The Basra Lessons
The way the British are abandoning Basra is hardly novel. I saw British troops sneaking out like thieves at night from Palestine in 1947, without turning over their installations or the authority to govern either to the Jewish or to the Arab communities, nor dividing the turf among the contending sides. A bloody war immediately followed. Although the turn over of power in India in 1947 was much more orderly, the parting arrangements the British made were very unstable. They became one reason many hundred thousands of people were driven out of their homes and land and armed strife ensued.
Now the British are claiming that they can leave Basra with impunity because Iraqi forces are ready to take over security there...
...which is about as accurate as if Senator Larry Craig claimed that he went to the public restroom merely to benefit from their conventional use. In effect, Basra is engulfed in a wave of violence propelled by the strife between militias of three Shia factions as well as among various criminal gangs.
The reason the retreat from Basra deserves much more attention than it has received is because the conditions in Basra were especially favorable for a peaceful transition into the post-Saddam Iraq. The population is relatively homogenous; there are no Sunnis or Kurds to speak of. The area sits on a wealth of oil and the city has a major port, both major sources of revenue and employment. The local population was united in its hatred of Saddam’s regime, as it had been one of it major targets. Moreover, in 2003, the people of Basra welcomed the British troops, if not with rose petals the Neo-Cons expected, at least with offerings of sweet tea. The British troops prided themselves at the time for not needing to wear their helmets when touring the city.
If the British could not make a go of it here, if they could establish neither security nor democracy in this city, it makes it even harder to expect that the United States and its allies can succeed on the much more complex and divided and less endowed nation, that of the whole of Iraq.
Basra provides lessons not only for Neo-Cons, who fantasize about flipping the Middle East into peace-loving democracies in short order, but also for those progressive people who believe in “reconstruction”. Many, including those who opposed the invasion of Iraq (and of Afghanistan) accept the Pottery Barn moral tenet evoked by Colin Powell. It is said to hold that ‘if you break it, you own it’. Meaning: if you occupy a nation, you incur an obligation to tend to it. (International law holds a similar concept.) Law professor Noah Feldman wrote a whole book on “What We Owe Iraq.”
Some wits have already pointed out that Pottery Barn has no such rule. The question still stands: What is the scope of the moral obligation of an occupying power? Must it make the nation whole by rebuilding what war destroyed? Should it make up for past abuses, such as the effects of Western sanctions on Iraqi children? Must it also make amends for the colonial era?
As Basra shows, all of this is highly theoretical. Despite considerable efforts, the occupying forces have been simply unable to foster economic development, to reconstruct Iraq, let alone Afghanistan (which can hardly be reconstructed as it was never constructed as a modern economy in the first place). Moreover, in both countries, much of what is repaired or built during the day is blown up at night, and indeed, quite often in broad daylight. Corruption is so high that large parts of the funds dedicated to reconstruction are stolen. And, excessive optimism about what can be achieved stands time and again in the way of that which can be accomplished, as the occupying forces have started scores of projects and completed precious few.
Particularly challenging is that the British retreat leaves the door wide open to the violent imposition of various religious laws based on the Sharia. If the sale of alcohol was banned by local ordinances, one might say that the United States had dry states. If it was only a matter of requiring women to wear the Burqa, one could say—albeit stretching the matter quite a bit—that the West also has dress codes. However, when barbershops in Basra are bombed and liquor stores are blown sky high, that is when the theocracy turns violent—one cannot but wonder what the liberation was all about. To argue, as Francis Fukuyama (the guru of global democratization on the run) does, that these are childhood diseases that every democracy must outgrow, is a cruel indictment. Violent regimes often last for decades, terrorize millions who live in abject poverty and fear, and leave behind killing fields where other millions of bodies are buried.
All these lessons from Basra are horribly depressing. The only silver lining I can discern is that hopefully, from now on, the calls of those who urge the powers that be to march into some country, will be subject to much more careful scrutiny.
Not less noteworthy is the extent to which the Allies’ micro-management of the new political institutions in Basra and elsewhere prevented these institutions from peacefully settling differences among the various factions. This micro-management includes the selection of those who wrote the new constitution, what wording was finally adopted, the selection of those who served as elected leaders—especially the prime minister. It also significantly limited the devolution of power to local provinces.
Last, but not least, we can learn that political development cannot be rushed along and that it is best promoted with non-lethal means—i.e. the ways we are cajoling and motivating China and Vietnam, and not the ways we isolate and threaten Cuba and Iran. If all these lessons are learned, the misery of Basra will still be profound, but at least it may be said that it yielded some major foreign policy insights.
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Micro- blogging: In Sweden, they have a new bumper sticker. It reads: "Be nice to Americans— or they will bring you democracy.”
Amitai Etzioni is a professor of international relations at The George Washington University. His most recent book is Security First: For A Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy just published by Yale University Press.
Amitai, there is a condescension and an arrogance of Western superiority over rest of the less civilized in your writing that is insufferable. This article is full of it, but let us focus on one small item, namely:
Now by what authority do you think that "we" have any business guiding other peoples political development or to even pass judgment on the rate of their political development? You seem to know where they are going and what is a proper rate for getting there? Do tell, share with us your vision of China's and Vietnam's future.
I see China as a culture that has an unbroken culture of 2000 years, which has had a bad last 200 years. However, they seem to be recovering fine from the ravages of Western imperialism. It is their show and they will do as the must without my or yours approval. But in the meantime we can note that they do not invade other nations, they do not have bases stretched around the world, they do not support coups, engage in political assassination or otherwise terrorize peoples of foreign nations. We do all of this. Continuously and without apology. One million dead Iraqis and we will not pay one dime in compensation. This is what we do. How can we possibly be the judge of other peoples "progress".
October 3, 2007 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
The British are getting out of Basra because the British are getting out of Iraq. They're doing that because they're a democracy and the British people are fed up with occupying Iraq. Americans are fed up too but our President refuses to listen.
You ask what the occupier owes the occupied. I ask what our government owes its people. That we don't want to have troops there is justification enough for not having troops there. The American people, tricked into war, don't owe anything. It's our government that owes us.
I'm getting frustrated that we talk a lot more about what our obligations are in Iraq than we talk about what's good for Americans. Bush screwed up. I'm not willing to pay for his mistakes for the rest of my life.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
October 3, 2007 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
The elected Democrats don't listen either. They won't even commit to being out by 2013.
It's time for a 3rd party which would really be only a 2nd party since as of today we have no choice at all.
October 3, 2007 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
"It was a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meant to explode in the centre of the city"
Looking at this quote from a slightly different vantage point, one may recall how often after a violent bombing during the Bremer proconsulship crowds would gather around the still flaming bodies and evince the conviction that American hands were behind the horror.
Such allegations, which uniformly caused US media to cluck at the supposed simplemindedness of these hapless survivors, rested upon the same realities you have referenced. Perhaps these locals were not uniformly deluded, but were reflecting the contradiction between professions of a search for stability as a prelude to ending the occupation and the long term plans for bases and oil contracts that belied the sincerity of such protestations by the occupiers.
In law, there is a principle styled "cui bono?"--"who benefits?"
The Brits, of course, have an 80 year history of setting indigenous peoples against each other a a matter of policy.
Leaving America aside for the moment, there is only one country who might conceivably (although misguidedly) think that its interests would be advanced if the Muslim world ignited in fratricidal conflagration.
That country, Israel, has deep Mossad penetration in Iraqi Kurdistan--and may well seek the expansion of a greater Kurdistan to the discomforture of Iran, Syria and Turkey.
Assuming some sop to Turkey (how 'bout EU membership?), Israel's strategic interests might well be served by the construction of an Irbil-Tel Aviv axis. (In this model, Kurdish independence is not an unintended consequence of Saddam's removal--Saddam's fall is damage collateral to the establishment of a Kurdish homeland.)
In that context, it is perhaps useful to remember that al-Zarqawi was released from a Jordanian prison only to pop up in Mossad infested Kurdistan. Many a double agent is turned in prison--likewise, the gang member who is mysteriously released after a short stay in jail is rightly suspected by his former associates of future treachery.
Perhaps this explains why Zarqawi, once trapped, was unceremoniously dispatched, instead of being captured alive and questioned.
(Nothing can explain how he was previously thrice captured and released before the day was out--this in a system that releases NO ONE once caught, hence the 10.000+ "security detainees" even now in "coalition" hands.)
(While we're on the topic, let's take a moment to debunk the 9/11 myth of CIA involvement--it was Mossad. Not as originator of the plot, but surely as a forewarned agency, doubtless having penetrated Al Q. in the same fashion as they have penetrated Hamas, Hisb'Allah, and the PLO.)
October 3, 2007 4:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
The US and British have had no intention of settling differences. On the other hand, the intention has been to stir things up and create instability.
news report, Sep 19, 2005:
Ten Iraqis - seven police commandos, two civilians and a child - were killed and more than 10 others wounded in the explosion of two car bombs near two checkpoints in Al-Mahmudiyah and Al-Latifiyah south of Baghdad while hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were heading towards the city of Karbala to mark the anniversary of a religious event.
And in a significant incident in the city of Basra, which is also marking the same religious event, Iraqi demonstrators set fire to two British tanks near a police station after Iraqi police had arrested two British soldiers disguised in civilian clothes for opening fire on police. Eight armoured British vehicles surrounded the police station before the eruption of the confrontations. A policeman at the scene said the two detained Britons were wearing traditional Iraqi jallabahs [loose cloaks] and wigs.
al-Jazeera TV:
If you really want to look for truth, then we should resort to the Iraqi justice away from the British provocations against the sons of Basra, particularly what happened today when the sons of Basra caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to be Britons and were in a car of the Cressida type. It was a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050920&articleId=972
Justin Raimondo:
As I have been saying for months – or is that years? – our real war aims have nothing to do with stability, democracy, or finding "weapons of mass destruction" that never existed in any case. Our goal has always been to plunge the Arab and Muslim nations of the Middle East into chaos, the better to move in, take control, and ensure the two main objectives of our foreign policy: access to oil, and security for a Greater Israel.
ecotourism
WeGoEco.com
October 3, 2007 4:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Eighteen months ago, China President Hu Jintao visited the US to be "cajoled." Said Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show": "The arrival ceremony was interrupted by a protestor, who said, 'Stop the persecution; stop the torture.' President Bush had to ask, 'Which one of us are you talking to?'"
October 3, 2007 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
To nudge things back towards the subject: America does have both a legal and a moral obligation to make Iraq whole again. Calling it "Bush's War" doesn't change that. Bush was elected our president in 2004 with the electorate fully aware of the fact that he had started an unjustified war in Iraq, along with many other crimes. That act makes us all co-defendents.
The Geneva Conventions, which are part of US law, also require that a conquering nation take care of the people in the conquered nation. That ropes us in.
Now, nothing in all of this says we must keep an occupying force in Iraq, prodding the sore spots to keep the civil war there heated up. What we do have to do is foot the bills for fixing the mess we created.
Iraq will eventually have an Iraqi government or governments. When that happens is when we need to pay up. But, the best course of action today is to withdraw our forces, both military and private, and allow Iraqis to settle on a government or government that they will be willing to live with. People will die as they do this, but people are dying and will die in any case. That part is an inevitable consequence of our invasion of Iraq. We can't put the egg back in the shell.
Hoppy in Sacramento
October 3, 2007 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
"What we do have to do is foot the bills for fixing the mess we created."
Instead of the "pottery barn" rule, how about the Chelsea Hotel rule:
If the rock band wants to trash the room and throw the tv out the window, they must replace the same upon checking out and leave a wad of cash for housekeeping.
October 3, 2007 9:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suspect that the "Security First" approach says that we stay until things are secure. I say things won't be secure as long as we stay. Either way, that's a tangent to your main point which is not about how we achieve our ends but about what we owe.
Was the 2004 election the ratification of the war? I don't know. If that election had happened a year later, Bush would have certainly lost. There's a lot that people didn't know back in 2004. I kind of think of our moral and financial debts that relate to this war are odious debts, the kind you forgive on a people because the leader was clearly at fault.
Besides, this war was supposed to be free! Iraqi oil revenue was meant to pay for the reconstruction... oh yeah, another lie...
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
October 4, 2007 8:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
"the kind you forgive on a people because the leader was clearly at fault."
That only works if you hang the leader after the war. See, eg, Nuremburg.
Also, even after you hang the leader, you might have to pay something to someone. (see, eg, German reparations to Israel...)
(It is also a good idea to work out a story in advance about how the leader was not really democratically elected, so the people are not really responsible. Oddly enough, THIS defense is not entirely inapposite in the instant case.)
October 4, 2007 8:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
"I saw British troops sneaking out like thieves at night." Oh, I forget: only craven, unpatriotic cowards and traitors would consider abandoning the occupation of Iraq. The rhetorical weighting helped me see that so much more clearly. I'm looking forward to seeing how our own huge number of troops can sneak out at night. Do take photos.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
October 4, 2007 9:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
It only works to lay all of the blame on the leader if you bring justice to bear on that leader. I agree completely with that sentiment. That is, in fact, the damning part of the 2004 election. We were given the opportunity, thanks to our constitution, to bring justice to bear on Bush in that election, but we, as an electorate, chose not to do so. Thus, we are complicit, we have accepted the responsibility for what happened before and after the 2004 election.
Obviously there has to be some way to find redemption. That way can only be to recognize what we did, acknowledge our horrible mistake, and finally bring the leader to justice. Justice doesn't necessarily mean "hang the leader", but it most certainly does mean a trial with a verdict and a sentence.
Since our Congress doesn't even believe that an impeachment is in order I think it is safe to say that redemption is not in our future.
Hoppy in Sacramento
October 4, 2007 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Justice doesn't necessarily mean 'hang the leader'"
I will confess to using the verb in question as a rhetorical device, the more so as I oppose capital punishment.
A few months in the Hague and life in prison will suffice.
October 4, 2007 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hoppy and Jolly, have I mentioned lately how much I like the two of you?
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
October 4, 2007 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think this is the first time, but encomia are always welcome--I have taken the liberty of rating your comment "excellent"...
October 4, 2007 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think this is the first time, but encomia are always welcome--I have taken the liberty of rating your comment "excellent"...
October 4, 2007 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
So nice, I said it twice...
(what is it with the TPM stutter stroke--I swear I only hit post once...)
October 4, 2007 12:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just have one comment. About NEOCONS wanting democracy. I guess you don't understand NEOCONS. From their view, the Iraq war is a great success, and another one would be good too. Follow where the money is going in the Iraq war, and you will see what the neocons really want, and are getting. Follow what is going on in this country, and you will see what they want, and what they are getting. The whole article is ludicrous when I see statements like that. You and people like you are great little tools for them. They are destroying democracy here and abroad, and setting up an elite class of money and power. This nation is being impoverished into financial ruin -but just keep your eye on the money. OUR money is going into the neocon's pockets at billions per year- NOT TO SUPPORT ANY TROOPS. The troops are there to provide a place for the neocons to profit -from our tax dollars. Cynical? Not as cynical as the ones doing it. Wake up, and then comment on the Brits.
October 4, 2007 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, and maybe I'm being uncharitable here... you say that "some wits" reject the "Potter Barn Rule" because the actual Pottery Barn has no such rule. I hope we're clear that the wit in that comment has nothing to do with what our responsibilities are (even though you and I disagree about them) and everything to do with the notion that basing foreign policy on retail standards is ludicrous.
Obviously, Pottery Barn policies are irrelevant to the fact that the first aim of the US government at this point should be to secure the safety of our soldiers by withdrawing them from Iraq.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
October 4, 2007 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
"secure the safety of our soldiers by withdrawing them from Iraq."
I have always felt that if I were serving in Iraq, (as far as supporting the troops, and all) what I would really want would be the support of a C-130 Hercules seat under my ass.
October 4, 2007 9:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since Al Qaeda refers to the Shiites as the near enemy you can add them to the list of people who want to keep Iraq and the surrounding area destablized.
October 5, 2007 6:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
How about a new Pottery Barn rule:
If you break it, and continue to break stuff, get out of the store.
October 5, 2007 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
How about the neo Pottery Barn Rule:
Break all the pots and kill all the resisting employees in the place, and then stack and staff your own while moving into adjacent pottery barns to bring them the same 'improvements'.
October 5, 2007 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
"moving into adjacent pottery barns to bring them the same 'improvements'."
This is the "Walmart rule"
October 5, 2007 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink