These people are INSANE! Michael Pugliese
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HARD QUESTIONS DON'T DAMPEN RECONSTRUCTIONISTS' FERVOR
WASHINGTON -- Rather like the "inconvenient woman" of classical literature coming back to haunt a man's marriage, every once in a while these days some spoilsport will ask an inconvenient question at one of the many conferences on the "reconstruction" of Iraq.
At the conservative Heritage Foundation up on Capitol Hill, for instance, Daniel Serwer, a Balkans expert who survived those wars, recently asked the group of scholars examining "The Future of a Post-Saddam Iraq: A Blueprint for American Involvement": "What is the concept of the transition of authority there after an invasion? Would the Iraqi opposition enter with the American troops? Who would run the police?"
"In the center of the country, we would run the show," John Hulsman, research fellow with the foundation, answered. "In the South, it will be a mixture of forces (the U.S. and the Shi'as). We'll want to seal the border with Iran and immediately work with local elites. We'll need to look at the regions."
"And how is the American second lieutenant going to decide who the local elites are -- and who are Saddam Hussein's Baathist Party members?" Serwer then asked.
"In Iraq, it won't be hard," Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior research fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, answered. "They'll know. Everything is out in the open there."
Some days later at the conservative AEI, the general mood at the conference "The Day After: Planning for a Post-Saddam Iraq" was at least equally as buoyant about a reformed, restructured and refined Iraq, which everyone assumes is going to emerge from a projected American invasion.
"This presents the United States with an opportunity as large as the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917," Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi exile scholar and leading Saddam analyst at Harvard University, began. "Iraq is not Afghanistan -- it is a rich country ...
"The new Iraqi regime should be federal in character, and this would break the mold of Arab politics because they do not have the experience of federalism. ... No future regime can be democratic there if it is not federal. ... The government should not be one of various ethnicities but one composed of various regions, in which the premium is put on the principle of citizenship for all. ... And it must be a demilitarized state in which, as in Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, Iraqis forever renounce the use of force."
Ahmad Chalabi, the polished and controversial head of the Iraqi National Congress, the Iraqi opposition coalition of central Sunni Moslems, southern Shiites and northern Kurds, then assured the audience: "Landing in Iraq will be equivalent to forming a provisional civil government. We should seize whatever land is free, and our coalition can be the focus of any defecting units. We will deal with the horrendous civil problems that might arise. The government can later call a constituent assembly and create a provisional government."
Halfway through the conference, Trudy Rubin, the international affairs columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, posited another "inconvenient" question. "How will you stop the conflict that has already begun by the Kurds and the Turkoman tribesmen over the oil wells at Kirkuk?" she asked. "What happens if Kurdish forces go into Kirkuk?"
Independent Iraqi analyst Siyamend Othman took on this question. "We think there are tacit agreements that the Kurds won't go into Kirkuk," he answered. Then he added, "But we also see the danger of Turkish meddling there."
The vastly rich oilfields at Kirkuk, which lie halfway between Baghdad and the Kurdish region of the north, are, of course, a great part of the underground riches that provide Iraq with fully 10 percent of the world's oil production. Already there are rumblings there, with both Kurdish and Turkomen tribesmen apparently ready to try to seize the oilfields from Saddam's troops should an invasion occur.
Most of these men and women who are holding forth virtually daily on the future of Iraq at one think-tank, conference center, media show, institute, university or another are smart when it comes to forms; but content is another thing. Their entire discussion quickly becomes extraordinarily abstruse and divorced from the reality of blood and war, not to speak of the historically violent and savage history of the country they so wish to save.
One legal scholar suggested of this seemingly assured postwar Iraq that, "I would look at it exactly like post- World War II Japan. We have to have troops somewhere -- why not have them in Iraq for 50 to 60 years?" Another, a classic scholar, suggested soberly, "It is time to discuss in very honest terms the imperial power of the United States."
Once in a while, however, even the pro-war group has momentary doubts and humble afterthoughts. "Our first cardinal principle in dealing with Iraq should be to realize that we really don't know anything," AEI's Reuel Marc Gerecht said at another point. "It's a closed society and nobody's been there."
And Saddam specialist Kanan Makiya warned at still another point: "It's doable -- but an invasion needs imagination, and it rests upon a number of assumptions: 1) that the government of the U.S. proceeds with it, 2) that the unseating of the regime does not take place at the cost of large numbers of casualties, Iraqi or Israeli, 3) that the principles (behind the new state) are actually adopted at a large meeting of the Iraqi opposition, and 4) that the U.S. sees its role as being there for the long term."
Those are clearly a lot of "ifs" and "thats," but they are doing little to deter most of the people who have sprung up in Washington, utterly intent upon "democratizing" Iraq and then using that instantaneous victory to reconfigure the entire Middle East. Every day, another cool conference: air-conditioned rooms, well-dressed people, intent and self-righteous gazes and, of course, lots and lots of talk. AEI alone is proceeding with upcoming conferences on reform of the Iraqi military, health system, education, civil services and a form of de-Baathification.
Meanwhile, foreign correspondents who are actually in Iraq write of souks seething with the motives for revenge against Saddam Hussein -- and also against America.
COPYRIGHT 2002 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE Originally Published on October-04-2002