Category | Op Ed

QARI - How we have it bass-ackwards

Published on August 22, 2006 by The Sentinel

Democracy, delivered full-blown by the U.S. to the politically starving masses of Iraq, is supposed to be the solution to America’s long-term interests in the Middle East. Unfortunately, all our invasion and mandated elections have wrought so far is death, destruction and a finally acknowledged civil war. Is this what our military planners anticipated? Is this what Congress authorized the Bush administration to produce? Of course, if your simple-minded mantra is “Freedom and Democracy For All” and you believe that military force can be used to impose personal freedoms and a working democracy on people with no history of either, then you should not be surprised at the Slough of Despond in which we now find ourselves.

For want of a nail a shoe was lost,
for want of a shoe a horse was lost,
for want of a horse a rider was lost,
for want of a rider an army was lost,
for want of an army a battle was lost,
for want of a battle the war was lost,
for want of the war the kingdom was lost,
and all for the want of a little horseshoe nail.
      from Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richards         Almanac”:

    Democracy, delivered full-blown by the U.S. to the politically starving masses of Iraq, is supposed to be the solution to America’s long-term interests in the Middle East. Unfortunately, all our invasion and mandated elections have wrought so far is death, destruction and a finally acknowledged civil war. Is this what our military planners anticipated? Is this what Congress authorized the Bush administration to produce? Of course, if your simple-minded mantra is “Freedom and Democracy For All” and you believe that military force can be used to impose personal freedoms and a working democracy on people with no history of either, then you should not be surprised at the Slough of Despond in which we now find ourselves.
    When we realize that full democracy, with all adult citizens voting for representatives in a republican form of government, was only achieved in the U.S. and Britain in the last one hundred years, and in most other democratic countries since the end of World War II in 1945, we are forced to realize that democracy takes time to implement and requires certain preconditions.
Among those preconditions are:
1.    Order and security. People need to feel secure in their homes, places of worship and places of work. Without such security, there can be no
2.    Stability. Stability provides some level of certainty about the future. Without such stability, no one is wiling to undertake even rudimentary
3.    Trade and industry. Trade may start at the barter or black-market level, but it is fundamental to providing personal property worth accumulating and protecting. Without such interest in property and trade, there is no interest in the
4.    Rule of Law. Laws provide peoples within a society the ability to conduct business [contracts] and their personal lives in a predictable way. Laws may be established by a monarch or by an elected legislature - what matters is that the laws are accepted by the people. Without the acceptance of the Rule of Law, there will be no opportunity to evolve a
5.    National Will and Common Purpose. The people must want to govern themselves, independent of any other ruler or state. Whether at Runnymede in 1215, or at Philadelphia in 1776 or Paris several times since 1789, governments established by and for a people are historically a product of those people. Even when there is such a will and purpose, people may not be able to successfully establish a
6.    Democracy. What we would normally call a democracy is a state governed by popularly elected legislators, with general acceptance of both national identity and the rule of law. The people engage in trade and industry of their own choosing because there is order and stability, along with some minimum level of personal freedoms.
    What is the current situation in Iraq? We have an elected government that cannot exert control over the capitol city, much less the rest of the country. Of the three dominant groups of Iraqis in the government, the Sunnis, the Shia and the Kurds, none fully supports the government. The Sunnis and the Shia are engaged in an undeclared civil war. The Kurds want the country broken apart and are already operating their area in the northeast as an autonomous enclave. The bottom line is that there is no Iraqi national will to be a country, much less a democratic one. There is no rule of law. It is impossible for industry to develop or for any but the smallest of businesses exist. There is no stability and there is no order and security, particularly in Baghdad.

For want of order and security, there will be no stability,
for want of stability, there will be no property of value and trade,
for want of property and trade, there will be no respect for the rule of law,
for want of the rule of law, the people will form no common will and purpose,
for want of a national will and purpose, there will be no democracy, and
for want of Iraqi democracy, the American purpose for being there is lost.

    Even if we assume that there was a good and sufficient rationale for ousting Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, we are forced to recognize that both the planning of the war and the management of its aftermath have been national disasters for us. The actual capabilities of our military have been reduced. Worse, the weaknesses of our military have been exposed to everyone paying the slightest attention to the debacle in Iraq. Worst of all is the loss of national prestige that the US has suffered. We may still be a superpower, but now we are one that few want to be associated with.
    What comes to mind is not another pithy saying from Ben Franklin. Rather, something from the brothers Grimm – the story about the emperor [Rumsfeld and/or Cheney] having no clothes.