What should we make of Bush and Blair’s strange acts of contrition at their joint press conference yesterday? Bush apologized for using overly bellicose language and encouraging the insurgents to ‘bring it on’. He also showed some regret about the damage Abu Ghraib has done to our international image. Meanwhile, Tony Blair cited an overly broad de-Baathification as the main mistake the coalition made in Iraq.
I actually was pleased to see Bush make any concessions at all, even if I was not very impressed with the concessions he chose to make. Bush might be surprised to learn how much goodwill he can regain if he is willing to reach out, admit mistakes, and stop politicizing the debate about the war. He made a tentative step in that direction yesterday, but it surely wasn’t enough to persuade many to trust him again. And more importantly, he didn’t propose anything that might help repair our image in the world. He could shut down Guantanamo. He could disavow secret gulags. He could promise to respect laws and treaties banning cruel and unusual punishment. He could admit that Abu Ghraib was more than the work of a few bad apples and cashier a few generals and high ranking intelligence officers. He did not do any of that, so how seriously can we take his regret over Abu Ghraib? It seems like he recognizes the problem, but is only sorry that we got caught.
Tony Blair’s admission was actually more interesting. Many people have commented on the decision to disband the Iraqi army and de-Baathify the civil service. It is almost universally considered to be a blunder. And, if our intent in Iraq was not a Democracy, or if our number one concern was to limit our casualties and get back out of Iraq as soon as possible, then I would agree that de-Baathification was a mistake. It assured that the country would be dysfunctional, and it assured that the former Iraqi military would become a Sunni insurgency.
However, if our intent was to make Iraq into a shining example of the blessings of liberty and the power of the vote, then it was unavoidable that we would tear out the old government and start from scratch. Tony Blair shouldn’t be regretful about the de-Baathification if he is truly pleased with the elections that brought the Shiites to power. It just sounds silly for Blair to praise a Shiite dominated government in one moment and say the next moment that his biggest regret is that he purged the Sunni-dominated government.
It’s hard to know if this admission of Tony Balir’s is merely ironic, or if he truly is a total moron. Did Blair not contemplate, in advance, the difficulty of replacing a government of secular Sunni Stalinists (representing 20% of the population) with a government of deeply religious Shiites (representing 60% of the population)? Did it not occur to him that a disbanded army that is denied alternative employment will have no alternative but to go on fighting?
What did Bush and Blair really think would happen when they got to Baghdad? Did they think the whole government of theiving brutal thugs would just show up for work as usual and Ahmed Chalabi could be placed on Saddam’s throne? Was that, perhaps, their real mistake? Because it seems to me that de-Baathification was a requirement if our intentions were to establish some kind of democracy in Iraq. So, it can’t have been a mistake. Since I believe Tony Blair when he says he regrets de-Baathification, I can only conclude that he regrets that the end result in Iraq has become a democratically elected government that is more friendly to Iran than to any of its other neighbors, or to us. And if that isn’t bad enough, the government would collapse tomorrow if we left, and may collapse regardless.
We have sacrificed a lot to get a broken government that hates us and is aligned with our enemy. It’s brilliant. Bush keeps talking about ‘winning’ in Iraq, as though there is some outcome possible that we might consider a win. To win, your opponent has to concede defeat, and that is not ever going to happen. The best we can hope for is that the Shiites carry out a sufficiently brutal sectarian cleansing and erect a sufficiently lethal police state that they can provide a modicum of security for the rest of their people. If we want to call that ‘winning’ that’s fantastic. But I don’t think that is what Tony Blair had in mind, somehow, when he was musing over the Downing Street Minutes.
