Posted on 02/06/2005 12:22:25 PM PST by M 91 u2 K
President Bush's speech Monday at the Army War College was steeped in the realistic perspective that America will need to stay the course in Iraq over the next 18 months as we work to implant a stable government in Baghdad. "There are difficult days ahead, and the way forward may sometimes appear chaotic," Bush warned. "Yet our coalition is strong, our efforts are focused and unrelenting, and no power of the enemy will stop Iraq's progress."
But as we struggle to transform this conflict from an international military confrontation into a peaceful Iraqi political contest, we need to be as realistic in assessing the political obstacles confronting our efforts to leave Iraq with a benign regime as we are in assessing the military obstacles.
One of those political obstacles is the Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, Iraq's leading Shiite cleric.
Policymakers ought to carefully examine the similarities and differences between Sistani and Ayatollah Khomeini, the late Shiite cleric who sparked the Islamic revolution in Iran.
One difference between Khomeini and Sistani is that Khomeini would actually meet with Westerners, including female Western reporters. Sistani won't even meet with Ambassador Paul Bremer, head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.
This may be explained by an entry on Sistani's English language Web site. Discussing things that are "najis," which he defines in a glossary as "impure," and things that are "pak," which he defines as "clean," Sistani says: "As regards people of the Book (i.e. the Jews and the Christians) . . . they are commonly considered najis, but it is not improbable that they are Pak. However it is better to avoid them."
Another difference between Khomeini and Sistani is that when Khomeini communicated with the West in the days before the Iranian revolution, he made soothing noises about free elections, political pluralism and women's rights. When Sistani communicates with the West today, he speaks about free elections (which would empower his own Iraqi Shiite base, which makes up 65 percent of Iraq's population), but he doesn't tout pluralism or women's rights. Indeed, Sistani won't endorse Iraq's draft constitution because it gives Iraqi Kurds a chance to veto Shiite political domination and because it doesn't guarantee that Islamic law will be the basis of Iraqi government.
Last November, Sistani ally Abdul Aziz al Hakim explained the ayatollah's objection to a U.S. plan to hold caucuses to pick an interim government. "There should have been a stipulation which prevents legislating anything that contradicts Islam in the new Iraq," he said.
In April, The New York Times reported: "Ayatollah Sistani's supporters want Islam to govern such matters as family law, divorce and women's rights."
Where does Sistani stand on these issues? Postings on his Web site include prescriptions for temporary marriage ("In a fixed time marriage, the period of matrimony is fixed, for example, matrimonial relation is contracted with a woman for an hour, or a day, or a month, or a year, or more."); keeping wives indoors ("It is forbidden for the wife of a permanent marriage to go out without her husband's permission."); and multiple marriages and divorces ("A man is not permitted to marry more than four women by way of permanent marriage. He also has the right to divorce his wives.")
Khomeini may have shared Sistani's values here, but his pre-revolutionary propaganda was better packaged for the West.
In November 1978, for example, Dorothy Gilliam of The Washington Post "Style" section interviewed Khomeini, who was then living in exile in France. While noting that Khomeini's aides "order Western women journalists to cover their heads and shoulders" before meeting him, she dutifully recorded that the ayatollah himself said, "In Islamic society women will be free to choose their own destiny and activity. God created us equally."
That same month, Washington Post correspondent Ronald Koven also interviewed Khomeini and some of Khomeini's aides. "The aides say he rejects the authoritarian models of Islamic republicanism in much of the Arab world. Iran is not an Arab country," wrote Koven. "The aide quoted Khomeini as saying, 'In the history of Islam, those who denied God were free to express themselves.' This, said the aide, is Khomeini's way of saying all political parties would be legal in his vision of an Islamic republic to be established in a national referendum."
Why did the man who installed a theocracy in Iran in 1979 say these things in France in 1978? Perhaps he was practicing "taqiyya," the Shiite doctrine that Grand Ayatollah Sistani blandly defines on his Web site as: "Dissimulation about one's beliefs in order to protect oneself, family, or property from harm." Sistani has written an unpublished treatise on this doctrine. Is it wise to assume he is not practicing it today in his dealings with a U.S. occupational force?
Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute, a strong advocate of installing democracy in Iraq, wrote in The Weekly Standard last month that Sistani "virtually has a de facto veto over American actions" there. If so, it's the wrong veto in the wrong hands.
If we want to leave an Iraq that is at peace with itself and the world, we will need to find a way to give Iraqis who oppose the ayatollah's theocratic vision a veto over him.
He is using the Muslim technique of taqiyya.
WE must not allow Iraq to become another Iran even if the IRAQIS want it. WE sacrificed to many troops for these ingrates to turn against us. Who cares what they want?
US interests should be put ahead of Wilsonian Idealism.
All very well to accuse Sistani of dissembling to us. But there will be others to deal with, even when we have withdrawn. All those ink-stained fingers to deal with . . .The very diversity of Iraq makes it impractical to impose a Shiite state; the Kurds and Sunnis together are, I think, about 40% of the population and would unite in opposition. Unless the Shiites establish a system like that of our inner-city Democrati Party, that won't work. And even then, the congress which is being forged in the current vote-counting will have to have the consent of the Sunni and the Kurds for whatever constitution they propose. It won't be a simple majority vote situation, any more than it was in the adoption of the US Constiution.
Because civil war would remain an option, and that would open Pandora's Box of foreign intervention - not only by the US but also by the neighbors. No, trust but verify - but the Shiites have a limited hand to play, and seem to be doing the right thing with it.
Like it or not, the conflict is not of religions or the forms of government. The conflict is between the civilizations. Historically, in such conflicts, one civilization perishes and the other one survives (survives, not wins!)
To prevail in this type of conflict, one has to accept that the world order will change, international bodies may disintegrate, the old alliances may (and will) dissolve, the new agreements will be reached.
The civilization least encumbered by the ballast of the current world infrastructure and ethics is the one most likely to win. Denial of the fact that the West will not be able to win the current conflict without major changes to its current morals and infrastructure will result in the death of our civilization. Any civilization that starts to pursue its security while objecting to taking any risks is in the stage of decline and will be replaced by the more aggressive, albeit more barbaric and a primitive one.
These types of upheaval have happened before, they may happen again. To think that simply giving people the opportunity to decide how they want to be governed will solve the problem is idealistic. The objective is to incapacitate the opposition, ensure its inability to resurge, and then to impose such an order on it that would make it more profitable for it to cooperate then oppose. The Rome did it, China did it, the British Empire did it. They have been defeated by internal politics, isolation and inability to adapt to the changed world.
The WOT has only started and Iraq (or Middle East, for that matter) is only a small part of the problem. Besides, the real alliances have not been formed yet, we don't even know what position Europe will take in the oncoming conflict (they have lost whatever influence they had and would like to gain some of it back.) The conflict of a magnitude of the Cold War is starting and the sooner we realize it, the better.
We should give a good thought as to how to build up our own base that would allow us to effortlessly maintain a huge military force and to continue to remain the strongest economic and scientific power in the world. Once that is taken care of, we'll be able to persuade our enemies to agree with us much easier. I'm not talking just about America, the new alliance would include any country willing to maintain or adopt, shall we say, Anglo-American ideology.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.