Advice to the Iraqi People
I had a good talk today with a friend who voted for George Bush. In the lead up to the war, my friend and I had disagreed about the justification of proceeding, but we now seem to be in agreement that the war was a mistake or at least that the planning for what would happen after the initial military victory was unacceptably poor.
The primary concern of my friend is how we are now going to get out of Iraq. I share that concern but also am concerned about what we are going to learn from our mistakes in going into Iraq in the first place. This latter concern is a more long range one - our nation still disagrees on what we learned from the Vietnam war, as was still apparent in this Presidential election.
Most Americans want us to stabilize Iraq and let Iraqis freely vote for their own leaders to govern their country, presumably as a democracy favorable to America. Elections will take place and they will be heavily influenced by the American occupation presence and the ongoing fog of war. I have no delusions that the election results will be a true measure of the voice of the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people are not experienced in having an electoral voice, they have serious internal differences and the US is going to influence and control the electoral process to insure an outcome acceptable to the US.
Granted the American people did not follow my advice to vote for Kerry, I would still like to offer my sincere advice to the Iraqi people. My first advice is to do what America has not yet done about Vietnam - reach agreement about what lesson should be learned from the rise and fall of Saddam. You can argue among yourselves about the US having supported Saddam on the rise and about who was helped and who hurt by Saddam. You can argue about whether Saddam should have been overthrown by Iraqis and why that did not happen and about what the true motives of the US were in invading Iraq. Have these arguments and then put them behind you. Those questions are all remnants of a long history of foreign domination which you now have the opportunity to end.
Iraqis, how best to end the American occupation and avoid foreign domination? America has been an occupier before in other places and those occupations ended reasonably soon and foreign domination did not become a problem. American military presence, however, has been maintained in most all of those places, in the form of US bases on foreign soil. If you let America do what it wants and co-operate with America in order to allow it to end the occupation as early as possible, you will probably have to initially proceed in ways that make America most comfortable, but then with time your own true voice can emerge more, even if it disagrees with America. Disagreement with America will not cause America to use its military bases in your country against your people. You will be respected as a sovereign nation and disagreements resolved by diplomacy.
Vietnam is the one case where American attempts to conquer and occupy were thwarted. Vietnam is an independent sovereign nation, without US military bases. Iraqis, can your country become the second Vietnam? I do not believe it can, because of significant differences. Vietnam had actually been divided into two countries, with a popular government in North Vietnam allied with large and popular insurgents in South Vietnam to unify the country over objections from a somewhat unpopular South Vietnamese government. The US became involved in South Vietnam to help keep the South Vietnamese government in power. The will of the Vietnamese people to fight and die to unify their country under a popular Vietnamese leader proved stronger than the will of the American people to continue a 10 year guerilla war in a country Americans ultimately decided was not worth the lives of more than 50,000 Americans.
Iraq is not Vietnam. There is no popular Iraq leader or nationalistic drive for unifying a divided country. Your military has been defeated and your dictator deposed and imprisoned. Your country is occupied, and the insurgency has nowhere near the depth and breadth of the Vietnam conflict. Islamic fundamentalist militants may have aligned with some generic occupation foes, but the militants are at least as dangerous to your country as are the Americans - both of them are killing your people and blaming it on the other.
Iraqis you need to bring the violence to an end by taking the side of the Americans on this issue and calling for an end to all violence. You need to take to the streets in mass demonstrations against the violence and you need to turn against the violent militant insurgents. Help America restore order. Then turn to the elections and vote. Vote for candidates who are pledged to reject violence and restore order and security. I know that you will not really have a wide range of choices. But go with what you have and you can build on it in the future elections.
America wants to end the occupation as soon as possible, even if they want to keep US military bases on your soil indefinitely. Try to think of the bases as permanent American tourist facilities and figure out legitimate ways to make money for Iraqis, just as other nations have done with US bases in their countries. Americans are an enterprising lot, especially the greediest capitalists, so they will try to get even richer on your resources, especially oil. That is the way it works, even in America, and all you can do is try to use your power of the vote to elect a government that will put some restraints on the greed for the benefit of the public. The willingness of the government to protect the people rather than look out for the greedy special interests will vary with elected administrations, the current Bush administration in America being an example of one more beholden to rich, special interests.
A last piece of advice has to do with the Constitutional structure of your new government. Democracy is not a perfect way to run a government, but it is the best system ever devised, so set up a democracy. But equally important is a bill of rights guaranteeing freedoms to individuals, one of the most important being to protect the right of each individual to religious freedom. Religious freedom means not only the right to choose whether to worship and worship however you choose, but also means that the government will not in any way endorse religion in general or any particular religion.
We Americans are divided in our politics, as the 51-48 election result showed. But all Americans are united in truly wanting the Iraqi people to be able to live peacefully and happily in a freedom of your own making.
The primary concern of my friend is how we are now going to get out of Iraq. I share that concern but also am concerned about what we are going to learn from our mistakes in going into Iraq in the first place. This latter concern is a more long range one - our nation still disagrees on what we learned from the Vietnam war, as was still apparent in this Presidential election.
Most Americans want us to stabilize Iraq and let Iraqis freely vote for their own leaders to govern their country, presumably as a democracy favorable to America. Elections will take place and they will be heavily influenced by the American occupation presence and the ongoing fog of war. I have no delusions that the election results will be a true measure of the voice of the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people are not experienced in having an electoral voice, they have serious internal differences and the US is going to influence and control the electoral process to insure an outcome acceptable to the US.
Granted the American people did not follow my advice to vote for Kerry, I would still like to offer my sincere advice to the Iraqi people. My first advice is to do what America has not yet done about Vietnam - reach agreement about what lesson should be learned from the rise and fall of Saddam. You can argue among yourselves about the US having supported Saddam on the rise and about who was helped and who hurt by Saddam. You can argue about whether Saddam should have been overthrown by Iraqis and why that did not happen and about what the true motives of the US were in invading Iraq. Have these arguments and then put them behind you. Those questions are all remnants of a long history of foreign domination which you now have the opportunity to end.
Iraqis, how best to end the American occupation and avoid foreign domination? America has been an occupier before in other places and those occupations ended reasonably soon and foreign domination did not become a problem. American military presence, however, has been maintained in most all of those places, in the form of US bases on foreign soil. If you let America do what it wants and co-operate with America in order to allow it to end the occupation as early as possible, you will probably have to initially proceed in ways that make America most comfortable, but then with time your own true voice can emerge more, even if it disagrees with America. Disagreement with America will not cause America to use its military bases in your country against your people. You will be respected as a sovereign nation and disagreements resolved by diplomacy.
Vietnam is the one case where American attempts to conquer and occupy were thwarted. Vietnam is an independent sovereign nation, without US military bases. Iraqis, can your country become the second Vietnam? I do not believe it can, because of significant differences. Vietnam had actually been divided into two countries, with a popular government in North Vietnam allied with large and popular insurgents in South Vietnam to unify the country over objections from a somewhat unpopular South Vietnamese government. The US became involved in South Vietnam to help keep the South Vietnamese government in power. The will of the Vietnamese people to fight and die to unify their country under a popular Vietnamese leader proved stronger than the will of the American people to continue a 10 year guerilla war in a country Americans ultimately decided was not worth the lives of more than 50,000 Americans.
Iraq is not Vietnam. There is no popular Iraq leader or nationalistic drive for unifying a divided country. Your military has been defeated and your dictator deposed and imprisoned. Your country is occupied, and the insurgency has nowhere near the depth and breadth of the Vietnam conflict. Islamic fundamentalist militants may have aligned with some generic occupation foes, but the militants are at least as dangerous to your country as are the Americans - both of them are killing your people and blaming it on the other.
Iraqis you need to bring the violence to an end by taking the side of the Americans on this issue and calling for an end to all violence. You need to take to the streets in mass demonstrations against the violence and you need to turn against the violent militant insurgents. Help America restore order. Then turn to the elections and vote. Vote for candidates who are pledged to reject violence and restore order and security. I know that you will not really have a wide range of choices. But go with what you have and you can build on it in the future elections.
America wants to end the occupation as soon as possible, even if they want to keep US military bases on your soil indefinitely. Try to think of the bases as permanent American tourist facilities and figure out legitimate ways to make money for Iraqis, just as other nations have done with US bases in their countries. Americans are an enterprising lot, especially the greediest capitalists, so they will try to get even richer on your resources, especially oil. That is the way it works, even in America, and all you can do is try to use your power of the vote to elect a government that will put some restraints on the greed for the benefit of the public. The willingness of the government to protect the people rather than look out for the greedy special interests will vary with elected administrations, the current Bush administration in America being an example of one more beholden to rich, special interests.
A last piece of advice has to do with the Constitutional structure of your new government. Democracy is not a perfect way to run a government, but it is the best system ever devised, so set up a democracy. But equally important is a bill of rights guaranteeing freedoms to individuals, one of the most important being to protect the right of each individual to religious freedom. Religious freedom means not only the right to choose whether to worship and worship however you choose, but also means that the government will not in any way endorse religion in general or any particular religion.
We Americans are divided in our politics, as the 51-48 election result showed. But all Americans are united in truly wanting the Iraqi people to be able to live peacefully and happily in a freedom of your own making.
posted by Tom Blake | 1:09 PM
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