QandO

September 07, 2004

Democratization and the state of progress
Posted by Jon Henke

As noted by Tom Maguire, it's been a tough week in the 'sphere for Matthew Yglesias--some of it deserved, some not--so it's not with a desire to pile on--he's a big boy, with a big brain, and he can tell the difference between abuse and intellectual debate--that I take issue with this post, but with a genuine interest in the issue he raises.

It's interesting to note that US forces are progressively surrendering larger and larger portions of Iraq to insurgents. It's things like this that make me so convinced it's vital to stay the course... victory is just around the corner... light at the end of the tunnel... freedom... democracy... yeah....

Without minimizing the problems inherent in an Iraqi democracy--or, really, any democracy in a country with diverse interests--I would note that the story doesn't actually give evidence that our larger strategic goals are necessarily in danger. The key grafs....

In Iraq, the list of places from which American soldiers have either withdrawn or decided to visit only rarely is growing: Falluja, where a Taliban-like regime has imposed a rigid theocracy; Ramadi, where the Sunni insurgents appear to have the run of the city; and the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf to the south, where the Americans agreed last month to keep their distance from the sacred shrines of Ali and Hussein.

The calls are rising for the Americans to pull out of even more areas, notably Sadr City, the sprawling neighborhood in eastern Baghdad that is the main base for the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr. There, leaders of his Mahdi Army are demanding that American soldiers, except those sent in to do reconstruction work, get out.

If I read him correctly, Matthew sees this as evidence that we're going backward in our efforts. That we are entering a quagmire, so to speak, where we define "surrendering cities" as victories. (Matt, if I've read you incorrectly, correct me and I will note it)

Well, that could be the case. Or, it might not. As the Times article notes...

where Iraqis once tolerated American soldiers as a source of stability in their neighborhoods, they increasingly see them as a cause of the violence. Take out the Americans, the Iraqis say, and you take out the problem. Leave us alone, and we will sort our own problems.

We would certainly like to see the Iraqis work side by side with us, all of them gladly....but that's a bit of a utopian dream. Nobody likes an occupation, and unrest is a given. We should leave that scenario off the table. It's a false choice.

What we need is simply for the Iraqis to work out their own salvation, and--beyond a certain point--that doesn't really require us. In fact, it requires our absence.

Matt seems to regard this story of Iraqis asserting their independence as a bad sign for the US. I'd argue that it is only a bad sign if we assume one of two things:

• the utopian fantasy of the lion laying down with the lamb was a possibility.
• it prevents elections.

Obviously, the first is off the table, but what about the second? Well, the New York Times expresses some concern....

Most significant of all, the withdrawal from these cities calls into question the practicality of nationwide elections scheduled to take place before the end of January. At the moment, the Americans appear to be prepared to hold elections without cities like Falluja and Ramadi. But excluding the largely Sunni Arab areas from the elections would raise serious doubts about their legitimacy. Already, one of the country's leading Sunni groups, the Sunni Clerics Association, boycotted the selection of the National Council, which serves as a de facto Parliament here.

But will it remain true as we disengage militarily? I'm not so sure it will, and this gets to the crux of the "are we winning" debate. You see, the real beauty of a representative democracy is in its tendency to mitigate the extremes. Ambitions are thwarted by opposing ambitions. When some minimal power can be had by participating in democracy, rather than killing fellow Iraqis (as opposed to those infidel Americans) to no apparent end, the marginal utility of the insurgency will change rapidly.

At this point, our goal should not necessarily be to win on the field of battle. The fact that we are choosing to withdraw is not, as Matthew thinks, evidence that we are losing the larger battle. Instead, we have the opportunity to change the field of battle to a political one....to thwart ambition with ambition.

And, if that can be accomplished--still an "if", but very possible, I think--then we will have one. We won't have a flowering Jeffersonian democracy with life, liberty and justice for all, but we'll have a nation orders of magnitude better than the alternative.

Finally: why do I think that will happen, as opposed to continued fighting? For the simple reason that, among the current insurgent leaders, there seems to be more anger at the US occupation than at the prospect of a democratic Iraqi government. And, like Moqtada Al-Sadr, they seem interested in participating in internal Iraqi politics, once the military conflict with the United States (read: point of pride) is out of the way.

The problem, of course, lies with the Sunni areas, where political power will be diminished from their halcyon days during Saddam's regime. The solution to that--a turnover of local power before sharply limited federal power, giving them near-autonomy in local control--would have been far better imposed early, but it can still be achieved.

In fact, if it is to be achieved, it absolutely requires our absence. Things may still go to hell before the elections in January, but our disengagement in the hotspots like Fallujah is not necessarily evidence of that, as Yglesias seems to believe, and the problems in Iraq are nothing that a bit of good parliamentary coalition-building pragmatism cannot subdue in fairly short order.

Of course, that's up to the Iraqis. We'll see.

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