Isn't that a bit like putting the proverbial genie back in the bottle? Even if Saddam Hussein were alive, we couldn't simply ask him to take over and call it a solution. It certainly wouldn't bring a strong, stable state.

Also, generally I'm not feeling my way to the perspective underlying these observations. Is it to show greater respect for repressive regimes, the good old Kissinger way? Is it to be aware of the limits they've been imposing so that we can focus on loosening them up, as Friedman advises? Is it to use them as a model to carry out our own adventures, sort of a realist version of the neocons? Either way, there's a lot of real-world observation behind the points in the post, which I respect, but the conclusions still scare the daylights out of me.

I'd say that one lesson from Iraq would be that if there's tension between the antidemocratic side of enforcing secularism, by conceding to military regimes, and Islamicist movements, we can manage to get the worst of both worlds by playing imperial power. We get to give renewed strengths to Islamicists, by letting them associate themselves with nationalism in the face of the occupier, while abusing military force ourselves. And voila: collapse.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

I have noticed that there is an argument emerging in Washington about the need for a new military strongman in Iraq (a very popular idea in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where I just spent some time).

And this "strongman" is supposed to come from where exactly? Doesn't rule by a military strongman require as a precondition a strong military with the capacity to subject the country through force? Surely the Saudis don't imagine that some Baathist retread can now successfully subdue the country and restore it to Sunni/Stalinist rule of the sort it experienced in the good old days under Saddam.

What the US needs to do is tell our Saudi friends that they are just going to have to get the burrs out of their backsides about the reality that the Iraq of the future is going to have much friendlier relations with Iran than the Iraq of the past, and that Sunni Arabs will remain a minority in the country and its government. Then we need to tell them to get to work using their good offices to encourage their Sunni friends in Iraq, those of the more traditional, practical and non-jihadist stripe, to abandon their fond wishes of toppling the government and restoring their community to some semblance of its former primacy in Iraq, and to begin to work on a political and economic settlement with their newly-empowered neighbors.

Then we need to invite a high-level Iranian representative to Washington for a very public and high-level meeting to show the Saudis we mean business. To the extent that rejectionists in Iraq perceive that the Saudis are having some significant success in working us over, exploiting US and Israeli Iranophobia, and goading us into sponsoring a military coup against the very government we brought to power in Iraq - just to stick it to Iran; to the same extent the insurgency will continue to believe it can eventually achieve victory through violence and succeed in destroying the government, ending the period of Shia and Kurdish ascendancy, and bringing their old pals and kinsmen back to the seats of power.

The Bush administration has been stabbing the Iraqi government in the back for some time now, and prolonging the violence through its ambivalence and vacillation about what side it is on. How about taking a resolute line against the butchers that have been killing our soldiers and blowing up civilians with merry abandon. Then tell the Saudis and the Egyptians to stick it.

One should remember, too, that the Russians were willing to engage in Afghanistan far more ruthlessly than the U.S. ever would consider, it still didn't work. And they even had an army presence we are running short of, not to mention a population reduced to a mroe traditional insurgency, rather than a nation everywhere at war with itself. Finally, they didn't have to worry about being perceived as enemies of Islam itself back then, because who had heard of the concept of such a crusade or had heard of the movements willing to exploit it?

And yet they still helped (with our support to the Taliban) create exactly that blowback that we fear. A shift from "coalition building" in Iraq to wiping the buggers out is laughable, even if we were the kind of country who would practice such a thing. And I do hope we are not. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

And this "strongman" is supposed to come from where exactly?

Chalabi must be drooling... 

Know your enemy well, for in the end that is who you become. ~~Old Chinese Proverb

Many thanks for bringing some much-needed foreign policy conversation to TPM. America Abroad has been gathering dustbunnies for far too long.

The resilience of all three military regimes is striking (though none perhaps moreso than Turkey's, as it has emerged seemingly intact through a sustained and popular drift towards the EU). Perhaps even more striking, however, are the countries where militaristic, authoritarian regimes have proven less robust: Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq. Though all three are distinct from your sample in that the military has taken a front-line role in government, they nevertheless provide worrying insight into the forces unleashed after decades of authoritarian suppression. All three have faced serious social, ethnic, and religious divisions; all three have faced internal challenges to their territorial integrity; all three have risked (or experienced) military conflict with the West; and all three act as incubators for serious threats to American interests at home and abroad.

Given these counter-examples, American policymakers are hard-pressed to learn clear lessons. Do we actively support anti-government, democratic political forces in the hopes of currying favor if/when the military regime is forced out? What about our W.O.T. goals in the meantime? Do we actively support the military regime and attempt to batten down the hatches of our strategic outposts against any future democratic revolution? What about our W.O.T. goals in the long term? Neither option is attractive.

A third way might be to take a page or two from the Egyptian playbook. Romeo Dallaire recently gave a talk in London in which he advocated a coalition of the middle powers - Germany, Canada, Japan - to take over the mantle of international leadership from the US. Our Cold War activities - and, even more so, Iraq - have divested us of meaningful credibility on the international stage, he argued. Thus, he said, we should take a step back and support the efforts of those who can credibly take the lead in these areas. I think his idea has merit and well suits an American public weary of foreign adventures. By quietly funding the activities of our allies we can retain an influence in regions and issues that are important to us while distancing ourselves from the barrel-of-a-gun foreign policy that has become our trademark. It is a way of avoiding isolationism while healing the rifts of the Bush administration, remaining involved while showing contrition. Mubarak might not be the best teacher of human rights, but he could show us a great deal about sustaining our power.