{"id":7605,"date":"2014-06-25T07:51:41","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T14:51:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7605"},"modified":"2014-06-25T07:51:41","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T14:51:41","slug":"melancholy-lessons-from-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/melancholy-lessons-from-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Melancholy Lessons from Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo via Wikicommons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The unfolding collapse of Iraq\u2019s government before the legions of al Qaeda jihadists is the capstone of Barack Obama\u2019s incompetent and politicized foreign policy. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), armed with plundered American weapons and flush with stolen money, is consolidating a Sunni terrorist state in eastern Syria and northern Iraq, replete with mass executions, sharia law, and the beheading of violators. With revered Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani calling the Shia faithful to arms, a vicious civil war between Shia and Sunnis will likely intensify in the coming days. But whoever wins, the fallout for our security will be disastrous \u2013 a Shiite \u201ccrescent\u201d from Aleppo to Mosul allied with Iran, which looks ever more likely to be nuclear armed, and a safe haven for terrorist training camps to prepare \u201cmartyrs\u201d for attacks against the West. And our allies Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel all will to various degrees find their own security and interests impacted by this administration\u2019s criminal foreign policy negligence.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Obama deserves the lion\u2019s share of the blame for many reasons. Most important is his failure to secure a status of forces agreement that would have left in Iraq sufficient American firepower to deter both Prime Minister Maliki from indulging his autocratic tendencies and abusing his power to subjugate the rival Sunnis, and the ISIS from attempting to expand its territorial reach through sectarian violence and mayhem. This catastrophic error was the result of Obama\u2019s political narrative that he ended George Bush\u2019s \u201cbad\u201d war in Iraq and brought all of our troops home, a potent campaign slogan in the 2012 presidential election. That sacrifice of America\u2019s security and interests, and betrayal of the soldiers killed and maimed during the Iraq war \u2013 just to gratify political necessity and an ideological disbelief in the goodness of American power \u2013 will join Congress\u2019s abandonment of Vietnam in 1973 on the roll of American foreign policy dishonor and disaster. Yet there are larger lessons from the debacle in Iraq that transcend one administration\u2019s incompetence.<\/p>\n

Democracy\u2019s Foreign Policy Weaknesses<\/i><\/p>\n

Political freedom depends on the accountability of politicians to the voters whose interests they must serve. Yet as democracy\u2019s critics starting in ancient Athens have pointed out, electoral accountability to the conflicting interests of citizens and factions makes foreign policy difficult. \u201cThe structures and habits of democratic states,\u201d Churchill wrote after World War II, \u201clack those elements of persistence and conviction which can alone give security to the humble masses.\u201d Foreign policy often requires long-range planning and steadfastness that are compromised by two-year election cycles and the eagerness of self-interested partisan politicians to respond to the short-term interests, impatience, anger, or indifference of the citizens. The hardships of war \u2013 the loss of life, the expense, the inevitable blunders and unforeseen consequences, and the necessary brutality that define armed conflict \u2013especially try the patience of citizens and politicians to whom military professionals are accountable. Yet giving in to such impatience can be dangerous in the long run. As Tocqueville wrote, \u201cThe people are more apt to feel than to reason; and if their present sufferings are great, it is to be feared that the still greater sufferings attendant upon defeat will be forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

The current collapse in Iraq confirms this analysis. As a senator Obama campaigned against the war in Iraq, untainted as he was by the vote to authorize the war burdening Hillary Clinton, his rival in the presidential primaries. In 2007 he vigorously opposed the \u201csurge\u201d in troops that would create the success he is now squandering as president, calling it a \u201cmistake\u201d and a \u201creckless escalation.\u201d He also introduced legislation to remove all U.S. combat forces from Iraq by March 2008. He was elected to his first term in part because of the voters\u2019 weariness of 7 years of war. Since becoming president he has acted on his campaign rhetoric that Iraq was George Bush\u2019s \u201cbad\u201d war and that he would bring everybody home, most destructively by failing to secure the status of forces agreement and by setting a date-certain for withdrawal. In his Second Inaugural he claimed, \u201cA decade of war is now ending,\u201d and in 2013, \u201cThe war in Iraq is over, and we\u2019ve welcomed our troops home.\u201d Yet in these and many other\u00a0boasts<\/span><\/a>\u00a0about ending the war, he showed no awareness that the war ended only because he abandoned the fight while the outcome was still in doubt.<\/p>\n

Yet Obama\u2019s political expediency has been in synch with the sentiments of a majority of Americans. A February 2014 Gallup\u00a0poll<\/span><\/a>\u00a0found 57% thought the U.S. \u201cmade a mistake in sending troops to Iraq.\u201d This opposition reflects a broader drift towards displeasure with intervention abroad. A December 2013 Pew\u00a0poll<\/span><\/a>\u00a0found that 52% of Americans thought the U.S. \u201cshould mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own,\u201d a 40-year low in support for U.S. global leadership. And 80% agreed with the belief that \u201cWe should not think so much in international terms but concentrate more on our own national problems and building up our strength and prosperity here at home.\u201d In the long term, however, this thinking is dangerous. The globalized economy that has created unprecedented worldwide prosperity requires a tutelary power subject to law and accountability, and founded on respect for human rights and freedom, to keep order. Only the United States has both the military reach and the political virtues that make us worthy of that responsibility.<\/p>\n

Democracy Promotion<\/i><\/p>\n

The shift of emphasis in the Iraq war\u2019s mission from destroying Saddam Hussein\u2019s regime to creating political freedom and democracy in Iraq was na\u00efve and misguided. Authentic liberal democracy is not a question of electoral mechanisms like voting, those photogenic purple thumbs that we celebrated when Iraq held its first free elections. Liberal democracy comprises popular sovereignty and individual rights not just codified in laws, constitutions, and transparent and fair political procedures and institutions, but also daily reinforced and strengthened through social mores, customs, and habits. This complex nexus of virtues, principles, laws, and customs cannot be bestowed from without, but must develop organically from within, in cultural soil conduce to their growth.<\/p>\n

As the continuing failure of the \u201cArab Spring\u201d revolutions to create genuine democracies shows, the Muslim Middle East is difficult terrain for many of these democratical elements. The cultural and religious impediments are immense. The persistence of tribal and feudal mentalities about women, family honor, clan loyalty, and religious minorities; and Islamic dogmas that subordinate all political and civic life to Allah\u2019s will and the 7th<\/sup>\u00a0century model of Mohammed, are two of the most obvious. After all, in the West, liberal democracy took 2300 years to triumph, and even then, in the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century it faced existential threats from fascism, Nazism, and communism, its victory a close-run thing costing millions of lives. To think we could achieve in a few years what took the West centuries to create was and remains na\u00efve. And to charge our military with building the infrastructure of democracy and civil society at the same time it was called upon to destroy a committed and vicious insurgency was delusional. Don\u2019t forget that Japan\u2019s and Germany\u2019s democracies were built only\u00a0after<\/i>\u00a0the occupying Allies had left both countries in ruins and millions dead.<\/p>\n

Nations for Everybody<\/i><\/p>\n

The rise of the nation-state created the preconditions for the creation of liberal democracy in the West by establishing a \u201cunifying principle,\u201d as political philosopher Pierre Manent writes, for establishing the political \u201ccommunion\u201d that gives citizens a common identity. Yet historically humans have had other \u201cunifying principles,\u201d such as tribal affiliation or religious faith, that give peoples their collective identities. For Muslims, Islam is the unifying force creating the supranational ummah, the global community of the faithful, which is more important than the alien Western concept of nations with distinct identities. The Ayatollah Khomeini, who created the Islamic state of Iran, the most powerful theocracy in the world, allegedly said, \u201cWe do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

After World War I, however, despite these cultural and religious barriers England and France created by fiat new nations in the Muslim Middle East out of the dismantled Ottoman Empire, which had recognized the ethnic and sectarian differences of the region but subjected them to the overall theocratic rule of the Caliph. With an eye to their own national interests, the European victors created artificial, secular sovereign \u201cnations\u201d that ignored those differences. Hence the \u201cnation\u201d of Iraq was cobbled together out of 3 Ottoman Vilayets or provinces that had roughly corresponded to the concentrations of Kurds, Shia, and Sunni. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, whose brutality kept these ethnic and sectarian divisions in check, and now with the departure of the Americans, these conflicts and rivalries have erupted into the violence tearing Iraq apart today. The lesson is that flags, national anthems, and borders do not create nations any more than elections, campaigns, and political parties create democracies.<\/p>\n

Two melancholy conclusions arise from these lessons from Iraq. First, American democracy is unsuited for the consistent, coherent, long-term foreign policy and intervention abroad required to nurture liberal democracy in other countries. Second, Islam\u2019s doctrines and dogmas make creating true liberal democracy \u2013 with its separation of state and religion, tolerance for minorities, and respect for individual human rights and freedom \u2013 even more difficult. Again Khomeini expresses this divide between the West and traditional Islam: \u201cDon\u2019t listen to those who speak of democracy. They all are against Islam. They want to take the nation away from its mission. We will break all the poison pens of those who speak of nationalism, democracy, and such things.\u201d The jihadists rampaging in Syria and Iraq agree, which is why their goal is to restore the caliphate under which Islam dominated the region for centuries.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cataloguing the failures of one president or administration is necessary, but it will not solve these larger problems. Only extraordinary political leadership and vision, and a mind-concentrating existential threat, can overcome those impediments and galvanize the citizens to pay the price and bear the burdens for ensuring our long-term security and national interests.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2009 FrontPage Magazine. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine The unfolding collapse of Iraq\u2019s government before the legions of al Qaeda jihadists is the capstone of Barack Obama\u2019s incompetent and politicized foreign policy. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), armed with plundered American weapons and flush with stolen money, is consolidating a Sunni terrorist state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[28,225,59,842,22,196,230],"tags":[161,1055,1080,975,1061,1016],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1YF","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2437,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/taking-our-eye-off-the-jihadist-ball\/","url_meta":{"origin":7605,"position":0},"title":"Taking Our Eye Off the Jihadist Ball","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Given our economic doldrums and the still metastasizing debt, the legislation raising the debt ceiling won\u2019t keep the economy from dominating the nation\u2019s attention until next year\u2019s election.This means foreign affairs will continue to be an afterthought, at a time when dangerous developments in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1320,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-christmas-gift-to-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":7605,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Christmas Gift to Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. 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Intensifying the fallout of this event has been the Obama administration\u2019s incoherent, clumsy, duplicitous, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2406,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/liberating-libya-for-jihadists\/","url_meta":{"origin":7605,"position":3},"title":"Liberating Libya for Jihadists","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The fall of Muammar Gaddafi is making some in the West giddy with the usual \u201cArab Spring\u201d wishful visions of democracy and freedom flourishing throughout the Muslim Middle East, even as the last binge of democratic intoxication, the fall of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7586,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/americas-middle-east-dilemma\/","url_meta":{"origin":7605,"position":4},"title":"America\u2019s Middle East Dilemma","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Toppling tyrants is ineffective in the long term without years of unpopular occupation. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Two and a half years ago, the U.S. pulled every soldier out of a mostly quiet Iraq. In the void thus created, formerly al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists calling themselves \u201cThe Islamic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"A Tenth Mountain Division soldier in Kirkuk Province, Iraq, 2008. (Photo: Staff Sgt. Samuel Bendet, Via NRO)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/pic_giant_061914_SM_Americas-Middle-East-Dilemma-DVIDS-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6897,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-fruit-of-obamas-abandonment-of-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":7605,"position":5},"title":"The Fruit of Obama’s Abandonment of Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 9, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 Anbar province, the region of Iraq that 1,300 American soldiers died pacifying, is at risk of being taken over by al Qaeda jihadists and their affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Fighting between Iraqi government forces and the jihadists is currently\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iraq"","block_context":{"text":"Iraq","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iraq\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7607,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7605\/revisions\/7607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}