I watched a great interview tonight on PBS.  Bill Moyers was interviewing Leila Fadel, a reporter currently working in Baghdad.  I enjoyed it for two reasons.  One, Leila is 26 and I’m really jealous of the work she gets to do.  Not so much the living in a war zone bit (that takes a special type) but that she is doing work that really has weight and meaning to it.  As an aspiring documentary photographer, I can only hope to one day do something as important.  The other reason I enjoyed the interview was its tone.  This was not a discussion of right and wrong and whether we should have gone in or not, whether we (the American public) were lied to or not, or why we need to leave immediately.  Rather it was a look at what things are like on the ground in Iraq.  What is going on in the daily lives of Iraqis.  Fadel highlighted the stories of people on all sides of the war because there are so many different perspectives.  You can see the interview or read the transcript here.

What concerns me most with the situation in Iraq right now is how polarized the American public is on the subject.  People are still fighting over whether or not we were right to go in in the first place and those who feel we had/have no business being there want the troops to pick up shop and leave immediately.  The just packing up and going home tomorrow is that it assures “failure.”  While many might argue that the Iraq “experiment” has already been a failure, and I would not argue that “total victory” is still a possible outcome, to leave Iraq now would be a catastrophic mistake.  We made this mess, we need to see it through to the end.  I realize this is very, very easy for me to say sitting here in my safe, warm house listening to my indie hipster pop/rock and lamenting the fact I have to work a second Saturday in a row.  But I am also a arm chair political scientist with a minor in sociology and I love to study 20th century history.  This both gives me hope and caution with what will happen in the next year or so with the American presence in Iraq.

First off, I do not have many answers (if any) and I do not know what the future months hold when it comes to the militias of Iraq (whether they are disbanded or open fighting starts again as the surge troops return home).  What I can see from looking at the last century is this, we (the West/US specifically) dropped the ball big time in Rwanda and Somalia (and depending on the day of the week, Afghanistan kind of goes back and forth), and nation building is incredibly difficult.  Rwanda is the textbook example of a global sin of omission, we could see what was coming and did nothing.  If the US just up and leaves Iraq tomorrow, I do not see how a complete disintegration of the country is avoided.  From what I know of Iraq as a nation, the three regions really do not have much motivation to stay together other than the US saying they have to.  Not that Iraq would be better off as three separate countries, but there does not seem to be much of a unifying Iraqi identity.  Somalia, on the other hand, is a perfect example of what happens when you leave a mess too soon before finding some kind of working solution.  I my mind, the tragedy of the Black Hawk Down story is not just that 13 servicemen lost their lives, but that in the end they died for no real reason.  When military force is brought to bear and lives are put on the line, you must see things through to the end.  This is not meant in a futile sense, if a situation really is untenable, you should get out (a la Vietnam).  But to only go halfway is worse than never going in at all.  Dismantling Iraq and then throwing our hands in the air and leaving when things do not go according to the plans of Washington bureaucrats only gives more fuel to the extremist elements of Islam we supposedly are fighting in Iraq.  All that said, Germany and Japan (albeit completely different situations than Iraq) do stand as strong evidence in support of the possibility of nation building being a successful venture.

Part of what keeps me from being an idealist is that most idealists do not temper their enthusiasm with pragmatism.  When Bush set out in the wake of 9/11, I believe he honestly thought he could reshape the way the world “works” and build strong democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan that would serve as a pattern for the rest of the developing world.  I think he felt people would rally to his calls for democracy and liberty and that he had been appointed (by God or history, take your pick) for the roll as leader of this new age.  As that dream has crumbled, instead of adapting and being willing to change policies on the fly, running with what works and ditching what does not, he has constantly sought to further entrench himself in untenable positions supported only by allies seen as completely lacking in credibility (to the point that some have faced criminal charges for their actions) by outsiders.  At this point, I have my fingers crossed that we can make it through the next 9 months without some catastrophic change for the worse anywhere else in the world.

Filed under: Uncategorized by Jonathan Assink