Let's Get Serious about Iraq

Among US politicians, and most of the world’s politicians, there are two unpalatable options on offer for solving the problem of Iraq:

1. "Keep doing what US and its allies are currently doing and continue on the way to disaster"
2. "Get out now and bring on the disaster more quickly."

This dismal conclusion is evident from the debacle of Senator Joe Lieberman in the US. Even among US Democrats, there seem to be only different flavors of disaster on the menu.

Neither is acceptable to the American electorate, and neither should be acceptable to the world. It is probable that John Kerry lost in 2004 in part because he didn't provide a convincing alternative. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has tried since then to enlist European support, which was part of Kerry's idea, but that isn't really a realistic option and the US electorate understood it then. Kerry just didn't have a solution.

However, just because politicians do not offer a solution, that does not mean there isn't one.

One may conclude that, "only the Iraqis can put their country back together again," which is a rationale for a graceful exit. That is a truism that everyone understands, but the Iraqis cannot do it without a lot of help. It is like the venerable cartoon of US Conservative politician, Barry Goldwater, telling some poor unfortunate "If you had any initiative you would go out and inherit a hotel." The vast majority of Iraqis do not want to blow each other up; it only takes small groups to create the chaos we see there now, with the help of various outside factors. Groups like the Mahdi Army and Al-Qaeda and the Baathists would be only too happy to put the country "back together," but the results would be unfortunate for Iraq, for America and for the whole Middle East.

There are internal problems in Iraq, but they are exacerbated greatly by outside pressures that feed the militias. Eventually Iraq will be "fixed" somehow. It won't stay in chaos for a hundred years. So it is not "unfixable." If the US and allies do not "fix" Iraq, then Syria and Iran, or Russia, or Al-Qaeda may "fix" Iraq. When the US & company pulled out of Lebanon, Syria moved in and "fixed" the supposedly "unfixable" civil war. Vladimir Putin has given an example of how he "fixes" things in Chechnya, remarkably similar to the way in which USSR "fixed" Hungary and Czecholovakia in the bad old days.  Those are some alternatives -- they might be the optimistic ones.

Pouring more money in is not going to help, if it goes to line the pockets of US executives and corrupt politicians. But nobody will convince me as yet that either giving up or pretending that everything is OK and continuing in the same way are the only alternatives, because it seems that nobody really tried to win.

Is it really possible to believe that oversight over where the dollars are going will not help? Is it really possible to believe that developing a real military intelligence capability will not help? Can anyone really argue that US troops were trained to win hearts and minds by their actions, and that it just so happened that the unreasonable Iraqis just don't like being raped, tortured and murdered? When the same terror (excuse me, "militant") tactics are used over and over to blow up unguarded crowds, can it really be argued that lessons are being learned and applied?

The amazing thing to me about the US Democrats (and everyone else for that matter) is that nobody really seems to be criticizing corruption and incompetence. There are only those like the gung-ho Republicans and Joe Lieberman who want to continue marching over the cliff, and the opposition, which is ideologically opposed to the war and wants to get out at any cost. The Iraq quagmire is not about some politician getting elected in Illinois or Wisconsin, or about "proving" some ideological point about "democracy" or "neo-cons" or "American Imperialism." The stakes are much bigger than that, for Iraqis, for Americans, and for the Middle East. It is long past time for everyone to get serious about Iraq. 

Ami Isseroff
A Middle East political commentator and Director of MidEastWeb for Coexistence.