Now Is No Time to Go Wobbly in Iraq

It's time to face facts. If President Bush's approval rating dropped after he requested 87 billions of dollars for Iraqi reconstruction, it is because the American people are not feeling particularly kindly towards the Iraqi people. And why should they? After all, the Iraqis are killing their sons and daughters, bad mouthing the United States, blaming the coalition for everything that is wrong with their country and failing to turn in not only Saddam and his cronies but those who are undermining the coalition efforts to rebuild the country. To add insult to injury, at the recent UN meeting the governing council seemed to side with France! Even if they are right, Ahmad Chalabi and company should have chosen a more opportune time to make their case.

So the administration should stop waxing lyrical about the poor Iraqi people, the number of reopened schools, hospitals and court houses or the other useful infra structure improvements the occupation forces made. Its time to admit that choosing to emphasize the WMD issue was a mistake. Instead, the administration should admit that just as stopping the Balkan havoc created by Slobodan Milosevic was the last necessary step to insure peace in Europe, overthrowing Saddam's Baath murderous expansionist regime was the first necessary step towards securing peace in the Middle East. What the administration must do at this moment is to explain to the American people the bad behavior of the Iraqi people, the reasons it is in their own interest to sacrifice life and treasure to remake Iraq and, last but not least, the reason they believe it to be doable.

Nobody likes ingrates and newly liberated people tend to behave as ingrates. Thus, according to Biblical liturgy, it took God mere months to get fed up with the constant whining and ingratitude exhibited by the post-Exodus Israelites. The Israelites took no time to forget the ten plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea and the falling of the Manna. "Did you take us out of Egypt only to let us die in the desert?" they inquired when asked to face down the Canaanites. Distrusting God and Moses they sought to appoint another leader who would return them to slavery in Egypt.

Freedom is scary and slavery teaches risk aversion. That is the basic truth the administration failed to take into account in its post-war planning. It is difficult for free people to appreciate the disabling effects of living under constant fear especially since enslaved people seem so intelligent and normal. Note Madeleine Albright's comment on Syria, the other Baathist state: "My sense was that Syria would change ,overnight if the Assad regime's boot were lifted from its neck. Syria possesses a literate population, a relatively enlightened attitude towards women, and ancient cosmopolitan trading culture. It could be a key to bringing the Middle East fully into the 21st Century if it people were no living under what amounts to a police state." This is precisely what the Bush administration expected of Iraq. But it is not the way newly liberated people behave now or then.

So, what can a liberator do? A fed up God wished to smite the Israelites and start anew with the descendants of Moses. Moses pointed out the irreparable harm such a course of action would cause God's long term goal of remaking these pesky Israelites into "a light unto the nations" by spreading the tradition of law based rule. When the world hears that you destroyed the people whom you personally led out of bondage, Moses argued, they will say you did so because you were incapable of bringing them to the promised land. Moses won the argument. God punished the rebel leaders and their direct supporters but put up with the multitude. "Be kind to us," their descendant since pray, "for the sake of Thy Name!"

If God could not afford to undermine his own credibility by letting the Israelites perish in the desert, the United States certainly cannot afford to walk away from Iraq. Credibility matters. No deterrence is possible without it. Recent internal and external criticisms have already strengthened the hands of the Islamists. Note the following paragraph in the September 13, 2003 Ansar Al Islam call for Iraqis to increase their guerrilla attacks against coalition forces in Iraq:

InshaAllah, there are good omens coming soon. We watched the Christians, the slaves of the cross, the Protestants, the Jews both guards and slaves, Americans, British and their followers cry out asking for help and relief from the UN organization to support their aggression . . . a matter that made all the countries scoff at them, in particular France as it published in the press. The fire of sedition has started among their leaders! I want you to know that you're the ones who made them taste the bitters of distress and tribulation with the help of Allah. You placed in them fear and terror and their soldiers have began to run away from Iraq.

Why? Because the Westerners wish for peace or in the Proclamation's language, "fighting them is their torture. To be able to stay the course, the administration must explain to the American people the degree to which Iraq was a true slave state.

In his book The New Iraq; Rebuilding the Country, for Its People, the Middle East, and the World, Joseph Braude writes: "In 1994 Saddam issued an order to cut off the ears of persons who failed to report to their military duty or who left their commissions without authorization. By using this cruel method, the regime evoked memories of ancient times. Section 282 of the world's first code of law, legislated by Hammurabi of Babylon over 2500 years ago decreed: "If a slave say to his master, 'You are not my master,' if they convict him his master shall cut off his ear." The evocation of ancient laws of slavery unwittingly reinforced many Iraqis' feeling of enslavement to their state."

Unwittingly or not, Islamists use the Quran and the Hadiths (sayings of Mohammed) to echo the slavery theme with demands of unquestioning obedience to the leader. In the aforementioned Ansar al Islam proclamation, Mohammed is quoted as saying: "Who obeys me, he obeys Allah and who disobeys me disobeys Allah, Who obeys the leader, obeys me and who disobeys the leader, disobeys me." And "He who hates something from his leader, he has to endure." In other words, a leader like Saddam deserves obedience regardless of his venality. A good Moslem, argue the writers of the proclamation, unlike the other "people of the book" endures because he, unlike his enemies, is not "greedy" for life. "As you are desirous for victory or martyrdom, they are desirous for life. Allah Almighty says: "And thou wilt find them greediest of mankind for life and (greedier) than the idolaters. Each one of them would like to be allowed to live a thousand years."

To convince the American people of the worthiness of their cause, the Bush administration must also explain to the American people that the Islamists cannot be appeased or contained because they are not rebelling against specific American or Western policies.

Indeed, they are seeking to defeat a culture which values life over death and freedom of choice over obedience to a leader and peace over war. To defeat the Islamist the United States must demonstrate that the peoples of the Middle East like the peoples of Europe can be taught that prerequisite skill of the 21st century - self government. Why Iraq? Because the American coalition owed it to start with them after the additional misery 12 years of Saddam Hussein containment inflicted on them. Why in 2003? Because 9/11 made clear that additional waiting will be reckless. The failure of Washington to stay the course in Germany after World War I caused World War II. It was not the German people who were changed by the Second World War, it was the American people

Is the remaking of such a slave culture doable? And if so can Americans do it? That was the question which no longer was asked in 1945. Americans knew the remaking was not a matter of choice but a matter of life and death. "The German Mind: Our Greatest Problem" was the name of a New York Times Magazine article authored by Brigadier General Edwin L. Sibert (Assistant Chief of Staff, Army Intelligence, USFET) and published on February 17, 1946, approximately a year after the beginning of the Allied occupation of Germany. Why? Because the occupation was getting terrible press, deNazification seemed a sham, democratization did not seem to be catching on , and British intelligence was warning of a possible revolt. Then as now, to be convinced of the importance of staying the course, the American people had to understand the nature of the problem faced by the occupation forces.

Siebert saw Germans as robots or slaves. "We are up against at least two hundred years of German history. Frederick William I, King of Prussia, created the basis of a Prussian civil service which in the end produced the type of "little man" who elected Hitler, the type of which Hitler represented. This human robot was a fabulous creature. . . This robot civil servant was bred quite as carefully and trained to perform certain tricks just as the greyhounds were. These tricks were performed at the slightest command - unthinkingly and irrevocable. Sometimes these tricks included brutalities, and these were carried out as dispassionately as an inventory." "Outside this ruler-slave relationship," Siebert goes on "stood a small class of German scholars and artists. Some of them, consciously or unconsciously, provided the dope with which the rulers could compensate their robots."

The dope was German nationalism which the military defeat in and of itself did not erase. An interview with students at Erlangen published the following day made that crystal clear. The students not only refused to accept any responsibility for Nazi atrocities but resented émigrés. They did not want to be told that they were "responsible for things as they were." We had fought for their country, they told reporters, "while people who are supposed to be the German leaders . . . were keeping quiet in Germany or even helping the enemies outside Germany. Nor did they withdraw their support for Hitler's decision to war: "Germany was not wrong to go to War," another student opined, " If she had not, she would have been strangled by England, France and Poland."

The reporter ended the article thus:

There is no great enthusiasm for a democratic Germany among the students, and almost no idea about the workings of a free society. This is understandable in view of the age of most of the students. They have never known anything but an authoritarian government.

But what is frightening is that they think of the Government only as a vehicle for creating a strong Germany.

"Germany is weak now," one said, "But she will not always be weak. We must regain our rightful place in Europe under a strong government. That is why we are here."

He explained that Germany "will need educated men with a background of war service" to lead her people in the future, since "the whole people has gone through war and will naturally accept us as leaders." He admitted that there was no political party that he was willing to join at present but, if the students of Erlangen are any criterion, there soon will be.

Then, unlike now, the editors of the New York Times admitted the problem but refused to contemplate defeat. With minor changes its February 25th editorial entitled "Crossroads in Germany" can be easily read as "Crossroads in Iraq" and their conclusions then are valid now:

All we can be sure of is that the Nazi (Islamist) doctrines are not carried in the germ plasm. They, and the brutal tradition from which they sprang, were educated in, and can be educated out, though the process will be long and difficult. Many of the veterans may be beyond saving, but if the right atmosphere can be created in Germany (Iraq) there is hope for their younger brothers and sisters. The problem of occupation is to create that right atmosphere. In a few instances, as in the local elections, the job has been begun. Most of it still lies ahead.

Whether its worthy or not, the American government must remake Iraq for the same reason it remade Germany, for the sake of the United States of America.