For some time now, Andrew Sullivan has clearly seen that this Administration has been incompetent on Iraq. He calls Bush on as many of the uncountable errors in the invasion as he can. Yet Sullivan still gets the big picture wrong. He still shares a key aspect of the neo-con creed: the idea that there is a “transformative effect of regime change and democratization in the Arab world.” It is this idea, more than any other, that has led to our current disaster in Mesopotamia.
To this point, there has been much ink spilled on Administration “incompetence,” and very little written about the reasons for it. But it is the belief in an Iraqi democracy as a beacon which will transform the states around it into pro-western democracies which is at the root of the string of errors in Iraq.
To understand the roots of the failure, one must look back to the early 1990's, when it was axiomatic that democracy was a political philosophy on the march, a rising tide that would transform the world for the better. It was widely assumed that democracy would be easily built in states which used to be authoritarian in nature. Social conditions which gave rise to authoritarianism were ignored. Similarly, the strong middle classes with firm investments in the stability of government in the West were seen as not playing a critical role in the creation of democracy in these new states.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the assistance the West planned for the former U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe. Cadres of Wall Street types argued that Russia should use a form of “shock therapy” in which capitalism in its rawest form was to be introduced, creating a rapid economic change which would support democracy.
It didn't turn out to be that way. The mass dislocations caused by the rapid change-over to capitalism left millions jobless and ready to follow the next strong leader who promised stability and a return to the old days. Citizens expecting capitalism to bring streets paved with gold overnight were rapidly disillusioned, while the lifting of some of the stringent controls of authoritarianism created a vacuum filled by lawless gangs.
Unsurprisingly, it was only in areas where capitalism and bourgeois democracy had roots that democracy seemed to take hold. The Czech Republic and Poland have done relatively well, and Russia, Belorussia and the Central Asian Republics have struggled.
These lessons were ignored by the thinkers at the Project For A New American Century and their followers. From the beginning, the neo-cons sought to have Saddam Hussein removed from power. Generally the basis for the regime change was the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. But as the prospect of finding these weapons began to fade, neo-cons often brought out another idea--the idea that democracy created in Iraq would then spread democracy to other Islamic states in the region.
Of course, these same pundits ignored the lessons of the 1990s when examining the chances of such a democracy being set up in the barren lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Despite the fact that no western-style middle class existed in Iraq, the neo-cons insisted it could be done. How wrong they were.
As we now know, there was no struggling middle class yearning to be freed that could set up a democracy. Instead, tribal and religious affiliations ran deep, deeper than even Saddam's brutal regime. Not surprisingly, a mass movement towards democracy never occured in the wake of the U.S. invasion. Instead, Iraqis seeking stabililty in chaos have either gone to ground or allied themselves with radicals such as al-Sadr and his thugs.
This belief was embedded into U.S. operational planning. The error in assuming that democratization would be the key task of U.S. troops was found in more than in the motivation for invasion itself--it was a basic error whose pervasiveness endangered the whole plan and made it ripe for failure. Belief that Iraqis would greet us as liberators led to an undermanning of the entire plan. During an argument over deBaathification and the disbanding of the Iraqi Army, CPA head Paul Bremer told General Jay Garner “The president told me that de-Baathification comes before the immediate needs of the Iraqi people.”
Indeed they did. As one looks back at the last three years of this mess, it is sometimes hard to believe that rational human beings are responsible. Democracy is a long way off in Iraq, and the cause of democracy in the region has been set back, not advanced. The sympathy that millions in the region demonstrated towards the United States immediately after September 11 has been lost.
Despite this obvious failure, Andrew Sullivan still gets Iraq wrong. The entire idea of establishing a democracy ready-made in post-Saddam Iraq was a key assumption in the Administration's plan to invade Iraq. It was that assumption that led to the low troop levels and the disastrous plan to disband the Iraqi Army. And it is that assumption that keeps the Administration from sending more troops to Iraq. Its time for Andrew Sullivan to get it right.