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| Iraq |
| Mugged By Reality in Iraq |
| 2007-09-18 |
| By Thomas Sowell In a world where the tragedy that is Iraq is usually discussed only in media sound bites and political slogans, it is especially gratifying to see an adult, intelligent, and insightful account of life inside Iraq by someone who lived there for nine months in the early days of the occupation in 2003 and 2004, and who saw the fundamental mistakes that would later plague the attempt to create a viable Iraqi government. John Agresto, a career American academic and former college president who volunteered to go help create a better higher education system in Iraq, learned a lot about Iraqi society in general and about American attempts to create a better society there. His recently published book is titled "Mugged by Reality" and is subtitled: "The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions." What is refreshingly different about this book is that it does not take the Bush administration line, the Congressional Democrats' line or anybody else's line. Agresto is not out to prove some theory or push some pet scheme but to convey what he saw with his own eyes and discerned from his own experiences with both Iraqis and Americans in Iraq. He makes no claim to infallibility but in fact admits to being forced to change his mind by what he saw. Initially a supporter of the invasion, he now says that he would not have been a supporter if he had known beforehand how the occupation would be mishandled and the results that followed. But he also recognizes that we cannot unring the bell and simply leave, for that would lead to even worse consequences, not only in Iraq but elsewhere, not only to others but to ourselves. The worst mistake, in Agresto's view, was the failure to establish law and order in the wake of the military victory, before undertaking the grandiose project of attempting to create democracy in Iraq. From this fundamental mistake, many of the other tragedies followed. In the absence of law and order, there was widespread violence, looting, rape -- in short, the war of each against all that Hobbes warned about, centuries ago. As for democracy, Agresto understands that the right to vote is no guarantee of freedom, toleration or respect for the rights of others. Without those prerequisites, democracy can mean tyranny at home and terrorism abroad. Apparently the American civilian authorities in Iraq did not understand this or else they let that understanding be overridden by political considerations. By setting up a government based on warring factions, they made cooperation in the national interest a very unlikely prospect. Today, when more and more Iraqis are rejecting the outside terrorists whom the media keep calling "insurgents," and when our military is restoring more order than Iraq has seen in a while, the most intractable problem is the very government we set up. General David Petraeus is mentioned only a couple of times, and briefly, in "Mugged by Reality." But those brief mentions seem to be revealing. Right after the success of military operations in Iraq, General Petraeus' 101st Airborne had control of the city of Mosul. According to Agresto, "he ran it in radically different ways than the rest of Iraq was run" -- and Mosul was "calm" in contrast to other parts of Iraq. Then, after control of Mosul was passed on to others, it "began to rival the worst sections of Baghdad for attacks on Coalition forces and violence against Iraqis." One of the ways in which Petraeus ran Mosul differently from the way things were done in the rest of Iraq, according to Agresto, was not to get rid of existing public officials wholesale, despite their being members of the former ruling Baath Party. Somebody has to run the basic institutions that make civilized life possible -- and you can't just get rid of those who know how to run those institutions before you have someone qualified to replace them. Apparently General Petraeus was pragmatic enough to understand that. We may, belatedly, have found a man and an approach that works. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #5 Frozen Al, My wife the Kindergarten teacher has always told me about the "teachable moment". When we were raising our two boys she would point out that there were certain times that a lesson would sink in, and others when it would just bounce off. You had to wait for the former and strike while the iron was hot (to mix metaphors). My job requires the same. Sometimes you just have to let the client fail before they will take your advice. Iraq was the same way. My idea was that we should have spent the early days running the central government for them; and teaching / turning over the local stuff (garbage collection like stuff) as soon as possible to the leaders at the local level. As they develop the skills to run government at that level build up regions or provinces and then go for the whole enchilada. Of course, that assumes that the rest of the world / Demonrats gave us the needed time and that's one hell of an assumption. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2007-09-18 21:05 |
| #4 I have to agree with AlanC. The Shia were watching us to see if we were going to replace one group of Sunnis with another one. Had we kept the Baathists around we would have had 60% of Iraq mad at us instead of 20% that we actually did. The bigger problem was that we were ignorent of Iraqi customs and language so we couldn't explain to them what we were trying to do. As we have become more familiar, our relations with the Iraqis is becoming much better. The other "what if" involves the Sunnis. The deal they are taking now is basically the same one that Bremmer offered them in 2003. If they had taken the offer instead of Al Qaeda's they'd be alot better off today. Al |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2007-09-18 18:36 |
| #3 Additionally he falls into the -A therefore B fallacy. Just because A didn't work (well, good enough, at all; choose one) DOESN'T mean that B would have worked any better and may, in fact have worked worse!! My opinion was for a different post-war strategy but there's no evidence that it would have been better. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2007-09-18 16:57 |
| #2 Also, we get here the classical mistake of all academics, imagining that on the average, people will behave in an orderly fashion with only a modicum of coercion. There was a lot of pent up demand for payback and mayhem in Saddamland, and hey what, demand got served... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2007-09-18 15:16 |
| #1 The worst mistake, in Agresto's view, was the failure to establish law and order in the wake of the military victory, before undertaking the grandiose project of attempting to create democracy in Iraq. One of thoà se problems faced by the Americans after OIF was that the intense agitprop by islamists, It is easy to say that the Americans shjould have done it differently when you ignore teh constraints. Now you can notice I am putting the problems and tghe dead at the feet Of Chirac and of the pacifist movement. |
| Posted by: JFM 2007-09-18 11:59 |