Lee Harris: Keep Allawi at the Helm

Everyone who thinks that democracy in Iraq is a good thing, hold up your hand. Now everyone who thinks that interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi should have been soundly defeated in the Iraqi national elections, hold up your hand. Okay -- now how many people who held up their hands to the first question held up their hands for the second question? Few, if any, I would wager. After all, the Americans who were cheering for democracy to work in Iraqi were also cheering for Allawi to win by a landslide. Indeed, for many of us, our hopes for democracy in Iraq depended, to a large degree, on our faith in this one individual leader -- and with good reason. He deserved our faith.

It is true that democracies have historically cast aside great leaders once their task had been discharged, the way England pushed Churchill out of office once the Second World War had been won, for example. But in the case of Allawi, his task had only just begun -- so that excuse doesn't work in this case. Indeed, here we clearly have the case of changing horses in the middle of the stream -- to use the metaphor Franklin Roosevelt came up with, in order to justify his running for a third unprecedented term on the eve of World War II. Only Iraq is not in the middle of a stream; it is in the middle of a struggle for its survival as a nation. It is in desperate need of continuity, strength, and unity.

Regrettably, the next man to be chosen to lead Iraq will depend for his power on an inherent fragile and unstable coalition of Kurds and traditional Shi'ites, and this means that not only will he be weak, but he will be more interested in keeping the support of his political backers than in winning the struggle against the terrorist insurgents. In other words, at the precise moment that Iraq desperately needs a strong and unchallenged leader, it is being turned over to rule by parliamentary debate -- a wonderful form of government if you happen to have the good fortune to live in a society in which men do not routinely blow themselves up in front of schools, hospitals, and police stations, but woefully unfit to deal with a crisis of the magnitude facing Iraq.

It is emotionally uplifting to watch millions of Iraqis line up courageously to take charge of their own lives; but it is profoundly disturbing to discover that, by doing so, they have discarded the one man who, with immense personal courage, has managed the nearly impossible task of preserving the honor and integrity of his nation during a period of military occupation, on the one hand, and all out terrorist assault, on the other. Indeed, Allawi's accomplishment places him in the company of truly inspiring leaders -- precisely the kind of leader that the Muslim world so desperately needs, if there is to be hope for the future of the region.

In which case, we are forced to ask ourselves the painful question, Why was such a man defeated, and defeated by a such a huge margin? What had Allawi done that was so wrong in the eyes of the Iraqi people?

His first crime may have been that he was too secular -- a Shi'ite, but not one willing to push for a Koran-based polity, otherwise known as a theocracy. His second crime, I suspect, was that he had worked with the United States -- not as a collaborator, as he is often represented in the lunatic Arab media, but as a genuine patriot who realized that the best chance for his country to gain freedom and autonomy was through the generous and disinterested help of America. That was why he was willing to take risks to his political career by publicly backing the American-led attack on Fallujah: he knew that the situation in Fallujah had to be dealt with, if there was to be any hope for stability in Iraq's future.

The Bush administration was at its very best when working with Allawi: both parties behaved with enormous restraint, displaying immense reserves of mutual respect and confidence. During the period between the transfer of sovereignty at the end of June and the elections at the end of January, Bush and Allawi managed to cooperate as team players, with a complete absence of the kind of open and public conflict that would have appeared to have been unavoidable under the enormously difficult circumstances facing both the American President and the Iraqi leader -- surely a tribute to the personal character of the two men, as well as to the singularly fortunate dynamic at work between them. Together they managed to keep Iraqi sovereignty intact, without loss of face either to Allawi or to the Bush administration.

The ultimate tragedy in Iraq may well be that the nation actually had a chance for a decent future -- a chance that the Bush administration had given the Iraqi people through its deft backing of a truly national leader like Allawi, yet a chance which the same administration may well have fecklessly thrown away through its ideological fixation on formal democracy as a panacea for all that ails the Middle East. In the past, democracies have not only voted good men out of office, in order to put terrible men into their place, but democracies have, at times, even voted themselves out of existence. The French did this when they elected Louis Napoleon emperor, the Italians did this when they made Mussolini the Duce, the Germans did it when they made Hitler the Führer. The once supposedly democratic revolution in Iran ended in a Shi'ite theocracy; and it could happen once again in Iraq.

The Austrian philosopher, Karl Popper, the champion of the open society, warned of what he called the paradox of democracy. If the people wish to vote themselves out of power, what is to stop them -- except a minority determined to protect the rights of a majority who is no longer interested in defending such rights themselves?

By this paradox, it may well have been that the best policy to pursue in Iraq would have been to back Allawi to the hilt, come hell and high water. True, those who hate us would have called us imperialists; but they us call that anyway, even after the elections that we held in order to prove that we are not. The Bush administration, by hoping to appear admirable in the eyes of its enemies, may well have ended by betraying its best friends -- Allawi and those who shared his views of Iraq as an open and liberal society.

What can be done at this point, I am in no position to say. But I would strongly urge the Bush administration to put as much pressure as it can possibly put on the new coalition government to rise above their own narrow sectarian and regional perspectives, in order to preserve a winning team. We can work with Allawi -- and since it is our money and our manpower upon which the future of Iraq now depends, and will continue to depend for a long time, then we have every justification to make such a call. True, it would be intervening with the Iraqi people's rights of national self-determination; but if the Americans weren't there to defend these rights, who would even know that they existed?

Pressure, bribe, coerce -- even send the magnificent and miracle-working Condoleezza Rice, if all else fails. But do whatever it takes to keep Allawi at the helm. We owe it to the children of Iraq -- the ones who couldn't vote in the last election, but who, with a bit of luck and a little more American behind-the-scenes intervention, may yet grow up to vote in future ones.

Lee Harris is back and provocative as always! Please, let me know if you want or don't want to be pinged to Lee Harris articles.

His articles at the TechCentralStation are archived here: http://www2.techcentralstation.com/1051/searchauthor.jsp?Bioid=BIOHARRISLEE

If you want to bookmark his articles discussed at FR: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/k-leeharris/browse

Lee Harris classics. If you have time, read these articles:

essay Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology By Lee Harris (FR post) "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology," (original)
The Clausewitz Curse (FR post) The Clausewitz Curse (original)
Given our uncertainty, what alternative does this, or any, administration have?
Our World-Historical Gamble (FR post) Our World-Historical Gamble (original)
The collapse of the liberal order and the end of classical sovereignty.
The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing http://www.policyreview.org/dec02/harris.html
America-bashing has sadly come to be “the opium of the intellectual,” to use the phrase Raymond Aron borrowed from Marx in order to characterize those who followed the latter into the twentieth century. And like opium it produces vivid and fantastic dreams.

His new book: Civilization and Its Enemies : The Next Stage of History

no.. I don't want to be pinged. Still, I just cannot agree with this. First, I think its way way too early to count Allawi out of the running if he wants to stay in some office. But, for now.. He must graciously do his role in providing an example of the orderly transfer of power. This is more important to Iraq then any other thing he could do at this point. Next he has to survive the insurgency (terrorists) who may want to chase after him. Then, he will be called back, perhaps as the leader for the 3rd term, but perhaps not.

The really interesting thing about Iraq is the Iraqi Shia position of separation of Church and State that is not as rabid as our idea of this, but still is being espoused and clarified as allowing the government to be done by government and the saving of souls be done by the Mullahs.

This example is very much in opposition to the theocratic dictatorship ideal followed by Khomeini and his cohort. Sistani, Iraq's leading Ayatollah, has the prestige and the power to lead both Iraq and Iran in a new and more productive direction. One can be cynical and say that Muslim ayatollah's are only interested in dictatorship and the stern rule or religious law, but this bitter thought shares much with the thoughts that said that Muslims do not want democracy.

I agree with you more than with Lee Harris. Its more about establishing the process than relying on individuals.

I can imagine people were saying how is it anybody can fill in Washington's shoes.

Speaking about Iraq. There were numerous local elections for different municipalities. Thats what needs to be spread and encouraged as much as possible: local elections. Democracy should grow from the bottom up.

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