Do liberals want the United States to succeed in Iraq? A couple of weeks ago Tom Friedman suggested we didn’t. How does one even address this loaded question?
First I’ll say what I want for Iraq, then I’ll talk about what I want for America.
I want Iraq to use the next six-seven months to craft and ratify a constitution, and to hold elections that are as fair and representative as possible. I think Bush wants this too.
I want Iraq to develop the police and security forces to protect their own citizenry from attack. I fervently hope that Bush wants this too.
But after this base of agreement, my idea of success diverges from BushCo. First of all, I am deeply pessimistic about the prospects for Iraq to accomplish the above goals in the allotted time. But my disagreement goes much deeper.
:::flip:::
It starts with the real cause of 9/11. As the story goes, 19 Arab terrorists killed 3,000 American civilians because the terrorists ‘hated freedom’. Well, that’s a juvenile characterization of what causes violent hatred of America.
When the Iranians seized the American Embassy and held Americans hostage, they did it because we had fomented a coup in 1953, and then built a strong commercial and military relationship with the Shah. The Shah was overthrown for tyrannical behavior. He wasn’t overthrown because ordinary Iranians hated the freedom the Shah provided.
When the Libyans stormed and destroyed the American Embassy in Benghazi, on June 5, 1967, they didn’t do it because they hated freedom. They did because the Arab-Israeli War had begun, and they had been convinced by propaganda broadcasts that the United States was bombing Cairo.
The famous Afghan mujahideen didn’t fight the Soviets for freedom alone:
Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [“From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
Translated from the French by Bill Blum
Jimmy Carter signed off on turning Afghanistan from a poor country into the biggest hellhole on Earth. How could your average Afghan not resent that cruel and cynical decision? We didn’t bring the Afghans freedom from atheistic communism, we enticed the Soviets into invading and then abandoned the Afghans after they had served our purpose.
Not only that, but we intentionally radicalized the Muslim world in an effort to punish the Russians.
After the fall of the Shah and the taking of American hostages, we were understandably angry with the new Iranian government. So, we cynically encouraged Saddam Hussein to make war on them, and then we kept mum while he committed atrocities against Iran and the Kurds.
When that war had run its course, we turned Saddam into the world’s greatest monster and imposed permanent sanctions and no-fly zones over Iraq.
All the while, we were busy turning Saudi princes into some of the richest people on Earth, while taking their money to cover the cost of covert operations (in some cases illegal) that Congress was unwilling to appropriate money for.
Of course, we paid for them anyway when the Saving and Loans all collapsed and BCCI was exposed.
When Usama bin-Laden, in 1998, declared war on American civilians, he didn’t justify himself by arguing that he disliked freedom. He said that our foreign policy in the Middle East was to keep all Arab countries splintered and weak, and that to accomplish this we were willing to see thousands of Iraqis die as a direct result of sanctions. He also accused us of favoring Israel in their dispute with the Palestinians.
The first question we should have asked after 9/11, (after we calmed down a little), was whether there were any policies that we could change that would lesson the hatred of our country, and the resulting risk to our citizens.
Bush eventually realized that the jihadist movement was a reaction to our cynical and hypocritical policies. And he talked about bringing democracy to a region that we had traditionally paid handsomely to subjugate.
But that was, and is, mere rhetoric. It’s true that a democratic Iraq, and recent elections in Lebanon and Palestine, could be a catalyst to beneficial reforms. But they have done nothing to ease tensions in the occupied territories, and they have paid mere lip service to reforms in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, our strategy for creating the first and most crucial piece of Wolfowitz’s wet dream has been inept, pathetic and counterproductive. Iraq is in shambles.
The logical conclusion from 9/11 should have been that we could no longer pursue a Cold War policy in the Middle East. We needed to back democratic reforms, and, in order to cope with the threat to energy supplies that an unpredictable period of social revolution might cause, we needed to work with a laser focus on alternative energy, and energy independence.
Next, if we felt that Saddam had to go, we should have explained why. We never should have lied about the intelligence and we never should have used the United Nations inspection process as a cynical ploy to entrap Saddam into giving us a casus belli for war. It was illegal and immoral and it was unfair to our allies and to the institution of the United Nations.
So, I want what is best for the Iraqi people. And we need to have some success in the upcoming months in order to prevent Iraq from becoming a failed state. I don’t want more bloodshed on either side.
But I also don’t want Bush to think that his policies are rational, moral, effective, or suitable to replication elsewhere.
America is at it’s best when it fights for other people’s civil rights and right to self-determination. We are at our worst when we sell-out the democrats and liberals so we can control valuable resources. Bush’s plan is not sincere. Everyone knows this. And it makes it very difficult to root for his unqualified success.
