BOSTON — It has taken only a few days since the strong Democratic Party win in last week’s congressional and gubernatorial elections for political debate here in the United States to focus sharply on a revised, withdrawal-oriented, policy in Iraq as a pressing national priority. Nobody has a clear, credible answer to the question that everyone is asking: What should the United States do in Iraq now?
I have been lecturing and meeting with university students and community groups throughout the United States during the past five weeks, and this is the single most common issue that comes up for discussion, yet always without a satisfactory answer. Precipitously withdrawing the 145,000 American troops would probably plunge Iraq into further chaos, destruction and suffering, while having them remain moves things in the same direction: a Texas-size and -vintage dilemma.
The first obvious conclusion from this predicament is one that few people dare speak openly in the United States: Sending your army half way around the world to break a political order and remake it in your own image is not only imperial behavior, but amateurish and fanciful imperialism at that. Ordinary Americans have acknowledged the mistake to some extent, and may now help their political leaders learn from the experience. For the American citizenry that asked for a change in political tone and policy in Washington, the focus was not primarily Iraq; rather, Iraq was only the most glaring example of the wider problem of arrogance, corruption, incompetence and a brazen, bullying ideological swagger that have come to define this Republican administration, at home and abroad.
Many fine minds and a few lingering dangerous charlatans now focus on how the United States should get out of the mess it has created for itself and the Middle East. I humbly suggest that a more thorough and integrated analysis of the U.S problem in Iraq should assess broad principles as much as immediate particularities. My sense of the principles involved is that five major priority issues must be addressed in Iraq now, and they are all related in one way or another:
1. Security on the ground, meaning regional political terror, the domestic insurgency and common criminality;
2. Economic progress and delivery of basic services to the citizenry, such as clean water, health care and electricity;
3. A constitutional agreement on a legitimate, decentralized national government system that shares power and oil revenues among the country’s main groups;
4. The full security and political impact of the foreign military presence;
5. The role of Iraq’s neighbors, especially Syria and Iran, both of which are threatened, sanctioned, targeted and pressured by the United States these days.
Resolving the Iraq mess with a minimum of further damage requires acknowledging the real relationship among these five issues — rather than working according to the political dictates of now increasingly discredited but still operative neo-conservative ideological zealots in Washington. The order of priorities to bring Iraq back to eventual normalcy over the coming year requires at its core a national constitutional accord that allows a legitimate government to assert itself throughout the land, based on negotiated power-sharing among the principal groups. This will not happen until the key Iraqi political groups have a sense that the foreign troops are starting soon to leave , and that the United States and UK do not plan to maintain long-term military bases in Iraq. The desired operative link between foreign troops and a legitimate, effective Iraqi government is that an effective Iraqi government will emanate from the withdrawal of foreign troops.
A legitimate national government in Iraq is the only force that can quell the insurgency and terrorism, and restore security. The American tendency to throw more troops at the security problem only makes the problem worse, because the insurgency, the terrorism, the criminality and the slow unraveling of the national fabric are largely a consequence of the military assault that shattered the former order — as terrible as that order was. Once the foreign troops are on their way out, even gradually, and a credible Iraqi government based on a constitutional accord asserts itself and reduces insecurity, economic growth and basic services can then be improved.
A newly re-legitimized and reinvigorated Iraqi government — not dizzy White House fantasy-peddlers — could then negotiate mutually satisfying relations with neighbors. One of the current frenzies in Washington is that the United States can get out of this mess by engaging the neighbors of Iraq. How that will happen when the United States simultaneously threatens and sanctions Syria and Iran, and refuses to talk to them, is not clear or coherent, like so many other things in Washington related to the Middle East.
A good starting point for the Washington crowd now actively reassessing Iraq policy is to be humble and honest, and accept the fundamental mistake of romantically using the military to rearrange despotic lands far away. The answer to the American dilemma is not with engaging the neighbors or sending more troops. It’s in understanding the age-old, strained relationship between foreign armies and local hearts.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 15 November 2006
Word Count: 840
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