The best piece of opinion journalism about the Iraq war that I've come across is "The Incompetence Dodge", by Sam Rosenfeld and Matthew Yglesias of The American Prospect magazine. As a side note, TAP is IMHO the finest liberal political magazine in the country, and their blog Tapped is a must read if you want some smart policy discussion with your politics. Anyway, they argued in November 2005 that the failure of the war was not that it was a good idea marred by incompetence at the top, but rather a bad idea from the beginning, because there was little chance whatsoever the Iraqis could forge a working stable government between themselves, and no number of US troops could bring that result about.
More recently, as public opinion in America turns to the idea that the problem in Iraq is irresponsible Iraqis, it was pointed out that both our leaders and the media have a habit of infantilizing the leadership of foreign nations, buying into a reward and punishment model for dealing with foreign nations while ignoring their interests. The media, I would argue, does this habitually. Whether it be politics as theater, the complete inability to determine the difference between facts and opinion, or the complete unwillingness to challenge well-worn narratives (McCain is an independent maverick!!), they really do a shoddy job of delivering in-depth news when they break away from missing pretty white woman stories. For politicians, however, we should ask for more. They, as powerful people, should know better.
Thus, the Man of the Year, as has been the case five years running, is George W. Bush (it should have been Bin Laden in 2001, may he rot in hell). Forget Rumsfeld; to quote Brad DeLong, the Kossacks work for the Czar. BTW, skipping forward 50 years or so, I'll leave it to you, DJ EZ D, to explain this blog's clever title. The only alternative should have been Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Nouri al-Maliki, the last two Prime Ministers of Iraq. Why are they both such failures, having come into office in a wave of purple fingers and purpler press releases? Because Iraq can't work at the moment, and no amount of bargaining on our part will bring that dream back to life (I'll leave denial to the administration, anger to the voters, take depression for myself and recommend skipping acceptance altogether). Without some semblance of security and the prospect of common goals, it will get much worse before it gets any better, and neither they, nor anyone else, will be able to do a thing about it. If there was a chance to save Iraq, and I doubt there was, the key words snuffing out hope belonged to Rumsfeld, and many people realized at the time how deeply disturbed they were: "free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes". Who will eventually restore order? The guy who can establish control. It could be some combination of either Moqtada al-Sadr and/or SCIRI, since they both have militias, living in uneasy truce with the Kurds, but it won't be pretty, and we should have freakin' known that, and those who ignored the fact were foolish, criminally foolish to ignore that fact. In the end, the ultimate description of Iraq may have been provided by the aptly named movie Army of Darkness. "Good....Bad...I'm the guy with the gun."
Sunday, December 17, 2006
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2 comments:
Correct, of course, but hardly surprising. It is odd that a government that does all it can to turn away from democracy (can you spell Patriot Act) would seek to impose it on a fictitious (as in "Accepted or assumed for the sake of convention" [American Heritage Dictionary]) country whose boundaries were drawn on a map, not on the land itself, and would then be surprised that it didn't take hold. But then at least it draws our attention away from those bastions of American styled democracies in Afghanistan and Haiti. A democracy that springs from within has a distant chance of success. One imposed from without has none, and a "none" government is an invitation to anarchy or dictatorship. In this world, George, ya gets what ya overpays for.
Are you suggesting that there is an element of hypocrisy in US foreign policy...or to paraphrase Mary Poppins, "In every job to promote democracy, there is an element of hypocrisy; you find the hypocrisy and snap!, you've joined the liberal media elite..."
Ok that last line doesn't scan well, but you get the point. It's as if, say, outgoing Republican sanators would support unions in Iran but attack them in America...
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