| Monday
November 6, 2006
New column and mailbag at Chaos Manor Reviews.
Administrivia: Saying this once again:
For all those who recently subscribed, thanks.
I believe I have caught up with subscription enrollments. If you
subscribed and have not received the welcoming letters, please let me know.
I recently sent a reminder to all those who subscribed in 2005. A few of you
got that even though you renewed in 2006. I think I have caught up with all
those clerical errors as well. I cheerfully admit that I am not the world's
best clerk, and I spend as little time on this stuff as I can get away with.
There was interesting mail over the
weekend.
The Legions
And Saturday the story came out about
the military papers demanding Rumsfeld resign. I am writing my own thoughts
on this now; we also have Greg Cochran's comments on
Orson Scott Card's column on Iraq.
The Iraq situation is I think a lot more complex than most believe, because
before we can choose a policy we have to make a firm decision on what kind
of nation we are.
Example: if what we wanted was regime change in Iraq, the time to do that
was in the First Gulf War when, at the end, we encouraged uprisings against
Saddam. What we hoped for was a coup d' etat by one of Saddam's generals. We
could have had that had we made it clear that we would not tolerate the
slaughter of those who were rising against Saddam. Instead we did nothing.
None of his generals would be first in arranging a coup, and it wasn't clear
what we'd do if one did. It was totally inept and resulted in slaughter of
those who would have built a democracy -- perhaps -- in Iraq. Those
passionate for democracy were killed, sacrificed to Bush I's inability to
make up his mind: are we a republic or empire? Do we want to stay home and
build America or go abroad slaying monsters and constructing hegemony?
If you cannot make that decision you cannot do what is needed. What we did
was probably the worst thing possible: we postured, we encouraged, and we
abandoned those we encouraged. The result was horrible including one of the
worst man-made ecodisasters in two thousand years. The Turkish breaking of
the terraces in Asia Minor, introducing goats into the Sahel; these may be
comparable to what was done to the Garden of Eden. The Soviet destruction
of the Aral and Caspian
Seas is on a comparable scale. This one was on us.
Then we went into Iraq under Bush II. This time it would be a lot more
difficult to build a democracy because most of those passionate about
democracy had been given their lesson good and hard. The only way we were
going to build a democracy would be first to establish order; then rule of
law; then local democracy; then regional democracy; and finally a national
federation of regional democracies. Nothing else was going to work and it
took no great genius to see that.
There were only two ways to establish order: to take in enough troops to
impose order -- my estimate was 500,000 but there were some optimists in the
Pentagon who thought 400,000 would be enough; or to hire it done by paid
soldiers, namely, the Army of the Republic of Iraq. The only way to do that
would be to tell the Generals that we would give them money to pay their
soldiers, and the condition of their continued payment would be order in
their regions. Brutally enforced order. Ordnung! General, for every incident
in your region we dock you a percentage of the money we pay you to pay your
troops; enough incidents and we replace you.
Instead we sent in the neocons and Jacobins who couldn't wait to disband the
Iraqi army and free the Iraqi people. Free them to loot and pillage and
destroy, but look! Our hearts were pure! We were not oppressing them. I do
not know what Bremer thought he was doing; from reading his book it is clear
he did not know what he thought he was doing. The result was utter chaos,
and it took no great amount of brains to KNOW that the result would be
chaos.
We are going to disband the army of a tyrant. We will send those young men
home with weapons but no pay and no jobs, and encourage them to be orderly
and vote! After all --
It is impossible for me to put myself in the place of the people who made
decisions like that. They thought de-Baathization, purification, our
strength is of the strength of ten because our hearts are pure. I can't
think like that, and I am a novelist.
But now we are there. Our army, once the finest in the world, is tied up
trying to do constabulary duty, its equipment in ruins, lives interrupted by
long deployments, and no end in sight.
And the military newspapers call for the resignation of the Secretary of
Defense. Unprecedented.
Before we can decide what to do about Iraq we must know what to do about
ourselves.
On that score: why are we in the entangling alliance called NATO? What now
is its purpose?
And having asked all that, we must still remember: we are in Iraq. We were
led there by ideals. Rumsfeld had built the finest military instrument the
world has ever known; he hasn't enough history to understand that
implementing Jacobin ideals requires more than an army capable of defeating
every organized military force on the planet.
But we are there; and when we leave we must leave something behind; what I
do not know, but fleeing in panic will not accomplish that.
As I wrote this I received:
Subj: Beware the fury of the Legions?
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTllODVjYjNmYzlhZWQxYmU2OGEzMzk0M2M0NzZmYzg=
So: *are* we going to tell them that they've left
their bones to bleach in those desert sands for nothing?
Rod Montgomery==monty@sprintmail.com
It is a question of some importance.
"Stay the course" will not work; we need new strategic goals. I do not think
Nancy Pelosi will be able to find them; and bringing home a victorious army
and treating them as if they have been defeated and should be ashamed is not
a healthy thing to do. The army knows it was not defeated. The
Administration must now know that the cakewalk, mission accomplished,
Chalabi installed as puppet king, was never in the cards.
We have to find a way out of Iraq. I have no fondness for the neocons; but
they at least have among their ranks some realists. The more extreme
Jacobins are being replaced by more traditional realists in the tradition of
Morgantheau. I see little to no sign of realism among their opponents on the
left. I can hope that the Republicans may have learned something. It is only
hope.
======
The election will be closer than anyone thought. The issues will be
immigration and security. This election will be key; and will probably cause
the Republicans to completely reorganize their structure, win or lose. The
message is clear: the American people are concerned, and mad as hell at
their leaders; but afraid of the opposition. This is a key election.
It is also the Republican Party's last chance to reform itself.
The conviction of Saddam will help. Hanging him will help more. But the New
York Times and the Democrat's hero Ramsey Clark question the fairness of the
trial and verdict. That will sure help if Nancy Pelosi is speaker. "Give him
a new trial or we cut off aid..." I wish I were entirely sure that is no
more than bad humor.
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