April 23, 2004

The Onus to Succeed is on the Iraqis
Posted by McQ

Ralph Peters says we shouldn't be too discouraged about the fighting presently underway in Iraq, but there are some things we should be troubled about:

* We should be troubled that, in this bloody month, none of the insurgents waved an alternative constitution - unless we count their perversion of the Koran. None of those violent men is fighting for freedom - they're fighting to strangle liberty in the cradle. They are, without exception, forces of reaction, not liberation, no matter how madly al-Jazeera twists the facts.

* Nor did the general Arab population or its leaders take a public stand against those who would renew their oppression. And those who will not defend their own freedom do not deserve to be defended by others.

Ok ... so the guys we're fighting aren't 'freedom fighters'. I think we knew that from the beginning, so sorry Ralph, I'm not at all troubled by that.

However, I AM troubled by the second point. That is the most important point. IF the Iraqis won't stand up to those who would again enslave them, we can't really help them.

As Peters says:

With sufficient troops, we can force Iraq's Arabs to behave. But we can't force them to succeed.

The more I think about this transition scheduled for June 30th, the more I think it is the right thing to do. It is imperative that an IRAQI ministry of defense take charge of defense or an IRAQI ministry of security be the go-to entity for security problems. And that is true across the board ... the sooner, the better.

That doesn't mean we wash our hands of Iraq, pack up and go home. It means we still assist, but that the heavy lifting is done by an IRAQI government and IRAQI citizens, not coalition troops or government.

One can only hope, then, that when THEY have a vested interest in THIER government and its future that they'll stand up and say "that's ENOUGH!"

The questions remains, though, will they indeed do so? Or are they so battered and beaten down by their previous regime that they'll just passively let themselves become enslaved again?

June 30th will begin to give us those answers.

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Comments

An excellent follow-up on Peters is the e-mail posted at Andrew Sullivan's today describing an analogy between Iraq and the emerging democracy in South Africa, what has and hasn't happened over time.

Also proving the very (nearly minuscule) attention span of the LLL.

Check it out at: http://www.andrewsullivan.com/

Posted by: recon at April 23, 2004 10:30 AM

President Bush said "some people don't think arabs can self govern" (paraphrase)- I think the ARABS don't think they can self govern.

But they'll have to.

The arab world needs to grow up.

Posted by: shark at April 23, 2004 01:48 PM

I agree, the Iraqis are fence sitting on their support of us. Why not. Americans urged the Shiites to revolt in southern Iraq in the spring of 1991 after the Gulf War and we allow allowed Saddam to crush their grass-roots revolt. In March 1995 and again in the late summer of 1996, we allowed the Kurds to be attacked by Saddam as we stood by and watched. All one has to do is look to our large cities, where a major problem in fighting crime is the citizens' mistrust of the police and are therefore not supportive. Would you expect less of the Iraqis?

Posted by: Al Reasin at April 23, 2004 07:23 PM