July 26, 2006

HORSEFEATHERS' POLICY FINALLY ACCEPTED

Yesterday Peter W. Galbraith, former Ambassador to Croatia, published an op-ed piece in the New York Times, "Our Corner of Iraq", suggesting a new policy designed to ease America out of its difficult position there.
[click HERE].

Alas, Horsefeathers posted an OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH on April 27, 2004 in which an identical policy was articulated--more than two years and 1500 deaths ago. Below the reader will find the relevent passages:

IRAQ IS NO PLACE FOR A CRUSADE: AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH

“I say that freedom is not America’s gift to the world. Freedom is God’s gift to everybody in the world. I believe that. And I believe that we have a duty to free people. I would hope we wouldn’t have to do it militarily, but we have a duty.”

The President has said this over and over again. That he sees his job as doing God’s political work by bringing freedom to all people in the world. And we fear that Iraq has come to mean that for him. It is crusader cant, it has the ring of messianism, and it is chimerical. As foolish as the crusades of the past were.

We were with the President when he rose to the challenge of 9/11 and proclaimed the Bush Doctrine—that any nation or state that harbored, supported, or gave aid to terrorism in any form was as guilty as the terrorists and should be punished and eliminated. He came to see that Arab radicalism—jihadism—was all connected whether it came from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen or Iraq. Isolated acts of terrorism were never really isolated, but part of a loosely knit Arab conspiracy of terrorism. And he took the lead in going to war against this conspiracy.

After Afghanistan, he saw that Iraq was a probable source of great danger. Why? Because Saddam had the largest conventional army in the Middle East, a modern air force, modern armor, and a modern command-and-control structure. It was the sixth or seventh largest military force in the world. In the previous ten years it had attacked three of its neighbors. It had programs for WMD, many of which were destroyed after the Gulf War. And for the previous five years Saddam had refused to allow UN inspectors into the country, suggesting that his WMD programs were being reconstituted. Clearly he was a man who was completely ruthless and capable of doing extremely imprudent acts—like giving or selling WMD to terrorists. He had been a threat to his neighbors and now he had become a threat to the U.S. because terrorists could deliver destruction to the shores of the U.S. much more reliably than ICBM’s.

But somehow, in the course of planning the “regime change” in Iraq, the primary aim of getting rid of Saddam’s regime and its weapons became distorted into “nation-building” and making Baghad into a City on the Hill, a shining example of American democracy and American values, including equality for women and minorities, and getting rid of Sharia law and theocracy.

Only the most blatant arrogance and messianic outlook could have allowed such nonsense to go forward.

Except for the most sophisticated and westernized, Iraqis cannot understand or accept western political values. In the world of the Arab, tribalism trumps everything. Two Arab brothers may be at each other’s throats until an infidel comes on the scene, whereupon they immediately join hands and attack the infidel. That is the way Arab culture works.

America has achieved its primary aim in invading Iraq—to weaken it as a threat to its neighbors and the world, and to show the the rest of the Islamo-fascist world what is in store unless they curb their resident terrorists.

Now, President Bush, it is time to move on. Give up your misguided mission to democratize Iraq. Iraq should be free to turn down Western values. You can’t shove it down their throats. Let’s stick to realpolitik and get past the crusader mentality. If you do you will quickly realize that you are free to:

1. Kill all of America’s enemies in Iraq without being held responsible to any future Iraqi government. You can go into Najaf and kill al Sadr. Go into Falluja and kill all the troublesome insurgents without having to worry about hearts and minds—which you will never win anyway.

2. Declare that Iraq has been given this great opportunity to create whatever form of government it wants.

3. Declare that the United Nations can help it determine whatever form of government it wants. Why not saddle the UN with the mess in Iraq.

4. Move our forces to the Kurdish part of Iraq, which is largely autonomous anyway, and get them to allow us to build an airbase there. In this way we can say that we are “staying the course” in Iraq. We can protect our friends, the Kurds, and their oil fields. We will also be able to use the base for any operations against enemies in Iraq, Iran, Syria, or Saudi Arabia. Or to launch Special Operations forces when such opportunities appear. Such a base would stabilize the entire Middle East. In such a situation our forces would be both welcome and safe from insurgents while at the same time able to mount small offensive tactics, something our troops are best at.

Won’t such a strategy—leaving central and southern Iraq to the Sunnis and Shiites—lead to civil war in Iraq? Very likely. But the fact is that Iraq was never an integrated nation. It was cobbled together by a cadre of French and English bureaucrats after the First World War for their own respective national interests, and to pay off debts in their fragile relationships with the Arabs.

History has shown, again and again, that very often the only way to solve problems between states, nations, peoples, religions, tribes, and all groups of enemies is by war. The polite, highly civilized Western democracies which are just about to enter into a European Union, with a common currency, socialized medicine, and three-week ski vacations didn’t start out that way. From the fall of the Roman Empire in the Fifth Century until 1991—about 1600 years—there were political wars, civil wars, religious wars, and revolutions almost constantly. Even peaceful Switzerland, which hasn’t had a war since 1848, was at war for seven hundred years before the Swiss got tired of it. If you let them, these things have a way of working themselves out. It may take a few hundred years but eventually they do reach an equilibrium.

Mr. President, give up your crusade and let America get on with our war against terrorism.