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The story is at:-
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=473300
Section 84 Entry 0002. Date:
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So the question now (the question which George Bush hasn't really answered yet) is this: "After the dictator, what?"
But what is "freedom," apart from the absence of acid baths?
We're told there are plans to install some kind of Iraqi government next year, but the outlines of these plans are unclear. The future is vaporous, a mirage in the desert.
It would be nice at this stage to give a pat five-point plan telling President Dubya exactly what he should be doing, but I don't possess the necessary wisdom. The problem is that I really don't think that George possesses the requisite wisdom either.
The political problem seems to be this:-
Iraq is divided (roughly) into three natural power blocs, the Kurds, the Sunni Muslims and the Shi'a Muslims. Of these blocks, the Shi'a bloc is the largest, representing between 60% and 65% of the population. (That statistic from The New York Times 2002 Almanac.)
A straight one-voter one-vote democratic election would probably hand power in Iraq to the Shi'a majority. This would raise two issues:-
(a) To what extent would Shi'a domination be acceptable to the Sunni minority?
and:-
(b) To what extent would a Shi'a dominated Iraq be acceptable to America?
Issue (b) relates primarily to Iran, which is 89% Shi'a Muslim (again, the statistic is from The New York Times 2002 Almanac). A Shi'a-dominated Iraq would seem to be a natural ally of Shi'a dominated Iran, and Iran, right now, is one of America's major bugbears.
If the Bush regime can tolerate the democratic victory of the Shi'a majority, and if it can live with the Islamic state which will naturally evolve from that victory, then the Kurds and the Sunnis may, in the long term, be able to coexist peacefully with the Shi'a majority.
But what if the Bush regime decides that such a future would be intolerable?
One temptation is going to be for America to gerrymander together some kind of government, call it a democracy, proclaim it to be the fruit of liberty, and deny the Shi'a majority the opportunity to take control of its own destiny.
This could win George Bush the next election in America ("Look, we have a democratic government in Iraq, and it's neither Islamic nor radical!") but, in terms of resolving the security situation, it would be a misstep.
The security situation in Iraq is, above all else, a manpower problem. America cannot put enough boots on the ground to pacify Iraq.
I argue this point (not enough boots and no way to win) elsewhere, in a piece on:-
guerilla war Iraq
Iraq needs to be able to police itself and to fight its own internal war, for the simple reason that it is a practical impossibility for America to do the job. America doesn't have enough boots and it doesn't have enough dollars.
This means that the Iraqis have to be presented with a future that they can commit to, and it is difficult to see how the Shi'a majority could be persuaded to commit to a gerrymandered future which denied them the control of their own country.
Now, an additional problem is that, if a Shi'a dominated government does take over the job of suppressing the Baathist guerillas, then it wouldn't take much in the way of mismanagement for the Sunnis to start seeing themselves as victims of Shi'a oppression.
That's one of the reasons why, as indicated above, I don't see any easy way out of this mess.
I've confessed: I don't have the wisdom to sort this one out. The question of the day, then, would seem to be whether anyone on the George Bush team does. And the answer, from where I'm sitting, would seem to be no.
The main problem with the Bush team, as I see it, is that the George Bush speechwriters are ten times better than the George Bush planners. The speechwriters have all the right image words in place and in the right order. But, on the pragmatic level, all the structural questions are wide open.
On the pragmatic level, an abstract word like "housing" can mean anything from a damp cardboard box to one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. And, when we think about Iraqi democracy and Iraqi freedom, we really have to wonder what the planners are going to come up with: the damp cardboard box version or something more durable?
The question still remains wide open: After the dictator, what?
Meantime, whatever path into the future is taken, there are going to continue to be unrepentent Baathist insurgents busy building bombs for quite some time to come.
Section 84 Entry 0003. Date: 2003 December 15 Monday.
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And it's 0935 in Japan and on CNN they're asking the poll question: Should Saddam Hussein have been taken alive?
Hint to the American publicity machine: this is not a question that a civilized society should be asking itself. This question belongs to the world of barbarian warlords, to a comic book world of rage and bloodlust, not to the world of a rational society living beneath the rule of law.
I've never read the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) but I'm familiar with a famous quote from his works which goes something like this:-
"Those who do battle with monsters become monstrous themselves."
[That sort of captures the spirit of it. Later, on the Internet, I found the Nietzsche quote I had in mind phrased like this: "Do not do battle with monsters, lest you become a monster; and when you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you."
[And I also found it phrased like this: "Beware when you do battle with monsters that you do not become one, and remember, when you stare long into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you."
[This is kind of the time at which I wish I had access to a proper reference library with a decent selection of English-language books.
[However, you've just got to love the creative potential of the Internet, right?]
Or, to put it [the Nietzsche quote] another way, adapting the quote to suit the present context, those who make war become militarized.
Granted, Saddam Hussein was and is a monster. Granted, the Saddam regime of rape rooms, mass graves and acid baths richly deserved to fall.
That said, what kind of society is it that amuses itself by toying with the notion of murdering its enemies?
(My own perspective here is that I'm not an American. Rather, I'm a spectator - a British-born writer educated in New Zealand and currently resident in Japan.)
Anyway, the answer ... at just after 1000 Japan time ... "Should Saddam Hussein have been taken alive?" ... in answer to CNN's poll, 83% of those who responded said "Yes."
There's hope for America yet.
comment on the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons
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