Friday, April 07, 2006
Friends And Enemies
Austin Bay points out that although such incidents as the mosque bombing get the headlines, many of Iraq's problems today simply involve crime or greed of one sort or another. Terrorist attacks notwithstanding, the rampant criminal violence and corruption that flourished under Saddam's vicious rule is still alive and well.
On the down side, the gangs are still conducting an unprecedented crime wave. This got started during the 1990s, as the UN sanctions left more and more Iraqis unemployed, and desperate. Even Saddam could not halt the growing crime wave. Months before he was overthrown, Saddam opened the jails and freed thousands of the criminals he had not killed yet. It’s still not clear why he did this, but it gave the crooks time to get organized, because after Saddam fell, the Sunni Arab secret police and organized street thugs, who kept the gangsters at bay, were gone. It’s been gangster heaven ever since. While there are more and more police on the streets, and jails are filling up with more hoodlums than terrorists, the crime rate is still very high.
The corruption in the government is still a big problem. While there are billions of dollars in oil money and foreign aid coming in for reconstruction, Iraqis still see a lot of stealing. Then again, Iraqis are at least admitting that this is not the fault of the Americans. It’s Iraqis stealing from Iraqis, and Iraqis have to solve this one.
The corruption has made politics more complicated than it has to be. Political differences are not as divisive as is the competition for key government jobs that give you the best opportunities to steal public money.
The squabbling over which party gets what has prevented the new parliament from putting together a new government. It’s inefficient, and embarrassing. And it’s Iraqis doing it to Iraqis. This is very unpleasant for most Iraqis.
Religious zealots are often as bad as the gangsters, with their demands for "contributions,” and physical violence against those who are not “Islamic enough.” Iraqis know that they are descended from the people who first made beer and wine. Despite Islamic laws against alcohol, Iraqis like to enjoy a cold beer, or something stronger. But not if the Islamic lifestyle police are in the neighborhoods.
The corruption among so many Iraqi politicians, and maintenance of private armies, means that, while Saddam is gone, there are still Iraqis who would like to replace him as dictator. Democracy isn’t something you just put on like a coat, and it works. You have to work at it, and while many Iraqis are, there are many more who would like to bring back the bad old days, just with a different cast of characters.
While such assessments scare the bejeezuz out of the more easily unsettled and the cut-n-run crowd, there are those whose belief in Iraq's future is considered and realistic as opposed to the left's concretized state of blind defeatism:
Though politicians like John Kerry call on the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq, Jamal al-Din warns that Kerry's approach would represent “a defeat for the modern and civilized world” and a “victory for bin Laden, Zarqawi, and terrorism all over the Middle East.” Terrorism would then once again “knock on the door” of the West.
Jamal al-Din ran for parliament on the slate headed by former prime minister Alawi. This was a national unity slate, and it fared poorly in the election. But Jamal al-Din remains as insistent about the need for a unified Iraq as he is about the related concept of separation of religion and state. He talked little about Sunni vs. Shiite vs. Kurd and much about truth vs. fear and democracy vs. tyranny. And when he spoke of terrorism, he spoke of Islamic terrorism, not terrorism by any particular faction.
During the question period, I asked Jamal al-Din to say who is winning in Iraq now, truth or fear; democracy or tyranny. He answered by saying that right now Iraq is “a kingdom of fear.” Diana West and I later agreed that this answer is more meaningful and perhaps more disheartening than Dr. Alawi’s claim (which has become a mantra of the left in this country) that Iraq is in the middle of a civil war. In a civil war, there's an enemy army; in a kingdom of fear there are ghosts. An army can be easier to fight than ghosts.
But Jamal al-Din does not seem inordinately disheartened. He believes that the creation of a military and a police force with a national identity would enable the truth-fear, democracy-tyranny struggle to be played out in a clash between sectarian militias and the national army and police force. Though he did not say so, I felt that Jamal al-Din believes this struggle could go either way, and he clearly believes that much depends on the willingness of the U.S. to remain engaged.
In fact, as Scott Hinderaker points out, the biggest danger affecting Iraq emanates not from within, but from the same gang who have fought both Iraqi and American interests from the day George W. Bush took office.
