Whatever the outcome in Iraq, there are several lessons to consider:Given the global dissemination of weaponry it is no longer practical to attempt sociopolitical transformation of states by force. Russia's failure in Chechnya should serve as a warning that even overwhelming military force in ministates may not achieve its objectives and can generate costly cycles of retaliation.
Should action be taken, no transformation process in tradition bound societies should be put on a precision schedule. Once intervention is irreversible, the commitment is indefinite. Japan is frequently and, in other ways, inappropriately cited as a precursor to Iraq as a country where American action brought democracy and prosperity. American troops are still there, 60 years later.
The Dayton model for Bosnia should have been considered as an option for Iraq, given Iraq's historic regionalism and the potential for particular problems in each region (de Blij, 2003). It may be too late for Iraq, but it should be an option in any future intervention in countries where discrete areas could progress under occupation toward a new order at their own pace, with eventual reintegration a "national" goal.
Unilateral or multilateral intervention in one state will have consequences for, and in, neighboring countries. The domino effect is likely to arise, with the potential to undermine regional stability. Even if it were to succeed in Iraq, the emergence of a democratic government would be seen as a threat by neighboring regimes unable or unwilling to transform themselves in its image.
The acquisition of nuclear weapons by rogue states should be prevented or constrained wherever possible, but the reality is that their dissemination is inevitable, even if Iraq had none in 2003. Interdiction should focus on the far more serious menace of nuclearweapon acquisition by terrorist organizations. States face the risk of annihilation following first-use. Terrorist organizations do not.
Representative government comes in various forms, and so does democracy (the United States is in truth a federal republic, not a true democracy as critics of the Electoral College like to emphasize). Democracy takes generations to mature; homegrown varieties do better than imposed systems; it cannot usually be installed, as departing colonial powers learned. Thus the invasion of Iraq changed the political and cultural geography of terrorism in ways unanticipated and shifted the focus from the mountains of Tora Bora to the plains of Mesopotamia.
One of the mistakes the media often makes however is to presume that Iraqi Shi'ites would have some bondage with the Shi' ites of the Shia heartland, in neighboring Iran. In fact Arab (Iraqi) Shi'ites and Persian (Iranian) Shiites do not see eye to eye. Iraq's Shiites adhere to a form of the faith known as Akhbari, which does not have strong political motivation and does not readily generate a political power structure. Iran's Shiites follow Usuli doctrines, in which the link between religion and politics is far stronger. As soon as the postinvasion disorder made it possible, Iranian Shi'ites crossed the border and began urging Usuli practices on the Iraqi faithful. One of those who heard that call was a young cleric named Muqtada al-Sadr, who assembled an armed force, holed up in a mosque in the holy city of Najaf, and contributed greatly to the chaos into which postinvasion Iraq descended.
But even Muqtada al-Sadr eventually agreed to participate in the political process, mindful of the order issued by the Shi'ites' grand ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who proclaimed that failure to do so by any Iraqi is "a betrayal of the nation" that would be punishable by "burning in hell." Indeed, Akhbari doctrine goes far to explain why a comparatively small Sunni minority could mistreat the Shi'ite majority (which constitutes more than 60 percent of the country's entire population) for so long, even to the point of environmental terrorism when Saddam ordered the draining of the historic marshlands of the south, depriving tens of thousands of their traditional livelihoods. Terrible retribution was meted out to Shi'ites suspected of disloyalty following Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. Mass graves found after the 2003 invasion contained the remains of hundreds of thousands, most of them Shi'ites. Nevertheless, Iraq's Shi'ites proved themselves repeatedly to be Iraqi Arabs first and Shi'ites second. During the Iran-Iraq War, there were no mass defections.
On the other hand the ten-year war between Iraq and Iran began not as a religious conflict, as many suppose, but as a boundary conflict in the area of the Shatt-al-Arab.
Currently, Iran’s conventional forces are deteriorating faster than they are being modernized, or improved in readiness and training. The real risks are now terrorism and extremism, asymmetric warfare, and proliferation.
It may well be that any broader effort at developing a regional security structure or concept will fail - or be largely symbolic like the Gulf Cooperation Council. Letting the current situation go on, however, is likely to create new dangers by default. Iraq will be left out. Iran will be isolated and proliferate. The divisive impact of Neo-Salafi Sunni extremism and Shi’ite extremism will grow. The Southern Gulf states will suffer from the spillover and backlash effects, be pushed into more arms imports, and have to confront how they can cope with proliferation. Military and strategic dependence on the West will increase. There may be no good or easy answers, but there clearly are much worse alternatives. It is time for the Southern Gulf states to both look hard at Iran and look hard at their strategic future.
The war reporting from Iraq one should ad, is shockingly one-sided, partly because some of the fixers and translators employed by some Western journalists once worked from Saddam's regime. Also the press simply doesn't play up allied victories; they save that precious air time for the next car bomb.
Nevertheless, Iraq's economy is starting to boom already. Many Iraqis , denied employment under Saddam Hussein's regime for reasons of ethnicity, sectarian identity, or for refusal to join the Baath party, now have jobs. Iraqis' own private investment, aided with capital remitted from family members abroad, has enabled the private sector to boom. Banks, restaurants, and furniture stores occupy what just last year were empty lots or abandoned storefronts. In August 2005, new business registrations have topped 30,000; this figure does not include the number of start-ups which still ignore Iraqi-registration rules.
Ordinary Iraqis are financially better off now than they were at any time in the past two decades. According to World Bank and International Monetary Fund estimates, per capita income has doubled since 2003. Iraq's per capita gross domestic product is today almost twice that of Yemen and nearing that of Egypt and Syria, hardly a sign of failure in a country in which, just three years ago, antiwar groups insisted children were starving en masse. Statistics aside, the Iraqi economic boom is apparent to anyone who visits an Iraqi market. Not only are appliances and luxuries in the stores, but customers are actually purchasing them.
Iraqis today employ technologies that were nonexistent or off-limits to all but the Baathist elite just three years ago. As of September 2005, there were more than 3.5 million cell-phone subscribers in Iraq, for example. Under the Baath party, there was no cell-phone service, and possession of satellite phones was a capital offense. Internet cafés dot not only Baghdad thoroughfares, but also dusty back streets in provincial towns. When I visited the (restored) marshlands of southern Iraq, I checked my e-mail and sent dispatches from internet cafes not only in the Maysan provincial capital of al-Amarah and the Dhi Qar provincial capital of Nasiriyah, but also in small, dusty towns like Islah, a Dawa stronghold on the edge of the marshes.
Daily reports of violence suggest Iraq is tearing apart at the seams. Ethnic strife remains a possibility, but it need not happen. While the Bush administration has been inept at making its case, the White House has little for which to apologize. Iraqis debate. They tolerate dissent. Politicians hash out compromise. The constitution may not be ideal, but it is fair. Meanwhile, tens of millions of Saudis, Syrians, Iranians, Tunisians, and Egyptians still struggle under dictatorships. They lack a free press. While self-described liberal bloggers pillory the White House, they ignore the plight of Lotfi Hajji, president of the Tunisian Syndicate of Journalists; Ayachi Hammami, secretary general of the Tunis Section of the Tunisian League for Human Rights; or Nejib Chebbi, secretary general of the Progressive Democratic party, all of whom are conducting a hunger strike in Tunisia to win the same press freedoms now enjoyed in a large part of Iraq.
The announcement on Oct. 25 that the first genuinely democratic national charter in Arab history had been approved by 79 percent of Iraqis was a major piece of good news. It confirmed the courage of Iraq's people and their hunger for freedom and decent governance. It advanced the US campaign to democratize a country that for 25 years had been misruled by a mass-murdering sociopath. It underscored the decision by Iraq's Sunnis, who had boycotted the parliamentary elections in January, to pursue their goals through ballots, not bullets. And it dealt a humiliating blow to the bombers and beheaders -- to the likes of Islamist butcher Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who earlier this year declared ''a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy" and threatened to kill anyone who took part in the elections.
No question: If you think that defeating Islamofascism, extending liberty, and transforming the Middle East are important, it's safe to say you saw the ratification of the new constitution as the Iraqi news story of the week.
But that isn't how the mainstream media saw it.
Consider The Washington Post. On the morning after the results of the Iraqi referendum were announced, the Post's front page was dominated by a photograph, stretched across four columns, of three daughters at the funeral of their father, Lieutenant Colonel Leon James II, who had died from injuries suffered during a Sept. 26 bombing in Baghdad. Two accompanying stories, both above the fold, were headlined ''Military Has Lost 2,000 in Iraq" and ''Bigger, Stronger, Homemade Bombs Now to Blame for Half of US Deaths." A nearby graphic -- ''The Toll" -- divided the 2,000 deaths by type of military service -- active duty, National Guard, and Reserves.
From Page 1, the stories jumped to a two-page spread inside, where they were illustrated with more photographs, a series of drawings depicting roadside attacks, and a large US map showing where each fallen soldier was from. On a third inside page, meanwhile, another story was headlined ''2,000th Death Marked by Silence and a Vow." It began: ''Washington marked the 2,000th American fatality of the Iraq war with a moment of silence in the Senate, the reading of the names of the fallen from the House floor, new protests, and a solemn vow from President Bush not to 'rest or tire until the war on terror is won.' " Two photos appeared alongside, one of Bush and another of antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan. And to give the body count a local focus, there was yet another story (''War's Toll Leaves Baltimore in Mourning") plus four pictures of troops killed in Iraq.
The Post didn't ignore the Iraqi election results. A story appeared on Page A13 (''Sunnis Failed to Defeat Iraq Constitution"), along with a map breaking down the vote by province. But like other leading newspapers, including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times, it devoted vastly more attention to the 2,000-death ''milestone," a statistic with no unique significance apart from the fact that it ends in round numbers.
Every death in Iraq is heartbreaking. The 2,000th fatality was neither more nor less meaningful than the 1,999 that preceded it. But if anything makes the death toll remarkable, it is how historically low it is. Considering what the war has accomplished so far -- the destruction of the region's bloodiest dictatorship, the liberation of 25 million Iraqis, the emergence of democratic politics, the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, the abandonment by Libya of its nuclear weapons program -- it is hard to disagree with Norman Podhoretz, who notes in the current Commentary that these achievements have been ''purchased at an astonishingly low cost in American blood when measured by the standards of every other war we have ever fought."
But that isn't a message Big Media cares to emphasize. Hostile to the war and to the administration conducting it, the nation's leading news outlets harp on the negative and pessimistic, consistently underplaying all that is going right in Iraq. Their fixation on the number of troops who have died outweighs their interest in the cause for which those fallen heroes fought -- a cause that advanced with the ratification of the new constitution.
Poll after poll confirms the public's low level of confidence in mainstream media news. Gallup recently measured that confidence at 28 percent, an all-time low. Why such mistrust? The media's slanted coverage of Iraq provides a pretty good clue.