councilor.org
| Source | Paul |
| Date | 03/08/19/02:11 |
| Jim writes:
>[*] It's possible that the neo-cons assumed that it would be easy to run >Iraq after the conquest -- oops, I mean "liberation" -- because the >countries of Eastern Europe were relatively easy to run after the fall of >the USSR. I have a different take on this. Occupying Iraq really should have been *relatively* easy (ok, a lot less hard), for a number of reasons. But the people calling the shots (sorry for the pun) are a extreme group, inexperienced, and for ideological reasons have isolated themselves - even from the vast U.S., Iraqi, and international apparatuses who would pretty much readily do it for them. Iraq had some unique advantages for the U.S. government - more advantages than practically any country in the world (which is why they chose Iraq). Only a handful of countries could provide that much revenue/per person to an occupying power. No other country could provide both the money and the human resource base. The U.S. succeeds a widely detested dictatorship in a largely apolitical un-mobilized climate after a decade of sanctions. Guerrilla groups can not survive in numbers in the countryside and the neighboring countries hated the regime and would be willing to stay out of the conflict (for now and under the right conditions). The Kurdish part of the country was already largely 'handled'. The U.S. needed to make compromises - BUT with groups that were ready to do it. International elites required some slice of the pie and minor seats at the table. Many, Iraqi Sunni Bathists and many of their guerilla supporters in the small units now active) could likewise be accommodated IF they believe there is some role for their class via control/sale of the state mechanisms they built (they mostly do not come from the traditional wealthy families or the tribal elite). Something like the Soviet transition would have been fine by them. Admittedly, the Shiites require some very subtile accommodations (but again there is LOTS of resources to do it with and they have gotten very little in the past). The Eastern Europe transition used multinational institutions that ensured a big place for the Europeans and even sought a place for the Japanese in the Soviet Far East. It brought in a lot of technical people who "know" how to do these things. It readily sought to buy out the existing national elite classes and groups and offer them a personal future. This model was rejected by the Bush administration (for now) and explains a good part (not all) of the problems. The contrast does also tell us about the future model this crowd hopes to promote. But I also wonder (with the Presidential election looming) whether the U.S. won't soften its line. |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho