The Northern Ireland Analogy Again
I certainly can't tell what's going on in Iraq. It's hard even to make a good guess at an answer to the question we are all wondering: how is the U.S. doing? Are they establishing a regime significantly better than Saddam's, that will last?
Bush's defenders are no doubt right to point out that the media emphasizes episodes of violence, even if lots of people continue to make a living and send their kids to school just a few feet away from a violent incident. I will always remember watching the TV coverage of a tornado in my home town, Edmonton. All you could see was devastation, and my wife and I were very concerned about loved ones. Of course it turned out the tornado touched down on a very small spot, and then moved in a very thin line. Virtually all of the city had a heavy rain storm, period. Even more generally, I believe that the better you know a story, the more disappointed you will be with the coverage of it.
On the other hand, it is a bit ridiculous for Congresswomen including Carolyn McCarthy, (link via Instapundit) and Sue Kelly to return from their trip saying how great everything is in Iraq, when it turns out they spent their nights in Kuwait. It's a great place, really, and the security is as good as I've seen anywhere--of course, Americans dare not spend the night in Iraq, or go out after dark--and this was before the bombing at the hotel that is pretty much an American headquarters.
(Correction: On Sunday, Oct. 26, the Al Rasheed hotel, where many Americans live, was attacked with missiles; an American colonel was killed and 15 people were wounded--11 of them Americans. Paul Wolfowitz, although apparently not the target of the attack, was sleeping on the 13th floor, just above the damage. On Sunday, Oct. 12, there was a suicide bombing just outside the Baghdad Hotel, which is more plausibly described as a "headquarters" for both the Iraqi Governing Council and the Coalition Provisional Authority. Seven people other than the bomber were killed, and over 30 were wounded, but the bomb did not reach the building. The delegation of U.S. Congresswomen to which I refer was in Iraq Oct. 23 and 24).
Update: Donald Evans, Bush's Secretary of Commerce, also spent a day or so in Iraq, careful to spend the night in Kuwait, and then gave glowing reports on the state of Iraq.
We have a Senator staying in Kuwait, while reporting on Iraq, here.
John Derbyshire on The Corner, a defender of the Bush policy, provides support for the analogy between Iraq under U.S. occupation and Northern Ireland during "the troubles." The occupying power is unable to completely stop incidents of violence, and has no desire to practice "scorched earth" tactics that might really subdue an entire population. On the other hand, the violence might be something they can live with--"an acceptable level of violence," although they can never say this in public.
According to Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail, a tougher approach is recommended by Mouwafak al-Rabii, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. He critizes the Coalition Provisional Authority as follows: "'I think they wanted to appease this [Sunni] triangle,' he says. But nothing will appease the fundamentalists. It's not possible to find common ground with them. Instead they must be rooted out. 'You have to crush them, and crush them really hard. You have to kill them before they kill you. You have to be prepared to kill some innocent people.'"
He is apparently emerging as a true leader in Iraq: "Some people say that Dr. al-Rabii, a moderate Shiite who spent many years exiled in London, is a good candidate to be the first democratically elected president of Iraq." My question: what happened to Ahmed Chalabi?
George F. Will said on TV a few Sundays ago that the correct analogy is not to Vietnam, but to Algeria during the last years of French occupation. Hardly a hopeful argument given the outcome, but Will was trying to stress that there is no jungle for the enemy to hide in, and no hostile super-powers waiting to help that enemy in various ways.
(Maybe I'm mistating Will's views. He's not very optimistic here--and indeed he questions Condeleeza Rice's optimism.)
(Wow. It was hard to get that link to work. The Washington Post builds in some code about "notFound" to send you to their main "who are you" kind of page. Problem solved, I think.)
(I posted something on various analogies for Iraq before).
If there is analogy to Vietnam, it may be to Vietnam in the mid-50s--the time of The Quiet American. Things might go a lot better in the future than they are going today. W. has always been fortunate--virtually every day of his life--and he may be fortunate again. Certainly it is beginning to look as though he will win the presidential election in 2004. On the other hand, things could go much worse in Iraq in the future.
I'm tempted to say that if the Bush people are correct in their analysis, and there is a large international terrorist movement to contend with, then the invasion of Iraq may have been a serious mistake--not only a distraction from the larger war, but one that can now become a growing battlefield in that war. On the other hand, if their analysis is wrong, then the problem really is Iraq itself. The presence of "outsiders" should never amount to much, and there is some reason to hope that Iraqis will see progress, and support it.
The pessimistic view--that the most radical Moslems are using the U.S. invasion as the new focus for hating the "infidel," that more and more Moslem clerics are taking the same line as Bin Laden, and that significant numbers of "outsiders" are arriving in Iraq to fight the Americans--is well expressed here.
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