On Sat, 22 Mar 2003, Chuck Grimes wrote:
> I had a terrible thought yesterday. After lunch and watching the shock
> and awe display (we dug up an old tv for the shop), I had this bad
> feeling that Bush might win this very quickly, very cleanly, with very
> few Iraqi casualties, that the Iraqis would welcome the troops into
> Baghdad.
Chuck, you can't wish for Iraqis to die. You'll hate yourself in the morning.
If shock and awe works -- if everyone gives up and almost nobody dies -- it will be a tremendous thing for civilization. It will mean war is be almost obsolete. If that's true, it's a wonderful thing.
The question will then be about controlling this new power. That's always been what this fight was about. It was never about whether it was good or bad to remove Saddam Hussein. That was always a good thing in everyone's book. The question was whether the bad would outweigh the good. And the bad was not mostly about the costs of this particular war. It was about destroying the the old structure of international relations and the stability that went with it. And what would replace it -- one that was worse, or one that was better, in terms of being less dangerous and more just. And,subsidiary to that, the question of how to build a new Iraq, and foster a new middle east, that is better for the people who live there than the one they live in now -- freer, more prosperous, more democratic. Everyone can imagine a better Iraq and a better Middle East. But would this lead there or no?
That was and still is the question. No one ever questioned that if the US fought this war, they'd win it. If they do it with almost no one dying, I could cry for joy.
But the bigger battle, over the future structure of international relations, the US has lost about as badly as they could have lost it. The UN, and international public opinion, in the last few months, for the first time in history, became more than the pale embodiment of twin platitudes. The next time the US wants to do something like this -- and this has always been about next time -- the world will be more ambitious in its opposition than it was this time. It will start with much greater goals for what is possible. And the US will start out under a much great cloud of suspicion. So they've lost what was most important to them. Because this was always about making a precedent. Saddam was chosen because that was the easist place to make the case. And they failed miserably. If the war is over in 3 days, it will just make clearer how little such a country is a threat, and how much more leeway there is for peaceful means. It will not convince the world that we are smarter or more moral than they took us for. It will merely show them that we are even stronger than they thought.
The US will lose the battle of forming a democratic Iraq as well. You can see that from the way they've treated the other two middle eastern democracies, Turkey and Pakistan. If democracy means a government that reflects the will of its people, this government has made it clear it won't stand for it. It is only a matter of time.
And as for victory sweeping all before it, surely you of all people know better. More than anyone on this list, you have been consistent in reminding us of how quickly contemporary history passes from media-obsessional bang to barely remembered whimper. It's possibly the only upside of the modular Big Lie Network and its neurotically short attention span: eventually they move onto a new lie and stop disgusting you with the old one.
And you know as well as I the magic phrase to wave at times like this is Remember Gulf War I. I mean really remember the way that was a bigger victory than this can ever be. Now it's been besmirched by fact (in part because it was mulched to fertilize this war): the crushed Shia uprising, the betrayed Kurds, the highway of death, and the fact that Saddam never left. But in the media obsessed moment, it was the technological marvel, the 100 hour war that looked like a video game, the missiles that went down air vents, the war we won during the Superbowl. It had a clear objective and it realized that objective completely. Politically, war doesn't get better than that. (This time we'll still be there in a year. And it won't yet be Shangrala. Comparatively, politically, that will be a minus, even if the story is played down.)
And then as we all know, Bush's Daddy lost a year and a half later because the economy sucked during his whole term when it had been great for the 8 years preceding. And there is every chance that Bush the younger will do the same. In which case his loss will be taken as a vote for multilateralism -- for accomplishing the same goal, removing tyranny, but through real coalitions rather than fake ones, which will be more emboldened than they ever were before to give peace a chance first.
Wars that can be settled in days with barely anyone dying; an international forum worth its salt, which leaders took seriously, and where international public opinion was real and mattered -- if those two things are both now possible, they are two great steps toward a world in which international law could become a reality rather than a term of propaganda. And in which peace really did have a chance.
That's what the real fight is over. And we're not losing.
Michael