1 Boring Old Man

Right War, Botched Occupation

^{As U.S. troops entered Iraq, President Bush promised freedom and democracy. But rather than establish a stable democracy, today terrorists and militias tear the country apart. After billions spent and the sacrifice of almost 3,000 U.S. troops, it is right to ask whether democracy in Iraq was not a fool’s dream.}

^{It was not.}

^{President Truman faced similar questions about Korea. Critics accused him of embroiling America in open-ended war, ignoring his generals and losing touch with reality. They said democracy was alien to Korean culture. Time proved them wrong. Any juxtaposition of nuclear North Korea with democratic South Korea shows the value of Truman’s policy.}

^{Bush was right to liberate Iraq. Saddam Hussein had started two wars, used chemical weapons and subsidized suicide bombers. He claimed to have weapons of mass destruction. Sanctions had collapsed; containment failed.}

^{With military action inevitable, the White House was right to pursue democracy. Cynical realism created Saddam. Iraqis who fled their country, meanwhile, had no problem accepting democracy; Iraq’s problem was both its rule of law and its dictator’s unaccountability.}

^{What went wrong? Iraq’s transformation was undercut by naive faith, not in democracy but rather in diplomacy. Instead of securing Iraq’s borders, the Bush administration accepted Syrian and Iranian pledges of non-interference. They believed the canard that Iraq’s neighbors sought a stable, secure Iraq. Both countries exploited U.S. trust.}

^{Then, to win United Nations support, the White House defined itself as an occupying power. Overnight, liberation became occupation, and Iraqi democrats became collaborators. To appease Paris and Berlin, the Bush administration justified insurgent rhetoric.}

^{Iraqis embraced democracy, but the wrong kind. UN experts sold the White House an election system based on party slates rather than on districts. Any system in which politicians are more accountable to party leaders than constituents, though, encourages ethnic nationalism and sectarian populism. Add militias to the mix, and the result is explosive.}

^{Iraqis greeted U.S. troops as liberators, but the Bush administration fumbled the occupation. Blaming democracy does not address the cause of strife; rather, it absolves policymakers for poor decisions and implementation. Too much is at stake, not only for Iraq but also for U.S. national security, if policymakers learn the wrong lessons.}

This is the complete article by Michael Rubin [1][2] from the American Enterprise Institute web site [also published in U.S.A. Today]. Rubin was in the Defense Department from 2002 through 2004 in the Office of Special Plans, was Political Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad from 2003-2004, and was frequently mentioned in the C.I.A. Leak case [3]. I posted the whole article to convey the logic, a logic which makes me personally ill. Rubin says,"Bush was right to liberate Iraq." Why? Because, "Saddam Hussein had started two wars, used chemical weapons and subsidized suicide bombers. He claimed to have weapons of mass destruction. Sanctions had collapsed; containment failed." All of these things are true. Remember Bush’s interview several years ago, "You’ve got to understand. Saddam Hussein is a bad man." This whole group of people at A.E.I. and the Project for the New American Century roll this stuff off of their tongues without even thinking. They neither see nor understand why anyone else would see a conflict in what they are saying. It’s just matter of fact to them that if somebody is a no-good-nik, we are perfectly justified in going to war with them pre-emptively [unprovoked], unilaterally [without the sanction of the U.N.], with everything we’ve got [strength without equal], and convert them to American Democracy. The fate and form of governments in the world is ours to determine. In simple terms, America rules the world.

Why didn’t it work? Well, President Bush didn’t do it right, says Rubin. We just weren’t strong enough, or we didn’t insist on the right kind of democracy, or we didn’t act like conquerers are supposed to act. Rubin and his colleagues are completely around the proverbial bend. Even faced with the disaster in Iraq, they still sit in their Washington think-tanks and advocate the same kind of Roman Empire thinking that got us into this mess in the first place. Who are we to say what other countries should do? No one asked us to do that. Certainly there’s no evidence that the American People want to do that.

We spent the middle of the last century fighting World Fascism and the second half dealing with World Communism. Now, we’re going to come out of the gate pushing for "World American Democracy?" Says who? Bush didn’t run on that platform! We didn’t hear about that when we were being cheerlead to go to Iraq. We were told that he was an eminent threat to our safety because Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction and because Hussein was in cahoots with al Qaeda. Neither of those things were true, or even close to true. We didn’t agree to this war to "spread democracy" or because Saddam Hussein was "a bad man." These A.E.I. people slid in the door with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, etc. Their doctrines were disguised with lies until they had already put them into action. We are under no obligation to carry out their plans for American Dominion in the world. In the process of pursuing American Dominion, they have severly compromised our position in the world community; they have given us an un-needed debt burden; we have lost too many Americans and our war has killed untold numbers of innocent Iraqis; and they have made both the world and our country less safe. Our job now is to stop them in their tracks.

Michael Rubin has just moved his name even further up on the list of people who needs to be stopped. Al Qaeda bombed the Twin Trade Towers in New York City five years ago, and yet our biggest danger is from the people who currently control and influence the Executive Branch of our own government.