Commentators miss a detail in the interview of a Iraqi militant aired by Al Jazeera. He demands recognition of the guerillas as sole representatives of the Iraqi people, thus evidently a guerilla himself. He also demands, however, the return of Baath and of Saddam’s armed forces. Guerillas are now integrated in the leftovers of the Baathist army and willing to use Baath as their political front. Saddam’s dictatorship was secular. The new military rule will be religious. The sooner the US reestablishes the Baathist army, the less fundamentalist it will emerge.
The guerillas agree to Baathist leadership because they recognize that no other military group is capable of subduing Iraqi violence and that no other group is acceptable to all other groups. US attempts to foster such a group, amenable to all strata, are futile.
Baathist methods of counter-insurgence are also the only viable ones. Humanism, democracy, and due process are meaningless words in the Iraqi milieu. If the US wants the respect of Muslims, it must crush the insurgency with mass arrests, torture, wholesale executions, razing guerilla strongholds, and countering anti-US demonstrations with deadly fire. Short of that, the continuing American presence in Iraq damages America’s reputation.
To develop a solution, a few things should be recognized. Only affluent countries accept wasteful liberal democracy; poor countries opt for the cheap safety of totalitarism. The US cannot democratize Iraq at will. Nor could the US govern and police Iraq indefinitely. The only viable successor would be a military ruler who either suppresses religious and nationalist movements as Saddam did or succumbs to them. The US is concerned with three things in Iraq: nuclear non-proliferation, getting rid of guerilla training camps and other infrastructure, and an uninterrupted oil supply. The US should embark on a short and successful offensive, annihilate the guerilla camps, raze some neighborhoods and exhibit other acts of useful cruelty. Then return the Baathists to power under some other name, have them sign a declaration of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and reject international terrorism, then go home.
Another option is to dismantle Iraq. There is no such state anyway. Historical borders are not incidental but reflect the actual balance of power. Iraq is the artificial creation of the colonial powers. Give part of Iraq to Iran in exchange for the abandoning its nuclear program, and divide the rest between Saudi Arabia and Turkey or Kurdistan.
Machiavelli was only partially right that free people couldn’t be conquered. People take generations to get used to being governed. Societal organization is a cultural phenomenon not learned in a year. The tribal entities of Iraq won’t submit to central power. One possibility is tribal self-administration with only nominal central authority, the way Pakistan deals with Peshawar. If Turkey accepts that role for Kurdistan, good; if not, sealing the troublesome region off is the only remaining possibility.
And fire that fellow in the State Department who called US policy in Iraq stupid. He betrayed the American troops fighting and dying in Iraq that same day.
