"These are the model citizens of a future democratic Iraq?"
That question must have pounded through the halls of the Pentagon as scenes of massive looting were broadcast around the world. One could almost sense the exasperation in the Bush Administration when, at the very moment of liberation, the Iraqis seemed to be proving themselves unworthy of the effort. But reaction was cautious. Even Donald Rumsfeld was prepared to cut the Iraqis some slack, declaring the looting an opportunity to vent and their wild abandon a natural reaction to 24 years of oppression. He, like many in the Administration, seems to believe that the lawlessness in Baghdad will eventually evaporate and a period of normalcy will ensue.
This is a grievous mistake. What we are witnessing in Baghdad is only the beginning of a long period of instability, marked by violence, civil strife and internal hemorrhaging.
There are two reasons for this.
The first is that Iraq, like many Arab countries in the Middle East, is a steaming cauldron of competing interests, delicately patched together by a secular dictatorship. Strip away the veneer of unity imposed by this leadership and what is revealed is a writhing mass of inter-tribal rivalries, clan jealousies, religious disputes and long held hatreds - all with roots trailing deep into antiquity. From Shi'ite to Sunni, Kurd to Assyrian, Chaldean to Nestorian Christian, Iraq is not unlike the fractured federation once known as Yugoslavia and is just as prone to a seismic outbreak of violence as the commanding authority evaporates.
The second reason is even more pertinent. Iraq is a society that has lived in fear of itself for decades: sons who inform on fathers; religious leaders who are uniformly tortured and forced to denounce their own congregants; young women who must run the gamut of abduction and rape; children who are liable to imprisonment for the slightest infraction. An entire generation in Iraq has come of age conditioned on authoritarian rule and terror. A normal human response to such coercion would be conduct marked by contempt, suspicion and subterfuge.
The Iraqis, in other words, are a brutalized people, for whom the criminality of their former leaders has come to be seen as normative conduct. As a consequence, widespread looting may be viewed not as morally questionable, but as a natural right. After all, if for years a man's property, privacy and basic dignity have been subject to sudden and inexplicable seizure, why is it so hard to imagine that the victims would begin to see all 'rights' as somehow impermanent? That does not mean that Iraqis are now inherently criminal in their conduct or that they will not eventually shake their Husseinist legacy, but it does mean that high expectations of a liberated Iraq are doomed to bitter disappointment.
If anyone wants a glimpse into the next several years of the Iraqi future, a review of post-Soviet Russia might be useful. Within a year of the fall of the Communist Party, the country's economy had tumbled into the grasp of powerful oligarchs - criminals, in more precise language - who effectively ruled the country, abetted by millions of willing accomplices. Many social historians have since concluded that it was not simply the collapse of the old bureaucratic order that gave criminal impulses such free reign, it was more closely related to over 70 years of association with a government that fed its population on a diet of lies and deception, while institutionalizing graft and corruption.
Ba'athism shares a similar ideological trajectory. Anteceded by the Golden Square, a group of colonels who masterminded a coup d'etat in 1941, the Ba'athist ideology closely paralleled Nazism, emphasizing
nationalist priorities over individual rights. A pro-Axis tilt, while disastrous, left in place a proto-fascist orientation that drew on Nazi dogma for inspiration. This is the atmosphere in which Saddam Hussein was schooled. Germany eventually recovered from its Nazi past, because it had a shaky democratic experiment in the Weimar Republic to which to refer. Iraq does not even have that dubious model.
Much print has been given over to the necessity of building democracy in Iraq, but the very basic steps for doing so have been neglected. Any gardener can tell you that rooting out only half the weed ensures that its return will be more vigorous the second time ?round. The eradication of Ba'athism will, therefore, take more than merely arresting Ba'athist leaders or closing down party headquarters. It will require wholesale and systematic re-education of an entire population. Propaganda that predicts the sudden flowering of democracy and the protection of human rights in such inhospitable soil is at best reckless, at worst destructive. Allied claims of victory aside, it is clear that the true liberation of the Iraqi people has yet to begin.
--------------------------------------------------------
Avi Davis is the senior fellow of the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies and the senior editorial columnist for the on-line magazine Jewsweek.com.
That question must have pounded through the halls of the Pentagon as scenes of massive looting were broadcast around the world. One could almost sense the exasperation in the Bush Administration when, at the very moment of liberation, the Iraqis seemed to be proving themselves unworthy of the effort. But reaction was cautious. Even Donald Rumsfeld was prepared to cut the Iraqis some slack, declaring the looting an opportunity to vent and their wild abandon a natural reaction to 24 years of oppression. He, like many in the Administration, seems to believe that the lawlessness in Baghdad will eventually evaporate and a period of normalcy will ensue.
This is a grievous mistake. What we are witnessing in Baghdad is only the beginning of a long period of instability, marked by violence, civil strife and internal hemorrhaging.
There are two reasons for this.
The first is that Iraq, like many Arab countries in the Middle East, is a steaming cauldron of competing interests, delicately patched together by a secular dictatorship. Strip away the veneer of unity imposed by this leadership and what is revealed is a writhing mass of inter-tribal rivalries, clan jealousies, religious disputes and long held hatreds - all with roots trailing deep into antiquity. From Shi'ite to Sunni, Kurd to Assyrian, Chaldean to Nestorian Christian, Iraq is not unlike the fractured federation once known as Yugoslavia and is just as prone to a seismic outbreak of violence as the commanding authority evaporates.
The second reason is even more pertinent. Iraq is a society that has lived in fear of itself for decades: sons who inform on fathers; religious leaders who are uniformly tortured and forced to denounce their own congregants; young women who must run the gamut of abduction and rape; children who are liable to imprisonment for the slightest infraction. An entire generation in Iraq has come of age conditioned on authoritarian rule and terror. A normal human response to such coercion would be conduct marked by contempt, suspicion and subterfuge.
The Iraqis, in other words, are a brutalized people, for whom the criminality of their former leaders has come to be seen as normative conduct. As a consequence, widespread looting may be viewed not as morally questionable, but as a natural right. After all, if for years a man's property, privacy and basic dignity have been subject to sudden and inexplicable seizure, why is it so hard to imagine that the victims would begin to see all 'rights' as somehow impermanent? That does not mean that Iraqis are now inherently criminal in their conduct or that they will not eventually shake their Husseinist legacy, but it does mean that high expectations of a liberated Iraq are doomed to bitter disappointment.
If anyone wants a glimpse into the next several years of the Iraqi future, a review of post-Soviet Russia might be useful. Within a year of the fall of the Communist Party, the country's economy had tumbled into the grasp of powerful oligarchs - criminals, in more precise language - who effectively ruled the country, abetted by millions of willing accomplices. Many social historians have since concluded that it was not simply the collapse of the old bureaucratic order that gave criminal impulses such free reign, it was more closely related to over 70 years of association with a government that fed its population on a diet of lies and deception, while institutionalizing graft and corruption.
Ba'athism shares a similar ideological trajectory. Anteceded by the Golden Square, a group of colonels who masterminded a coup d'etat in 1941, the Ba'athist ideology closely paralleled Nazism, emphasizing
nationalist priorities over individual rights. A pro-Axis tilt, while disastrous, left in place a proto-fascist orientation that drew on Nazi dogma for inspiration. This is the atmosphere in which Saddam Hussein was schooled. Germany eventually recovered from its Nazi past, because it had a shaky democratic experiment in the Weimar Republic to which to refer. Iraq does not even have that dubious model.
Much print has been given over to the necessity of building democracy in Iraq, but the very basic steps for doing so have been neglected. Any gardener can tell you that rooting out only half the weed ensures that its return will be more vigorous the second time ?round. The eradication of Ba'athism will, therefore, take more than merely arresting Ba'athist leaders or closing down party headquarters. It will require wholesale and systematic re-education of an entire population. Propaganda that predicts the sudden flowering of democracy and the protection of human rights in such inhospitable soil is at best reckless, at worst destructive. Allied claims of victory aside, it is clear that the true liberation of the Iraqi people has yet to begin.
--------------------------------------------------------
Avi Davis is the senior fellow of the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies and the senior editorial columnist for the on-line magazine Jewsweek.com.