The Iraqi Tar Baby

As one of those who thought the invasion of Iraq was a good thing to do for
both humanitarian and strategic reasons, the flow of books by those who went
there after the invasion or by Iraqis who did their best to put it on the
path to democracy all tell essentially the same story. Iraqis were totally
unprepared to rule themselves and thus create a modern bulwark against the
menace of al Qaeda’s or Iran’s fanatical Islamism.

Iraq has become like the tar baby in the Uncle Remus story about the way
Brer Fox lured Brer Rabbit into a fight with a tar baby. He got so angry at
the tar baby that would not respond to his questions that his vanity got the
better of Brer Rabbit who punched it and discovered he was stuck. He butted
it with his head and got further stuck. How that rabbit avoided becoming
dinner for Brer Fox is unknown, but it is rumored Brer Bear extricated him.

The people of the United States are locked into a debate about whether to
get out of Iraq without actually looking like we are abandoning it or
whether to stay as long as it takes to get Iraq onto a more secular, modern
path.

There was a history lesson that was in the back of my mind during the entire
run-up to the invasion, but I paid it little heed. In retrospect, George
Herbert Walker Bush, our 41st President, seems like a genius for not
deposing Saddam Hussein and occupying Iraq. That decision, however, does not
change the fact that Saddam and his sons were permitted to cheat, steal and
murder until George W. Bush put an end to their three decades of horror.

John Agresto is a former president of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New
Mexico, who was asked to join the Coalition Provisional Authority to help
restore Iraq’s educational system after the invasion. He has written “Mugged
By Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions” and I
recommend you read it.

Agresto was there from 2003 to 2004 and his observations reflect those
raised and educated in the West who must confront a culture so radically
different from their own that it becomes a lesson on why the Middle East has
remained a stagnant sinkhole for centuries, resistant to change, armored
against rational behavior, and chained to barbarism.

“It was not America’s lack of awareness of ‘Iraqi culture’ or ‘the character
of the Middle East’ that harmed the mission,” wrote Agresto, “so much as our
amazing incomprehension of human nature, our blindness to the power of
fiercely held notions of religion and morality and honor, our
misunderstanding of all that real democracy entails, and our ignorance of
the damaging effects of tyranny on a people’s outlook and character.”

“We are in danger of losing all we hoped to accomplish in Iraq because we
haven’t a clue as to how to be an effective occupying power.” Two
generations passed the remarkable job our grandparents did in a defeated
Japan and Germany we have forgotten how a victorious nation should function
to restore a former enemy to the world.

That was immediately evident to everyone who watched via television the
looting that broke out after the American and coalition forces occupied
Baghdad and other cities. The first mistake was not to use our military to
put an end to it if, in fact, that was even possible. The only building in
Baghdad the coalition protected was the oil ministry.

Instead of being welcomed as liberators-the widespread expectation of the
neocons-our failure to impose control, i.e., security, on the population led
to a cascade of failures. “It was our lack of power-our inexplicable
inability to get things moving, to stop the looters and vandals, to find the
troublemakers and punish the terrorists-that led to our being held in
contempt by so many Iraqis,” wrote Agresto.

What most of us failed to realize was that the structural damage inflicted
by the invasion was nothing compared to the destruction that Iraqis did to
their own nation afterward. For an educator, Agresto was saddened to
discover that in schools and on university campuses, Iraqis had burned whole
libraries and destroyed classrooms, laboratories, and dormitories. This was
and is irrational behavior.

What destroyed Iraq in the wake of the invasion was Islamic fanaticism and
the hatred between the Sunni and Shia sects. The real problem of Iraq and
the entire Middle East is Islam.

“What we are up against in the world,” wrote Agresto, “is not a movement
born of poverty, or even born of resentment. It’s not a movement solvable by
something as political as resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. It’s a
movement born of a number of diverse, strong, and often fierce and sordid
feelings and passions.”

Agresto’s understanding of our 231-year experiment with democracy deepened
as he confronted the far more ancient inclination of Iraqis to accept the
socialist society of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist state in which their basic
needs were met with food baskets, subsidized housing, low gasoline prices,
and other “free” services and perks.

Beneath it all was a corruption of such breadth and depth that Americans
cannot even fathom its daily role in the lives of Iraqis and others
throughout the Middle East.

The invasion was a success. The liberation was doomed to failure by the very
people whom we naively believed would embrace freedom and democracy. “The
Americans who think there’s a hunger for liberty in every human breast, or
that a respect for the rights of all is natural and not inculcated, or that
by spreading democracy we naturally spread liberty, toleration, and
moderation, well, then, those Americans are wrong.”

“Unless we understand that Islamic radicalism is as antagonistic to all the
values the West stands for as were Fascism and Stalinism previously, our
response will always be muddled and insufficient.”

Iraq, when the United States draws down its forces there, will likely became
a vast bloodbath as Muslims play out their worst instincts and act upon the
most fundamental aspects of their so-called religion.

Perhaps the most interesting and most irritating aspect of the Iraq question
is that both options-staying or leaving-can be argued with logic and facts.

We cannot undo history. That is the fact with which we are faced right now.

There are legitimate complaints regarding the astonishing failures of
judgment about the invasion of Iraq, its subsequent occupation, and the
continuing effort to destroy al Qaeda’s role and diminish Iran’s in the
Middle East.

The iron law of history, however, is that if tyranny is not opposed, it
expands into the vacuum of indifference that fosters it. There is still time
to hope that historians will look back and see that America did the right
thing.

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet
site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com
<http://www.anxietycenter.com/> . His latest book, “Right Answers:
Separating Fact from Fantasy” is published by Merril Press.

C Alan Caruba, October 2007

Visit his daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com
<http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/>

 

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Category: World