The Iraqi Dilemma

History has not been kind to Western intervention in Islamic societies. The clash of Modernity with Tradition has often come to bloody stalemates. The forces of Modernity will always be more reluctant in use of force. It seems natural even that the Traditionalists would put up a tougher, bloodier fight than Western Liberalism has a taste for.

Did we forget Lebanon already? Somalia? No matter what the reality is, perception has and will be that of invader and conquered. We can dress it up as “liberator” and “liberated”, but it matters if locals do not see it that way. Therein lies both the problem and the solution. How do you get a conquered people to feel liberated?

You turn the power on. You spend more time helping people than pointing barrels at them. You keep water flowing. You rebuild hospitals and other civilian infrastructure that has decayed or been destroyed in the variable-speed 12-year war that has ravished the country. You withdraw the troops leaving the country on a short path to being a better place than it was before they came.

Unfortunately, the Iraqi resistance knows this. They have seized the negative momentum of destruction that was supposed to end when the last Iraqi tank was destroyed. The rampant looting following the fall of the Ba’athists helped them in their course. They want us out and they know the formula: high casualties, high costs, and public feelings of hopelessness in American and in Iraq.

So they have picked off US soldiers in a sustainable low quantity – just enough to keep on page two of most newspapers and in the back of American minds. They have help keep the utilities off in most of Iraq, enough to stay in the editorials of Arab newspapers. They have blown up the Jordanian embassy, UN mission, and northern oil pipeline to grab the headlines of newspapers around the world. They intend to keep reconstruction money out of and natural resources inside of Iraq by blocking oil sales that would bring much needed fiscal relief. They intend to promote hostility between Americans and Iraqi’s by keeping young G.I.’s edgy and trigger-happy when around the Iraqi public, creating further alienation.

Stating the obvious, the momentum must turn in favor of progress if Bush is to win his “splendid little war.” How to get there is another question. Bush seems to be on the right track by training Iraqi police. They are better suited than Americans to the do the police operations desperately needed inside of Iraq. Of course, they need re-education in how to deal with the population in a Western Liberal way, disguised with Arab tongue and culture.

Two dilemmas spring from that are: Where are the supplements to take the place of the tens of thousands of Iraqi police while they are being re-educated in Poland? While there will undoubtedly will be a need for them in the future, there is nonetheless a necessity for them now. The second dilemma stems from the mission itself and is much deeper and harder to address. How do you re-educate the entire society? Let us not fool ourselves by pretending that this was about weapons of mass destruction or Saddam’s human rights abuses. This is Empire at work. This is the full induction of what was once the most Modern country in the Arab world into the Western Liberal tradition. Iraq was always meant to be the post-War Japan of the Middle East, a beacon and a “roadmap” of what a Westernized economy and popular culture can do for a country in an otherwise violently xenophobic arena. It seems now that just because you dangle a hook with our cultural and economic bait does not dictate that the world’s citizens will always bite.

I don’t know what more Bush can do other than what he already seems bent on doing: leaving Iraq, like Afghanistan, after a symbolic Western gesture of elections – free, fair, or otherwise. Perhaps the isolationist instincts of America are not without logical foundations: Empire does not work within the neo-Western values we embrace. Perhaps we cannot have a successful Iraq because we cannot stoop to the level of the Iraqi resistance without undermining our own cause. Despite his calls for vigilance, I think Bush really means to say patience. It will all be over soon, and Iraq will recede, like Afghanistan, into the abyss’s of our newspapers and minds.

Tags: Treyopia Iraq Spinnaker Current Events Exit Strategy Exit Strategy Bush War

Sharon's Wall

As with everything in international politics, there are never perfect answers. It is easy to spot horrible ideas, but even the best of ideas tend to sink when one weighs all the variables and possible outcomes of an action. Oftentimes, then, leaders must make the least worst decision. This makes it easy to criticize every foreign policy decision, which is why foreign policy editorials tend to very negative, unless written by loyalist to the decision maker. But here I must defer.

I must admit I have no loyalty to Israel’s Prime Minister Arial Sharon. Though the man may display deftness in an M60 tank battling it out with Egyptians on the Sinai, I feel his agenda towards terrorism is self-destructive. He has devoted all of his resources towards battling the symptoms of terrorism (the bombings/bombers themselves), while neglecting and worsening the roots of terrorism (the humiliation of occupation, economy, and views towards Israel). There is a policy he is pursuing that I wholeheartedly agree with and it seems the rest of the world – left, right, and center - is against. Mr. Sharon is building himself a wall following roughly the pre-1967 war borders. He intends to cut non-citizen Palestinians out of Israel for good, thereby ceasing suicide bombings and other horrors that Israeli civilians endure.

Palestinians object because they cannot negotiate the wall’s location – Sharon holds all those cards. Many Peace Now types tend to be mortified at the thought of another Iron Curtain. They believe it will remove all hope of reconciliation and the possibility of a peaceful negotiated end to the situation. They understand that the Palestinian and Israeli economies are interwoven, and that the rise of a wall would permanently cut tens of thousand Palestinians off from their Israeli jobs. Some even point out that if one were to enforce that type of solution, it would create two Palestinian entities that cannot be connected through Israel. However, they also disregard that to fix that problem, one would have to slice Israel in half then…

Conservatives and other hardliners oppose the wall because they realize what it will do – not only would it keep the Palestinians out of Israel, but also it would eventually keep Israel out of the of the West Bank. Land, they feel, is rightly theirs. Some feel it is rightly theirs because of conquest – just Arabs would have held on to any land they acquired at the end of hostilities. Others, Christian and Jew alike, view this as an eternal battle as old as the Bible itself and to step in the direction of partitioning the land would be a sin. Many Jews and Christians alike believe that only until the State of Israel fully exercises dominion over the Holy Lands will the Messiah come (again, for the Christians).

Both sides play to the strong emotions of this political arena and ignore the realities. The reality of the situation is that Israel can no longer occupy the West Bank and Gaza. The price of suicide bombings is too great. Even when the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) close up the roads in and out, the bombings go unabated. The civilians of Israel need security, and they have not gotten it under the belligerence of Likud or the relative peace of Labor. The reality is that there are groups, on both sides, that will do anything in their power to stop the peace process.

To use Thomas Friedman’s terminology, Israel and the Palestinians need a divorce. They simply cannot live together. One can go on for hours pointing fingers, throwing the blame. That does not diminish the reality that Sharon finally understands, which is that the IDF cannot continue holding the West Bank. The wall is a first step towards a true two-state solution. It will both end, or severely diminish the suicide bombings and alas, end the humiliating 36-year occupation of Palestinian land. This solution will inevitably cause both pain and protest, but I would be inclined to think it able to stand the test of history.

Tags: Treyopia Sharon Israel Israel-Palestine Intifada CurrentEvents Spinnaker