Answering Chucky

Charles Krauthammer continues his downward spiral. Here he seems dangerously close to admitting that the war was wrong:

Our objectives in Iraq were twofold and always simple: Depose Saddam Hussein and replace his murderous regime with a self-sustaining, democratic government.

The first was relatively easy. But Iraq's first truly democratic government turned out to be hopelessly feeble and fractured, little more than a collection of ministries handed over to various parties, militias and strongmen.

The problem is not, as we endlessly argue about, the number of American troops. Or of Iraqi troops. The problem is the allegiance of the Iraqi troops. Some serve the abstraction called Iraq. But many swear fealty to political parties, religious sects or militia leaders.

Are the Arabs intrinsically incapable of democracy, as the "realists" imply? True, there are political, historical, even religious reasons why Arabs are less prepared for democracy than, say, East Asians and Latin Americans who successfully democratized over the past several decades. But the problem here is Iraq's particular political culture, raped and ruined by 30 years of Hussein's totalitarianism.
What was left in its wake was a social desert, a dearth of the trust and good will and sheer human capital required for democratic governance. All that was left for the individual Iraqi to attach himself to was the mosque or clan or militia. At this earliest stage of democratic development, Iraqi national consciousness is as yet too weak and the culture of compromise too undeveloped to produce an effective government enjoying broad allegiance.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't he skirting the edge of saying the Iraq War was/is a pointless exercise? I mean, he seems to be feebly suggesting that there was no way we could have known this would be the outcome, but that's just crap. Anyone with even passing familiarity with the post-Soviet Eastern Bloc (or any country where authoritarian regimes were deposed, including Russia itself, in a way) could tell you this was a very likely outcome in a sudden power vacuum. Authoritarian governments stamp out civil society--it's pretty much the defining characteristic of what they do. In their aftermath, nations don't have the institutions necessary to make an easy transition to democracy.

All we're really left with from Chuck, then, seems to be an admission that he and his buddies were too stupid to understand any of this.

Of course, the best part of the column is how this should have been prevented:

I have my own theories. In retrospect, I think we made several serious mistakes -- not shooting looters, not installing an Iraqi exile government right away, and not taking out Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army in its infancy in 2004 -- that greatly compromised the occupation.

Awesome. Let me see if I have my Building Democracy Checklist in order: shoot thieves on sight, install puppet governments, assassinate popular leaders.

All three are great, but I've gotta say, the first one (shooting looters) is my favorite. Where to begin with this one? In the past, Arab regimes were considered savage because they believed in cutting off the hands of thieves. But apparently, if they had taken it a step further and just executed them, they would have been laying the foundation for democracy. Besides which, didn't Krauthammer's boy Rumsfeld tell us all back in 2003 that the looting wasn't a big deal and we were stupid to care about it?

Of course, the idea of "taking out" Sadr and the Mahdi Army is a doozy, too. He willfully ignores Sadr's popularity, and what it signifies: discontent and militancy among the poor urban Shiite population in Iraq. That's an intrinsic problem--you don't "take" that "out."

Of course, as with any Krauthammer column, it's not really worth reading the whole thing. In this case, he demonstrates his separation from reality at the very beginning with his obligatory sophomoric and totally inappropriate historical reference:

"A republic, if you can keep it."

-- Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention, in answer to "What have we got?"

We have given the Iraqis a republic, and they do not appear able to keep it.

Yeah, that was a totally awesome republic we gave them. However did they manage to screw it up?

I'm worried that K-Ham will be beyond parody if this trend continues. A worrying idea, given that half of my posts are about his shitty hack columns.