In the WSJ, Danniel Henninger employs the alternate history strategy to close out the Iraq War, asking, “What if Saddam had Stayed?”
Let us assume that Mr. Obama’s “smarter” view (2002) had prevailed, that we had left Saddam in power in Iraq. What would the world look like today?
Mr. Obama and others believe that Saddam and his nuclear ambitions could have been contained. I think exactly the opposite was likely.
At the time of Mr. Obama’s 2002 antiwar speech, three other significant, non-Iraqi events were occurring: Iran and North Korea were commencing toward a nuclear break-out, and A.Q. Khan was on the move.
In March 2002, Mr. Khan, the notorious Pakistani nuclear materials dealer, moved his production facilities from Pakistan to Malaysia.
In August, an Iranian exile group revealed the existence of a centrifuge factory in Natanz, Iran.
A month later, U.S. intelligence concluded that North Korea had almost completed a “production-scale” centrifuge facility.
It was also believed in 2002 that al Qaeda was shopping for nuclear materials. In The Wall Street Journal this week, Jay Solomon described how two North Korean operatives through this period developed a network to acquire nuclear technologies.
In short, the nuclear bad boys club was on the move in 2002. Can anyone seriously believe that amidst all this Saddam Hussein would have contented himself with administering his torture chambers? This is fanciful.
Admittedly, but this is where Mr. Henninger’s analysis falls apart: The other two members of the “axis of evil” have been allowed to nuclearize, or are on the brink of doing so. If Saddam’s threat had to be eliminated, why do we tolerate Ahmadinejad’s and Kim Chong Il’s? If they can be tolerated, why could not Saddam?
Was Iraq exceedingly more dangerous than Kim Chong Il’s gulag, or the neighboring Iranian mullahcracy? North Korea’s despot class chiefly wants to ensure their own survival, and so their nukes form a weird, asymmetrical deterrent: They are allowed to indulge in provocations, and the South is denied the opportunity to respond. And who knows, perhaps a little off the top could generate some hard currency that goes a long way towards the importation of caviar, champagne and blonds to private parties at the workers’ paradise.
And while a nuclear rivalry between Iraq and Iran would have been problematical, it would have chiefly been their problem. Now Iraq is too weak to act as counter-balance and check Persian ambitions.
We are standing over the graves of 4000 US soldiers, let us at least be frank: We went into Iraq because we thought that a swift victory there was a worthwhile end in itself that could also serve to deter Iran and North Korea from nuclear adventurism. Clearly, we we wrong on both counts: Imposing order, not to mention the semblance of a civil society (far less its institutions) ended up being much harder than practically anyone suspected, North Korea has nukes and Iran is well on the way to joining the club. This is not to question the judgment of those who made our national decisions – we now know things that we could not have known before.
In the early years we told ourselves that by breaking Saddam’s grip we had unleashed pressures that had been bottled up by 35 years of repressive tyranny. After a few years, with our senses dulled by daily scenes of unspeakable violence, we stopped trying to imagine motives: The capacity of some Iraqis and their Arab “brothers” for inflicting barbaric punishment – mostly on their own co-religionists – was hitherto unimaginable.
Granted the stand-up fight, the set piece battle is apparently not quite their form. But find some loser who can’t find a girlfriend, hop him up on heroin and the promise of heavenly virgins and you’ll find any number willing to drive explosive laden buses into crowds of school children. If he won’t do that, there are also jobs to be had setting up pressure plate IEDs and popping off small arms and RPG rounds around the corner. You can’t buy that in Kansas.
We say we “love freedom” and “hate tyranny”, but we had a failure of imagination – political love and hate are abstractions to us, mental models. We simply were not equipped to envision hate on this vector or scale.
Not everyone of course, not all of them. Not even most. But enough.
The “Sunni Awakening” had less to do with any sudden realization of the benefits that US-style democracy might confer, or even any weariness from fighting and much more to do with the realization by the sheiks of al Anbar that 1) al Qaeda was the more lethal threat to their ambitions and 2) the US Marine Corps was the “strongest tribe” with which to ally themselves. The surge brought order to the capital by offering more troops for jihadis to shoot at, who in turn were recipients of (usually much more accurate) return fires and dead men kill no more. It also forced Moktada Sadr – who is cleverer than he looks – to husband his strength and await better opportunities.
We stayed and fought because while the cost of doing so was roughly calculable – another thousand dead, another hundred billion dollars – the consequences for failure were not.
Alternate histories are entertaining. But ultimately, they are acts of fiction.
Pretty accurate synopsis, Lex. But , again, I would contend this was/is all the result of the Wilsonian “We are going down in Mexico to teach the Mexicans how to elect good men” idealism in which almost the entire leadership cadre of every ideological political faction–indeed the nation as a whole–is still enamored with. More “Perfidious Albion” and less cow-bells is my motto..
A great deal of the world’s misery can be traced to Mr. Wilson’s desire to Make The World Safe For Democracy. You can’t just go in, and expect the locals to go, ” Yes, Please, show us the way!” You have to convince them that your way is the better one. This can take decades, particularly where only despotism has been in effect in the past. Even in Western countries, like Germany, with Western values, it took years to shape them into a functioning republic, and the East didn’t shake off the nasties until the 1990′s. I imagine that there is still work to be done there. But only patience, and the desire of the people in the country in question can make it happen.
The Nasties have always been in charge in the Middle East, force is far from unthinkable in Moslem politics. Fair, just governments may or may not come to that region, but it isn’t for us to say so, all we call do is encourage them, and try to set a good example.
One of the most misunderstood poems of all time is Kiplings White Man’s Burden. The point of the poem is not that the white man, which should really be read as the culture of the West, to go out and colonise, and tell the fuzzies what’s what, but rather than that the White man should pass on his knowlege and technology to the other cultures, that may benifit from moderm medicine, safe water, hygiene, electrical lighting, et al, so that they, too, can live longer, more pleasant lives. That is why you ‘teach your brothers, and by them you shall be judged’.
There has been far too much Wilson, and not enough Kipling going on during the last century. We tried our best to do the Territory of the Phillipines in the Kipling manner, and that didn’t work out so bad, but we sure seem to be Wilsoning it in the Mideast. Alas, the emocrats and the Media are Wilsonians through and through, and cannot accept anything other than ” Do as i say “, so if a process takes longer than a few months, they deem it a failure. I guess we can only be patient, try our best, and hope it works out OK.
As a Chinese protectorate North Korea is a totally different kettle of fish. A nuclear Korea isn’t worth risking a total nuclear war over. The proliferation aspects are troubling, but we have other ways of dealing with that. Hopefully the CIA has an unlimited budget when it comes to acquiring nuclear materials. This is one area in which I’m glad for a anti-competitive player.
As I’ve said here before Iran is the major obstacle for progress in the Middle East. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking GWOT or Israel-Palestinian, Iran serves as a material and ideological support center, while simultaneously preventing us from acting against the other source of our trouble, the Saudis.
One of the reasons I supported the Iraq war was to secure our rear and lines of communication for a campaign against Iran. I still think that the latter phases of the Iraq war would have been mitigated if we had engaged Iran directly. I think the hope was that the example of a free and democratic Iraq would cross the Shatt al-Arab. While I think it’s too early to call it a failure once Iran nuclearizes it will be our only option.
You need to toss another benefit in the pot Lex. Mohammar Qaddafi looked at the tea leaves and abandoned his nuclear program in Libya. That’s no small thing.
And just to prove that that bandit in a burnoose Mohammar is really just a kinky lovable old goat, he recently went up to Rome, hired 200 good looking models, and preached to them that they should convert to Islam.
But we’re still faced with Iran–and our willingness to even talk about doing something about it in a credible fashion expired in early November 2008.
I’m with you Jeff and of the opinion that Dubya calculated that the despots of the Middle East needed a better example of a democratic political system than Israel. Idealistic to the extreme? Probably. But I think he decided that it was time to try and un@#$k that part of the world once and for all. To me, the most important words President Bush uttered in his 8 years were those he spoke in NOV 2003 to the National l Endowment for Democracy: “Sixty years of western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.”
I hope the Iraqis man up and make a go of it. Either way, I give the President credit for trying to change the world. And for freeing 25 million enslaved Iraqis in the process.