Iraq's problems existed long before 2003.
By Christopher Hitchens
February 5, 2007 | Slate
Replying to Fareed Zakaria's observation in Newsweek, about Iraq and the Iraqis—that "We did not give them a republic. We gave them a civil war."—Charles Krauthammer, in our common sister paper the Washington Post, expressed a fine contempt:
Did Britain "give" India the Hindu-Muslim war of 1947-48 that killed a million souls and ethnically cleansed 12 million more? The Jewish-Arab wars in Palestine?
Alas, the answer to the above sarcastic questions is "yes." (In the first instance by staying several decades too long and then compounding the mistake by leaving much too fast—even unilaterally advancing the date of independence so as to speed up the scuttle—and by capitulating to Muslim League demands for partition; and in the second instance by promising Palestine at different times to both the Zionist and Arab nationalist movements.) However, this unpleasant historical fact—which has its own implications for Iraq—does not acquit Zakaria's remark of the charge of being morally idle. In many other people's minds, too, there is the unspoken assumption that what the United States does in Iraq is a fully determined action, whereas what other people do is simply a consequence of that action, with no independent or autonomous "agency" of its own.
[The real assumptions of the anti-war crowd are indeed serious and "adult:": (1) every person, nation, or "agency" must be held responsible for its own actions; (2) before acting, every person/nation/agency must consider, first and foremost, the likely consequences of its actions – including others' likely reactions; and (3) every person/nation/agency should act with the intention of doing more good than harm – and preferably no harm at all. We must admit that, in our daily lives, this is basically how we make decisions.
So why do Hitchens and his ilk insist that America's preventive invasion of Iraq be exempt somehow from these basic rules of decision-making?
Because it suits them, that's why. It suits Hitchens because he doesn't care about doing more good than harm, only the selective good of having relieved the West – and particularly America – of Saddam Hussein.
The truth is, we still don't know how bad Iraq will get. We don't know how or when this violence and chaos will end. And we don't know whether a U.S. presence, no matter at what level of strength, will have any positive effect, much less bring about an end to it all.
If Hitchens can't or won't satisfactorily address these "known unknowns" – which boil down to: Is America ready and capable of ensuring a good outcome in Iraq? – then he must admit that America's Iraq policy is not very serious or grown-up. Policies whose successes depend on half-hopes and unlikely outcomes are fundamentally irresponsible and dangerous. A nation ought to enter such conflicts only when the situation is desperate, and the stakes immense. Saddam's Iraq, pre-invasion, was ugly, belligerent, and brutal to its own people, but it fit neither of these two criteria from the West's perspective. There was no urgency for outside nations to intervene, and no "adult" level of certainty that intervention would lead to something better. – J]
This mentality was perfectly expressed, under the byline of Marc Santora, in the New York Times of Jan. 31. Santora explained the background of the murderous attacks on the Shiite festival of Ashura: "At Ashura, Shiites commemorate what is for them the most formative event of their faith, a celebration that had been banned under Saddam Hussein. In recent years, Sunni militants, caught up in a renewed sectarian split, have attacked worshippers on the holiday." (My italics.)
I suppose that might be one way of putting it. But a factually neutral way of phrasing the same point would be to say that three years ago, the leader of al-Qaida in Mesopotamia wrote to his guru Osama Bin Laden, saying that there was a real danger of the electoral process succeeding in Iraq and of "suffocating" the true Islamist cause. The only way of preventing this triumph of the democratic heresy, wrote Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was to make life so unbearable for the heretical Shiites that they would respond in kind. The ensuing conflict would ruin all the plans of the Crusader-Zionist alliance. I can still remember the chill that went through me when I read this document and realized that it combined extreme radical evil with a high degree of intelligence. Santora's reportage is not alone in slightly declining the responsibility for facing this central truth.
If there is a sectarian war in Iraq today, or perhaps several sectarian wars, we have to understand that this was latent in the country, and in the state, and in the society all along. It was not the only possible outcome, because it had to be willed and organized, but it was certainly high on the list of probabilities. (The Saddam Hussein regime, which thrived on the worst form of "divide and rule," certainly represented a standing invitation to run this risk.)
In other words, those who now deplore and decry the "civil war" (or the "civil wars") must, in order to be serious, admit that they would have deplored such an outcome just as much if it had not happened on America's watch or had (like Rwanda) been something that we could have pretended to watch as disinterested or—even worse—uninterested spectators.
[To repeat: If civil war was always a likely possibility, then it was absurdly irresponsible and dangerous of the U.S. to invade and "liberate" Iraq in the first place, unleashing a sectarian battle for control.
Anyhow, Hitchen's hypothetical argument about "how we would have felt" under different circumstances is absurd and irrelevant, because it ignores actual circumstances, i.e. recent history. We "know" why we invaded Iraq – or at least we've been given several reasons why. And none of those reasons included preventing a possible civil war that could eventually happen someday in Iraq's future. – J]
The habit of viewing Iraq as a crisis that only began in 2003—a lazy habit that is conditioned by the needs of the impending 2008 election—is an obstacle to understanding. Everybody has their own favorite alternative scenario of how things might have evolved differently or better. In some weak moments, I can picture taking the alternative advice from the European Union and the United Nations in 2003—let's just see how Iraq develops if left alone as a private fiefdom of the Saddam Hussein dynasty—and only then deciding that things have deteriorated to the point where an international intervention is necessitated. That would have been much less upsetting and demanding than the direct assumption of responsibility, and could have been triggered by the more familiar images of unbearable suffering and carnage, and could have summoned the Darfur-like emotions of guilt and shame, but it would perforce have been begun very much later—and perhaps too late altogether.
Iraq was in our future. The specter, not just of a failed state, but of a failed society, was already before us in what we saw from the consequences of sanctions and the consequences of aggressive Sunni fascism at the center of the state. Nobody has ever even tried to make a case for doing nothing about Iraq: Even those who foresaw sectarian strife were going by a road map that was already valid and had been traveled before. Thus it seems to me quite futile to be arguing about whether to blame the Iraqis—or indeed whether to blame the coalition. Until recently, no Iraqi was allowed to have any opinion about the future of his or her country. How long did we imagine that such a status quo would have remained "stable"? Charles Krauthammer might be wrong about his specific historical comparisons, but he is quite right to lay stress on the point that—absent a complete evacuation of Iraq and the region—there was a rendezvous in Mesopotamia that could not have been averted. A general refusal to confront this fact is actively revealed by the use of the passive voice.
[Yes, indeed it is absurd to argue about whether to blame Iraqis or ourselves. We should blame ourselves, because that's what adults do: Act as wisely as possible, and then take responsibility for what they've done. Adults know they can't control what others do, only what they themselves do. But adults also live in the real world; they take into account others' possible reactions, which are often predictable. So, when an adult acts in a way that produces a predictably negative reaction from another, a real adult must place some of the blame for that negative reaction on himself.
It's another argument for another day, but it suffices to say that we could not have been certain in 2003 that Iraqis would not someday overthrow Saddam's tyranny (or his sons'), and make something at least marginally better out of Iraq, with less sectarian strife, bloodshed, and potential for regional spillover than there is now.
Hitchens, a war cheerleader from the start, only makes excuses for the Iraq disaster, and takes no responsibility. In fact, in his view it's silly to lay blame on anyone, what with all these "latent" conflicts and unavoidable "rendezvous" with destiny in that inexorable honeypot of Mesopotamia.
He may write prettily, but at heart he's an irresponsible child who won't 'fess up to a mistake. Hitchens' argument is, "Don't blame me; history did it." We adults in the room shouldn't let him get away with it. – J]
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