Another False Dichotomy

Today, Bill Safire essentially tells us that if we don't support the Bush Administration's version of occupation, we face dire consequences:

Set aside the loss of U.S. prestige or America's credibility in dealing with other rogue nations acquiring nuclear weapons. Iraq itself would likely split apart. Shiites in the south would resist a return of repression by Saddam's Sunnis and set up a nation under the protection of Iran. Kurds in the north, fearing the return of Saddamism, would break away into an independent Kurdistan; that would induce Turkey, worried about separatism among its own Kurds, to seize the Iraqi oil fields of Kirkuk.

One result could well be a re-Saddamed Sunni triangle. Baghdad would then become the arsenal of terrorism, importer and exporter of nukes, bioweapons and missiles. There is no way we can let that happen. Either we stay in Baghdad until Iraq becomes a unified democratic beacon of freedom to the Arab world - or we pull out too soon, thereby allowing terrorism to establish its main world sanctuary and its agents to come and get us.

These fears, of course, justify ad hominem attacks on "the dovish left", which presumably includes those he calls "failuremongers and isolationists on the campaign trail". Let's ignore, of course, the fact that many people who were wary of an attack on Iraq, or who opposed the war - on both the left and right - were opposed out of concern about the aftermath, including the possible fragmentation of Iraq, and concerns about the rigidity of the Bush Administration's backbone if the choice appeared to be losing the 2004 election or abandoning Iraq to chaos. Wasn't it the Bush I administration which first raised the fears of fragmentation and chaos in the event that Hussein were deposed, and whose wet dream for Iraq was to have the nation ruled by an iron-fisted dictator who simply didn't happen to be Saddam Hussein? Does that make Bush I a failuremonger from the dovish left?

But on to Safire's false dichotomy. Before the war, we obviously had an additional choice beyond occupation or abandonment. We could have opted to maintain the isolation of Hussein's regime - an isolation that, all propaganda aside, had been effective in disarming his nation, and in preventing Hussein from lending support to terrorist causes directed at the United States. Granted, that was far from an ideal situation, and even if it were that option is no longer available.

Does our abandonment of containment mean that our choices are now as Safire states, either to "stay in Baghdad until Iraq becomes a unified democratic beacon of freedom to the Arab world" or to "pull out too soon"? Somehow the Bush Administration remains tightly allied with Saudi Arabia, the nation which produced both Osama Bin Laden and the majority of those directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and which is a repressive, fundamentalist Islamic kingdom. We lend billions of dollars in annual aid to Egypt, the second greatest contributor to the 9/11 attack force, and far from being a beacon of justice and democracy. We justified our first attack on Iraq on its invasion of Kuwait - another repressive Middle Eastern kingdom which denies equal rights to women and which just elected a fundamentalist Islamic majority to its (relatively powerless) parliament. If the Bush Administration could install a relatively cooperative and stable equivalent regime in Iraq, oppressive and totalitarian though it would be, I am quite certain both that it would do so and that Safire would cheerlead its decision - even though it would be anything but the creation of a "unified democratic beacon of freedom to the Arab world".

Beyond the false dichotomy, there are issues that Safire intentionally chooses not to address. First, he does not speak to the means by which we can transform Iraq into a "unified democratic beacon of freedom". Second, he does not speak to the cost involved in establishing such a transformation, whether in terms of money or in terms of lives. Third, he does not address the duration of the occupation necessary to effect such a transformation. If he has no ambivalence about the continued occupation, surely he has some impression of the costs and burdens he is insisting that we absorb.

In fact, the only proposal Safire makes is that we can attack Baathism, which he apparently perceives to be the root of all problems for the occupation, with a concerted campaign of propaganda. This proposed propaganda campaing would be spearheaded by General John Abizaid, who is of Lebanese heritage and who speaks fluent Arabic. I am sure that there would be nothing more compelling to the Iraqi people than hearing a U.S. general speak to them in U.S.-accented Arabic from the Eastern Dialect of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, warning them of dire consequence if they did not help bring about an end to the Baathism that, presumably, most don't support in the first place.

And, ending with the question that perhaps could have been the starting point... what does Iraq have to do with "rogue nations acquiring nuclear weapons"? Yep - as usual, Safire has all the answers.

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