Posted on 11/28/2006 5:31:24 AM PST by nuconvert
Right War, Botched Occupation
By Michael Rubin
November 27, 2006
As U.S. troops entered Iraq, President Bush promised freedom and democracy. But rather than establish a stable democracy, today terrorists and militias tear the country apart. After billions spent and the sacrifice of almost 3,000 U.S. troops, it is right to ask whether democracy in Iraq was not a fool's dream.
It was not.
President Truman faced similar questions about Korea. Critics accused him of embroiling America in open-ended war, ignoring his generals and losing touch with reality. They said democracy was alien to Korean culture. Time proved them wrong. Any juxtaposition of nuclear North Korea with democratic South Korea shows the value of Truman's policy.
Bush was right to liberate Iraq. Saddam Hussein had started two wars, used chemical weapons and subsidized suicide bombers. He claimed to have weapons of mass destruction. Sanctions had collapsed; containment failed.
With military action inevitable, the White House was right to pursue democracy. Cynical realism created Saddam. Iraqis who fled their country, meanwhile, had no problem accepting democracy; Iraq's problem was both its rule of law and its dictator's unaccountability.
What went wrong? Iraq's transformation was undercut by naive faith, not in democracy but rather in diplomacy. Instead of securing Iraq's borders, the Bush administration accepted Syrian and Iranian pledges of non-interference. They believed the canard that Iraq's neighbors sought a stable, secure Iraq. Both countries exploited U.S. trust.
Then, to win United Nations support, the White House defined itself as an occupying power. Overnight, liberation became occupation, and Iraqi democrats became collaborators. To appease Paris and Berlin, the Bush administration justified insurgent rhetoric.
Iraqis embraced democracy, but the wrong kind. UN experts sold the White House an election system based on party slates rather than on districts. Any system in which politicians are more accountable to party leaders than constituents, though, encourages ethnic nationalism and sectarian populism. Add militias to the mix, and the result is explosive.
Iraqis greeted U.S. troops as liberators, but the Bush administration fumbled the occupation. Blaming democracy does not address the cause of strife; rather, it absolves policymakers for poor decisions and implementation. Too much is at stake, not only for Iraq but also for U.S. national security, if policymakers learn the wrong lessons.
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.
Maybe, but I'm having a difficult time seeing the South wanting to fight hard for what they've achieved. They seem to be going out of their way to appease the North.
When did this happen?
9/11 should have precipitated a 'get bin laden', punitive war.
as there is a connection between bin laden and Hussein, then we should have destroyed the Iraqi military machine...thrown a grenade into the spider hole...and then gone on to Syria and Iran if necessary....
.....actually after 9/11 total vaporization of Mecca and Medina would not have been uncalled for.
compassionate conservatism is for Chamberlain style appeasers.....
Regime change and democracy for Iraq has been a U.S. law since 1998.
---
The Iraq Liberation Act
October 31, 1998
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
Today I am signing into law H.R. 4655, the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998." This Act makes clear that it is the sense of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter reality of internal repression and external aggression that the current regime in Baghdad now offers.
Let me be clear on what the U.S. objectives are: The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.
The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.
WILLIAM J. CLINTON
THE WHITE HOUSE,
October 31, 1998.
Bump for reference.
There certianly are similar quotes from Gore, Kerry, Edwards, and even Hillary herself.
Don't see any ideas or suggesions as to what to do different. Would a different approach have different results? He doesn't tell us. More of the beat on Bush bandwagon.
Okay mr resident neocon scholar Rubin, if the USA can't secure our own clearly defined Southern border, how the 'heck' do you secure a line drawn in the sand???
(neocons: always right - after they're wrong)
The biggie I see: Letting Bremer run the show.
Two key items that should have been done differently, that I believe Bremer was instrumental in stopping (I know he was, on the second).
Fallujah should have been leveled as a lesson to the rest of the country, the first time around.
Mookie Al-Sadr should have been taken out early on, as a lesson to radical imams.
Trusting Iran with our security is like having the neighborhood pedophile run a day care center.
In my opinion, the primary reason for invading Iraq was to surround Iran with countries controlled or at least "friendly" with us (Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey and Pakistan). Iran knew this and fought back as best (and now looking very successfully) they could to prevent this.
Then, to win United Nations support, the White House defined itself as an occupying power.
I attended an off the record talk given by someone pretty high up in Centcom. He said that there were a lot of arguments about whether we were an occupying power according to international law. The primary point was "we aren't an occupying power therefore we aren't responsible for law enforcement, power, water, sewage, etc." They were corrected by military lawyers who made it quite clear that we invaded and we tossed out the old government so by the definitions in international law we were an occupying power, no ifs ands or buts about it. The reason and justification for the invasion didn't matter, we were an occupying power.
If it was so botched, then let someone offer a viable, WINNING alternative strategy for fighting it.
Syngman Rhee and decades of military rule in South Korea wasn't exactly a model of good democratic government. They got there, eventually, but it wasn't easy. I don't know if America is really willing to wait 40 years for Iraq to work it's way through a series of questionable elections, coups, juntas, and similar growing pains, like we did with South Korea.
You've got your facts wrong concerning Bremer.
Bremer(whom Michael Rubin worked for as an advisor) is the one who publicly announced that he was going after alSadr. He and Rubin (and others) knew that alSadr needed to be taken out of the picture because of his ties to the Iranian regime.
They were ordered to back off.
The intellectual money shot of this article. Going into Iraq was the right thing to do, but the policymakers dropped the ball, with catastrophic results. Unless they are able to look in the mirror and say, "We screwed up, we need to examine what we did, and what not to do next time", they may walk away from this endeavor without learning anything.
Rubin has been suggesting and calling for a strategy for the past 3 yrs......regime change in Iran.
Here are some great quotes from Democrats BEATING THE WAR DRUM all the way back to 1998 when Bush wasn't even President.
http://www.freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html
"Trusting Iran with our security is like having the neighborhood pedophile run a day care center."
Exactly.
You might be interested in this article by Rubin.....
"Can Iran Be Trusted?"
http://www.meforum.org/article/1002
As with any sporting event or sport for that matter, those involved MUST follow through - we failed in the effort, because of poor leadership decisions at the top.
Now that we are behind the power curve - so to speak - we have to do it harder than the other guy, and in reference to Patton's comment to Montgomery prior to the Battle of Bastogne, "I don't like paying for the same real estate twice."
What we have here is a lack of communication, a lack of communication to those who are in charge of our military that we do not like the fact that the Iranian/Syrian/Terrorist menace is alive and well in Iraq.
Yes, the plan was acceptable, but the results were significantly less than astounding. The original plan was to make Iraq the magnet for terrorists to meet in one place to be eliminated by American forces.
Now that the terrorists are in country in Iraq, what now? Every Freep here knows the correct answer, but can the government see through their own blinds?
SS
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