....LMB: "Iraq Iraq Iraq"....

September 24, 2002

Yeah, not even 24 hours have passed since I said that I was going to cut back on Iraq-related entries, and I'm already posting another Iraq entry.

Heard an interesting argument yesterday on KPFK's Daily Review radio show. The host of the show rotates, and yesterday's was Ian Masters, who I think is great, very knowledgable, very insightful. Masters was interviewing journalist Eli Lake about his recent New Republic article about a conflict between the CIA and the Pentagon over who gets to advise the president about Iraq. But the discussion shifted to a broader debate about US power, democracy and human rights.

First of all, Lake claims that the Bush administration is working on an assumption that Muslim dictatorships and Muslim terrorism are inextricably linked. And since finding and destroying terrorist cells is difficult, the administration will instead destroy these governments and replace them with democracies. So in a sense, the region-wide instabilities (instabilities that could potentially overturn dictatorships and replace them with democracy-like regimes) that a war against Iraq could cause are not an unwanted side-effect for the White House, but the actual policy goal.

Lake then goes on to pose this question: why does the Left, which is opposed to tyranny and oppression, oppose the use of the U.S. military to democratize Iraq and possibly the rest of the Middle East? He suggested his own answer about knee-jerk anti-war sentiment and a distrust of American government that he implied was misplaced. Not a bad argument, although I disagree with many of the assumptions upon which it's based.

First of all, let's bolster Lake's initial theory about the White House's goal of fighting terrorism by fighting Middle Eastern tyranny with this article, The Real Foe Is Middle Eastern Tyranny. It's written by a member of the influential conservative think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute. The facts that the AEI is taking this position, and that it frequently contributes to American policy, supports Lake's argument that the White House does indeed hold this view.

First of all, I disagree with this viewpoint, that somehow Middle Eastern dictatorships are responsible for what we call terrorism (once upon a time, the term "terrorism" meant "brutal governmental oppression, " in which case these dictatorships would be very responsible for terrorism). These terrorist organizations seem to function fine without governmental sponsors. I get the impression that they are frequently funded by wealthy elites within some of these repressive countries, but not necessarily by governments.

So let's take on Lake's question to Lefties. And if the U.S. military was truly setting out to do what he claims they are out to do, that would be a very good debate. Is it morally acceptable to use force to remove dictators? Do other nations have the right to interfere in another country's affairs that way? Will the eventual regime change justify the inevitable death count?

But I think that those questions become moot in this case here. I don't think that the U.S.' goal is to replace the Middle Eastern tyrannies with democracies. I think that'd be just another cover story. I think that the goal would be to replace the Middle Eastern tyrannies with America-friendly regimes, democratic or not. The U.S. has a long history of supporting governments, no matter how democratic or despotic, that are amenable to U.S. interests. For PR reasons, I imagine that the U.S. would want these new Middle Eastern regimes to look like democracies, because that helps justify the intervention.

But there's still some valid questions in there for anti-war folks. Would even a sham democracy be better for the people of Iraq than life under Saddam Hussein? Would the destruction of war justify this regime change?

But an important question that I don't think anyone is asking is "what do the people of Iraq want?" As far as I know, no one's asking them. If you did ask, I imagine the first thing they'd say is "end the sanctions," the ones that are depriving them of much-needed food and medicine. But apart from that, I don't know what they would want. Frankly, it's a possibility that they support Saddam Hussein. Much the way that Americans rallied around George W. Bush in a time of crisis, maybe the Iraqi people have done the same.

So here's the Jake Sexton Might-Help-But-Certainly-Won't-Solve-the-Problem Iraq Policy:

End the sanctions against Iraq
Begin an international weapons embargo to the entire Middle East
Find out what the people of Iraq would want us to do, and see if we can help