Iraq -- It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature

Its been a while since this was published, but in a sense it is timeless. A couple of weeks ago Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer did a piece on Iraq for the WaPo that encapsulates the developing critique of our efforts there and perfectly illustrates the profound and perhaps willful misunderstanding that informs it.

Wrighe and Knickmeyer start with the assumption, voiced by anonymous members of the permanent government, that administration goals in Iraq were "unrealistic."

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

Read the whole thing here.

They fault the US for not providing services and security, for not eliminating faction fighting, for not insisting strongly on western-style democratic principles, for not bringing economic prosperity, and a host of other things. They seem to have taken their lead from Larry Diamond, a Stanford academic who wrote Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, and whom they quote favorably.

But this is a sly and dishonest assessment. It is always possible to cherrypick infelicitous quotes and to interview disgruntled bureaucrats who resent direction from the political appointees. That sort of thing has long been a mainstay of WaPo journalism. What is not reported is that from the beginning top administration officials made it clear that the invasion of Iraq was just the first stage in a long and arduous process that they compared to the Cold War -- one that would last long beyond Bush's presidency. Yes, there were some outlandish statements, the most egregious being made by people out of government, but then there always are and Bush himself time after time made it clear that we had started down a long and difficult road that would tax the nation's patience. To accuse Bush and his top people with excessive optimism is to confuse occasional expressions of hope with the realistic assessments that formed the core of the administrations message.

More dangerous and dishonest, though, is the persistent insistence that the US is failing to impose order, prosperity and western-style democracy in Iraq. That assumes that the goal of the administration has always been that of the empire builder -- to crush opposition and to govern the conquered territory efficiently and effectively. This is an imperialist formulation and charges to that effect from the administration's critics reveal their utter incomprehension or deliberate misinterpretation of what is happening in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. This misunderstanding is not the fault of an inarticulate administration that cannot explain what they are up to. Bush has always been up front in his explanations, the problem is that his "sophisticated" opponents in the media and in government just refuse to believe that he is serious.

Bush's role is not that of an imperial ruler, bringing order to the world. It is that of a liberator, who is seeking to empower people to chart their own course in freedom. Our role in Iraq is not to impose order, but to assist the Iraqis in establishing order themselves. We are not trying to create a dependency there, but a free and self-determining polity. Nor are we trying to impose a western-style democracy. Rather, we are insisting that the Iraqi people, through democratic processes, forge their own form of government -- one that reflects their particular historical circumstances, not ours. Nor is it our role to provide prosperity for the Iraqi people. That is something they will have to build for themselves.

An imposed peace is a false peace that can only be sustained through massive and permanent intervention in the region. An imposed government can never represent or serve the aspirations of the Iraqi people. And prosperity through subsidy can never bring about the kinds of reforms and economic activities that will make Iraq a successful self-sustaining state. Bush understands this far better than his small-minded critics in the press and the permanent government.