- Stanley Heginbotham is someone who thinks carefully and compassionately about issues of war and peace. I was interested to read some thoughts he’s put together on the US-Iraqi imbroglio, and I am happy to publish them here as a contribution to our continuing discussion. ~HC
WHEN IRAQIS PLAY BY IRAQI RULES
Implications for US Strategy
by Stanley J. Heginbotham,
New York City, January 30, 2007
The author served for 10 years as chief of the foreign and
defense policy division at the Congressional Research Service. As a
junior officer in the US Marine Corps in the early 60s he was OIC of a counter
guerrilla warfare school. He received the PhD in political science
from MIT and a BA in History from Stanford. He taught comparative politics
at Columbia University and was VP of the Social Science Research Council.
Americans recognize that Iraqis behave according to their own rules.
But we lack a clear sense of what those rules are. We can, however,
derive some close approximations because we have several years of evidence
of how Iraqis behave – as opposed to what they say — and we know a
lot about basic features of Iraq and countries facing analogous situations:
Iraq’s social stratification, how divided societies response to rapid transitions
from authoritarianism to electoral politics; how people in tribal systems
operate, and how people think in economies that haven’t known sustained secular
growth.
Four rules provide a useful guide to what determines Iraqi behavior.
Further, they suggest a number of predictions of how key groups in Iraq will
behave in the near future.
Rule 1: As Iraq moved from authoritarianism to electoral politics,
successful politicians focused their appeals on core sources of personal
identity: tribe, faction, religion, and ethnic community. Politicians
who staked out broad public policy positions in order to appeal across ethnic
and religious identities have been strikingly unsuccessful and marginalized.
The December 2005 elections marked a profound setback for American
aspirations for such parties and leaders. Ahmad Chalabi was unable
to secure a single seat in the parliament. Support for Iyad Allawi’s
party declined dramatically as a result of those elections. Subsequently
he has been only a peripheral player in national politics and now lives primarily
abroad.
Rule 2: The gains of any political group are seen as being
achieved only at the expense of its adversaries.
The notion of win-win result — Sunni, Shi’a and Kurds
cooperating in a unity government that stimulates growth and benefits all
— is inconceivable to key Iraqi politicians and their followers. The stark
reality is that our invasion dethroned Sunnis and replaced them with Shiites.
This is a classic zero-sum perspective. It is common – and makes good
sense – in societies that haven’t experienced secular economic growth.The middle and professional classes who could conceive of a win-win solution
no longer matter. Indeed, many have fled Iraq in the face of dashed
hopes and serious threats to their personal survival.
Rule 3: Iraqi groups define other groups as temporary
and instrumental allies or adversaries, and expect that these relationships
will flip from one to the other as circumstances change.
This rule makes sense if one thinks of the successive levels
within tribal societies. A man seeks preeminence over his brothers,
but bands together with them in opposition to threats to their family from
an alliance of their cousins. Brothers and cousins compete for dominant
positions, but band together in temporary alliance against a competing extended
family. And clans fight to gain preeminence within a tribe, but join
with other clans to strengthen their tribe’s position vis-à-vis competing
tribes. Once security at a higher level is reasonably assured,
attention shifts back to efforts to gain or consolidate dominance at the
next lower level.
Rule 4: Groups compete to co-opt and manipulate
foreign forces in temporary and instrumental alliances designed to strengthen
their position vis-à-vis current domestic adversaries.
The notion of foreigners being “even handed” is meaningless
to Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish activists. Each group sees foreign
intervention as working either “for us or against us.”
Iraqi groups seem to subscribe to and identify with foreign forces’
values and goals but their only purpose is to build a temporary alliance.
Iraqis are highly skilled in manipulating such relationships.
Westerners typically take an Iraqi’s depictions of allies and enemies at
face value, and then feel betrayed when, with changed circumstances, allies
become enemies and vice versa. Such Iraqi behavior typically
seems to Americans to be duplicitous and dishonest.A foreign force allied with one Iraqi group inevitably is exposed to the
violent opposition of the group’s enemies. When circumstances
change, however, those enemies may well seek to co-opt and manipulate the
foreign force. Both our “friends” and our “enemies” among Iraqi groups
are transitory and instrumental. They can and will switch sides
when it seems advantageous to do so.
How will key groups in Iraq respond to developments in coming months?
The “moderates” among all of the major groupings have largely given up
hope that a win-win solution is politically feasible. In the face of
systematic “cultural cleansing” directed against them by radicals of all
communities, they will increasingly seek to flee the country. US efforts
to support them as bases for “moderate” political parties will fail to reverse
this trend.
Among Shiites, confidence that they will not again fall
under Sunni dominance is high. The Shiite-dominated government has gained
enormously from US military attacks on Sunni forces as well as from our largesse
in financial support and provision of military training, weapons, and equipment.
But the value of these benefits is declining in comparison to the constraints
we put on the government’s autonomy. Shiite parties and militias disagree
on the best strategies for consolidating Shiite power in Iraq.
They also are increasingly focused on struggles for dominance within the
Shiite community. In those struggles, competing efforts to build
temporary alliances with the Iranian government and its agents are assuming
increasing importance.
Al-Sistani wants at all cost to avoid a replay
of what he sees as the Shiite miscalculation in the 1920s: premature Shiite
violent opposition to the foreign occupation caused the British to leave
Sunnis in power as they withdrew. Al-Sistani can be expected to abandon
his appeals to accommodate American interests and goals once he feels that
Shiite political dominance is assured.Prime Minister Maliki and his Shiite allies continue to
benefit from US efforts to defeat Sunni forces which, despite their relatively
small size, still pose a significant threat to Shi’a dominance. President
Bush’s support sustains Maliki’s fragile coalition among Shiites, but his
position could easily be toppled if he fails to protect Shiite militias from
large-scale American assaults.So far Maliki has been able to make a plausible case that he shares our vision
of a unity government and has the will – but not the capability — to attack
Shi’a militias. Among the gambits he will use to maintain his Shiite
coalition government are:Bargaining for control over command structures in
Baghdad so his commanders can protect Shi’a militias from US-controlled attacks.Arguing that the initial goal of the “surge” must be to better protect Shiites
in Baghdad by focusing on attacking the “insurgents” – i.e. Sunni.Arresting sufficient numbers of Shiite militia supporters and leaders to
create a plausible perception that he is serious about going after Shi’a
militia.Arguing that the inability of the Iraqi – read Shi’a-dominated – army to
successfully prosecute action against insurgents and militias stems from
the failure of the US military to adequately equip it and to allow a clear
chain of Iraqi – read Shiite – command over their operations.
Arguing that a “deal” on distribution of oil resources is virtually “done,”
so that failure can be blamed on Kurdish intransigence.Maliki will try to move away from his alliance of convenience with the US
by mobilizing support for US troop withdrawals from Baghdad and drawdowns
of US troop levels in Iraq.Muqtada al-Sadr has calculated that Shi’a are already
strong enough to establish predominant power in all of Arab Iraq and that
the instrumental alliance with the US could therefore safely be abandoned.
He, like us, wants a united Iraq, but – unlike us – wants one that is not
only dominated by Shi’a but that effectively excludes significant Sunni and
Kurdish influence. The “surge” in Baghdad may lead him to show
some measure of common cause with the US, but this will be a temporary and
tactical shift.Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, SCIRI leader and primary competitor
to Maliki, will increase his efforts to persuade the US that we should “arrange”
to replace Maliki’s government with a SCIRI-led coalition. His appeal
to the US would focus on his willingness to let us prosecute a more vigorous
campaign against Maliki’s coalition partner, Muktada al-Sadr, and his militias.
Al-Hakim’s longer-term low-cost solution to the overall conflict has been
to promote a highly decentralized Iraq. He is prepared to accept Sunni
dominance in the west and Kurdish dominance in the north. That will leave
the Shi’a with control of oil resources in the south and dominance in the
core of what has been Iraq. His goal of integrating Baghdad into a
Shiite-dominated state has been greatly advanced by the success of Shiite
militias in “ethnic cleansing” campaigns in the capital.
Sunni parties and militias have a single-minded goal:
prevent and roll back Shi’a dominance over the government of Iraq, which
has been an artifact of America’s misguided insistence on majority rule.
They see superior Sunni organizational and military capabilities – and corresponding
Shi’ite weaknesses and inexperience — as the key to achieving this goal.
Because the US was co-opted by the Shi’a, we are – temporarily, at least
— their enemy.
Hard-core Sunni militants found their own
natural foreign allies of convenience in al Qaeda-related operatives, with
whom they share a hatred of the United States, though for quite different
reasons. As the US puts increasing pressure on Sunni forces and
is constrained by the Maliki government from fighting Shiite militias, these
Sunni militants will bargain for more extensive support from Sunni-dominated
neighboring states, especially Saudi Arabia.Sunnis accommodationists will increasingly try
to draw US support away from Shiites by appealing for American forces to
be “even-handed” and protect Sunni forces and people from annihilation by
Shiite militants and Shiite government forces.
Kurdish forces will continue to fight to sustain and
strengthen their de facto independence, their control over Mosul and Kirkuk,
and their ability to exploit northern oil resources. They are already entering
into oil exploration agreements independent of the central government’s oil
ministry. Their representatives in Baghdad will continue to articulate support
for a unity government, but they will not compromise on their key goals,
notwithstanding American pressures to do so.
Their temporary alliance with the US – which
dates back to the early 1990s — has finally produced the de facto independence
they have fought for and been denied since the end of World War I.
The US has insisted that they join a unity government in Iraq and that they
put aside the historical animosity between Massoud Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic
Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
They have seemed to acquiesce on both fronts by allocating the presidency
of the Government of Iraq to Talabani and the government of Kurdistan to
Barzani and his KDP.When US support becomes less critical to the survival of Kurdistan, the conflicts
between Talabani and Barzani will resurface, the gloves will come off in
the Kurdish campaign to cleanse border areas of non-Kurds, and Kurdish support
for Kurdish movements in Turkey and Iran will increase.
Implications for American strategic choices
Recognizing the importance of Iraqi adherence to Iraqi rules tells us a lot
about the potential consequences of four policy choices.
The President’s “surge” initiative relies on the
forlorn hope that Maliki really wants to promote a unity government or that
at least, under intense American pressure, he will aid and abet our efforts
to suppress Shi’a-Sunni conflict, lead a “unity” government, and seek to
make win-win bargains. The President hopes, in other words, that
we can persuade Maliki – and the rest of the Iraqi body politic — to play
by American, rather than Iraqi, rules.
Irrespective of the scale, tactical sophistication, and wisdom of a new American
strategy, the President will be denied the “success” he seeks by Iraqi commitment
to their own rules. An expanded US force in Baghdad may be able to
suppress some of the ethnic cleansing of both Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods,
but this will be but a temporary success achieved at the cost of increasing
anger over US occupation.
As “success” continues to elude the President, he and his advisors will be
increasingly tempted by a second policy option:
The al-Hakim/SCIRI fall-back option: sabotaging
the Maliki/al-Sadr coalition and “managing” its replacement by a coalition
led by al-Hakim or a stand-in for him. Our ability to pull off such
a democratic “coup,” however, is highly questionable given our very tenuous
and declining influence over political events in Iraq. More likely
than a clear success would be prolonged governmental stalemate and increasing
chaos in Baghdad and the countryside.
The presumed benefit of an al-Hakim/SCIRI-led
government – if we were successful in establishing it — is that it would
give us greater freedom to go after al-Sadr and his militias, who many in
our military and administration now see as the real threat to our interests
in Iraq. Al-Sadr differs from other Shiite forces, however, not in
any fundamental goals, but in his current choice of militant tactics:
All want the US out; all want Shiite dominance over Sunni; and all want to
co-opt Iranian support in their goal of achieving dominance among Shiites.
Two other policy options have effectively been taken off the table by the
President because neither promises “success.” Nevertheless, they
remain the two most serious practicable options open to the US.
A precipitous and unconditional withdrawal of American
occupation forces would be just as self-defeating as the “surge”
and the al-Hakim/SCIRI solutions. Advocates suggest that the over-riding
goal of Iraqis is to expel the United States and that, once that goal is
achieved, they will turn their attention to internal reconciliation and to
finding a formula for sharing power within a united Iraq. This notion
that, once Americans leave, Iraqis will start to play by American, rather
than Iraqi, rules is completely unrealistic.
Rather, Sunni–Shi’a warfare would intensify and expand, the battles among
contending forces within the Shi’a community would become more violent, and
the vacuum created by American intervention would be filled by contending
foreign interests entering into alliances of convenience with domestic parties,
militias, and proto-military forces.
The resulting warfare would be more chaotic and deadly than anything that
we have seen so far in Iraq. Increased flows of refugees and internally
displaced persons would compound the already severe problems faced by Jordan
and Syria and by organizations that are trying to alleviate the suffering
of domestic Iraqi refugees.
The most promising course the President could adopt would be to:
Pursue vigorous regional and international diplomacy
aimed at achieving consensus on the terms and conditions that would accompany
a phased US withdrawal from Iraq with reasonable expectations of post-occupation
stability.
Contending forces in Iraq will not seek or voluntarily buy into reconciliation
with their domestic adversaries. Our best hope is to persuade regional
states – including Syria and Iran – to reject temporary alliances with Iraqi
parties in favor of an agreed distribution of power, resources, and territory
that seems reasonably likely to bring about the end of American occupation,
constrain domestic Iraqi chaos and violence, and limit its destabilizing
effect on the Gulf and Middle East .
Then the understanding would have to be sold, with appropriate carrots and
sticks, to Iraqi parties, insurgents, and militias. Such an understanding
would likely include:
• A phased withdrawal of
American forces over a two to three year period. Phases of the withdrawal
would be contingent on the Iraqi acceptance and implementation of specified
conditions.• The evolution of a highly decentralized Iraq, with guarantees
of a Sunni region within Baghdad and sufficient oil-revenue sharing to assure
the fiscal viability of the Sunni state.• International organizations’ commitments to manage further
refugee flows – with attendant violence and human tragedy — of minority
populations in mixed communities. Developed countries,
including the United States, would need to be willing to accept significant
numbers of Iraqi refugees into their societies.• An American commitment to sweeten the pot with sizable
financial contributions to reconstruction within the regions of Iraq – without
significant control over how the contributions would be used.• Commitment of international “peacekeeping” forces to
establish and enforce boundaries between the regional units of Iraq.
Sunni activists would likely try to undermine boundary agreements.• Highly autonomous regional governments that might initially
be elected but could be expected to become authoritarian in character and,
in the case of the Shiite region, dominated by Islamists.
It is tempting to believe that, before beginning a serious effort to negotiate
the terms and conditions of a phased withdrawal of US forces,
we should give the President a last chance to see if his “surge” can miraculously
produce a change in Iraqi behavior.
A prolonged “surge,” however, is a very
high cost option because time is not on our side. Each week that
passes invites deeper and more complex involvement of regional forces with
competing Iraqi groups. As these foreign commitments and entanglements
grow, we lose leverage in negotiating the bilateral and international understandings
that offer the best hope of damage limitation.Within Iraq, each week that passes yields additional ethnic cleansing, intensified
warfare between ethnic communities, intensified hostility to American occupation,
additional American and Iraqi casualties, and American budget outlays of
close to $2 billion.Within the United States, each week that passes increases the despair of
a public and a Congress that see a precipitous withdrawal of American occupation
forces as the only practical alternative to the Administration’s inability
to accept the failure of its strategy.
The President’s rhetoric is clear: he wants only to consider alternatives
that will yield “success.” He needs to come to terms, however,
with the reality that the determination of Iraqis to play by Iraqi rules
will deny him that “success.” His administration needs promptly
to initiate regional and international diplomatic discussions that will lead
to an orderly, phased withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.
Should the President persist in his current course of action, significant
progress toward an orderly end to the American occupation of Iraq will –
tragically – have to await a new President and a new Administration.
Because the US was co-opted by the Shia, we are temporarily, at least — their enemy. … An expanded US force in Baghdad may be able to suppress some of the ethnic cleansing of both Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods, but this will be but a temporary success achieved at the cost of increasing anger over US occupation.
The author makes it sound as though the US govt ever had an intrinsic interest in avoiding ethnic cleansing or other human rights abuses in Iraq, let alone angering the citizens. That doesn’t makes sense, neither by examining the US’s past and current behaviour, nor by coldly considering what truly motivates them.
Shouldn’t it be said that the only reason that stability was ever an objective is because a stable state is necessary before the US can reap the economic and strategic benefits that motivated the invasion in the first place? Initially, they hoped to achieve this with unity, but now that is clearly no longer an option (not that it ever was, imo). However there is more than one way to achieve the ‘stability’ that they desire, if we keep in mind that the motive behind stability is not fairness nor the welfare of the Iraqi people, but creating a strategically and economically hospitable climate.
The only route remaining is to assist any ethnic cleansing the Shia and the Kurds desire, as they now undeniably hold the keys to what the US wants. The Iraqis are not the only ones who Machiavellianly shift their alliances to suit their interests, and to suggest otherwise smacks of racism. The US govt’s bargaining-chip is its firepower. They hope that with their military might, through torture, genocide and ethnic cleansing, that they will get dissenters’ numbers and power low enough that business can be conducted profitably between the victors.
I can only assume a grudging acceptance of the cost by the Iraqi benefactors, as even its success implies low but continuing level of terrorism for Iraq, at least for the foreseeable future. However any level seems acceptable to the Americans, economic interests aside. As their opinion-leaders are fond of pointing out, the American citizens would rather fight the terrorist ‘over there’ than ‘here’, which belies America’s indifference to the consequences of their chosen strategy for the welfare of Iraq.
I can’t edit my post, but I wish to change the phrase “smacks of racism” to “sounds like racism”, as I didn’t mean to imply an accusatory tone against the author.
I’d go with “smacks of” . The problem is that the author takes as a given US national interests as being those of Imperialism. The problem is that Iraq is viewed as a series of technical problems in need of solution, the real question, the matter of the morality of the affair is begged. The author makes observations of the general ethnocentric “aren’t furriners weird” sort and then proceeds to what I suspect is “analysis.” But the question is how can anyone justify staying in Iraq a day longer and killing another Iraqi? It isn’t good enough to argue that that is no longer relevant and that if the US left, taking its death squad trainers, its arms and ammunition, drones and air force with it there would be a blood bath. There is a blood bath now and it is one of a very long series of them whose locations are very well known. And the question is how do we stop the US government from starting bloodbaths? what makes it of immediate urgency is that there is a good chance that another and bigger one is being planned. And that really is the only reason I can think of for leaving the troops in Iraq: not sendiing them elsewhere.
I’m sorry, but these “rules” strike me as pretty shallow and useless, as well as arrogant and paternalistic.
“As Iraq moved from authoritarianism to electoral politics”
When did that happen? I must have missed it.
“Politicians who staked out broad public policy positions in order to appeal across ethnic and religious identities have been strikingly unsuccessful and marginalized.”
Translation: Expatriate candidates sponsored by the intelligence and military directorates of the occupying foreign power were rejected by nearly all voters, regardless of ethnic or religious identity.
“The gains of any political group are seen as being achieved only at the expense of its adversaries.”
How exactly does this make Iraq different from anyplace else? “Win-win” solutions only exist in PowerPoint land. Just ask John Kerry.
“Iraqi groups define other groups as temporary and instrumental allies or adversaries, and expect that these relationships will flip from one to the other as circumstances change.”
Hardly an original thought. I believe this is usually expressed as “Me and my brother against my cousin; me and my cousin against a stranger.”
“Groups compete to co-opt and manipulate foreign forces in temporary and instrumental alliances designed to strengthen their position vis-à-vis current domestic adversaries.”
So what would YOU do? The notion of an occupying army being “even handed” is meaningless to me too, and I’m not even a Muslim.
“Westerners typically take an Iraqi’s depictions of allies and enemies at face value, and then feel betrayed when, with changed circumstances, allies become enemies and vice versa.”
Not all of us Westerners were born yesterday. The ability to understand changing alliances is not restricted to inscrutable Easterners.
Oh well – I’m too tired and depressed to go on with this.
Elendil, Bevin and John,
Thank you for your takes. I find his piece quite ethnocentric and more-than-borderline racist too. Which reminds me of this one which I posted on one of Helena’s older threads last night:
You gotta love the white man’s concern for the well-being of those sand-dwelling barbarians:
“whether our own Jason Zengerle or National Review’s Michael Rubin is right about whether the American press judges U.S. abuse of Iraqi prisoners and random Iraqi mass murders of other Iraqis equally. Chotiner thinks that Rubin is right and that Americans are more critical of wrongs done in our name than what comes naturally to the Iraqis.
That’s the point, isn’t it? I actually believe that Arabs are feigning outrage when they protest what they call American (or Israeli) “atrocities.” They are not shocked at all by what in truth must seem to them not atrocious at all. It is routine in their cultures. That comparison shouldn’t comfort us as Americans. We have higher standards of civilization than they do. But the mutilation of bodies and beheadings of people picked up at random in Iraq does not scandalize the people of Iraq unless victims are believers in their own sect or members of their own clan. And the truth is that we are less and less shocked by the mass death-happenings in the world of Islam. Yes, that’s the bitter truth. Frankly, even I–cynic that I am–was shocked in the beginning by the sectarian bloodshed in Iraq. But I am no longer surprised. And neither are you.”
http://www.tnr.com/blog/spine?pid=58683
Sustained secular growth: that’s the key phrase. Mr H obviously believes that world peace will arrive only when each country has jumped through the evolutionary hoops which lead to parliamentary democracy, widespread prosperity and, of course global warming and planetary destruction. If that were the case then one supposes some kind of moral gloss could be put upon massacres, (something on the lines of “if we hadn’t wiped out the inhabitants of New England how would they have got to heaven and who would run the casinos?”)It is, however, not the case, look around and you will see that not only is the planet beginning to burn but that the number, both relative and absolute, of poor people around the world, the number of people starving and dying of disease, surrounded by commodity production on lands stolen from them, is growing all the time. The myth of economic growth benefiting all was never true. I’m afraid that the motto of the current century was written by Rosa Luxemburg in the last, “Socialism or Barbarism” she predicted. What she meant by socialism was probably “not barbarism.” What is happening in Baghdad is barbarism, the population which supports it or argues over the detail of it is barbaric.
We have higher standards of civilisation than they do? By what measure? No “civilisation” comes anywhere close to reaching the criminal depths plumbed by US and British imperialism in the modern era. The worst charges against the Stalinists cannot be compared with the routine carnage caused by the US in say Guatemala or Angola and these are forgotten chapters. If one refers to the Bengal famine and the millions who died therein the obvious response is “which one?” For there were several. And what about Fallujah or Jenin? Show me an Arab regime which acts in uncivilised fashion and I’ll show you one receiving massive assistance from the west. America has nothing to teach the world about decent conduct and restraint in war or justice in political society. Americans are not to be blamed, what is blameworthy is the constant reiteration of attacks on other nations from a country that not only brought us Jim Crow but still elects presidents because they are racists. Or is that a misreading of the elections which brought us GWB DeLay et al?
I, too, read this warily, with the question of whether the approach was fundamentally racist. But in the end, several points emerged for me:
First, these “rules” do seem to describe very well a lot of what has taken place in Iraq over the past few years.
Second, these are not necessarily the rules that all Iraqis subscribe to, but they seem to apply very well to the people who have risen to positions of power in Iraq and the dynamic among them. One could look at people who have risen to the top of the U.S. political system and come up with “rules” about what type of behavior works in the U.S. — rules that would probably not be very flattering to us as a nation if they accounted properly for the emergence of Bush and Cheney in their present positions of power.
Third, people are, in many respects, the product of their experience, which they interpret in their own ways. I’m not at all put off by the notion that different societies, or individuals in those societies, have evolved different “rules” out of very different experiences. Of course they have.
Fourth, to say it’s racist is to imply that these “Iraqi rules” are somehow inferior to the ones that we ostensibly subscribe to. But the real racism is buried in that implication. Are they inferior, or are they just different, and equally valid because Iraqis have evolved them from their own experience?
Ethnocentric? Racist?!
Not my first reaction, anyway, although I think I see what “David” dislikes about this scribble.
Modestly to begin with myself, however, à la Dubya, the point of departure is something like “Oh Lordie, here’s yet another paleface planmonger off the larboard bow!” Actually there are two of them today, because it”>http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2198418.ece”>it is reported that the Brookings Institution now offers a handy-dandy panacea of its own.
There is a faint silver lining to the cloud, however, in that Dr. H. actually notices what the rest of the tribe of prescriptionists miss — it does not deter him, but he does notice it:
Should the President persist in his current course of action, significant progress toward an orderly end to the American occupation of Iraq will – tragically – have to await a new President and a new Administration.
The others blithely proceed from the tacit assumption that the Crawfordite GOP has been somehow annihilated by magic before they even get started.
Now back to “David”: Dr. Higinbotham seems to be an equal opportunity imperializer and colonializer; your race is perfectly immaterial to him, no matter who you may be, it is preëmptively demanded that you kindly allow him to know best about neo-Iraq.
It’s mostly only rhetoric, of course. Any player of the Let’s-Fix-Their-Botched-Iraq game can adopt the same strategy if he chooses, dressing up his speculations and preferences so they sound like much the same sort of product that Moses descended from Sinai with. The little bit of it that is not sheer bluff and stylistics is encapsulated in “VP of the Social Science Research Council,” I fear. Dr. H. almost certainly believes he is being wissenschaftlich when he misbehaves like this. Accordingly, I presume he would deny my Philistine call that everybody amateur is entitled to the licenses he allows himself. He is a learnèd clerk, we are ignorant lay sheep. Kindly allow him to know best, everybody! Q.E.D.
So then, ’tis not ethnocentric racism nor anything even one-tenth so appalling, it’s only Soc. Sci. doing business as usual, really. Dr. H. lays the scientism on so thick that a critic might plausibly wonder whether she is not dealing with a spoof of Baconian induction or something of that sort, had not the biographical information been included to set us all straight.
“David” and Dr. H. and I intersect somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the late Prof. Edward Sa‘íd and his “Orientalism,” it looks like. Is this sort of wannabe Wissenschaft intrinsically ethnocentric and racist? Sa‘íd and “David” would claim that it is, Dr. H. would no doubt rebut indignantly. It’s tempting to take a leaf out of Citizen Murdoch’s book and sign off with “We report, you decide,” but of course, like Murdoch, I’ve long since decided already, and decided against Prof. Sa‘íd.
=====
The plan being mongered underneath all the scientizing and all the preëmptive rhetoric seems to me better than most — i.e., tolerably in accord with my own druthers. That’s a bit surprising, really, because Dr. H.’s diagnosis of the disease he undertakes to cure is much more remote from my guesswork than his remedy. Since none of it is going to happen before the spring of 2009 at the earliest, I’ll limit myself to questioning his account of the Arabophone Sunnis:
Sunni parties and militias have a single-minded goal: prevent and roll back Shi’a dominance over the government of Iraq, which has been an artifact of America’s misguided insistence on majority rule. They see superior Sunni organizational and military capabilities – and corresponding Shi’ite weaknesses and inexperience — as the key to achieving this goal. Because the US was co-opted by the Shi‘a, we are – temporarily, at least — their enemy.
Hard-core Sunni militants found their own natural foreign allies of convenience in al Qaeda-related operatives, with whom they share a hatred of the United States, though for quite different reasons. As the US puts increasing pressure on Sunni forces and is constrained by the Maliki government from fighting Shiite militias, these Sunni militants will bargain for more extensive support from Sunni-dominated neighboring states, especially Saudi Arabia.
Sunnis accommodationists will increasingly try to draw US support away from Shiites by appealing for American forces to be “even-handed” and protect Sunni forces and people from annihilation by Shiite militants and Shiite government forces.
Is that adequate? I think not. There both is, and is not, a “single-minded goal.” They all want to restore “Iraq” to its natural masters, to themselves, to the traditional Sunni Ascendancy hallowed by Ottomans and Brits and Mecca monarchists and barracks-based republicans and Ba‘thí fiends all alike. But they could not agree less about how to get there from here. Their present plight is a gift to satirists: this same crew that are quite sure that only they can ever constitute a government of Iraq that really works have now become so fragmented that they recognize three different “legitimate” “governments,” the Ba‘thís with M. ‘Izzat al-Dúrí as heir of Saddám, the Islamic Emirate of al-’Anbár (or whatever it’s called, exactly), plus of course all the Green Zone collaborationists, real or feigned.. All that diversity on top of being only twenty-odd percent in the first place!
“Single-minded goal” requires a great deal of very careful glossing.
But God knows best. Happy days.
By focussing on what I found wrong with the article, I made it sound like I found nothing right with it, and that’s not true. I think that the author provides a nice concise framework in for the key interests in Iraq, and it is valuable for that alone. I know that I learnt a few things by reading it, and I basically agree with the author’s conclusions at the end.
It is not that I disagree with the author’s cynical take on Iraqi society and motives. I love a parsimonious explanation just as much as the next person, and there’s nothing more parsimonious than raw cynicism 🙂 What irks me is that, if the author is going to take the mantle of the scientist, the dispassionate one who ‘calls it how it is’, he should do so consistently.
Consider this; before listing the 4 rules the author says Americans recognize that Iraqis behave according to their own rules. But we lack a clear sense of what those rules are. But what are these rules listed except the rules that govern all politics? No, it is not that Americans don’t know what the Iraqi’s rules are, it is that they refuse to recognise them within themselves. Read rules 1 and 3 in particular again. Sound familiar?
The author says The President’s rhetoric is clear: he wants only to consider alternatives that will yield “success” yet he observes that the strategy most likely to lead to “success” was not chosen by the President. How strange! Why would the US govt act against its own interest? Are they all idiots?
Well maybe Bush is, but I don’t think the powers that control him are. There’s a much simpler explanation for this paradox, that the definition of “success” used by us and that used by the powers that be are not the same. Good people, the author included, define success in terms of the welfare of Iraq, of fairness for parties, of minimising bloodshed. However there are others for whom these things are only coincidental to their definition of success, and then only given the right circumstances. (Some of them aren’t even “people”, except in the legal sense, but that’s another story). So it is not that the determination of Iraqis to play by Iraqi rules will deny [the President] that “success”, but the determination of all powers involved to play by whatever rules necessary to get what they want will deny us our success, and by “our” I include all people, Iraqi and American citizens, together.
That’s the missing piece of understanding. It’s almost a cliche; first, know yourself. The citizens of America desperately need to purge themselves of their self-aggrandising illusion, that their nation is apart from other nations, somehow above selfishness and cold-blooded economic powerplays. Only then can they reign in their govt and kill beast that it has become.
Well said elendil, especially about the meaning of success. Cheney unequivocally states that the invasion of Iraq was an enormous success. Normal people hear him say this and think he is either lying or delusional. He may be both, but then again he may simply have different criteria for success.
I was mostly reacting to the author’s “rules” which were unfortunately placed at the beginning of the article. They really don’t contribute anything to the rest of the analysis.
The Vietnamese — Northern and Southern and Central — proved perfectly able to manipulate foreigners — whether French, Americans, Russians, and/or Chinese — so as to “make dependence pay,” as Francis Fitzgerald put it, at the same time that they sorted out their own internal disagreements until they had unified their country and sent all the foreigners packing. I assume that the Iraqi people can do the same.
I wouldn’t want to place a bet on the Americans figuring out what to do, though. They don’t have a very good track record as either religious crusaders or imperialists, let alone both. In fact, endemic Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism have pretty much handed the formerly democratic republic over to a crypto-fascist corporate oligarchy; so I’d worry more about Americans losing their own Constitutional freedoms to their own government than whatever the Iraqis might decide to do about themselves.
Yes, indeed. It does appear that Richard Nixon’s “pitiful, helpless giant” has returned for yet another unrequested encore, with the corrupt and compromised civilian and military bureaucracies consumed with no other thought but how to blame the uninvolved citizenry for the soup sandwich they both wanted and neither could produce.
ut the mutilation of bodies and beheadings of people picked up at random in Iraq does not scandalize the people of Iraq
If you are so convinced in this why these shows stopped David?
Dose Iraq changes now after four years of democracy?
“We” have higher standards of civilization than they do
Yes you are right, but what that stand when you go to them and “kill’m all” is this “higher standards of civilization”…? Standard of lies and propaganda David.
Salah,
You missed the sarcasm and irony unfortunately [Ta’nah maybe?]. I was making your point. When you hear people talk about “the white man’s…” usually they are referring to the arrogance and self-referential superiority of the West.
Thanks David,
BTW, David I know you don’t like my reference but I found it really fair view of Iraq toady by a man worked inside Iraq he listened to a wide range of Iraqi society.
He is the resigned Arab League Representative to Baghdad, he resigned last week by sending a letter to Amro Mussa critics Arabs for not move fast and not giving to help Iraq and Iraqis.
Salah,
You didn’t comment: can you use “ta’nah” to mean sarcasm with irony?
I read Mokhtar Lamani’s long interview. Which section were you pointing out?
‘Iran, Kissinger wrote, needs to be showed “that it is still a poor country not in a position to challenge the entire world order. But such an evolution presupposes the development of a precise and concrete strategic and negotiating program by the United States and its associates.” Kissinger noted that the “the Sunni states of the region—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the non-Shiite government of Lebanon, the Gulf states—are terrified by the Shiite wave.” The solution, he said, was to exploit that fear and to “rally” them into line against Iran. Rice appears to be trying to do just that. In a recent interview with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, she referred to the strategy in the region as a “realignment.”’
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16931352/site/newsweek/page/2/
“Mr. Meridor said in the interview that he saw the beginnings of a realignment in the Middle East, linking Israel and the United States with moderate Sunni Muslim Arab states fearful of the rising power of Shi’ite Iran. But he said it was too soon to tell whether an anti-Tehran coalition would form.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20070131-115117-2811r.htm
Salah,
I read the Limani interview for a second time. he gives an interestingly honest picture of Iraq under occupation. Very depressing.
“that it is still a poor country not in a position to challenge the entire world order.
He is right in this. some need leader see themselves bigger that what really are “like balloon with hot air” this time Ahmadinajd, we saw that with Saddam before, sadly their nation will pay for this “Hot Air”
anti-Tehran coalition would form.”
The Funny thing here US/UK in early 1930s linked Iran Turkey and Iraq in an alliance called Baghdad at tat time.
Now new wave but in opposite direction…
I think that the rules stated are true everywhere. We don’t recognize them here because family an community relationships in this country are weak. So, when people follow these rules, they are operating with different groups for different reasons, and the result is somewhat chaotic. This is not empowering for people at the bottom of the food chain, so to speak. I think there is a much bigger flaw in his argument than just the mistaken idea that the people in Iraq have a different set of survival rules that we do rather than just a different set of structures through which they are enabled. That is the assumption that they are the violent ones, and that the only way they know to play out their power struggle is through violence, and if we leave with our violence, with our guns and tanks that they will become even more violent. I don’t believe this is true. Yes there will be residual violent rituals to play out whenever we leave. We set the pot spinning with guns and tanks and keep it going with a somewhat ambivalent support for the Shia, and an even bigger sense of self interest that has lead to midnight raids on peoples homes and violent attacks on random Iraqi civilians who are either in the way, or convenient targets or misconstrued as whomever is designated as the enemy du jour. It is not surprising that violence is perceived to be the way to power in this context.
It is true that many of the players we know about and think we understand are manipulating the occupying powers. What else would you expect them to do? Just let us tell them what to do? Treat us as saviors and wise gurus when we are there recklessly destroying the countryside, randomly attacking their people and preparing to make a nest for ourselves so we can bleed off their resources in the most convenient and comfortable way possible? Of course they are trying to manipulate the situation to advantage. What do you think the Saudis and Jordanian governments are doing? Are they really a reflection of our own interests, or are they using us so they can manage their own affairs to their own advantage?
But of course, the ones we really fear and distrust, the ones we accuse of the worst intentions are those darned militias and their leaders that just want us to leave so they can govern their own affairs. I have read through your comments and what I see in general is that no one much thinks the Iraqis can sort our their own problems. But that is really more true of us than them. We can’t sort out their problems because we don’t have their interest in mind, and we don’t know or care what those interests might be. This is scary even for those of us who are inclined to good will and would like to see a benevolent situation. We really don’t know what to do. They, on the other hand, know exactly what they need. And they know that to create a center of power they have to work together. And they are the ones who will have to do it.
We have not so far given them a chance to demonstrate this potential. Saddam got power, at least in part, because we backed him (overtly and covertly). Meanwhile, when we don’t feel like the government in power is going to advance our agenda, we get rid of it. And everyone over there knows it. We have done that in Iraq and Iran and all over the Middle East and South America throughout the last century. What could be more manipulative? We have used our overwhelming technological advantage to manipulate the entire region to our will, yet we call them manipulative (barbarians) because they try to use whatever means available to gain some advantage in this situation.
It seemed to me the Italian interview with Mukta al Sadr was really quite hopeful. I see more advanced progress in the coalitions forming around Hassan Nasrallah and Hizbollah in Lebanon. While we’re busy setting Shia against Sunni and using every fundamentalist extremist we can find to keep the pot boiling, there are leaders willing to seek unity. We don’t recognize them for a couple of reasons. First, we don’t really have a clue of anything going on there. Second, they don’t like us and they carry guns and are willing to use them to protect their people who are their families and neighbors and clans and whatever. If they couldn’t do that, what kind of following could they keep. They dabble in the political process, but right now, there is now real power to be had in that domain, and no security and no resolution. We own the process, not them.
Yes, I know, supporting Hizbollah is heresy. Signora is our man, but after last summer, it isn’t a surprise that he is no longer so popular with the people. After all, he was powerless to stop his western supporters from nearly destroying the country, and he reconciled with them as soon as the debacle was over. Even so, if he would join in with a Unity government and share power with the other elected officials, perhaps that would be the end of it. But no, we won’t stand for it. He still has to assert the western agenda regardless of the will of the majority of the people to keep the support of his western backers, and so he refuses to participate in a unity government, claiming that the constitution doesn’t require him to. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Iraq is merely a more aggravated example of a problem at large in the developing nations of the world. If we leave, it will become less aggravated. If we let power flow to the people who are capable of holding it independently and trust to nature and to human nature we can let go. They can solve the problems that we created for them because they have strong incentives to do so, their lives, their independence, their peace, their country.
Judith,
From my deep heart I say thank you for your comment.
I fully agree with you specially that last bit when you said they can solve the problems that we created for them because they have strong incentives to do so, their lives, their independence, their peace, their country.
Those people “Iraqis” had 5000 years of history they gave this world the first Code of Law, they taught the world how to Read and to write, obviously they can do the job better than you.