Posted on 12/09/2008 5:42:25 PM PST by neverdem
Last week I wrote that many Americans and Iraqis I spoke to in Baghdad recently expect a surge of violence after American troops withdraw from Iraqi cities as stipulated by the recently signed Status of Forces Agreement. Many readers seemed surprised by that pessimistic forecast and wondered, after two years of good news, if it could even be true. “Your report and that of Michael Yon,” Richard Everett wrote in the comments section, “published on the same day on the same subject are at so great variance that one has to ask; 'are you two in the same country?' He is positive, you are not. Why the extreme difference?”
Michael Yon did, indeed, publish an upbeat report on the same day called The Art of the End of the War. I encourage everyone to read it. Yon's work is always accurate and informative, and this time is no exception. Richard Everett is right to point out that my piece was gloomy while Yon's piece was not, but Iraq is complex. Iraq produces good news and bad at the same time.
“Al Qaeda was handed a vicious defeat in Iraq,” Yon wrote, “and it can be said with great certainty that most Iraqis hate al Qaeda even more than Americans do. Al Qaeda can continue to murder Iraqis for now, but al Qaeda will be hard pressed to ever plant their flag in another Iraqi city. The Iraqi army and police have become far too strong and organized, and the Iraqis will eventually strangle al Qaeda to death.”
I have no doubt this is true. In some Iraqi cities – Fallujah, Ramadi, Bacouba, and some parts of Baghdad – every day was September 11. Al Qaeda fanatics car-bombed and mass murdered their way into power. Some Iraqis, unlike Americans, have actually had to live under the rule of Al Qaeda. They hate Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al Zarqawi like no one else. After Anbar Awakening leader Sheikh Sattar Abu Risha was assasinated by a car bomb in front of his house in Ramadi, his brother Ahmed Abu Risha said “All the tribes agreed to fight al Qaeda until the last child in Anbar.” How many Americans talk about Al Qaeda like that?
Al Qaeda has been by far the most vicious and sadistic terrorist group in Iraq, but there are many other groups still skulking about in reduced numbers – the Mahdi Army “Special Groups,” Hezbollah, Asa'ib Ahl al-Haqq, and some others have been seriously bloodied and weakened, but they still exist. It's a near certainty that there will be spike in terrorist and insurgent activity when Americans clear the streets because Iraq's most effective counterinsurgents will have cleared out of the way. That doesn't mean the terrorists and insurgents will win. It means there will be a partial security vacuum, and they will try.
I doubt any of the weakened terrorist and insurgent groups will be able to defeat the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police. A retired Iraqi Army general told me not to worry because when they are in charge they will rule the country with much greater force and less concern for human rights than Americans. I wouldn't decribe that as encouraging, exactly, considering what Iraq looked like when it was ruled that way in the past. But at least we no longer have to worry overly much about Al Qaeda seizing power as Hamas did in Gaza after the Israel Defense Forces left. Al Qaeda doesn't have even a fraction of Hamas' popularity, and the Iraqi Army, unlike the Palestinian security forces, have been trained for years by American soldiers.
Two years ago Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army had already seized power in parts of Iraq. They would have retained that power and territory if American troops left the country at the beginning of 2007. General David Petraeus could not fix everything in Iraq, but at least he fixed this. Iraq was a perilous place in 2006, but imagine what it would have looked like if an Sunni Al Qaeda ministate in the Sunni Triangle went to war with a Shia ministate ruled by the Mahdi Army. Iraq might then have resembled Yugoslavia under Slobodan Milosevic, or even Cambodia under Pol Pot if one side decisively lost.
Nothing like that is likely today.
Iraq is still a mess, even so. Iraq is dysfunctional. Iraq is corrupt. Iraq is riven by racial and sectarian hatreds between Arabs and Kurds and between Sunnis and Shias. Each race and sect are further divided against each other by tribe. Revolutionary Iranians still muck around with Iraq's internal politics, and many Iraqis will continue to let them. Religious fundamentalists coexist precariously with Iraqi secularists and women who resent having to wear the hijab over their hair so they won't be targeted by the radicals. Even some Christian women in Baghdad feel compelled to wear the hijab. The only people in the country who seem interested in cleaning up the garbage still clogging the streets are Americans, and they're on their way out. Iraq will always be Iraq, whether a terrorist regime takes over or not. It will be a while before it's a place you will want to visit.
At this point, though, it's unlikely that the United States will fight another war in Iraq. Michael Yon is almost certainly right about that. A large number of Iraqis want American troops to leave, but most of them are not our enemies. Very few shoot at American troops anymore. Even fewer have any interest in attacking Americans in the United States. Roadside bombs are rare enough now that I no longer worry about them when riding in Humvees with American soldiers. The Iraqi Army and Iraq Police conduct joint operations and patrols with Americans. If Iraq were an enemy state, or if the various insurgent and terrorist groups were still widely supported by Iraqi civilians, the steep decline in violence over the past two years would never have happened.
Whatever happens next is up to Iraqis. It may or may not be pretty, but the days when Iraq is a lethal threat to anyone outside its borders most likely are over.
Michael J. Totten is a freelance writer and blogger who has reported from Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Cyprus, Turkey, and Israel. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Reason, and numerous other publications.
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It is hard to be too up beat over successes in Iraq, knowing the cultural tendencies of the region. but however Iraq turns out, Iraqis have an opportunity now that was never even imaginable prior to the coming of the Americans. What they do with it is entirely up to them, and I think after our wonderful troops are gone Iraqis will miss them dearly.
My thanks to those who put their lives on the line in the armed forces. Although I was against the invasion of Iraq, I’m glad that we’re leaving it (thanks to our troops) as a place with a chance.
I do think, howver, that it’s unconscionable that our military did so much work and that the Iraqi constitution says that “no law may be contrary to Islam.” We should have at least ghost-written the thing, guaranteeing rights to all Iraqis (including Christians and, if there are any, to Jews) instead of institutionalizing Islam in another government. Guess that is what you get when policymakers believe in moral equivalence and don’t realize just what exactly it is that makes America great.
While part of me agrees with you. But I think that in keeping with our own love of self determination we must respect the decisions of Iraqis on religious, cultural and legal issues. To dictate to them how to run their country would be counterproductive. Tell someone he can’t do something and he then wants to do it. What we can do is let them have that opportunity, and see what they do with it. And if they return to their old ways of despotism and aggression, and that intersects with our own national interests again, then it is time to wipe them off the face of the earth. Otherwise, live and let live, hopefully in friendship and mutual betterment.
We did it for Japan, and I daresay that they wouldn’t be the country they are today without their constitution.
I would also argue that without a government based on respect for the natural rights of man (which in turn is specifically based on the principles of Christianity) will have all of its shortcomings exploited. For those who would misread this, I am not suggesting an official religion, just that the basis of law be in Christian principles ... the only thing that has proven to work. You can have economic freedom only and end up with Dubai.
I have a friend who was a grad student in econ argue with me that economic development would bring reform to China. I argued that economic development could very well just enrich a communist state and that personal freedom, with its basis in religious freedom, would be the only thing to bring real change. Two schools of thought, though I think our overlord in D.C. agree with my friend. This is the moral equivalence that is causing the downfall of the West. Denying what made us what we are because we are supposedl “post modern” is crazy.
wgflyer, sorry to get all tangential on you!
We did it for Japan, yes. But I think the culture there and then was far different from that which we find in the middle east. Different time, far different culture.
As for getting all tangential on me, really, I agree with you. A society based solidly in Christian principle provides the best environment I’ve seen for a culture to flourish and prosper. But you’re not going to turn a muzzie based society into one that adopts Christian principles, even if you leave the Christianity off of it. Islam doesn’t allow it, and to change that they have to drop their faith in Islam, or Islam must go through a massive reformation. So, we can show them how to succeed as a society, but we can’t make them accept it, and therein is the crunch. I hope they make it. But I fear they won’t.
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