Monday, January 22, 2007

IRAQ - Ever A Functioning Democracy?

Jan/22/07

For two years we have expected republicanism to gain traction in the Mid East.
From a posting from this center of Feb/27/05: Realists have maintained that the Mid East is the least hospitable place in the world for a democracy. They are mistaken. What is true is that for the past 45 years a civilization gap has continued to widen between this region and so many other parts of the world. Arab countries have aped western ideas but sought to implement these through state power - capitalist dictatorships that don’t work. The inevitable decay and failure, the brutality of rule have together bred a growing yet sub-surface counterculture of resistance. It is this reservoir of internal pressure and agitation, before constrained or crushed by ruling thugs that now will be married to an enlightened US agenda, ultimately transforming the entire region.

Were we wrong? No. Expecting too much too early from our newborn? Yes.

American patriots too worried after independence that the building blocks might not actually exist. Some lost hope. "We are not," said Charles Lee in 1777, "materials for such divine manufacture."

The war, Robert Livingston told Gouverneur Morris in 1779, had not produced the effect "expected from it upon the manners of the people." There was disappointment that the people, having been given a considerable amount of power by the new state constitutions (most written in 1776) were not qualified to handle it; corruption, vice, licentiousness, uprisings - all seemed common, and everywhere. Benjamin Franklin noted that, "We have been guarding against one evil - the excess of power in the rulers but our present danger seems to be the defect of obedience in the subjects."

The people it seemed were not self sacrificing, the spirit of compromise seemed nowhere to be found. Jeremy Belknap writing in 1784 could say that although America had seemed the fittest place in the world for a republican experiment, the child now seemed to be going the way of the parent, "dissipated and corrupted even as it got on its feet." William Livingston, reflecting the general disappointment in early 1787, concluded that, "Americans do not exhibit the virtue that is necessary to support a republican government."

But of course we know from hindsight that in 1787 there was indeed reason for hope; in fact what Carol Berkin called in "A Brilliant Solution" was soon to take life. Some contemporaries saw that too. Benjamin Rush admonished those who had lost faith. It was absurd he said for Americans to "cry out, after the experience of three of four years, that we are not proper materials for republican government. Remember, we assumed these forms of government in a hurry, before we were prepared for them." Finally, he concluded that, "it remains yet to effect a revolution in our principles, opinions, and manners so as to accommodate them to the forms of government we have adopted." "Let us have patience. Our republican forms of government will in time beget republican opinions and manners. All will end well."

And so it did. Re Iraq - And so it will.

Robert Craven

Monday, January 08, 2007

IRAQ - An Update

Jan/08/07
IRAQ - An Update

We predicted Nov/17 that US policy re Iraq for 2007 would 1) look to increase US troop levels by 30M to secure Baghdad first, then expand outwards, 2) direct more $ and commitment to the training of Iraqi forces, and 3) look for a political solution in the sculpting of an entirely new coalition.
Most of the plan for 2007 has now been leaked. In the largest sense, the mission will be to balance the effort to enhance Iraqi military competence with a US-assisted aim to secure the population, beginning with Baghdad. Securing the population was never a priority for us. It has now become the primary mission.. At least 20,000 more US troops will land with the militants in their cross hairs, and key, with expanded rules of engagement.
The notion is that by securing the population a re-formed government can, finally, exercise its sovereign powers. Thus, the Administration has pressed Maliki and Co to ostracize al-Sadr (whose party claims 30 seats in parliament), building a coalition of so-called "moderate parties". The new coalition we predict will eliminate al-Sadr loyalists altogether and replace them with other Shiites, then Kurds or moderate Sunnis. Finally, and a key component of the new plan (something we failed to highlight in Nov) is a jobs program intended to employ would-be hoodlums, including proposals for increased economic aid.
The military component of the plan is roughly patterned on that attempt to secure (meaning take and hold) Baghdad last summer, an operation that failed due to the shortage of US man power and Maliki’s unwillingness to agree to raids against the militia loyal to al-Sadr. That militia escaped because their power base is a strong supporter of Maliki in the assembly. Now, Maliki, no longer one of the willfully blind, has seen the light.
As their part of this agreement, Iraqi forces are beginning a neighborhood by neighborhood assault on militants, meaning Sunni insurgents and Shia death squads; these forces will eventually have responsibility for holding inner Baghdad while US forces partnered with Iraqis, will be in charge of surrounding areas, ever expanding their control.
More later.
Bob