Saddam's Legacy

Just over an hour ago, Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging for crimes against humanity. Now that the former tyrant is no more, both the U.S. and Iraq will have to see whether delivering justice to Saddam becomes a milestone toward national reconciliation or serves to further alienate Sunnis (his sect) from the Shiite/Kurd-led government.

The fact that Iraq today remains unstable and faces an uncertain future, three years after Saddam was overthrown, forces us to confront his legacy. In his absence, the sectarian rivalries and various factions vying for power that were quashed under his tyrannical rule have emerged and gone virtually unchecked, proceeding to rent Iraq asunder.

Certainly he was a vile and narcissistic despot who murdered thousands and brutally oppressed his own people. He was also a major threat to regional and world security, and we are better off having eliminated him. Nonetheless, his secular and pro-modernization attitude is one that we should hope is adopted by future Middle East leaders if we want to see strong, secure states emerge in that region. An emphasis on education and economic development, rights for women, and a legal system that doesn't consist only of arcane Sharia law is vastly preferable to the hostile, Islamist vision for the future that is gaining in popularity across the Muslim world today.

More pertinent to the immediate future of Iraq, given the country's ethnic and religious divisions, is the idea of Iraqi nationalism. Unlike many political players in today's Iraq, who wouldn't mind seeing their country partioned for the benefit of their respective groups, Saddam believed in the idea of Iraq the nation (although his belief rested on twisted, selfish notions.) It would not be in our interests or the region's interests to see Iraq carved to pieces, so we should hope for the emergence of Iraqi leaders who will put the interests of Iraq first--not Kurdistan, "Shi'astan", etc. Oh, and they have to do it without all the death squads, imprisonments, brutalities, corruption, paranoia, and self-interest that Saddam employed, thanks!

I Read the Iraq Study Group Report

For the past nine months the ten person, bipartisan Iraq Study Group (a.k.a. the Baker-Hamilton Commission) of elderly public figures has met, and in the process their much-anticipated report was expected by many to be the last, best hope for fixing what's gone wrong with the war.

Well, the report dropped yesterday, and as can be expected, reactions were all over the place. Some hailed it as a bold acknowledgement of mistakes and a call for change, some were offended by perceived threats, and some yawned and suggested that the report was exactly the kind of thing that would be produced by a large group of people with opposite ideologies who are forces to come to a consensus. That is to say, a painting brushed with broad strokes, a lot of stating the obvious. That is what I was expecting, but I had to read it for myself, and I would encourage you to do so as well.

Instead of running out to Borders or clicking over to Amazon to buy the ISG Report for $10.95, you can do what I did and read it online for free. At about 60 pages excluding appendices and surprisingly easy to read, the ISG report is helpful even for those who are not too familiar with the details of the situation in Iraq. The report provides background on the security situation, sectarian conflict, political and religious leaders, legislative and judicial issues, economic implications, and more.

All the news reports have focues on the two main recommendations from the executive summary, which are described below:

1. The U.S. needs to ask its bitter enemies Iran and Syria for help in stemming the flow of insurgents and encouraging Iraqi national unity. This recommendation is already causing indigestion amongst many hawkish conservatives--a guest on the conservative blog PowerLine ridiculed the notion of getting "terrorists [sic] supporting countries involved in fighting terrorism." The ISG also generically recommends diplomatic initiatives to resolve tensions in Lebanon and provide a two-state solution to the Palestine-Israel dispute.
   
   
2. "Significantly" more troops should be sent to Iraq temporarily to help with security, but most American forces in Iraq could be withdrawn by early 2008. I agree with this position, but I know it's bound to draw fire from both critics and supporters of the war. The former will not want to send more men and women to die in Iraq, and the latter will refuse to give up on the mission or abandon the Iraqi people.
   

While the above two recommendations have generated much of the headlines, I found several interesting insights in the background assesment part of the report. What follows is the rather lengthy list I wound up jotting down (all emphases added by me unless otherwise indicated):

• Props for not mincing words and stating the obvious from the get-go: the intro paragraph in the first section says "The level of violence is high and growing. There is great suffering, and the daily lives of many Iraqis show little or no improvement. Pessimism is pervasive." To its credit, the ISG denounced "staying the course," an acknowledgement that the war is going badly, and was equally disparaging to the idea of withdrawing immediately.
  
  
• How bad is the security situation? "Total attacks [against U.S., Coalition, and Iraqi security forces] in October 2006 averaged 180 per day, up from 70 per day in January 2006...Attacks against civilians in October were four times higher than in January. Some 3,000 Iraqi civilians are killed every month."
  
  
• On the sources of violence in Iraq: "Most attacks on Americans still come from the Sunni Arab insurgency...It has significant support from within the Sunni Arab community." The Bush administration, by playing up al Qaeda's role, does not acknowledge the fact that the main troublemakers are themselves Iraqis. To be fair, although al Qaeda plays a small role, "that includes some of the more spectacular acts: suicide attacks, truck bombs, and attacks on significant religious or political targets." Its goal is to incite all-out war between Shi'a and Sunni.
  
  The main problem, though, remains sectarian violence, which "causes the largest number of Iraqi civilian casualties." Shiite militias/death squads include two prominent groups: the Mahdi Army (which has "as many as 60,000 fighters"), led by Moqtada al-Sadr, and the Badr Brigade, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, which is closely tied to Iran.
  
  
• How are Iraqis being affected by the war? "The United Nations estimates that 1.6 million are displaced within Iraq, and up to 1.8 million Iraqis have fled the country."
  
  
• We have trained and equipped 326,000 Iraqi security forces (police and Army). The Army is making "fitful progress"--it is described as "one of the more professional Iraqi institutions." That said, sectarian divisions run rife even here, and large parts of the Army apparently refuse to carry out their assigned missions. Then there's the whole lack of leadership, equipment, personnel, logistics, and support.
  
  That's at least better than the police, who "cannot control crime" and who "routinely engage in sectarian violence, including the unnecessary detention, torture, and targeted execution of Sunni Arab civilians." The police forces are heavily infiltrated by militia members, assasins, and other thugs.
  
  
• The report on the political and religious leaders in Iraq is bleak: Prime Minister Maliki is beholden to Sadr, who has built a political party within government and maintains an outside armed militia in a manner reminiscent of Hezbollah in Lebanon. The leading Shiite cleric in Iraq, the moderate Ayatollah Sistani, wants a unified Iraq, but his influence is declining. Iraq's third major ethnic group, the Kurds, want their own state--their leaders certainly don't care much for the idea of the Iraqi nation.
  
  
• The Kurds already have their own autonomous regious, and the Shiites may press for one in the future. The Sunnis want a unified Iraq, but only with themselves as the rulers. There is no economically feasible independent Sunni state, because Iraq's oil reserves are all located in Kurdish or Shi'a areas.
  
  
• Do these guys make Ken Lay look tame? "Corruption is rampant. One senior Iraqi official estimated that official corruption costs Iraq $5-7 billion per year."
  
  
• Regarding the economy: "Growth in Iraq is at roughly 4 percent this year. Inflation is above 50 percent. Unemployment estimates range widely from 20 to 60 percent."
  
  
• The cost of war for the U.S.: $400 billion so far. We are currently spending $8 billion each month! The ISG says the final bill could be as high as $2 trillion.

After the report concludes the Assessment portion, it moves on to recommendations. And you know how old people always love to give advice? This panel certainly did--79 recommendations in all, with perhaps the two most important described above.

Of the rest, they range from consequential to mundane, with some maddeningly generic. For example, they call for "significantly greater analytic resources to the task of understanding the threats and sources of violence in Iraq." In any case, I'm sure over the next week or two, we'll see more discussion and debate of the specific recommendations. At that time I might have more to say about them.

Bush, Iraq, and the Missing Sacrifice

Sunday's Washington Post featured four academics trying to rate President Bush on the historical scale. Three of the four consigned him, to put it politely, to the rubbish heap--the judgment from the fourth, a former Bush speechwriter, amounted to "there's still time for him to upgrade to mediocre."

I'm not a fan of these "instant history" analyses, because perspectives can change dramatically over time--one article pointed out that Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor, was once considered "near great." Today the man who vehemently sought to deny rights to the freed slaves, and later became the first president to be impeached, is rightly considered a failure.

That said, one thing that won't look rosier for Bush over time is his accomplishments on the domestic front--because they are slim. The economy has improved, but especially so soon after the "dot-com" era set the bar for booms, the more sane growth we've seen over the past few years is nothing to write home about. And I doubt that No Child Left Behind and tax cuts will be the subject of many breathless chapters in future textbooks. Perhaps if Bush had been able to achieve meaningful Social Security reform, he would have something to hang his hat on, but that didn't pan out.

This is not to suggest that the lack of significant, lasting domestic accomplishments is in and of itself an impediment to being considered a great president. In Bush's case, in fact, it became clear as early as 9/12 that his legacy would be determined by how he would confront the threat of terrorism and manage America's exercise of hard and soft power.

With respect to the former, Bush can proudly and justifiably say he that he has prevented another attack on the homeland. No, we can't say we're completely safe today, but we're certainly a lot better prepared. And while currently there are still deep divisions about measures like the USA Patriot Act, I think that history will eventually look forgivingly at the reaction of this administration to protect a shocked and wounded nation. Hey, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, and they still built a statue to him in DC!

But let's not kid ourselves. The main prism that Bush is seen through today is the one that will people years from now will look at him through: Iraq. And in this case, there's no point in mincing words. Whether or not you still support the war effort (and I definitely do), two things are abundantly clear:

• Iraq is in a civil war. This is one of the rare times that I, a self-described member of the "grammar police," will say that semantics should be thrown out the window. There shouldn't have to be one side wearing gray, the other side blue, and both sides marching in neat rows for us to realize a mess when we see one. Calling the situation in Iraq anything but a civil war is to deny its gravity.
  
  
• The U.S. is currently losing in Iraq. Robert Gates, the nominee to be the new Secretary of Defense, should be applauded, for admitting this during confirmation hearings today on the Hill. Despite what any right-wing blog may say, we are losing in Iraq--if we were winning, this debate wouldn't be happening. Keep in mind though, that "losing" does not mean all is "lost"--let's figure out a way to win.
  

Administrative decisions, military strategy, and troop deployments are all matters for qualified experts, and I wouldn't have much to say on those issues. But for a long while now I have felt that there was another reason that our Iraq venture was doomed from the start: that the American public was never asked to make sacrifices or adopt a wartime mentality.

In today's Post, the always astute Michael Kinsley picks up on that reason to explain why the American public has lost its will to support the war in Iraq:

At first it seemed a brilliant strategy -- repellent, but brilliant -- to isolate most Americans from the cost of the war in Iraq. It's starting to seem a lot less so. As the deaths and injuries mount, more and more people are touched by the war -- and become understandably resentful of those who are not. Bush, in his speeches, is eloquent about what no one doubts -- the sacrifice -- but banal about what most people have come to doubt: the purpose.

The decision to wage the war on the margins of the public's consciousness might seem to make sense--it's applying a lesson learned from the Vietnam War that minimized exposure means minimized dissatisfaction. But if you go this route, things have to be going well. You can endure a mosquite bite on the back of your leg, but if it keeps getting bigger and more itchy, it will inevitably come to consume your attention.

President Bush didn't prepare the American public for a big, itchy bug bite. And there is where the whole problem arises from. Had he placed the public in a wartime mentality, they would be willing to put up with setbacks. And unlike Vietnam, the time was right to emphasize a struggle. The aftermath of 9/11 was a golden opportunity to make clear to Americans that life as we knew it was going to be different, that sacrifices would have to be made.

Bush instead sought to convey as much as possible that everything was business as usual, and it has become his undoing, because now we demand that everything be quick and painless. The post-9/11 months could have been used to kickstart a nation to transform itself, through heavily publicized programs like an increased gas tax, expansion of community service programs, foreign language requirements in public education, or any number of dozens of other ideas that would have constituted the message that it's a different world today with different expectations.

In other words, it was time for tough love. Instead, President Bush pampered the public, and now he has to live with the results of that squandered opportunity: constituents that are not willing to deal on his terms or his scope in Iraq.