The war in Iraq, like the war in Vietnam, is a quagmire, but where does the comparison end? There’s a wall in Washington, DC that says the Vietnam War lasted 16 years and cost 58,000 American lives. Let’s hope we don’t match those statistics before we bring the troops home.
As in Vietnam, it’s been clear from the beginning that Iraq’s principle issues are political and cannot be solved by any amount of military intervention by the United States. The difference is that in Iraq, military officers and diplomats are already willing to admit to the futility of seeking a military solution. Getting to this point in Vietnam took a decade.
So what’s the political solution? As in Vietnam, it lies with the legitimate aspirations of the Iraqi people. The Vietnamese people aspired to a nation governed by Vietnamese, for Vietnamese. The Vietnamese Communist Party may not have been the highest, best and most democratic expression of the will of the Vietnamese people, but it had more legitimacy than the succession of crooks and hoodlums maintained in power by the French, Japanese or Americans.
Who represents the legitimate aspirations of the Iraqi people? No one does, and no one will. The “Iraqi people” have no legitimate aspirations, because people in Iraq do not aspire to be “Iraqi.” In the north, Kurds aspire to an independent Kurdistan, a relatively secular state for ethnic Kurds. In the south, Shi’ite Arabs aspire to a mullah-driven theocracy, similar to that found in Iran. In between, Sunni Arabs want the other two groups to leave them alone.
Forcing these factions into one government is not only distasteful to them, it’s unwieldy; they approach governance from radically different angles. The Kurds have the most experience, having enjoyed semi-autonomy since the imposition of the northern no-fly zone in 1991. Shi’ites, whose denomination of Islam is more hierarchical than the Sunnis, would likely choose a government based on their interpretation of the Shariah and reserve a role for imams. Sunnis might be guided by the unfortunate examples set by Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party.
Monday’s New York Times reported that Sunnis and Shi’ites continue to squabble over the composition of Iraq’s Constitutional Commission. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Kurds are rounding up Arabs and Turkmen in northern Iraq, in what looks like a dress rehearsal for ethnic cleansing.
An independent Kurdistan would cause outbreaks of aneurysms in Ankara and Tehran, as the Turks and Iranians have restive Kurdish minorities in territories bordering northern Iraq. Similar distress would be registered in Riyadh, because Saudi Arabia has a population of Arab Shi’ites along Iraq’s southern border. The Sunnis might establish their own hostile state, or they might be absorbed into Syria.
A year ago, the partition of Iraq would have bee an unthinkable invitation to chaos. Now as the ongoing insurgency and internecine bitterness foment chaos anyhow, the notion of partition is becoming more palatable, perhaps even seen as a “realistic” outcome by some.
“Legitimate aspiration,” is diplo-speak for “what people really want” and since each of the three groups really want autonomy and discontinuity from the other two, they have little incentive to cooperate in building a unified Iraq, other than for the sake of putting on a show for the Americans, to keep the aid dollars flowing and to make nice with the Pentagon. None of the factions want the U.S. guns pointed at them. Meanwhile, the Iraqi National Army continues to looks like a cast of extras from “Sons of the Desert” and the real fighters can be found in the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Shi’ite Madhi Army and the various Sunni insurgent groups.
The U.S. should get out of Iraq as soon as possible. American politicians will not pull the troops out until there is stability. There will be no stability in the historically fictional “unified Iraq.” Partition is the only answer that will provide stability. Politicians don’t like the idea of partition, but eventually they will accept its necessity. The only question is: how many deaths will it take to convince them?
Legitimate Aspirations
The war in Iraq, like the war in Vietnam, is a quagmire, but where does the comparison end? There’s a wall in Washington, DC that says the Vietnam War lasted 16 years and cost 58,000 American lives. Let’s hope we don’t match those statistics before we bring the troops home.
As in Vietnam, it’s been clear from the beginning that Iraq’s principle issues are political and cannot be solved by any amount of military intervention by the United States. The difference is that in Iraq, military officers and diplomats are already willing to admit to the futility of seeking a military solution. Getting to this point in Vietnam took a decade.
So what’s the political solution? As in Vietnam, it lies with the legitimate aspirations of the Iraqi people. The Vietnamese people aspired to a nation governed by Vietnamese, for Vietnamese. The Vietnamese Communist Party may not have been the highest, best and most democratic expression of the will of the Vietnamese people, but it had more legitimacy than the succession of crooks and hoodlums maintained in power by the French, Japanese or Americans.
Who represents the legitimate aspirations of the Iraqi people? No one does, and no one will. The “Iraqi people” have no legitimate aspirations, because people in Iraq do not aspire to be “Iraqi.” In the north, Kurds aspire to an independent Kurdistan, a relatively secular state for ethnic Kurds. In the south, Shi’ite Arabs aspire to a mullah-driven theocracy, similar to that found in Iran. In between, Sunni Arabs want the other two groups to leave them alone.
Forcing these factions into one government is not only distasteful to them, it’s unwieldy; they approach governance from radically different angles. The Kurds have the most experience, having enjoyed semi-autonomy since the imposition of the northern no-fly zone in 1991. Shi’ites, whose denomination of Islam is more hierarchical than the Sunnis, would likely choose a government based on their interpretation of the Shariah and reserve a role for imams. Sunnis might be guided by the unfortunate examples set by Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party.
Monday’s New York Times reported that Sunnis and Shi’ites continue to squabble over the composition of Iraq’s Constitutional Commission. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Kurds are rounding up Arabs and Turkmen in northern Iraq, in what looks like a dress rehearsal for ethnic cleansing.
An independent Kurdistan would cause outbreaks of aneurysms in Ankara and Tehran, as the Turks and Iranians have restive Kurdish minorities in territories bordering northern Iraq. Similar distress would be registered in Riyadh, because Saudi Arabia has a population of Arab Shi’ites along Iraq’s southern border. The Sunnis might establish their own hostile state, or they might be absorbed into Syria.
A year ago, the partition of Iraq would have bee an unthinkable invitation to chaos. Now as the ongoing insurgency and internecine bitterness foment chaos anyhow, the notion of partition is becoming more palatable, perhaps even seen as a “realistic” outcome by some.
“Legitimate aspiration,” is diplo-speak for “what people really want” and since each of the three groups really want autonomy and discontinuity from the other two, they have little incentive to cooperate in building a unified Iraq, other than for the sake of putting on a show for the Americans, to keep the aid dollars flowing and to make nice with the Pentagon. None of the factions want the U.S. guns pointed at them. Meanwhile, the Iraqi National Army continues to looks like a cast of extras from “Sons of the Desert” and the real fighters can be found in the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Shi’ite Madhi Army and the various Sunni insurgent groups.
The U.S. should get out of Iraq as soon as possible. American politicians will not pull the troops out until there is stability. There will be no stability in the historically fictional “unified Iraq.” Partition is the only answer that will provide stability. Politicians don’t like the idea of partition, but eventually they will accept its necessity. The only question is: how many deaths will it take to convince them?
© Mark Floegel, 2005