These are heady days for a news junkie. The elections are less than a week away, Minnesota is still mourning for Paul Wellstone, the DC sniper has been caught, Kim Jong Il has a nuclear weapon (but we’re not going to war with North Korea), Vladimir Putin is gassing his own people (but we’re not going to war with Russia) and, according to a full-page ad in Tuesday’s New York Times, you can now buy a time-travel device for less than a thousand dollars. Heck, I don’t even have a DVD player yet.
Let us not be distracted though, we are going to war. The Pentagon will not take the day off for Halloween, Thanksgiving or even Veterans’ Day. Reservists and their employers are put on alert that a quarter million troops may be called to service in the near future. Logistics planners fret that U.N. weapons inspections – should they happen – may upset deployment timetables. On the left and right, pundits speak of American casualties. The left wing hopes such sobering thoughts will bring restraint. The right wing hopes by overestimating casualties, the actual body count may seem tolerable by comparison.
Forty years ago, the U.S. wallowed into a war in Vietnam. We thought we would win, we thought it would be easy. It wasn’t easy, we didn’t win. One problem was ignorance. Our nation’s leaders, much less the average American, knew very little about Vietnam in 1964, just as most of us now know little about Iraq. We may be able to defeat the Iraqi army without knowing much about Iraq. If, however, we hope to set a post-Saddam Iraq on the path to democracy, we’ll need to understand a little bit about the country.
Iraq is about the size of Montana; it’s home to 22 million people. Seventy-five to 80 percent of Iraqis are Arabs, 15-20 percent are Kurds, with a handful of other ethnic groups thrown in. Nearly all – 97 percent – of Iraqis are Muslim. The majority, 60-65 percent, are Shi’ite, 32-37 percent are Sunni. As an analogy, one could say almost everyone in Northern Ireland is a Christian, 60 percent Catholic and 40 percent Protestant. It’s like that.
Most Iraqis are Shi’ite Muslims. Iran, Iraq’s bitter foe to the east and north, is a Shi’ite nation. Iranian Shi’ites, however, are ethnically Persian, not Arab. To the west and south of Iraq, in Saudi Arabia, there is a substantial Saudi minority that is religiously Shi’ite and ethnically Arab, like the Iraqi majority. The Saudi royal family, which is neither Shi’ite nor Sunni, but Wah’habite Muslim, is worried that if Iraq is politically destabilized, the Shi’ite community in southern Iraq will seek to join the Saudi Shi’ite community and establish a nation along the Persian Gulf. Is this confusing? It gets worse.
In the north of Iraq, the Kurds are Sunni Muslims but are not ethnically Arabs, they’re Kurds. Although there are some three million Kurds in Iraq, most Kurds – about 10 million – live across the border in Turkey. Kurdish political activists, advocating a separate state for the Kurds, are a long-standing source of political unrest in Turkey. The northern “no-fly” zone of Iraq encompasses Kurdish territory. In the dozen years the U.S. has enforced the “no-fly” zone, a semi-autonomous government, led by Kurds, has emerged in northern Iraq. The richest oil-producing region of Iraq – Kirkuk – has a Kurdish majority population.
Like the Saudis, the Turkish government worries that once Saddam is gone, the Kurds will make a revolutionary bid for their own nation, taking a hunk of Turkey in the process. If such an event transpires, either in the south or the north, what should the U.S. do? Stand by and watch it happen? Get involved with guns and troops and airplanes? Would that be justified?
One other thing to consider. Turkey holds its parliamentary elections next week. It is expected the current secular government will be replaced by a government that wants Turkey to become a more overtly Muslim nation. Turkey watchers say we should not be concerned by this development. If things get out of hand, they say, the army will step in and restore order. Feel better?
Off we go to war. If things go well and Saddam is defeated and few American troops are killed, we’ll be left trying to build the Persian Gulf’s first democratic state in a nation, part of which wants to destabilize our ally to the south and part of which wants to destabilize our ally to the north. What is the prudent course of action? The Bush administration has no clear answer, but don’t recycle that ad for the time machine just yet.
Off We Go to War
These are heady days for a news junkie. The elections are less than a week away, Minnesota is still mourning for Paul Wellstone, the DC sniper has been caught, Kim Jong Il has a nuclear weapon (but we’re not going to war with North Korea), Vladimir Putin is gassing his own people (but we’re not going to war with Russia) and, according to a full-page ad in Tuesday’s New York Times, you can now buy a time-travel device for less than a thousand dollars. Heck, I don’t even have a DVD player yet.
Let us not be distracted though, we are going to war. The Pentagon will not take the day off for Halloween, Thanksgiving or even Veterans’ Day. Reservists and their employers are put on alert that a quarter million troops may be called to service in the near future. Logistics planners fret that U.N. weapons inspections – should they happen – may upset deployment timetables. On the left and right, pundits speak of American casualties. The left wing hopes such sobering thoughts will bring restraint. The right wing hopes by overestimating casualties, the actual body count may seem tolerable by comparison.
Forty years ago, the U.S. wallowed into a war in Vietnam. We thought we would win, we thought it would be easy. It wasn’t easy, we didn’t win. One problem was ignorance. Our nation’s leaders, much less the average American, knew very little about Vietnam in 1964, just as most of us now know little about Iraq. We may be able to defeat the Iraqi army without knowing much about Iraq. If, however, we hope to set a post-Saddam Iraq on the path to democracy, we’ll need to understand a little bit about the country.
Iraq is about the size of Montana; it’s home to 22 million people. Seventy-five to 80 percent of Iraqis are Arabs, 15-20 percent are Kurds, with a handful of other ethnic groups thrown in. Nearly all – 97 percent – of Iraqis are Muslim. The majority, 60-65 percent, are Shi’ite, 32-37 percent are Sunni. As an analogy, one could say almost everyone in Northern Ireland is a Christian, 60 percent Catholic and 40 percent Protestant. It’s like that.
Most Iraqis are Shi’ite Muslims. Iran, Iraq’s bitter foe to the east and north, is a Shi’ite nation. Iranian Shi’ites, however, are ethnically Persian, not Arab. To the west and south of Iraq, in Saudi Arabia, there is a substantial Saudi minority that is religiously Shi’ite and ethnically Arab, like the Iraqi majority. The Saudi royal family, which is neither Shi’ite nor Sunni, but Wah’habite Muslim, is worried that if Iraq is politically destabilized, the Shi’ite community in southern Iraq will seek to join the Saudi Shi’ite community and establish a nation along the Persian Gulf. Is this confusing? It gets worse.
In the north of Iraq, the Kurds are Sunni Muslims but are not ethnically Arabs, they’re Kurds. Although there are some three million Kurds in Iraq, most Kurds – about 10 million – live across the border in Turkey. Kurdish political activists, advocating a separate state for the Kurds, are a long-standing source of political unrest in Turkey. The northern “no-fly” zone of Iraq encompasses Kurdish territory. In the dozen years the U.S. has enforced the “no-fly” zone, a semi-autonomous government, led by Kurds, has emerged in northern Iraq. The richest oil-producing region of Iraq – Kirkuk – has a Kurdish majority population.
Like the Saudis, the Turkish government worries that once Saddam is gone, the Kurds will make a revolutionary bid for their own nation, taking a hunk of Turkey in the process. If such an event transpires, either in the south or the north, what should the U.S. do? Stand by and watch it happen? Get involved with guns and troops and airplanes? Would that be justified?
One other thing to consider. Turkey holds its parliamentary elections next week. It is expected the current secular government will be replaced by a government that wants Turkey to become a more overtly Muslim nation. Turkey watchers say we should not be concerned by this development. If things get out of hand, they say, the army will step in and restore order. Feel better?
Off we go to war. If things go well and Saddam is defeated and few American troops are killed, we’ll be left trying to build the Persian Gulf’s first democratic state in a nation, part of which wants to destabilize our ally to the south and part of which wants to destabilize our ally to the north. What is the prudent course of action? The Bush administration has no clear answer, but don’t recycle that ad for the time machine just yet.
(c) Mark Floegel, 2002