Fighting the big one

America’s opponents know just what’s at stake in the postwar struggle for Iraq: Beat America’s ideas in Iraq and you beat them out of the whole region.

In the wake of the bombing of the UN office in Baghdad, some “terrorism experts” (By the way, how do you get to be a terrorism expert? Can you get a B.A. in terrorism or do you just have to appear on Fox News?) have argued that the US invasion of Iraq is a failure because all it’s doing is attracting terrorists to Iraq and generating more hatred toward America.

I have no doubt that the US presence in Iraq is attracting all sorts of terrorists and Islamists to oppose the United States. I also have no doubt that politicians and intellectuals in the nearby Arab states are rooting against America in Iraq because they want Arabs and the world to believe that the corrupt autocracies that have so long dominated Arab life, and failed to deliver for their people, are the best anyone can hope for.

But I totally disagree that this is a sign that everything is going wrong in Iraq. The truth is exactly the opposite.

We are attracting all these opponents to Iraq because they understand this war is The Big One. They don’t believe their own propaganda. They know this is not a war for oil. They know this is a war over ideas and values and governance. They know this war is about Western powers, helped by the United Nations, coming into the heart of their world to promote more decent, open, tolerant, women-friendly, pluralistic governments by starting with Iraq -- a country that contains all the main strands of the region: Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

You’d think from listening to America’s European and Arab critics that we’d upset some bucolic native culture and natural harmony in Iraq, as if the Baath Party were some colorful local tribe out of National Geographic. Alas, our opponents in Iraq, and their fellow travelers, know otherwise. They know they represent various forms of clan and gang rule, and various forms of religious and secular totalitarianism -- from Talibanism to Baathism. And they know that they need external enemies to thrive and justify imposing their demented visions.

In short, America’s opponents know just what’s at stake in the postwar struggle for Iraq, which is why they flock there: Beat America’s ideas in Iraq and you beat them out of the whole region; lose to America there, lose everywhere.

One of the most interesting conversations I had in Baghdad was with Muhammed A. al-Da’mi, a literature professor at Baghdad University and author of Arabian Mirrors and Western Soothsayers. He has spent a lifetime studying the interactions between East and West.

“Cultures can’t be closed on themselves for long without paying a price,” he explained. “But ours has been a vestigial and closed culture for many years now. The West needed us in the past and now we need it. This is the circle of history. Essentially [what you are seeing here] is a cultural collision. I am optimistic insofar as I believe that my country -- and I am a pan-Arab nationalist -- is going to benefit from this encounter with the more advanced society, and we are going to pay at the same time. Your experience in Iraq is going to create two reactions: one is hypersensitivity, led by the Islamists, and the other is welcoming, led by the secularists. [But you have to understand] that what you are doing is a penetration of one culture into another. If you succeed here, Iraq could change the habits and customs of the people in the whole area.”

So, the terrorists get it. Iraqi liberals get it. The Bush team talks as if it gets it, but it doesn’t act like it. The Bush team tells us, rightly, that this nation-building project is the equivalent of Germany in 1945, and yet, so far, it has approached the postwar in Iraq as if it’s Grenada in 1982.

We may fail, but not because we have attracted terrorists who understand what’s at stake in Iraq. We may fail because of the utter incompetence with which the Pentagon leadership has handled the postwar. (We don’t even have enough translators there, let alone MPs, and the media network we’ve set up there to talk to Iraqis is so bad we’d be better off buying ads on al-Jazeera.)

We may fail because the Bush team thinks it can fight The Big One in the Middle East -- while cutting taxes at home, shrinking the US Army, changing the tax code to encourage Americans to buy gas-guzzling cars that make us more dependent on Mideast oil and by gratuitously alienating allies.

We may fail because to win The Big One, we need an American public, and allies, ready to pay any price and bear any burden, but we have a president unable or unwilling to summon either.

This is a war. Somebody will win and somebody will lose. Should we lose here we will not be safe anywhere. Should we win it will certainly spell trouble for terrorist everywhere and just as certainly spell the end of more than one corrupt Arab regime. Terrorist attacks anywhere are terrible, but better terrorists attacks in Baghdad than in New York, or Chicago, or LA.

NOW is the time for more troops in Iraq, not fewer. The sooner we kill, not capture or detain, terrorist the sooner they will stop killing us. They will not stop attacking until they either win or die. Let's do everything in our power to arrange for them a meeting with allah.

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN has it right in most instances. However, wrong in others. In any event, the US gov needs to work more towards making the folks at home understand what is at stake and towards getting the US puplic behind the Iraq effort.

"NOW is the time for more troops in Iraq, not fewer."

I disagree. You can't fight terrorism w/ large groups of infantry, have you checked the Isreali/Palestinian conflict lately?

The only way to success is through perseverance, increasing Iraqi participation in their gov. and increased intellegence.

The fact that terrorists are being drawn to Iraq is a good thing. At some point the Iraqi's are going to get fed up w/ foreigners sabotaging their country.

Everybody is convinced that Rummy and W are idiots, but I think their plan will work and by this time next year we'll be arguing about prescription drug benefits.

thanks for the link.

I agree that there is enormous inertia at State and the CIA and that most of the "lifers" in those institutions are dedicated to the staus quo and are therefore in a position to undermine any "new" ideas and/or intelligence that goes against their own perceived self interest.

And yet the stakes are great, W's vision is bold and risky. IMO the paramount question is whether or not we, the US, have the staying power to outlast the radicals and give the Iraqis enough time to establish a government that can function on its own.

The rewards of such determination will be tremendous, and if we allow this plan to fail events will spiral out of control the world over.

I beleive we are in a war. And sometimes wars progress slowly.

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.