Lengthening Shadows of Iraq War

From all portents and signs, it appears that the coalition armies have not yet turned the corner in Iraq war; the shadows of the war continue lengthening and the end is not in sight.

There was a time, not too long ago, when President Bush seemed to enjoy popular support on his invasion of Iraq in search of the weapons of mass destruction although there were dissident voices even then; their criticism was muted by the overwhelming hatred of the despicable dictator, Saddam Hussein.

There are three op-ed columns in The New York Times of today (April 25, 2004) and all of them are critical of Iraq war. The column “The Orwellian Olsens” is written by Maureen Dowd who has been a consistent critic of President George W. Bush. She however seems to support Bush the Senior for his decision not to occupy Iraq in the First Gulf War, because of the complexity and unpredictability of the Shiite-Sunni mix of the Iraq population. He did not want the Shiite faction to seize the control in Iraq in view of the continuing hostile stance of Iran. So, Dowd in her usual style has mocked at President Bush’s weltanschauung which she calls “the Bushworld.”

The second column “Rue John Kennedy” is by Thomas Friedman whose views on Iraq war and the Middle East seem to have undergone a radical change with the things going sour in Iraq. In the beginning, before the outset of the war, Friedman was in support of regime change in Iraq, even by force, so that a democratic government could be installed there to serve as a model for the rest of the Arab world. He supported war for regime change but not for “oil”. Now he has quite a different view.

He says in his column, “You don’t get from Saddam to Jefferson without going through a little Khomeini and Nasser – not in this neighborhood – and we’re going to have to let Iraqis find their own path through this maze.” It’s not clear who in his view “a little Khomeini” is in the unraveling situation in Iraq and who “Nasser” is whom he can trust. It’s merely a rhetoric jumble of words.

A more realistic evaluation of the prevailing condition on the ground in Iraq in his words is: “We are now in the middle of a low-grade civil war in Iraq for who will control the place after we leave. That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news: I doubt we will be in Iraq a year from now – certainly not in large numbers. One of these things is likely to happen. First, the security and economic situation could continue to spiral downward, creating a Mogadish – like situation in which we will have to fight our way out.

Second, we might manage, with the help of the U.N., to organize a reasonably legitimate Iraqi caretaker government to which we can hand “limited” sovereignty on June 30. But that won’t stop our opponents. They will go on attacking U.S. forces to provoke a U.S. retaliation that will embarrass the caretaker government, make its leaders look like our stooges and pressure it to throw the U.S. out.

Third, the least-bad scenario is that we will be able to stick it out, with the U.N., conduct a decent election by the end of the year that brings a legitimate Shiite-led Iraqi government to power. I doubt that such a government is going to want to have U.S. troops protecting it for very long, and it will either invite us to leave gradually or insist that we put our forces under a U.N. umbrella.”

In brief, the situation is complicated and the U.S. needs to sober down and forget for a short while that it is the only superpower in the world. A little diplomacy may still be better than brutal force.

The third column “The Wrong Debate on Terrorism” is contributed by Richard Clarke, the author of the best seller “Against All Enemies”. He suggested that the American war should be against terrorism of the radical Islamist elements and not against the Islamic world. According to him, “Once we recognize that the struggle within Islam – not a “clash of civilizations” between East and West – is the phenomenon with which we must grapple, we can begin to develop a strategy and tactics for doing so. It is a battle not only of bombs and bullets, but chiefly of ideas. It is a war that we are losing, as more and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United States and some even develop a respect for the jihadist movement.” Regarding liberal democracy that President Bush wants to institute in Iraq, Clarke said, “Nor will calls from Washington for democratization in the Arab world help if such calls originate from a leader who is trying to impose democracy on an Arab country at the point of an American bayonet. The Bush administration’s much-vaunted Middle East democracy initiative, therefore, was dead on arrival.” Finally, Clarke also suggested, “Other parts of the war of ideas include making real progress on the Israel- Palestinian issue, while safe-guarding Israeli security, and finding ideological and religious counterweights to Osama bin Laden and radical imams.”

The administration needs to consider the prevailing situation in Iraq dispassionately and divorce its policy of “Bring Them On” to more viable and less expensive, in terms of material and human loss, alternatives. It should be realized that a continuing war in Iraq has increased terrorism worldwide and a peaceful solution can hopefully bring a degree of normalcy in the traumatic Middle East.