Too Much To Dream

Call me a starry-eyed optimist, but I think there will be a lot of gratitude. If there is not, that's okay. I generally take the line of someone (den Beste?) who laid it out basically like this:

We are coming to eliminate a threat. We will set up the apparatus for democracy, then leave because we are not a colonial power. After that, it is your responsibility to run your government. If you devolve into another petty dictatorship that threatens us, we will keep coming back until you get it right.

Yes, there will be a kind of Iraqi gratitude. I think we should coin it "French Gratitude" in honor of 6/4/44.

There are obviously different opinions in Iraq, and among Iraqi exiles, just as there are everywhere else. Everyone who manages to eke out some ability to speak freely clearly hates Saddam. Some people (mostly, those further from Baghdad) actively want the US to come in and get rid of him; others (mostly, those closer to Baghdad, who have less to gain and more to lose from an invasion) aren't so sure. All reasonable positions.

The one consistent theme that comes through loud and clear, as Gary Farber has pointed out, is that they do not want to be ruled as a colonial dependency by Americans, or by anyone else from outside Iraq. Would you?

So we have to weigh the chance that they'll screw things up, and end up with an endless civil war or dictatorship, against the certain knowledge that they will resent excessive interference by the Americans in their affairs (not to mention the chance that the Americans will screw things up). The de-Ba'athification period must be extremely short and we will not be able to do everything we would like to do.

Fortunately, the American people seem to believe the same thing. The US population is not going to stand for a long involvement running the military government of Iraq.

Unfortunately, it could all turn out badly in many ways if we scale back our presence early. The most likely situation is that Iraq will end up sort of like some of the post-Soviet republics: a pro-forma democracy shot through with corruption, constant attempted power grabs by functionaries of the old order, and the constant risk of violent fragmentation.

But even that would be better than Saddam's regime. We will be able to say that we removed a tyranny and gave the Iraqis a chance to have their own government, and the rest is up to them.

I do expect dancing in the streets and jubilation. I think it's inevitable. People will be free to speak again.

Then, being people like anyone else, they'll start to squabble and bicker amongst themselves. That's when the hard part begins.

Remember, some of them are also going to be killed in the invasion. Maybe many of them, if we have to kill a lot of draftees. There will be some civilians killed by accidental bombings. Probably not many, compared with other air campaigns, but you can bet that all eyes will be on them when it happens.

You can argue all you want, sensibly, almost certainly correctly, that this isn't going to be as bad as what would happen to them under ten more years of Saddam. Fair enough... but that's still going to hurt, and we shouldn't expect anything but hate from people whose family or friends get killed.

I'd advise reading Salam Pax's most recent rant. He wants democracy in Iraq. He's dead against war for the simple reason that, however bad things are now, airplanes are coming to bomb his city. It's like an express train bearing down on him. He's read all the worst-case scenarios for what could happen; he's taped up his windows and prepared his family for the walls blowing in. He has no good concrete solutions for what has to be done now; it's too late. He's convinced that Saddam could have been brought down some other way, maybe if things had been done differently a decade ago, and he's terribly angry about the whole thing, at the US and at everyone else involved.

When he says stuff like this, Americans post all sorts of encouraging messages on his comment board. Don't worry, the cavalry's coming. It'll be fine. They've got the best of intentions and they may even be right. But it seems obscene to say this sort of thing from a relatively safe place to a guy who is living in the target city. We don't know that he's going to be all right.

This is going to be hard. It's going to take a really, really clean operation if we want to get anyone in Baghdad on our side.

That's why I haven't said anything about how much they will love us and how happy they will be. For another thing -- and maybe I haven't stressed this enough -- it's just plain rude to say to someone: "You will appreciate me!" Also, it's kind of pathetic. A puppylike need to be loved is only attractive in puppies.

I espect there will be dancing in the streets for a couple of days, then the Iraqis will be criticizing us for all sorts of reasons, mostly irrelevant and false ones.

As for taking out Saddam some other way, we missed that chance 12 years ago through an excess of multilateralism, belief in the value of stability in the Middle East, and deference to UN resolutions. The Iraqis have failed themselves to do so for 24 years. Don't tell me there should be another way at this late date. Outside invasion is the only hope the Iraqis have of liberation, and most of them are to some degree complicit (especially the Sunni Arabs there)in the continuation of this noxious regime which has started two unprovoked wars and spread terror wherever it has gone. The casualties they will suffer now (and there will be some) are the unfortunate but unavoidable price for these failures and complicity.

Screw it. One of my ex-brothers-in-law is German, and he says he didn't remember dancing around while his sisters blew the GI's in the streets our of gratitude. Considering that they lived fifteen miles from Dresden, I can understand why.

But I don't think that's the point. Whatever happened to doing the right thing because it's... well, the right thing to do?

Possibly, Craig, that we didn't liberate Germany; we conquered it. The dancing in the streets should have come gradually over the next several decades in which we failed to subjugate West Germany as the Soviet Union did to East Germany. We actually paid to rebuild.

No, no dancing for the conquered.