(Charles Krauthammer article continues)
We Americans, looking at a situation like the one that has
unraveled in Iraq, immediately want to blame ourselves. We
traditionally flatter ourselves that we are the root of all
planetary good and evil, whether it is nuclear weapons in
North Korea, poverty in Bolivia, or disco attacks in Bali.
Fingers are pointed that somehow attempt to locate the root
of the problem in the United States. Our discourse on Iraq
has followed this same pattern. Where did we go wrong? Not
enough troops, too arrogant an occupation, too little
direction from the political authorities in Washington or
too much? Everybody has his own theory. I have mine on the
things that we should have done otherwise. We should have
shot looters on day 1, we should have installed a government
of Iraqi exiles immediately, and above all, we should have
taken out Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army in 2004, when
we had the opportunity. All of those decisions, I think,
greatly complicated our problems.
Nonetheless, the root problem is not the United States and
not the tactical errors that we have made in Iraq. The root
problem is the Iraqis and their own political culture. Since
this an evening honoring Benjamin Franklin, I want to recall
to you one of his most famous statements. When leaving the
Constitutional Convention, he was asked what they had
accomplished. His response was "A republic, if you can keep
it." What we have done in Iraq is given them a republic, but
they appear unable to keep it.
I think that has a lot to do with Iraqi history. We had two
objectives going into Iraq. The first was to depose the
regime--relatively easy. The second was to try to establish
a self-sustaining, democratic successor government. That has
proved to be extraordinarily difficult. The problem is not,
as we endlessly hear, American troop levels. It's not even
Iraqi troop levels. The size and the training of Iraqi
forces is much less an issue than is the question of their
allegiance. Some of these soldiers serve an abstraction
called Iraq, but others serve political entities, militias,
and/or religious sects. The Iraqi police, for example, are
so infiltrated by *****e death squads that they cannot be
relied upon at all for the security of the country.
And again, the reason is not, as many critics now claim,
that there is something intrinsic within Arab culture that
makes them incapable of democracy. Yes, there are political,
historical, and even religious reasons why the Arabs might
be less prepared to be democratic in their governance than,
say, East Asians or Latin Americans. But the problem, I
believe, is Iraq's particular culture and history. This
after all is a country that was raped and ruined for thirty
years by a uniquely sadistic and cruel and atomizing
totalitarianism. What was left in its wake was a social and
political desert, a dearth of the kind of trust and good
will and sheer human capital required for democratic
governance. All that was left to the individual in Iraq was
to attach himself to a mosque or clan or militia. That's why
at this earliest stage of democratic development Iraqi
national consciousness is as yet too weak and the culture of
compromise too underdeveloped to produce effective
government enjoying broad allegiance.
Just a month ago the U.S. launched operations against the
Mahdi army in Baghdad and was ordered to stop by Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government. Under pressure, the
barricades that we had established around Sadr City to find
one of our missing soldiers and to arrest a death squad
leader were suspended. This is no way to conduct a war. I
believe the government of Prime Minister Maliki is a
failure. The problem is not his personality, it's the fact
that the coalition on which he depends is predominated by
*****e elements of militias and religious parties, armed and
ambitious, at odds with each other and with the very idea of
a democratic Iraq.
Is this our fault? I think the answer is no. It's the result
of Iraq's first experiment in democracy. When the U.S. went
into Iraq, it was not going to replace on tyrant with
another. We were trying to begin the planting of democracy
in the heart of the Middle East as the one conceivable
antidote to terrorism and extremism. In a country that is
two thirds *****e, that meant inevitably *****e rule. It was
never certain whether the long-oppressed Shia would have
enough sense of nation or sense of compromise to set aside
their own grievances and internal differences and make a
generous offer to the Sunnis in order to tame the insurgency
and begin a new page in their country's political history.
The answer to whether that was going to happen is now in,
and the answer is no.
The ruling Shia themselves are lacking in cohesion. Just a
month ago there was a fight in the city of Amara between the
two leading *****e political parties, a bloody and brutal
fight, which actually holds out some hope for what might
help to ameliorate the situation in Iraq--namely, a change
in structure of the coalition, which is now *****e with the
Kurds as a junior partner, and try to establish a new
government with a new set of coalition partners, which would
involve secular and religious *****es who would reach out to
some of the Sunnis, those who recognize their minority
status but would be willing to accept a generously offered
place at the table. This kind of cross-sectarian coalition
almost happened after the election last year. Almost half of
the parliament consists of these Kurdish, *****e, and Sunni
elements. It seems to me that unless there is a change in
the government, which has clearly not succeeded, we are not
going to succeed. You can tinker with American tactics and
troop levels all you want, but unless the Iraqis can
establish a government of unitary purpose and resolute
action, the simple objective of the war--leaving behind a
self-sustaining, democratic government--will not be
achieved.
Given these circumstances, we now have a situation in
Washington after the election, which is looking for a kind
of exit, honorable or not, and that is why I think there is
a lot of discussion about negotiations with Iran and Syria,
which I think ultimately would amount to nothing more than
cover for an American retreat. I don't think that is the
only alternative, however. I think there is at least a
chance of trying to save the situation not only in Iraq, but
the general idea of trying to establish more liberal
democratic and less confrontational governments in that
region. Part of that effort I think has to be a very
important and exerted effort now to try to rescue the
Lebanese government, which in the next week or so will be
under threat of demonstration, perhaps even civil war and
perhaps even open Syrian intervention against it. That's why
even though our situation today is a rather gloomy one and
there is a lot of disorientation and despair, I think that
if we do not lose our nerve and lose our way, there is a way
to actually emerge from this two-year era of setback.
What is becoming clear is that the overall international
strategic situation in which we had unchallenged hegemony
for the first decade and half the unipolar moment is now
over. We are seeing on the horizon the rise of something
that is always expected in any unipolar era, which is an
alliance of others who oppose us.
