Iraq is falling back into authoritarianism and headed towards becoming a police state, despite US claims that it has helped establish democracy in the country, Human Rights Watch said on Sunday.
Human Rights Watch could very well be stretching the facts to reach their conclusion. But events are cause for some concern. For years, I've said that promoting rule of law would be our hardest task after defeating the terrorists and insurgents. I've wanted our continued military presence to help foster rule of law and entrench it. Without presidential interest and without our military on the ground, it is likely that Iraq's democracy will have difficulty holding its own. I won't say that Iraq is doomed to become a police state (although it is unlikely to be anywhere near as bad as Saddam's police state), but democracy and rule of law could definitely take a hit.
But this should make liberals happy, shouldn't it? I mean, that's why the Obama administration is running from Iraq, right? If they won't allow a pipeline from Canada to ship hated oil to us in order to make radical environmentalist campaign donors happy, surely they will refuse to defend the hated Iraq War's victory to keep radical anti-war campaign donors happy.
Besides, how can they complain about an authoritarian Iraq? They kept saying we should make a deal with Saddam Hussein rather than fight him. Who, the anti-war people asked, was Saddam going to sell his oil to if not us? Remember how they kept going on about foreign policy "realism?"
And truth be told, even an authoritarian Iraq that is friendly to America is an improvement over Saddam's Iraq which was our enemy. But if that is all we wanted to settle for, we could have pulled out our troops many thousands of casualties ago and simply given the Shia majority a green light to kill and torture their way to victory over the Sunni Arab resistance (and screw the Kurds, too).
Our troops fought and died to give Iraqis a chance at real freedom, and to set an example for the entire Arab and Moslem worlds that they have another choice besides Islamism and authoritarianism to govern their lives. But we decided to risk all that to have a bullet point on the President Obama reelection web site that says we "responsibly ended" the Iraq War.
If Iraqis succeed in building democracy despite our apparent lack of interest in helping them, I hope liberals won't be too disappointed.
UPDATE: Rule of law is threatened:
Violence and political instability have escalated across Iraq since the withdrawal of American forces, as political and sectarian factions have fought for power and influence in a struggle that, within weeks, has threatened to undo the stability that allowed the pullout in the first place.
This is why so many people--including me--wanted our troops to stay in Iraq. It is too soon for the Iraqis to run a democracy without a safety net. Too many Iraqis fear the old rules can come back and could be too nervous about that prospect to play by the new rules of democracy and rule of law. Our troops provided an assurance to all Iraqi factions that nobody would be allowed to break the rules (how far you could bend them was the main tactic) to win.
Get the Iraqis to agree to a return of our ground troops! Come on, President Obama! Bust a gut to lead on this. What are we paying you for, anyway?
