda), or at home here in the US (ditto)?
  3. Equally or even more importanly: How about the precedent set for Iraqis, for that 96 percent of the world’s people who are not US citizens–and for the four percent of us who are US citizens— if the US administration is seen as “successful” in imposing its will on the actions of a large and distant sovereign nation purely through the force of arms and the waging of a war that was quite unjustified by any criteria of “just war” or international law?

This brings me to the heart of what I think it is that constitutes being a “responsible” American, which is a little different from what Cole seems to believe. For me, being “responsible” means having a sober and realistic view of the US citizenry’s essential inter-dependence with all the other nations of the world. So for me, the effects that the US administration’s actions have on world-order issues and on the Iraqi people themselves are actually far more important than any surface feel-good-ism about “the US must succeed”. (No, Juan, that’s not what I’m accusing you of engaging in. But I do feel you have a slightly US-centric optic in your argument–not to mention a disturbing dose of white-man’s-burden-ism.)
So actually, I feel no qualms at all– as a quite “responsible” American–in saying: No, I don’t want this deeply misguided and mendacious administration to succeed in its current attempts to cobble together a US-dominated “policy” for Iraq. Yes, I do want Iraqis to be empowered to build for themselves the very best form of participatory and accountable government that they can. But I don’t see the US military as being either the most effective (!) or the most appropriate (!!) midwife for this process.
It’s possible that the Iraqis don’t even actually need a midwife in order to realize their own self-empowerment. (Think George Washington. Did he need outside nannies to show him how to do it?) But if they do, then there is only one institution with the legitimacy and the capability required to get the job done.
And it ain’t the US Army.
That’s why I say it is quite “responsible” for US citizens to say: “Support our troops!  Bring them home! Hand the Iraq question over to the United Nations!”
That way, perhaps US citizens and our deeply, deeply misguided national leaders might start to get back into a more appropriate and productive relationship with the other 96 percent of the world.

29 thoughts on “US “success” in Iraq– for or against?”

  1. The Bush gang will never go the UN unless it’s the last resort. As to the rest of the world, why should they rescue the US in Iraq so the Bush gang can go attack Syria and Iran?
    I think – to use an American expression – you are whistling Dixie.

  3. Hi! Thanks, Advanced, for yr contribution. I’m calling for the USG to hand this Iraq portfolio over to the UN not primarily because I think they listen to me (they haven’t, so far!) but because I think it’s totally the right think to do…
    Also, back on Juan Cole, you can see his response to my post if you go to his post of today. (It’s the second item down there.)
    Of course, Juan, if you’d put yr comment here instead, folks could have read it more easily…

  4. Thanks very much for this comment. I too was troubled by what Juan Cole wrote about “responsibility” and “success,” but the dissonance remained somewhere in the background of my cognition, if I may put it that way.
    Here is one of the more thoughtful articles I have found about what a real exit strategy would look like. Of course, I would add that we owe the Iraqis billions of dollars in reparations.
    Learning from History
    By Thomas Gale Moore
    http://www.independent.org/tii/news/030623Moore.html
    To avoid the necessity of trying to hold an artificial and unnatural Iraqi state together by force–as the West has been doing in Bosnia for eight years–the United States should withdraw its forces quickly and allow a coalition of the willing to transition the various Iraqi groups to self-determination.
    The creation of multiple, independent countries might cause friction with some of Iraq

  5. I have just read Cole’s reply to you. I fear that he thinks the U.S. is much too even-handed. He does not seem adequately to take into account the three main reasons for the war: oil, empire and Israel. I think he is correct that the neo-conservatives are now more restricted in their ability to accomplish their goals. But I cannot agree that the U.S. is ready to put the good of the Iraqis forward to the degree that he seems to envision. Meanwhile, the U.S. will be under increasing pressure to turn Iraq over to the UN. Doing that should be what progressives call for.

  6. I don’t trust the neo-cons. What I (and probably the governments of “Old Europe”) am afraid of is that once the US soldiers are relieved in Iraq they will move into Syria and Iran.
    I think John Cole is thinking about his Shi’ite friends and how oppressed they were under Saddam. If the case for intervention had been strong enough, the UN (or NATO) could have been convinced to sponsor it. The real problem is what I perceive to be Bush’s “lone cowboy” attitude. He prefers, I believe, going it alone and keeping control to the maximum extent possible.
    What it is going to take to move the US troops into Syria, Iran and perhaps North Korea is another successful terrorist attack. This, I fear, is next. After all, Bin Laden will co-operate with the US in this area. You have to remember that getting rid of the “Axis of Evil” members in the Middle East (secular or Shi’ite dictatorships) as well as the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt serves Bin Laden’s interest as well as the neo-cons’. Bin Laden knows that the US will eventually leave (Arabs can be patient – the Crusaders were eventually driven out.) and his forces will be able to move in.
    The fact of the matter is that neither Iraq nor any of the other targetted states will develop into democracies any time soon. The poverty of the population, their sense of shame at needing the US to drive out dictators and the deals that will be made by Bush’s friendly corporations will create resentment. If we force them to kiss Israel’s butt, it will only humiliate them further. If we insist on separation of “Church and State”, when neither Britain, Israel, Italy or Spain are, this will cause further trouble. As to whether Iraq is an artificial entity, I think if the Swiss confederal model is adopted, the barriers of a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-menatlity state can be overcome.

  7. Summer Reading Musts

    Must reading: Max Rodenbeck’s balanced and nuanced report in the current New York Review of Books on the first hundred days of the occupation of Iraq, where he catalogs the “prewar misconceptions, wartime miscalculations, and postwar misrule” that hav…

  8. “I fear that he thinks the U.S. is much too even-handed.”
    I think Cole was more arguing the case that the US is being forced into a position where it will persue something resembling the hoped-for behavior, ie. “I have no illusions as to why they have ultimately tilted in this direction, but I think they have. And if they don’t, every evidence is that the main Iraqi political forces will demand it in ways that the Americans will find difficult to resist.”
    I think he might be a little optimistic given all the cynicism driving policy, but I appreciate the fact that he’s finding cause for some shred of hope. The immediate shred being, I suppose, that the cobbled US-dominated “policy” in Iraq is no more mendacious and malovent than US policy is with regard to most other nations that have their necks under the bootheel. The neo-con strategy is demonstratably worse than the “realist” strategies of the State Dept. or, say, Clintonites, and it does appear that the neo-cons have ended up, since getting their fingers on the trigger, shooting their legs out from under themselves because their strategy was based on absurd and unworkable premises.
    Which leaves plenty of things to rail against and numerous alternatives to persue, the latter being the reason both of us, I think, objected to the war, but at this point I find it difficult to support calls for unilateral, immediate withdrawal of US troops when most Iraqis, for what evidence is available, don’t. It would seem more important to me to end the status and nature of the occupation, nevermind Bush’s tenure as the Iraqi head of state.
    A couple things I found odd in his reply and would seriously disagree with though would be that “they don’t think that the UN or the 96% were terribly helpful in stopping Saddam’s genocide” when it’s a given that the USG was the primary obstruction to the UN doing anything to prevent said genocide. Sort of an odd argument for Cole to make when he knows perfectly well the USG actively supported it. The same goes for the “sanctions regime had been manipulated by the Baath”, when he also knows perfectly well that the destruction of Iraqi society through sanctions was a cooperative effort between three successive US administrations and the Baath regime.

  11. i think that we should not be in Iraq we have no reason for being there and if just for oil then are presdent is a wise dumb @$$. i hope we leave Iraq for good or nuke the place! I am tried of it being on the news and peopel are being shot and killed because of bush giogn to iraq

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