You Have To Really Try to Be This Wrong

Just what is Dmitri Simes talking about in this piece?

JUST 10 DAYS after Iraq's government managed to transform Saddam Hussein's execution from an act of justice into a sectarian revenge killing, the Bush administration is planning a troop "surge" to try to help a leadership that is simultaneously too brutal and too wimpy to bring stability and democracy to Iraq.

How on Earth does the minor error of allowing Saddam to be taunted erase the justice of executing a dictator after a lengthy trial for the deaths of hundreds of thousands by his command?

And in the spirit of damned if you do and damned if you don't, could Simes at least settle on one complaint? Is the Iraqi government too brutal or too wimpy? You can say too wimpy to bring stability or too brutal to bring democracy. But trying to bring stability and democracy takes a little finesse. Perhaps more than the Iraqi government can manage. But I dare say if the Iraqi government just pushes for stability, Simes won't be congratulating them on their resolve.

But sending more brigades to pursue the same crusade is unlikely to bring success — at least not on an American political timetable. The problem is not just the incompetent management of the war's aftermath. The problem is that the crusade to reshape the Middle East that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq precludes anything that could be legitimately called victory.

What crusade is Simes talking about? I'm not aware of the forced conversions to Christianity or the building spree of Cathedrals under our forces' protection. Although Simes says we can't achieve victory he first says we can't get victory on our political timetable. Those are two very different things, now aren't they? And that is only because some in our political landscape insist on victory on a political timetable. And given the success I argue we've had since we crossed the Iraqi border in March 2003, I dispute fully his assertion that the post-war was incompetent.

The debacle that is Iraq reaffirms the lesson that there is no such thing as a good crusade. This was true a thousand years ago when European Christian knights tried to impose their faith and way of life on the Holy Land, pillaging the region in the process, and it is equally true today. Divine missions and sensible foreign policy just don't mix.

Asserting Iraq is a debacle does not make it so. Perhaps Simes has laid out his case for debacle in other places. And again, just because Simes has decreed we are on a crusade and divine mission doesn't make it so. Further, implying we have pillaged Iraq is just insulting to our troops and leaders as well as just being purely idiotic. It is merely a footnote removed from being a screeched "Halliburton!" as an argument against the war. And remember, Iraqis wrote their constitution--not us.

As for his comment about divine missions not mixing with a sensible foreign policy, I do believe Mr. Simes is preaching to the wrong audience. I think the whackjobs in al Qaeda and Tehran need this lecture more than we do.

For President Bush and his neoconservative supporters, the invasion of Iraq was from the outset about much more than dismantling (as we now know nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction, cutting Hussein's (also nonexistent) ties to Al Qaeda and removing a murderous and unpredictable dictator from power. They also sought to depose an Iraqi regime hostile to the United States and Israel — and to demonstrate to Arabs and others in the greater Middle East who was the real master of the region.

Oh good grief. Where to start with this? Yes, to Simes it was all about the Jews. Iraq was hostile to Israel so naturally we must have gone to war for their interests. Never mind Iraq was hostile to America. And Britain. And lets toss in Iran and Kuwait and Syria, too. But I guess it wasn't for those crafty Persians or Allawites that we went to war! And it is notable that Simes doesn't try to refute the fact that we removed a murderour and unpredictable dictator. Yet his claims Iraq had no WMD is refuted by his actual use of them. And the final story of his programs is hardly laid to rest in my opinion. As for ties to al Qaeda, they certainly existed. Saddam did not command bin Laden nor do I think they conspired in 9/11, but to say no ties existed is to ignore mounting evidence that two thugs who hated America could cooperate a bit. Simes' assertion also deliberately narrows the focus by ignoring Saddam's support for other terrorists.

The dismantlement of the Iraqi army and government machinery, now conveniently blamed on L. Paul Bremer III, was a logical outcome of the crusading mind-set. Bush wanted an Iraqi government to catalyze his transformational plan for the region. That is why less radical approaches than "remaking" Iraq were contemptuously dismissed.

Blamed on Bremmer? I don't blame Bremmer. We had to dismantle the Baathist security and governing bodies. Is Simes really advocating that we should have reduced our goals to Baathism without Saddam??!! If this is Simes' idea of less radical, contempt is the least bad thought I have for the idea. And once again, tossing around the term "crusade" does not make it one.

Instead, group-think buttressed the shaky propositions that democracy could easily take root, that a democratic Iraq could move to recognize Israel and continue to contain Iran, that a small force could get the job done. That Iraq's neighbors — which in 2003 were often and quite publicly warned that they were next in line for forcible regime change — would accept American-style stabilization of Iraq defies belief.

Sigh. All those Republican and Democratic legislators voting for the war resolution in 2002 and not one seemed to be on to the Jewish cabal pulling their strings? I mean, Congress was under divided control. Just how powerful are thos Neo-Cons?

Our initial plan had us running Iraq for a couple years, writing a constitution, and then going to elections under our guidance--all on the theory that democracy could not easily take in a country pillaged by Saddam's Tikriti mob. We adjusted our schedule in the face of the Baathist insurgency and then the jihadi insurgency and Sadr revolts to accelerate the formation of an Iraqi government to provide legitimacy to the new government.

If democracy is so alien, why does every Moslem dictatorship have the form of democratic institutions? They all have elections. And parliaments. And presidents. So all these dictators-in-all-but-name believe their people value democracy enough to fake it.

And given that Jordan and Egypt recognize Israel, who says we had to democratize Iraq for that outcome? And who says it was a primary goal? I don't recall that one.

As for there not being enough troops to win, doesn't Simes in this piece say no number of troops can provide victory? Must be that "nuance" thing I hear so much about from war opponents. I don't have it, clearly.

Finally, I certainly never believed Iraq's neighbors Syria and Iran would like what we did in Iraq in creating a democracy that is pro-Western. But what I did believe is that they would be too scared of our power to intervene. In that I was wrong. Letting those two thug regimes get away with murder is undoubtedly a mistake of our post-war policy. A mistake we are hopefully correcting now.

Yet faith is once again demanded of the American people. Just as the Crusaders a millennium ago blamed their defeats in the Middle East on a lack of faith, we are told today that it is the realists — those heretics with an insufficient faith in the ability of American values and power to rapidly transform the world — who are poised to sabotage the entire project for spreading freedom throughout the region, that the realists and their false gods of stability and national interest will seduce Americans away from their true calling of spreading liberty throughout the world, even at the barrel of a gun.

So, let see, we're back to the Crusades analogy. Really, it isn't that the realists have insufficient faith. It is that they have too much faith in their Cold War-era thinking as it applies to our current age. The realist faith in "stability" that spawned the 9/11 hijackers by granting them horrible rulers who the jihadis viewed as aided and abetted by us is rhe real problem. How it was in our national interest to allow that ideology to fester and grow is beyond me. Yes, when the Soviet Union had 10,000 nukes pointed at us, a bunch of rabid Islamists had to take second place in the big picture. Realism demanded that.

But now? Realism demands that we understand that dictators aren't likely to just grant democracy because we ask them nicely or because they have a moment of salvation and repent. Nor have we imposed democracy at will. We have selected our targets--based on national interest strangely enough. The basic problem is that the "realists" stopped facing reality around 1991.

The truth is that no surge and no amount of faith can rescue this crusade from failure. The alternative is not to "cut and run" or to withdraw troops but rather to seek a difficult solution that is the only plausible one: reshape U.S. policy in the Middle East to establish a manageable political context for the war. The Iraq Study Group was right on two counts: Sending more troops to Iraq and continuing to work with the current Iraqi government is a nonstarter. And Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria, need a stake in stabilizing Iraq and won't help without U.S. assurances that they will not be next in line for regime change.

He sees but one solution. His, of course. Simes doesn't think we can impose democracy but he also doesn't think we should respect the results of democracy. Darned strange crusade that lets the Iraqis choose their own rulers--even those we aren't happy with. You'd think this would make it tough for us to pillage Iraq, but I guess not.

As for Iran and Syria, they have escalated their help for the terrorists inside Iraq as they have lost their fear of us--not because they fear us too much. The only things that will make Iran and Syria support stability in Iraq is if they can get an Iraq that allies with them. Or maybe Syria just wants to subjugate Lebanon (again) and maybe Iran just wants the time to go nuclear. Are any of these things a good political context in which to set our policy? My God, even the lame press stopped praising the Baker commission's Iraq report when they got around to actually reading the banal prose. But Simes still loves it!

A new approach to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is also essential. The perception that the United States fully supports Israeli policies makes it more difficult for friendly neighbors of Iraq, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, to provide much help. And we should accept that democracy in Iraq, to say nothing about a democratic Iraq as a role model for the region, might have to wait for better times.

And back to the Jews for good measure. I guess we know why Simes loved the Baker report. We won't mention that the Saudis seem to have had no problem giving Israel the green light to go after Hizbollah in the summer of 2006. Or that the Saudis fear Iran's nukes more than Israel's. And yes, pity that Jordan's pining for a Palestinian solution has kept them from negotiating a peace treaty with Israel (Oh, they did? Never mind.) And I wasn't aware that Jordan wasn't helping us. We staged from Jordan in the invasion and Jordan helps train Iraqi security forces. "Realist," indeed.

And how long do we wait to help democracy grow in the Moslem Middle East? Yes, in the 1990s, East Asians weren't ready for democracy yet Taiwan and South Korea made the transition. And also in the 1990s, the former Warsaw Pact countries weren't ready for democracy. Now they enter the EU and NATO. Nor were the Latin Americans ready for democracy in the 1980s. Yet democracy advanced in that region, too. How many thought we were ready for democracy over two-hundred years ago? What exactly is the right time to stop oppressing people and let them have a chance for freedom?

Under current circumstances, the emergence of a tough but relatively benign leader who could establish law and order may not be the worst outcome. Of course, it is not appropriate for the United States to select a new strongman for Iraq. But many Iraqis are now tempted to put someone in charge who could quell the chaos. Washington might do well to ponder the limits of the U.S. responsibility to defend the corrupt and inept government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki — a government heavily infiltrated by the very militias that the troop surge is supposed to destroy.

Why yes, he actually would be happy with a non-Saddam Baathist! Clearly, the only thing worse than this for Simes is a victory in Iraq that vindicates President Bush. Certainly, we have no place defending the Maliki government. But we do have a role in defending the process that put him there and the process that could lawfully remove him if the Iraqi people decide it is the right thing to do.

While not as murderous as Hussein, such a leader is unlikely to look like a knight in shining armor in the Bush administration's pro-democracy crusade — but he may just allow the United States to get out of the Iraqi quagmire without losing its prestige or leaving a sanctuary for Al Qaeda.

So the entire philosophy of "realism" comes down to installing a friendly despot to crack down once and for all and end those unsettling images that disturb our dinner. Fascinating. Iraq is no quagmire and we are winning. Losing the war will damage our prestige and leave jihadis a place to hide. Winning will enhance our prestige and deny our enemies a safe haven. Sadly, it will make President Bush look good, too. That is the real problem that Simes seems to fear. Oh, and the Jews, of course.

One can almost see the spittle flying as he raged out this piece of demented rage in a single sentence, relying on an editor to supply punctuation. I haven't read anything this loopy in quite a while. Though to be fair I pretty much stopped reading the New York Times last summer, so the best competition is out of the running.

Oh, and the actual Crusades liberated the Holy Land from Moslem conquerers and resulted in a couple centuries of Christian rule there. But I guess Simes judges a never-ending Moslem jihad to force the world to submit to their religion superior to a couple centuries of our civilization fighting back. So Simes should really get another historical analogy to demonize the Bush administration--I hear some of his opponents use the Nazi theme now and again. He should try it out. I bet he'd like it.

Still, bravo, Mr. Simes. Bravo. Truly an awful piece of work that not even Paul Krugman could match behind that Great Wall of NYT.