Iraqi Democracy is No Pottery Barn Posted by Heather Hurlburt

This doesn't happen often, but Laura Rozen's review of the NY Times' review of Larry Diamond's Squandered Victory sent me running to the bookstore on a Sunday morning.   I am only 40 pages in -- so far it's a beautifully-written retelling of what we knew about how the Pentagon pushed pre-war planning aside, how General Garner was put in place and then removed for Ambassador Bremer, judiciously lit with anecdotes about what kind of place Iraq was, is and hopes to be.

I start out admiring Diamond for his willingness to go try to help Iraqis despite having opposed the war.  That represents both real patriotism and real devotion to one's chosen work -- in his case, the study of democratization.  He's a Stanford professor and former FOC (friend of Condoleezza Rice).  She asked him to go, but never, he says, responded to the long memo he sent upon his return.

For purposes of this post, I flipped through the end in hopes of a convenient Democracy Arsenal-style Top 10 list.  I think the better of Diamond that he doesn't have one.

He's not wholly pessimistic about Iraq's future as a democracy:

Perhaps the likeliest scenario in Iraq (at least over the medium term) is the perpetuation of some uneasy, periodically rejiggered, continually crisis-ridden form of the Governing Council coalition.  This could well produce an elite political pact to generate peace and stability, but with only very limited democracy and with quite a bit of corruption and bad government.

OK, that doesn't sound worse than Bosnia or Kosovo -- or, for that matter, IRaq's neighbors.  Then, he summons up post-authoritarian Nigeria as a hopeful example of how an oil-rich state can move toward genuine power-sharing and make some effort to fight corruption.  That's less encouraging.

Finally:

If they [Iraqi political leaders] choose pragmatism and accommodation, the political system they craft may be something less than true democracy but much more than dictatorship and civil war.  From the soggy soil of that political pluralism and power sharing, and with continued international support, a genuine democracy could gradually emerge.

So there's your optimistic scenario.  He seems to presume that, given the chance, Iraq could follow the path of countries that, a few years or decades after conflict ended, moved successfully toward democracy -- South Korea and some Latin American countries come to mind.  The question that an aid expert can't answer:  can US and then Iraqi forces get enough of a handle on security to allow something "more than civil war" to develop.

I was asked in our comments section to define a little better what I meant by US security interests that can only be protected by military means.  Perhaps I was imprecise, so let me state my redline in more moralistic terms:

As long as people we put there are struggling with some promise to make Iraq a peaceful, functioning, democratic state, just like we promised them, and our withdrawal would increase, not decrease, the violence, we need to stay.  I'm a firm believer in what Colin Powell supposedly called the 'Pottery Barn' rule:  you break it, you own it.  [Pottery Barn itself is more forgiving than the global arena...]

Which is why this fit of democratization by invasion was such a lousy idea in the first place.

Comments

[Angryman]

So you'll be enlisting then? Congratulations!
I'm sure you'll find, though, after your enlistment that many of the GIs you'll be hanging out with feel they were lied into this war. They'll be thrilled that you think they need to stay there, away from their families and homes, until some outcome that you're not even sure is possible can be achieved.

Do you have an address where we can send the enlistment forms? Or can I forward your email to a recruiter?

[Cal]

Thanks for answering my concern, Heather.

I can agree with you in the abstract, but the truth is we can't know whether pulling out of the country would cause more harm than good in the long-term. Knight Ridder did a story last year saying that -- based on official Iraqi documents -- US troops killed twice as many Iraqis as the insurgents over a 4 month period.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9753303.htm

BTW, the CIA issued a report saying that Nigeria could well be heading for a civil war in the next 15 years, and that "20,000 people have been killed in Nigeria while that country has maintained its democratic facade."

[doc]

....while the long term effect of a continued US presence in (or withdrawal from) iraq may be indeterminate, my guess is that the effect of a quick withdrawal would trail the US like marley’s chains.

there is not enough space on this blog to detail my absorbance for the current administration, but i am in agreement with heather: we have to pick up after ourselves.

this has nothing to do with the policies of a merchant selling overpriced household goods and everything to do with how you treat the willful behavior of a 4 year old…

[doc]

..."absorbance" - abhorrence, abhorrence, abhorrence: sheesh, i'm so mad i can't properly run a spell check.

[Cal]

The fact is we're already withrawing -- involuntarily.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-milassess24may24,1,1284663.story?coll=la-iraq-complete

--Just three battalions of Marines are stationed in the western part of the province, down from four a few months ago. Marine officials in western Al Anbar say that each of those battalions is smaller by one company than last year, meaning there are approximately 2,100 Marines there now, compared with about 3,600 last year...."[Commanders] can't use the word, but we're withdrawing," said one U.S. military official in Al Anbar province. "Slowly, that's what we're doing."---

At this point it's not a question of morality, but of capability.

[Jeff Owen]

According to this Economist article http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4079136 we aren't really supplying the Iraqi army with what they need. That's hurting our troops in the long and short run.

Supplying the Iraqi army at least with armored vehicles would take more of the burden off our troops with only a cost in dollars, not lives. Building the armor would provide jobs for both Americans and Iraqis, and Iraqis desperately need them.

Without proper equipment, is it really such a mystery why their army won't fight? Properly equiping the Iraqi army is a no brainer that we can pay for.

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