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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Michael Rubin, former political advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq; resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
President Bush successfully contextualized Iraq as an essential component of the war against terror. His reminder that the U.S. cannot afford to fail is important, especially in an election year where Democrats and Republicans alike seek to make Bush's management of the Iraq war a campaign issue. Bush was wise to let Iraqis know that the Coalition Provisional Authority would not simply transfer itself into an embassy on June 30; it will be a mistake if any American continues to occupy CPA headquarters in Saddam's Republican Palace on July 1.
There were significant omissions in the Bush speech, however. Before the war both the State and the Defense Departments underestimated the trauma of President George H.W. Bush's abandonment of Iraqis in 1991. Iraqis remain unconvinced that the U.S. will stick to its rhetoric and will not once again cut and run. While Bush rightly says that "whenever people are given a choice ... they prefer lives of freedom to lives of fear," he ignores the fact that Iraqis will not again put their necks on the line if they doubt U.S. commitment to their future. Comments by both Secretary of State Colin Powell and CPA Administrator L. Paul Bremer in the past week suggesting that the U.S. might withdraw its troops shook Iraqi confidence in the United States. Iraqis -- who fear the worst -- will notice that Bush did not roll back Powell's statements.
Iraqis will also be disappointed by the trust Bush places in the United Nations. The U.N. may be respected in the United States and Europe, but Iraqis have a very different experience. Many Iraqis believe that the raid on Ahmad Chalabi's compound was meant to squash the Governing Council's investigation into the U.N. oil-for-food program. U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's credibility took a hit in the past month when Iraqis learned that his daughter was engaged to Prince Ali of Jordan, the half-brother of King Abdullah. We may respect Brahimi's role in Afghanistan, but Iraqis are prickly nationalists and distrust any mediators' ties to neighboring countries.
By focusing on the role of Saddam's elite guards in the insurgency, Bush downplayed the role of regional states like Iran and Syria in the current conflict. Ignoring their complicity may be politically expedient, but it can cost American lives. Over the eight months I worked for the CPA, I would sometimes visit the black market for documents. The price of Iraqi passports and identity cards increased as the cost of Iranian passports decreased. That's basic supply and demand. When I drove along the Syrian border in January, it was still unguarded. Tire tracks breached the single coil of barbed wire that delineated the frontier in the vicinity of Jebel Sinjar.
Bush also glossed over what elections for Iraq will mean. He laid out a multistep process, but the results of elections will be far different if they are party-slate (enabling tyranny of the majority) or single-constituency (making individuals accountable to specific districts). The devil is in the details, but with stakes so high, details cannot be ignored. All in all, a good start. But both Americans and Iraqis wait to hear more.
As'ad AbuKhalil, Arab media expert; professor of political science at California State University at Stanislaus.
George W. Bush is certainly concerned about his reelection. His plummeting popularity in the polls explains his need for a "major" speech on Iraq. He may have sounded convincing to those in the U.S. who know little about Iraq and who do not follow foreign affairs closely. But for Iraqis (and Arabs in general) Monday's speech will go down as yet another desperate effort in the series of U.S. propaganda campaigns that followed Sept. 11 and the two subsequent U.S.-led wars.
The major problem with how Bush's rhetoric plays in the Middle East is that it assumes that Arabs and Muslims can easily be manipulated by empty words about "freedom." Will Iraqis really care that Bush has now decided to demolish the Abu Ghraib prison? Will that erase the horrific crimes of Saddam -- and those of the U.S. occupation that followed -- behind the prison's walls? The pictures of U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib will stay in the Iraqi and Arab collective memory for a long time to come.
Bush insulted the intelligence of the Iraqi people with his latest speech in more ways than one: He talks about free elections, freedom and democracy, when all Iraqis, including children, know full well that an ayatollah who has not left his house in six years (Ali Sistani) insisted on free elections, while the leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority fiercely opposed them. He tells Iraqis that they will have full sovereignty, and yet assures the military audience before him that he will send additional troops if they are needed, and that all troops in Iraq will serve under U.S. command. What kind of sovereignty is that? Bush says that American "technical advisors" will stay in key ministries; Arabs will surely recall the thousands of American "advisors" who were in Vietnam.
Bush and neoconservatives still foolishly refer to a "free Iraq" as a model for the region. They may be right -- if other Arab populations are eager to incorporate into their lives daily car bombs, shootings by soldiers at checkpoints, torture of prisoners by liberating armies, the rise of fundamentalist groups and violent militias, clerical control of political affairs and many empty promises of democracy. Colonization does not work in the 21st century, and the Iraqis who suffered under Saddam will settle for nothing less than full independence.
Sean Wilentz, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University.
The White House is still in the deepest denial -- and still determined to evade responsibility for what Gen. Anthony Zinni has called the obvious screw-ups in the planning and prosecution of this war. I was particularly struck by Bush's attempt, early in the speech, to blame our current troubles on our "swift removal of Saddam Hussein's regime last spring." This, he said, "had an unintended effect" of allowing the Baathists to regroup. So, let me get this straight: If the war had only gone worse last year, it would be going better now? If only we hadn't accomplished our mission then so easily, we'd be accomplishing it more easily now?
As ever, this White House can't even bring itself to utter the perennial mealy-mouthed evasion, "Mistakes were made." This White House never makes any mistakes, active or passive; it simply suffers from the unintended consequences of its triumphs. If Abraham Lincoln had thought that way, he never would have fired Gen. George McClellan, and the Confederacy would have won the Civil War.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected since its original publication.
