By Brian Carnell

Thursday, December 4, 2003

In an article for the September 22 edition of The Nation, Jonathan Schell did a nice job of highlighting the views of his particular corner of the Left in an article outlining "The Importance of Losing" the war in Iraq.

Schell opens his article by chronicling the various -- and largely inevitable -- problems facing the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Part of the problem here is that it has been so long since the United States carried out a military occupation on this scale that the difficulty of transforming a country ruled by a dictatorship into a democracy was seriously underestimated.

Like Japan and German before it, transforming Iraq into a democracy is a job that will likely take years, not the weeks and months that the media and White House seemed to think might be possible.

Schell, for his part, isn't afraid to have things both ways. In one sentence, for example, Schell complains that the United States failed to provide an "adequate police force, whether American or Iraqi" to keep order, but then turns around and complains that the United States began recruiting some members of Iraq's feared foreign intelligence agency, the Mukhabarat, to aid in identifying those resisting the U.S. occupation. (Not that Schell favored military intervention to eliminate a government that relied on agencies like the Mukhabarat in the first place).

Schell is dismissive of the very idea of establishing a democracy in Iraq,

"Winning," evidently, now consists not in finding the weapons of mass destruction that once were the designated reason for fighting the war but in creating a democratic government in Iraq -- the one that will serve as a model for the entire Middle East. Condolezza Rice has called that task the "moral mission of our time." . . .

These plans to mass-produce democracies and transform the mentalities of whole people have the look of desperate attempts -- as grandiose as they are unhinged from reality -- to overlook the obvious: First, that people not excluding Iraqis, do not like to be conquered and occupied by foreign powers and are ready and able to resists; and, second, that disarmament, which is indeed an essential goal for the new century, can only, except in the rarest of circumstances, be achieved not through war but through the common voluntary will of nations. It is not the character of the occupation, it is occupation itself that the Iraqis are, in a multitude of ways, rejecting.

First, military occupations do not need to be popular to be successful. Again, the occupation of Germany and Japan were not popular in those countries, and yet proved eminently successful if the measure is how well they produced democracy and stability in country's formally dominated by dictatorships. Plus, those occupations did more for disarmament than decades of the "common voluntary will of nations" had accomplished.

Second, what few scientific polls of Iraqis exist suggest that they a) are glad that Hussein is gone, b) want a democratic Iraq, and c) are very unhappy with Iraq's military defeat and the U.S. occupation of their country. Frankly, what Iraqis think of the U.S. occupation at the moment isn't nearly as important as to what they think of democracy a decade from now.

It is worth noting the effects, more than 20 years later of another military invasion that the Left derided as a effort at imposing American imperialist hegemony -- the 1983 invasion of Grenada. Following a military coup that resulted in the murder of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, the United States invaded, occupied the country briefly, and eventually withdrew. Grenada held elections in 1984 and today has an extremely contentious democracy.

But Schell argues the main mission of the United States must be to dispense with such fantasies,

Biden says we must win the war. This is precisely wrong. The United States must learn to lose this war -- a harder task, in many ways, than winning, for it requires admitting mistakes and relinquishing attractive fantasies. This is the true moral mission of our time (well, of the next few years, anyway). The cost of leaving will certainly be high, just not anywhere near as high as trying to "stay the course," which can only magnify and postpone the disaster. And yet -- regrettable to say -- even if this difficult step is taken, no one should imagine that democracy will be achieved by this means. The great likelihood is something else -- something worse: perhaps a recrudescence of dictatorship or civil war, or both. An interim period -- probably very brief -- of international trusteeship is the best solution, yet it is unlikely to be a good solution. It is merely better than any other recourse.

Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there were those on the right who argued that the optimal outcome would be to kill Saddam Hussein and his sons and hope that a more palatable dictator might arise in his place. And here's Schell writing in The Nation that the best option the United States has is to withdraw its troops and sit back to watch precisely that scenario unfold.

Schell's views of Iraqis as uninterested in democracy is all too common among commentators on the right and left who believe that the reason illiberal regimes persist must be that those subjugated by such regimes simply lack the will or political culture to overthrow them. Apparently, only those who can muster this neat trick are truly worthy of democracy.

Schell's answer is for withdrawal and throwing Iraqis back to the wolves who have tortured, imprisoned, raped and murdered them for decades,

On the other hand, just because Iraq's future remains to be decided by its talented people, it would also be wrong to categorically rule out the possibility that they will escape tyranny and create democratic government for themselves. The United States and other countries might even find ways of offering modest assistance in the project. It's just that it is beyond the power of the United States to create democracy for them.

The matter is not in our hands. It never was.

Of course Iraqis must construct their own democracy, but this will not happen if the United States withdraws and the remnants of the Iraqi regime are free to focus their car bombs and mortar attacks on those who would build democratic institutions.

Source:

The Importance of Losing. The Nation, September 22, 2003.

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