The Ground is Shifting in Iraq
This is more of a placeholder post — I’ll write something more detailed later tonight. Let me just say that backsliding is a very real possibility in Iraq. We need elections, and we need elections while the U.S. presence remains large and significant.
War supporters have been complaining a lot that war opponents aren’t reacting more to the improved security during the time of the surge, that we aren’t appreciating the events on the ground. And fair enough. But ignoring the fact that Iraqi politicians— the same Iraqi politicians who war supporters have been defending and legitimizing for years— have been calling for a definite, timely end to American occupation of Iraq seems to me to be equally unfair and dishonest. Maliki and all of the other members of his government pressing for a set time of US withdrawal is an absolute game changer, particularly since the pro-occupation right have made Iraq democracy (you know, rule by the people who actually live in a particular country) the lynch pin of their rhetoric. After all the talk about the anti-occupation side’s refusal to acknowledge new realities, this silence is deafening.
— Freddie · Aug 28, 10:45 PM · #
Freddie, you’ve made this point in every third post, and the rebuttal to it hasn’t changed. And there’s new rebuttals. Hell, this administration’s cred is so tied to Iraq that al-Maliki’d be stupid not to demand a pullout and see what they can get. Plus what Reihan’s talking about are increasing signs they’d like a pullout so as to begin a genocide. That’s not, actually, what democracy is. I’m not saying it’s not real real real important what al-Maliki’s saying. I’m saying it’s not by a damn sight the simple moral absolute you predictably insist that it is.
I want the troops back. I’m pretty sure, reading you, that I want them back more than you do! But guys like me are “deafeningly silent” because we aren’t so certain what the clear moral implication of what Iraq’s government is saying, is. I question the wisdom of such certainty.
Off to see the speech….
— Sanjay · Aug 29, 01:57 AM · #
To phrase the thought more clearly — al-Maliki’s stance is grossly important for American political and military calculations. But you continually assert that the political prouncements of one country’s government, creates obviously a moral imperative on another people. That’s not even ignorant.
— Sanjay · Aug 29, 02:12 AM · #
So in other words, I’m wrong, I don’t actually want the troops home despite my years-long advocacy of bringing them home immediately, I don’t know the difference between morality and politics, or democracy and genocide, I’m too certain, and I’m not even ignorant. Tough crowd around here!
I think Iraqis should be in charge of Iraq. And that’s about all. You can disagree with me that what is best for the Iraqis. That’s a principled position; I just think that it should come with an admission of a broader belief in paternalist authoritarianism. But to me, concerns about the outcome of the decisions of other country’s are irrelevant to the policy of another democracy. If we believe in self-determination, we have to let the Iraqi people decide what is right for them. It’s kind of first principles thing with me. You can’t, in my estimation, support democracy if you don’t support self-determination of sovereign people, and I’m told that’s why we went over there.
This is what is meant by American exceptionalism; this is what is meant by American hegemony. The idea that it is for Americans to decide whether refusing to leave another people’s country is or isn’t the democratic thing to do… it’s just bizarre, to me. And they only way to really have that conversation, it seems to me, is to question the legitimacy of the al-Maliki governmen… which is uncomfortable for war supporters… and is kind of a problem when Reihan is calling for more elections, considering that you’d be questioning the legitimacy of Iraqi elections! (I’m not sure in what context Reihan is calling for elections; I just hope it’s not “this government is calling for US withdrawal— new elections immediately! I think far too many occupation supporters have become so caught up in the politics of resentment— in opposing withdrawal because war opponents favor it— that truly, progress means anything that prolongs occupation.)
As far as the morality thing, I just think that it is our moral duty to avoid restricting the democracy of foreign nations.
— Freddie · Aug 29, 03:51 AM · #
“I think Iraqis should be in charge of Iraq.” Hey, great. The problem is, which Iraqis? Bearing in mind that (as certain Presidents might have wanted to consider) in many senses there aren’t “Iraqis.” As far as I can tell most of the Iraqi military brass — whose mission is really basically to prevent all hell from breaking loose — favor a slower American drawdown. The “sons of Iraq” favor less American presence but again, not quite American departure. And the thing is, they may have good reason to fear the departure of American troops because right now they consider their communities as protected by American-backed local militias which al-Maliki has signalled an interest in destroying. “It is our moral duty to avoid restricting the democracy of foreign nations.” Freddie: democracy is not what happens when the majority decides to impose its will by force on a minority, and what Reihan calls “backsliding” is a growing sense that, that’s what al-Maliki’s calculation is. Somehow I don’t lose sleep nights over the possiblility of restricting the democracy of Sudan either. Morality just isn’t clear here. I’m not saying it’s not applicable. I’m saying that you keep insisting that what it demands is clear. BS. It’s “not even ignorant” — it’s a deliberate fudge in the direction you happen to like.
Me, I don’t think it’s obvious we should stay longer or go — I think it’s a clusterfuck. That’s not “paternalist authoritarianism;” I fully accept that if a super-great authority speaking on behalf of Iraqis — in a sense that we can construe “Iraqis,” and bearing in mind our respect for the rights of minorities — tells America what to do, we really probably ought to figure out how to do that. I just think that finding such an authority and getting such an order is — difficult. By glossing over certain aspects of how this government got set up I can at least find someone invested with political (thouh not moral) authority, but. I find some but not much gap between what you’re doing here, and say early insistence by some that what Chalabi and his cronies (of whom al-Maliki now may be one) wanted America to do represented the deep-seated interest of the Iraqis.
Furthermore — and this is why you genuinely seem to confuse politics with morality — you don’t know what the Iraqis want, and more to the point, you don’t even know what al-Maliki wants (and nor does John McCain, whose instantaneous response to the timetable float from the Iraqis was goofy). What you know, is his negotiating position. It may or may not represent something he actually wants, and he may or may not want it for the reasons he gives you. That is, in theory, a virtue of elections — that the stated positions of the politicians have to somehow reflect what everyone agrees is actually safe policy — but again, elections in Iraq have been ten kinds of weird. I guess if things really are safer with the “surge,” and if you really do have some buy-in from minorities who’ve previously boycotted elections, there’s good reason to get an election underway fast just so’s to give everyone some confidence as to what’s being negotiated — I suspect you’ll still see a withdrawl demand, but I suspect it will be paced and executed differently as well. But frankly I don’t know.
OK: compensation for being an underpaid wage slave: I get a four-day weekend with the family.
— Sanjay · Aug 29, 04:38 AM · #
Sanjay, if we can constantly question what people really want, and what foreign leaders really want, how can we ever have democracy or self-determination at all? If we’re empowered to decide what a foreign country’s leaders or people want, what’s to prevent us from invading and saying “We know what they really want”? And do we and only we have that authority? Isn’t this precisely the kind of appeal that Russia is making in its excursions into Georgia/Ossetia? This, again, is American exceptionalism; the idea that we and only we have the right and ability to determine what other countries want.
This is a recurring theme with you, Sanjay. You say stuff like this: it’s a deliberate fudge in the direction you happen to like. But that’s precisely what you always do. You accuse me of doing what you do. The difference is I’m open about my own position, while you insist on dancing around on the notion that you’re just stating the facts. Well, that’s bogus.
— Freddie · Aug 29, 05:03 AM · #
We obviously owe the Iraqis a little stability after throwing their country into chaos. The question is, can we actually give them that. So far no. Any long term stability requires the various competeing factions come to some kind of equilibrium, either through political agreement or force. It’s pretty obvious we have no control over their politics. Currently we may be preventing the equilibrium through force option, but how long do we really want to be doing that? If that is what we are doing, how long before it gets ugly again? I think that we are at the point where we give the political soloution one more big push and then go, with some contingency plans in place in case of immediate genocidal actions. That gives Iraqis who know much better than we do what will happen a chance to prepare. For contingency plans I would say safe cities connected by corridors.
The problem is that we have created a monster in Maliki and he is shaping up to be the big dog. I actually think further civil war is probably inevitable within the next few years, whether we are there or not. The Shiites are not going to let the sunis continue with the autonomy they have and they are not going let the Kurds succeed. The sunis would act the same if they were in the Shiites position. I think almost anyone holding the seat of “national” power is going to try to re-consolidate the country. Vey few politicians or polities are willing to give up land resources and control.
I just don’t think we can do much about this situation besides holding the parties apart, not with the military at least. Like I said, how long can we be reasonably expected to do that?
Sometimes problems don’t have good soloutions.
— cw · Aug 29, 05:18 AM · #
I wrote “succeed” when I meant to write “secede.” Embarassing.
— cw · Aug 29, 06:29 AM · #
Freddie, that whole first paragraph of yours makes the same mistake explicitly. Read it again.
Look,I’m not making some metaphysical point about not knowing what the Iraqi people want. The government says something, it’s a political negotiating position. And, sure, I could say that that creates an absolute political imperative — that in all dealings and negotiations with the Iraqi government we have to figure out how to accommodate that position or buy it away — but I won’t say that because it’s content-free: I mean, duh, if we negotiate with someone we have to start with our respective starting positions, the Iraqi political position forces how we can act. What I don’t do is claim that that political position forces our moral position, whereas you repeatedly thunder that it does: that if we don’t accept the Iraqi negotiating position we are ourselves some kind of exceptionalism-devoted navel-gazing hegemons. Saying it’s something I do myself is therefore patently wrong, because frankly I’m not sure how to derive any moral context from what seems to be going on; I wish I could. This idea that the political position of a government places an onus on us from “first principles” is a little postcard from Wolfowitz-land. What’s it like there?
Does that mean that only we have the authority to make the decision as to what the Iraqis want? No, it means I’m agnostic about what the Iraqis want. Only we have the authority to decide what our troops and our resources are going to do once we drill down the Iraqi negotiating position. The same holds true of the Russians, too, by the way: it’s just the West can put its thumb on the scale when the calculation is made by Putin about how to deploy forces. We have no authority to make the decision for the Russians, though, and nor do the Georgians. Again, that’s not moral, that’s factual.
Now, about that Iraqi withdrawl demand. Once we get that we’re in the land of political needs, not “first principles,” it gets complicated. Yep, al-Maliki says he wants withdrawl and let’s figure he “really” does. He also wants an American security guarantee. And, damn straight he wants one — his position is unstable, the Saudis and Syrians have made it straight from day one that they’re uncomfortable with the rise of the Shia majority government in Baghdad (for different reasons), the Iranians want to be able to dictate to it…he’s in a mess.
Well, those security guarantees are a bitch and we should extract a whole lot of concessions for them. You cite Georgia — yeah, and one HUGE misstep of this administration has been baiting the Georgians with an implied security guarantee that was worthless: if we actually brought them into say NATO we had damn well better be prepared to defend them, and that would force a lot of military cooperation and basing. In Okinawa, as I pointed out before, you’ve got a populace that really, really wants us gone and has said so through their elected government — which, mind you, is absolutely definitely a representative government in a way the Iraqi one is not — again and again and again. Does the Freddie formulation, then, force us to pack up and leave? C’mon, Freddie, tell me about “first principles.” Because that would be past dumb: the Japanese have an explicit US security guarantee and they still say they want it.
Now, if al-Maliki says, I want you gone, oh, and I don’t need your military aid — that’s a different story. But he hasn’t done that. What he is doing so far instead, is using his timetable to force an administration which has, stupidly, banked its credibility on there being no short-term drawdown, to extract concessions. Because this is political, not “first principles” moral, we horse-trade, as we should.
— Sanjay · Aug 29, 01:17 PM · #
Reihan, baby, you know that I love you. You are, and I say this without the faintest hint of a shadow of a doubt, an absolute unwavering Bushian certainty, my favorite shaved-headed Bangladeshi quasi-conservative singer/songwriter/over-emoter/blogger.
But what the hell is the deal with the conservative obsession with “democracy” and “elections” the last 6 years?
I don’t have the time or the energy to get too deep into the weeds on this subject right now, but it seems to me that peace and relative stability are a necessary precursor to the building of a functioning governmental system. They’re not something which is brought about by a functioning governmental system. I’m sure this is a vast oversimplification, but just look at the difference between Germany after World War I, racked by massive reparation payments and out-of-control inflation, vs. West Germany after World War II, rebuilt by the Marshall Plan and given the opportunity to actually join Western Civilization?
I completely fail to understand how another set of elections held right now, with stability due in large part to increased American troop levels and the rank bribery of Sunni sectarian forces, are going to improve the likely long-term outcomes in Iraq. Until you can either settle the underlying racial and religious strife, or simply put people who hate each other on different sides of a border, owing allegiances to mostly autonomous governments, such as in Serbia and Kosovo, the removal of the forces which are propping up the government, and enforcing some manner of peace and stability, will result in nearly-immediate resumption of full-on hostilities between the groups who have seen, in the last 6 years, very little reason to stop hating one another.
I waiting until today to post this, because your post said that you would be putting up further thoughts about it last night. But you didn’t do so, and thus my response now. I really want to know why elections are more important than actually working to solve the problems on the Iraqi ground.
[cross posted to Damn Lefties. ]
— David Samuels · Aug 29, 07:23 PM · #