With the American elections out of the way, it is, perhaps, time to discuss the issues without partisan calculations. One issue of immediate interest, which also dominated the American election campaign, is Iraq.
For more than a year Iraq was used as a stick to beat President George W. Bush. People who disliked Bush for different reasons, some legitimate; some not, were not interested in Iraq as such. They were interested in using Iraq as an additional pin to stick into their object of hatred.
The deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein must be wondering in his prison about the strange coalition that has emerged to lament his destitution. My guess is that few members of that coalition really loved Saddam or were sorry to see him go. Their real aim in portraying the liberation of Iraq as a disaster was to damage Bush’s chances of re-election. With the election now over it is time to return to the real Iraq, treating the issue on its merits, and not for Bush-bashing. Far from being a disaster, the liberation of Iraq is certain to enter history as a success.
Here is why.
A relatively small force of coalition allies and US conquered the whole of Iraq, a country the size of France, in just three weeks, and with minimum casualties.
Mesopotamia, a land that has seen many conquerors over the last 3000 years, had never seen so speedy a victory. Cyrus the Great needed six months to seize it, and Alexander put in four. Crassus, the great Roman general, lost his army there, and was captured and killed. Mark Anthony failed to subdue it and had to flee in the only ignominious retreat in his brilliant military career. Roman Emperor Julian, too, was killed there, leaving his legions to negotiate a retreat. Emperor Valerianus was captured with his entire legion and taken into slavery. More recently, the British needed four years to conquer and stabilize the land.
Next, it must not be hard to admit that getting rid of Saddam was a noble act, and that the world is a better place without him. Saddam’s regime was the most vicious the Arabs had seen in a long time, and the only one since World War I to have used chemical weapons, including against his own people. Also, Iraq under Saddam was the only country ever to be formally at war with the whole of the United Nations, and the only one to have violated 12 mandatory resolutions of the Security Council for almost 13 years. In short, Saddam was a criminal who had to be deposed and brought to justice on charges of crimes against humanity. That George W. Bush, whom one may like or dislike, did this should not make us forget the fact.
There are, of course, those who mock the notion of “imposing democracy by force”.
What has happened in Iraq, however, was not imposing democracy by force. It was removing those who used force to prevent the emergence of democracy. Using force to remove impediments to democracy is nothing new. It has happened many times in history. The English and French revolutions were instances of using force to break the structures of tyranny that prevented democracy from emerging. Today, India is the world’s largest democracy because the British used force there to destroy the feudal society of Maharajas and Nawabs and other despots who would never have allowed the people any say in decision-making.
That is also what happened in postwar Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, among others. If, as I am confident will be the case, Iraq moves toward democracy, the use of force to remove its enemies from power would be more than justified.
Bringing democracy to Iraq, or anywhere else for that matter is not an act of charity on the part of the US. It is vital for ensuring America’s national security. Democracies do not attack one another; nor do they breed international terrorism.
What about the postwar situation in Iraq? The image created, mostly by television, is one of a land in turmoil with no bright prospects. That image was useful to beat Bush with. Now that the election is over, it is, perhaps, time, to present a more balanced image as Iraq begins to chart its way to the future.
In facing an insurgency mixed with terrorism, Iraq is not alone in the Muslim world. In the past three decades 22 Muslim countries, from Malaysia to Algeria, through Turkey and Egypt, have suffered similar experiences.
Malaysia needed 14 years to crush terrorist insurgents, at the cost of 25,000 lives. It took Egypt two decades to defeat its terrorists. The cost was some 20,000 lives, among them a president and a prime minister, and scores of other officials, assassinated by terrorists. Turkey’s experience with terrorism claimed 30,000 lives over more than 15 years. Algeria’s war on terrorism has lasted for 12 years and claimed more than 150,000 lives.
Judging by the standards of other Muslim countries the terrorist-insurgency problem in Iraq is, in fact, below average. Iraq’s terrorist-insurgents have not been able to upset any aspect of the plan for progress toward democracy. This week the election register was posted, to be finalized in the next few weeks. In 10 weeks’ time Iraqis will be able to vote in their first free elections just as Afghans did last month. Provided the US stays the course, as promised by the re-elected President Bush, Iraq may be well on its way to pluralism within the next two to three years.
Here is a simple test to find out how things are going in Iraq.
Noam Chomsky’s prophesy that, if Saddam were deposed, six million Iraqis would die of hunger and disease has proved false. There is more food in Iraq than anytime in the past three decades, and almost all of Iraq’s hospitals are once again operational after 13 years. For the first time in four decades Iraqis are not becoming refugees in large numbers. On the contrary, more than 1.8 million refugees have returned home since liberation, some after decades of exile.
Predictions of civil war or Sunni-Shiite conflict have proved false as political parties across the religious and ethnic divide prepare a national list of candidates for the coming elections.
Iraq’s economy is beginning to revive. An exhaustive study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates Iraq’s growth rate at a staggering 56 percent for the past 12 months. It also predicts that Iraq will become “the engine of growth” for the entire region’s economy. Not surprisingly, the Bush-bashing media ignored the IMF because it gave Iraq high marks. The IMF assessment, however, is confirmed by the fact that the new Iraqi currency, the dinar, has risen in value against both the US dollar and a basket of regional oil-based currencies. Pilgrims are also returning to Iraq’s “holy cities”. In the past 12 months or so Najaf and Karbala have attracted more than eight million visitors, including large numbers from India, Pakistan, the Gulf and Iran.
Despite the mistakes made both by the US-led coalition and the new Iraqi leadership, the liberation of Iraq has been and remains a success. Iraq has a good chance of becoming a model for other Arab and Muslim nations. There is only one condition: The US and its allies should do “what it takes”, as Bush has promised.
With the election over, it is, perhaps time, for both sides of the American political divide to see Iraq as a success, and help consolidate it. One way to do that is to send a bipartisan team to Iraq to prepare a nonpartisan report on the situation there, and make recommendations for a bipartisan policy to ensure Iraq’s speedier transition to democracy.
Those who wanted Iraq to fail because they really wanted Bush to fail should now realize that failure in Iraq is not in anyone’s interest.
