I read this interesting Fareed Zakaria piece Ara sent me. I must admit to being rather bemused by it.
Zakaria lays out, in splendid fashion, just how amazingly well the situation in Iraq has gone since the Baathist regime was toppled. By any measure, the invasion was a success, and the average Iraqi is better off than he has been in decades. That war quite apparently saved more Iraqi lives than it cost, and the subsequent occupation's cost has been entirely bearable. Indeed, we're losing more soldiers on a daily basis to things like traffic accidents and heart disease than we are from the steadiliy weakening guerilla operations.
Despite acknowledging all this, Zakaria thinks it's "irrelevant" because, after only four months, electricity still isn't on everywhere and there is still light guerilla resistance, and he thinks we need to bring in the UN to take things over.
To be blunt? I can't think of a worse fate for the Iraqi people than to let the UN take charge of things. Iraq is already in better shape than Japan or Germany were four months after hostilities ended in World War II, and things are going swimmingly well. I am constantly bemused by people who see different. To me, it just reaffirms something I have come to believe over the years: some people will always believe that things are hopelessly screwed up, no matter what the situation under discussion.
some people will always believe that things are hopelessly screwed up, no matter what the situation under discussion.
That may be true, but I don't think that's what's going on here. Here's my view:
Some people will always PORTRAY things as hopelessly screwed up, no matter what the situation under discussion, because the advancement of their ideology necessitates the most negative of all outlooks on all things. If anything is acknowledged as going well, their entire theory collapses. We call these people "liberals", although that's not consistent with the real definition of the term. "Moonbats" is more appropriate.
More, I think that even bright people have a very skewed view of this because they have no context for it. World War 2 is something that our grandparents took part in--an old, musty war made interesting by Steven Spielberg. What happened in the aftermath of that war isn't merely uninteresting, it's completely unknown to most people.
Without the historical perspective and with a very short attention span, it's easy to see how Iraq could look like a failure.
Interesting to see how people can interpret the current situation to be positive. In fact, for anyone outside the US it was rather clear that chaos would overcome Iraq - as it starts now to overcome Afghanistan as well - after a war (that the actual war would be short was never a question).
Probably most amusing was the firm belief that the US would be welcome in Iraq. Non-US people call it naive or arrogant, I've come to the conclusion that it is just a unique american missionary behaviour, a behaviour that most world-powers had and have. Typically human?
Martin
- from old Europe
Martin...you say that since the war, "chaos would overcome Iraq," as if chaos hadn't been there all along. It's not chaos when 1 million people are killed in a pointless war (Iraq/Iran)? It's not chaos when electricity is *deliberately denied* to areas frequented by populations tending to oppose Saddam, and these areas are left swimming in their own sewage?
Dictatorships often give a superficial appearance of order, masking the true chaos within. This is often accepted at face value by people who themselves are superficial in their thinking.
Hi Martin:
What is your basis in fact for asserting that the situation is other-than-positive? Which more-effortless occupation were you comparing this to? Certainly not any of Grossdeutschland's.
To which "chaos" are you referring? Even the New York Times today has acknowledged that things are settling down happily everywhere in Iraq other than in the Baathist triangle. Attacks on coalition troops are down from 25/day average to 12/day average, despite a huge influx of foreign Islamist fundamentalists.
The only poll I've ever seen of Iraqi public opinion indicates only 13% of them want us to leave immediately. Fewer than 18% of Iraqis describe themselves as feeling "very hostile" or "hostile" to the coalition.
http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2003/07/17/wpoll17big.gif
I've come to the conclusion that it is just a unique american missionary behaviour, a behaviour that most world-powers had and have.
Please make up your mind. Is this behavior "unique" (adjective: being the only one of its kind; solitary; sole) or "behavior that most world-powers had and have?" You contradict yourself.
Dean, I thought Zakaria's piece was excellent, and I wonder if you're misinterpreting him a little. To me, he is not so much declaring the situation is hopelessly screwed up, but instead pointing out the very real difficulties that we still face, and how we can go about dealing with them. That last point is important - Zakaria isn't just whinging about the occupation, but making some constructive criticisms about how to do it better. I agree with you that turning things over to the U.N. would be a disaster in the making, but I think he, and other critics, are right in that we really do need an additional 50,000 to 100,000 troops on the ground for security reasons, and that unless we do so, instability within the Sunni Triangle has a good chance of spreading.
David: No, that's not chaos. It was planned. They didn't accidentally cut off power and kill millions, it was quite organized. Hence, not chaos.
There is a good argument that more troops would worsen the situation rather than better it in Iraq.
George:
You make good points, and Zakaria is a pretty clear thinker in almost every regard except his belief in the usefulness of the UN, but I think our long-term success will hinge almost exclusively on the quality of our intentions.
If we really are there to help the Iraqis form an independent liberal democracy, I think the Iraqis will see that in our actions and we will be successful.
If we really are there to guarantee oil concessions to our oil companies, I think the Iraqis will see that and we will slowly but inevitably lose the support of the masses.
I don't believe the insurgents will "infect" the general populace unless we show bad intentions or perpetual incompetence, or if we retaliate in a generalized way against the populace in response to insurgents' attacks.
George,
Personally, I don't know why the Bush Administration is bothering with the UN...perhaps as a sop to Powell? Alternately, as a means of failing there again, and then getting support from other countries who'd like to do it with the UN, but have to have it proved to them that the UN route wont work - India would be key here.
It is correct that we need 100,000 more troops - and these must be Iraqi's. We don't need other foreigners coming in to make Iraqi's feel even more removed from control of their own destiny...we're already doing the right thing in this matter, and I think this is why Rumsfeld is resisting the calls for more troops which are emanating from everywhere but the US military.
I haven't read Zakaria yet, but here's a thought I came up with all by my little lonesome.
Remember, "Never trust anyone over 30?" from the 60's?
Well, it's not quite as pithy, but much more true, I think...
"NEVER trust anyone, in the media, born between 1945 and 1960 ( + or - )."
Their political formative years were thus 1965 to 1975. Anyone whose outlook on the world was shaped in that era will be catastrophically and hopelessly screwed up in approaching questions of the US role in the world (evil and corrupt), the nature of socialist regimes (gosh, they'd be SO wonderful if they worked. Keep trying!), and totalitarianism in general. (Oh, who are we judge? WE'RE awful too!) Etc. etc.
As so many have noted, the ones NOT screwed up byi are most likely in business. Those that are are in academia, media, and the arts (hello).
Nitwits all, who will see 1968 as days of glory, never to be matched for the rest of their lives. "We stopped a WAR! How wonderful we were!" No thoughts need be spared for the millions of Vietnamese forced to flee, the millions of Cambodians murdered in the aftermath. Rude even to bring it up.
Andrew,
You said it - I brought the matter up over on one of the MSN boards (pointing out that the so-called "anti-war" protestors of today are ideologically indistinquishable from those of the Vietnam era and their final result, if successful, will be the same - US defeat, death and destruction for all those forces friendly to the United States in particular and liberty in general); I never came across such an outpouring of hurt feelings.
This super-annuated hippies have nothing else worthwhile in their lives - only if causing us to lose Vietnam is a good thing can they claim a decent act on their part. The drugs came a cropper, so did free and open sex; easy divorce hasn't worked too well and neither has cradle to grave security; opposing US policy vis a vis the old USSR was proved entirely foolish; anti-nuke? very dumb. Take any facet of the left from 1960 until now and each and every one of their prescriptions have proven false - all they've got left is Vietnam; they managed, by dint of the Big Lie, to place within the minds of a majority that the whole war was a horrible mistake from start to finish...this is being chipped away at, and once that is done then they will only be able to survey a life done doing the wrong things...they can't stand it.