American neocon publications (The WSJ, Commentary, Weekly Standard etc.) are these days full of commiserations about the impending withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. With newly found precsience, the hacks predict much strife in the country, complete with massacres, deportations, foreign invasions neatly harmonised in the background with a civil war from hell. A prolonged US military presence would allegedly prevent such outrages, they claim. How prolonged? Well, who’s counting among friends? A generation or two, maybe a century or two — it’s the thought that counts. Of course, American presence there since 2003 was coextensive with the best part of a million Iraqis (not to mention 4,500 Americans) dying violent deaths, a coincidence that makes sceptics talk causal relationship. But the neocons are adamant: no sacrifice is too big for democracy. Those poor Iraqis had to die for the bright future of their country becoming like, well, Norway. Or even, do let our imagination run wild, Idaho with oil but no potatoes.
Nowhere does one see a regret, not even a mild misgiving, about going in to begin with. And yet the war was criminally stupid and stupidly criminal from the very beginning. Far be it from me to make pacifist noises: ever since Augustine put the concept of just war into a Christian context, pacifism has lost a natural home in the West. Some wars are just and must be fought; some are unjust and must be avoided. But putting justice aside for a moment, a government thinking of going to war must first answer three questions: 1) Why are we doing it? 2) What end to the war do we seek? 3) Do we have the means to achieve this end? The US attacked Iraq without first finding satisfactory answers to any of these. That’s why the world is much worse off than it was in 2003.
The declared objectives have been changing kaleidoscopically from the very beginning. First, it was ridding Saddam of WMD. What, no WMD? Gee, sorry. What we meant was preventing terrorism. Oh, Iraq was implicated in this much less than others, including some of our close allies? Okay, so it’s about getting rid of Saddam anyway. He’s a nasty bit of work, no? Well, there you are then. Okay, okay, so Saddam is gone and we aren’t. We’re still here to build the Iraqi nation, to turn them into PLUs (People Like Us). Two cars in every pot, two chickens in every garage, democracy, PTA, Little Leagues, that sort of thing.
Now that the cars are blowing up, the chickens are running scared, not knowing which street to cross, and the street is no longer there, the absurdity of it all ought to be clear to anyone other than neocon zealots. No war can be won that starts with such moronically obtuse answers to the critical questions. No one has a right to be so moronically obtuse as not to see that democracy anywhere in that region is neither achievable nor realistically desirable. Just as democracy is unravelling in Europe, where it goes back centuries, it takes an IQ below room temperature (Celcius) to believe it can be installed in an area that has no historical, cultural, political or religious premises for it. The neocons remain true to their DNA, combining Wilsonian imperialism with Trotskyist temperament. This sort of heredity is never going to produce a truly democratic offspring.
It is of course possible to coerce or bribe the natives into holding Potemkin villages of sham elections. Indeed, all sorts of thugs have learned that, if they put ‘democracy’ into every sentence, Western money will zigzag its way into their Swiss accounts faster than you can say ‘socioeconomically disadvantaged’. For neocons, this virtual democracy seems to be sufficient. Ever since ‘manifest destiny’ has acquired a laser-guided aspect to it, that’s the only kind they’ve ever been able to get. The only kind they’ll ever get. Democracy for them is a meaningless shibboleth, all form and no content. It’s a bull’s head sitting on top of a totem pole. Or else a battle cry to put fire in people’s belly.
I’m not lamenting the passing of Saddam or, for that matter, the rapidly approaching one of Mubarak. Couldnta happened to nicer guys, as neocons no doubt are saying. But I do lament the rapid islamisation of the Middle East (say what you will about Saddam, but a Muslim fundamentalist he wasn’t) as a direct result of the West’s involvement in Iraq and elsewhere. Nor am I happy about the erosion of America’s and Europe’s will to face real challenges to peace in the world, such as a nuclear-armed Iran. The US is a sprinter, not a stayer (and Europe these days is neither). A decade or so of even limited warfare she can just about handle — after that it’s usually ‘Hell no, we won’t go’. Let’s pray that, just as the invasion of Iraq eventually produced the present debacle, the Arab Spring won’t lead to a nuclear winter.