Posted by Damozel | In response to Charles Krauthammer's recent piece, I argued that the existence or nonexistence of progress in Iraq doesn't change the imperative to end our commitment of blood and money. Krauthammer was arguing, as all right wingers are currently arguing, that there are signs of progress (which of course pleases me), even though they are not the signs we were told to expect. To which my reply remains: "And.....?"
In other words, we wonder if we have not
in fact reached a stage where Iraq's fate should no longer be the
problem of the American taxpayer and the American soldier. Can we not
let them take it from there? Krauthammer and his neocon pals have so
far failed to evince a single argument which compels the conclusion
that the interests of the people funding this war are being served now
by our continuing to do so.
Please note that we aren't arguing that Iraq can't achieve the benchmark of "top down reconciliation." Some time back, we accepted that this isn't going to happen any time soon, if ever. So Krauthammer's argument that there are other measures of progress besides "top down reconciliation" simply begged the real question, which is why should we believe that remaining in Iraq (with all that entails) is better for America than bringing home the troops. We recognize the argument that a stable, democratic Iraq might help stabilize the middle east, but view this argument as speculative to say the least and as carrying less weight every day in proportion to the cost to Americans now. The longer the war drags on, the less any benefit to American interests weigh in the balance against the tax burden and the cost in American lives.
.
And after all: hawks have a history of being wrong in their predictions. Consider: the Vietnam War! The domino theory! The "bright shining lie" by which gullible American conservatives such as my own late father were misled into believing that the mission could succeed! And it's not that I don't see the differences between Vietnam and Iraq, or even that I think the differences matter more than the similiarities. It's that I've observed from personal experience just how wrong the 20th Century advocates of "manifest destiny" (and its spawn) turned out to be; and just how wrong the 21st advocates of similar theories appear to have been.
Perhaps the reason that the hawks are so often wrong is that their theories so often depend on a view of human beings that assumes that they will always act (1) rationally, (2) in their own "best interests" as identified by outsiders, (3) according to stereotype, or (4) as they've done in the past. It's what I'll call---borrowing now from Publius Endures---the automaton theory of human behavior and it sees members of a population as a uniform mass rather than as individuals who simply can't be counted on to adopt someone else's view of their best interests.
Publius Endures , which I referenced with respect to Charles Krauthammer's piece, has a strong response from the libertarian angle as to why the Iraq venture---considered as an exercise in spreading democracy----was, from the outset, naive. I'm quoting it because I think it nails one of the fundamental problems with the neocon view of what I'll call "the domino theory of democracy."
"Top-down national reconciliation" hasn't happened yet because "top down national reconciliation" is impossible almost by definition. The very concept of "top-down national reconciliation" presumes that people are automotons who do whatever their government/leaders tell them to do. It presumes liberal democracy is a means to stability rather than the result of stability. If top-down reconciliation were possible, Israelis and Palestinians would have been at peace ever since the Oslo Accords.
Think of it this way: when you try to create liberal democracy from the top-down, you are paradoxically trying to force people to be free. A top-down democracy is a democracy in name only: a politician in a liberal democracy can't force people to follow his lead. If he does, he is no longer leading a liberal democracy! (Fisking Krauthammer; emphasis added)
This actually gets to the heart of why the dream of exporting democracy to Iraq by force was naive to begin with. Democracy cannot be forced; it is created. Historically, as I learned many years ago in my 100-level PolSci course, democracy has been successful only when it has arisen in societies that already had some degree of liberal freedom to begin with. .....[A]sk if the American Revolution would have happened without the freedoms afforded by the British Empire. Fact is, successful democracies have almost always arisen from the bottom-up, not from the top-down. (Fisking Krauthammer)
And, of course---yes, we are going to keep coming back to this point---the majority of Americans never committed to exporting democracy in Iraq in the first place. We invaded because we were told that Saddam Hussein was a direct and imminent threat to our national security and that we had to put a stop to him. The hawks are now trying to convince us, by not-really-all-that-deft sleight of hand that we went there with the specific goal of "rebuilding Iraq" as a democracy. Don't let them fool you. Democracy in Iraq would have been an immense, a triumphant outcome, if it had been achievable over the short-term, but considered as a long term goal for this country, the law of diminishing returns makes it less justifiable with every passing day, progress or no progress.
RELATED POSTINGS:
Comments