George Packer is a writer for The New York Times. He was one of the pro-war left in 2003 and three years later his book, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, is an examination of what went wrong with post-war Iraq and his own reasons for supporting the war.
The root of Packer’s support for the Iraq war lies in his friendship with Kanan Makiya. Mikaya is an Iraqi exile who teaches at Brandeis University. Mikaya was a passionate supporter of the overthrow of the Iraqi regime and with good reason. As an exile Mikaya had documented the past abuses of the Iraqi people by Saddam and hoped for a change. Packer also details the evolutions of the neo-Straussian machinations of the neo-cons but it was the ideas of the Iraqi exiles that were the most interesting. Often overlooked in the post-postmortem analysis of why Iraq was invaded, Packer sympathetically recounts their story.
As someone who was opposed to the war (and still thinks the war on Iraq was monumentally stupid) I did ask myself whether if I had known an Iraqi exile such as Mikaya would I have supported the war? It is a question that can’t be answered but reading of the struggles, passion and hope of the exiles it did make myself wonder. However as we are introduced to the other Iraq exiles including Ahmed Chalabi, the problems with the exiles become apparent. The differing motives and philosophical divisions with the group of exiles as well as political interference (the exiles were not as well regarded by the Bush administration as they were led to believe) showed, even though their intentions were often worthwhile, they had made the same grievous error as the Bush administration. Instead of trying to understand Iraq as it stood now, Iraq had become an abstract canvas on which they could paint their ideas forged many decades removed from their country. Ideology became powerful than reality.
Those that have suffered the most in regards to the abstraction of Iraq are obviously the Iraqis themselves. Packer has visited Iraq a number of times, shaking off the protective cocoon of the Green zone when possible. Packer’s friendship with an Iraqi woman, Aseel, is touching she is a supporter of the US, wanting to escape the isolation of Iraq. Packer describes the conflicts she faces as an Iraqi woman:
Being an Iraqi girl was a kind of confinement. Aseel and I couldn’t to alone to a restaurant, couldn’t talk alone in her house, couldn’t exchange the kisses on both cheeks that every other member of her family gave me. For all of her insistence on free thinking, free dressing, free reading and free moving (she longed to ride a bicycle around the city, something no woman could do without drawing unwanted attention or worse), I had the sense that Aseel accepted these taboos as the way she had to live. When she was sixteen, an older cousin had danced with her at a wedding, and the touch of his hand on her back was like nothing she’d ever felt. The he went away to school, and soon he was married, and that was the end of the first and last love affair of her life. She prayed infrequently, she went to the mosque only on special occasions like Ashura, and her attitude toward religion was more mystical then doctrinal. But she still wanted to be a good Iraqi girl.
Aseel’s contradictory desires are reflection of the complexity of Iraqi reality. The impression of Iraqis via Packer is that they are happy for their freedom, appreciative of Americans, wanting them to leave but fearful of the future. Aseel’s family had narrowly escaped from being victims of suicide bombers a number of times. The insurgency was a predictable outcome that was ignored in pre-war planning. Washington’s response to the insurgency was to almost pretend it was not happening or blame it on former Baathists and/or foreign terrorists. Eventually some realized that is was “POIs. That is pissed off Iraqis.â€? Packer notes that the Sunni and Shiite insurgencies were fundamentally different.
The Sunni insurgency never articulated a political vision that could win over the Iraqis in large numbers. Its rhetoric was nationalist and Islamists; its strategy was increasingly sectarian. What it really excelled at was fear.
The Shiite insurgency arose from the murder of Ayatollah Abdul-Majid Al-Khoei by followers of Moqtada al-Sadr. It started as a struggle over who would be the spiritual leader of the Shiites. The American’s inability (or reluctance) to confront Sadr allowed his power to grow unchecked. He presented himself as an alternative candidate for an Iraqi government and led protests against the interim governing councils and condemned the occupations. The occupying authorities shutdown Sadr’s newspaper which sparked a full scale rebellion against the occupation forces. What followed next was a series of decisions (including the attack of Fallujah) where the Bush administration rode over consideration of the realities in Iraq and made matters worse. It even led to Sunni and Shia fighting together. Eventually Sadr was convinced to end his insurgency and join the political process. Packer notes that this was “a rare strategic victory in Iraq.â€?
The failure the anticipate the insurgency was nothing to the failure to anticipate the civil war. Packer titles his tenth chapter ‘Civil War?’. Packer concentrates on the plight of the Kurds. Forcibly removed from Kirkuk by Saddam, Arabs were moved in. Now many years later, the Kurds are reclaiming Kirkuk and the Arabs, many who have lived there all their lives, are being forced to leave, confused and dismayed. It is a reversal of what Saddam did to the Kurds. With already existing tensions between the Kurds and Arabs it could be the second front in a civil war. The first front, between Sunni and Shia has been underway for some time in the shadows of the insurgency. The only question is whether it can be contained and extinguished or whether it will explode into a full scale war and eventually involve other nations such as Iran, Turkey etc.
And as the Iraqi people are hurt by unreal decisions made from far away so are the American soldiers sent to Iraq to enforce their government’s abstract visions. Undermanned, poorly trained (for peace keeping and reconstruction work) and under equipped, Packer uses the experiences of Captain John Prior in the US Army as example of that the soldiers are facing. Often they are acting as town planners, mediating disputes between rival groups and handing out books at schools. Activities they were not trained for. They aren’t sure who to trust and are unable to understand or get to know the Iraqis because of the constraints and context of being occupiers. The soldiers believe in their mission and follow their orders but there is a sense bewilderment about what they are exactly doing.
In another chapter, ‘Memorial Day’ Packer tells the story of Chris Frosheiser whose son was killed in Iraq. It reflects the story of John Prior as Frosheiser tries to come to term with his son’s death, the reasons why he was in Iraq and whether any good will come of it.
Assasin’s Gate is a honest attempt by Packer to examine if his pro-war stance was valid and the consequences wortwhile. Packer doesn’t renounce his pro-war stance but acknowledges that life in Iraq is difficult and he still believes that the war is winnable (I’ll agree that the war was winnable):
Daily existence in Iraq remains a nightmare. In the world’s newest democracy, most people aren’t free to speak their minds, belong to a certain group, wear what they want, or even walk down the street without risking their lives. During the worst of the violence, some Iraqis said that they had been better off under Saddam, that America should never have overthrown him if the result was going to be so much more bloodshed. Few Iraqis I knew ever said it, though. Experts in suffering, they are better qualified than people in Cairo, Rome, London, or Washington to balance their costs against their gains. When I told Aseel that, after the weapons turned out not to exist, some Americans felt betrayed by the Bush administration and Ahmad Chalabi, she exclaimed, “We are more important than missiles!” What the war gave people like her is hope.
The long view of history made the war possible, and the long view of history made the war costly. Out of government, Drew Erdmann dwelled on the institutional character of the administration’s mistakes, but in Baghdad in the summer of 2003 he had said that success or failÂure would largely depend on the judgment of individuals. I came to believe that those in positions of highest responsibility for Iraq showed a carelessness about human life that amounted to criminal negligence. Swaddled in abstract ideas, convinced of their own righteousness, inÂcapable of self-criticism, indifferent to accountability, they turned a difficult undertaking into a needlessly deadly one. When things went wrong, they found other people to blame. The Iraq War was always winnable; it still is. For this very reason, the recklessness of its authors is all the harder to forgive.
Undeniably the Iraqis deserved to be freed from the brutality of Saddam’s regime. But the Iraqis did not deserve to pay the price for the abstract, out of touch ideology visited upon them by the Bush administration. Packer has been criticised in his soul searching for not offering any answers. But to be fair it is a difficult question and I’ll admit that I am not sure what the answers are either. However empty rhetoric about “staying the courseâ€? is no answer. The course that the Bush Administration adopted is what caused this mess. It would be prudent to try a new direction one that takes into account the realities of Iraq and Middle East politics. One that will not betray the hopes of long-suffering Iraqi people.
The same Ahmed Chalabi who stitched up a deal to buy Australian wheat while the Cole AWB enquiry was still raging?
The same Silkworm who spots racist shit?
The same indeed silkworm. There were quite a few exiles involved trying to drum up support before the war. Chalabi happened to be one of the more, shall we say, oppurtunistic.
Another Kim, I really don’t want the comments to descend into off-topic comments about other commenters. If such comments do appear they will be deleted.
I’m off to enjoy my cricket club’s end of season awards night so play nice. As long as people abide by the guidelines for commenting on LP they are welcome to comment on this post.
Nice post, Shaun.
As a bit of an antipodean counterpart, here’s a post from Andrew Leigh, an Australian leftie who supported the war.
An excellent and considered post, fair minded and polite to a fault. But a bit too long and not quite to the point.
The regime-change and nation-building of Iraq was doomed in both conceived ends and executed means. Gulf War II was a neat example of the errors of “constructivism in foreign policy”: Old Left democratic revolutionary in its means and New Left multicultural reformatory in its ends. This doom was forseeable because the Bush admin was the means processor and Iraq was the end state.
A person with my politics should have seen this disaster coming a mile off. But patriotic fervour and partisan spite blinded me. And war-blogging is intoxicating to white males of a certain age.
“Constructivism in foreign policy” is a bad idea in principle. Externally imposed democratic revolutions are usually a recipe for disaster, although it can work in practice (Germany, Japan). The light bulb has to want to change, by conservative evolution rather than constructive revolution.
Preventive war is also profoundly unconservative - the Treaty of Westphalia establishing invioable sovereignty as the basis for inter-state relations is a profoundly conservative docurment. Moreover GWB is the last man to lead such Napoleanic enterprises, his team could not run a tuck shop.
But even Napolean would have quailed at the prospect of turning Iraq into a coherent and civil state. For a start it is composed of tribalised consanguinous Arabs etc, (”When she was sixteen, an older cousin had danced with her at a wedding, and the touch of his hand on her back was like nothing she’d ever felt.” - this statement would be cause for social ostracism in Australia.) In-breeding is not a sound basis for nationalism. Local Alpha-males lording it over each other through ethnic mafias is not a sound basis for national loyalty.
And the Iraqi Arabs are divided into provincial sects, which produce a sizeable fraction of young men every year who live to make martyrs of each other and themselves. This problem is massively exarcerbated by the assymetrical geographical distribution of oil resources.
Overlaying all this is the Islamic religion which, in its sectarian form, is not the best cultural underpinning for modernity.
We should not stick our noses in other peoples business. Apart from offering relief from natural disaster and constraining political crimes. The Middle East is full of places as bad as Iraq, best they sort out their own problems over there and we dont get involved in them, by either going over there or bringing them here.
What point are you trying to make? The Iraqis need to buy wheat. Should they not buy it off Australia if Australia has wheat to sell? Would not the fact that the Cole enquiry is still raging provide significant assurance that at least on this occasion the sale will be done on transparent terms. As a Deputy Prime Minister in the Iraqi Government would he not be at an appropriate level and position to negotiate such a deal?
I am far from being a fan of the man as I see him as an extraordinary opportunist (and worse) who was capable of gulling the credulous Donald Rumsfeld but on this occasion I think you are making an unwarranted allusion.
Awesome post, Shaun.
“The Iraq War was always winnable; it still is. For this very reason, the recklessness of its authors is all the harder to forgive.”
What an excellent quote. I do hope that more of those who supported the war start seeing it this way - that admitting that those in charge have done a terrible job isn’t the same as denouncing their original goals.
A great article, Shaun, and without the estimable Jack’s qualifiers.
However.
“Winnable”? Maybe, but winnable for what and for whom? I think the insurgency can be contained, given the right military resolve. What comes later is the issue. It still seems to me that Iraq - a fabricated “state” from the get-go - will fracture along its natural fault lines - Kurdish, Shia and Sunni. Three peoples, three Iraqs. We’re training Shia and Sunni army brigades separately now, as I understand it, because they won’t train together. So what will happen when the COW leaves doesn’t take a lot of imagination, really.
And maybe, brutal and bloody and all as the conflict will be, that will be ultimately for the best. When people hate each other so much that they can’t raise themselves above the instinct for mutual slaughter, there’s very little anyone else can do about it. I think it was William Shawcross who argued that these conflicts have to be fought out until one side wins, and the other loses, unpalatable as it will always appear to outside observers. It’s what has happened throughout history, after all.
Unfortunately for proponents of the ‘natural faultline’ solution to the current mess, the Iraqi cookie doesn’t crumble as neatly as popular imagination would have it. [Map]
For one thing, Baghdad which would most likely end up in the ‘Sunni’ zone has about two million Shias, many with mixed-religion families and longstanding ties to their districts esp. ‘Sadr City’. A similar situation exists in many of the central provinces like Diyala and especially Salahuddin, which contains both Saddam’s old stronghold of Tikrit as well as the mixed Sunni-Shia city of Samarra (home of the famous-now-infamous Al-Askari mosque).
In the north the issue is even more vexed, with Sunnis, Turkomen and Kurds all laying claim to key cities Mosul and Kirkuk. An independent Kurdistan isn’t really economically viable unless it controls those two and their neighbouring oilfields, which isn’t going to impress the large Turkmeni and Sunni communities in both. There’s already been a quiet campaign of ‘ethnic cleansing’ on Kurdistan’s part since 2003, though so far it pales in comparison to Saddam’s Anfal campaign and the attempts to ‘Arabise’ Kurdistan (though this isn’t really saying much). I can’t imagine any partition of these areas that doesn’t look 10x worse than Bosnia.
Setting aside the utter carnage and full-scale civil war that would result from any partition under the current circumstances, what makes it undesireable from a Western (and indeed, Global) perspective is the destabilising side-effects, as far as regional balance of power is concerned. A three-way partition leaves a Shia-majority, Iran-supported statelet bordering Saudi Arabia’s (oil rich) Shia-majority northern province, a destitute and economically unviable Sunni rump, and in the north, Turkey and Iran’s worst nightmare - independent Kurdistan, a shining beacon of inspiration and hope to their millions of oppressed Kurds.
Maybe the Brits should have thought a little bit more about the consquences when they carved up this chunk of the Ottoman Empire but the breakup of Iraq - no matter how artificial the current arrangement is - is not a solution so much as a gateway to hundreds of problems, much worse than the current clusterfuck.
I don’t mean neat geographical faultlines, Leinad. I mean ethnic and religious faultlines, the whole Balkans thing: forced migrations, ethnic cleansing, massacres. Barring a miracle — and we have seen some, aftger all. Or great leadership. It’s trite, I know, but only time will tell.
Apologies, Rob, I mistook your post for one of those ‘just cut the cake three ways and everyone will be happy’ offerings.
I agree that the situation looks grim to outright appaling but I think an important lesson from Bosnia (and the 1947 partition for that matter) is that there isn’t really an ‘end’ to these kind of conflicts - the grudges and nationalist ambitions become inter-state instead of intra-state.
If Iraq splits in three along Shia-Sunni-Kurd lines what was a civil war will just spill over into an international conflict, one which is going to draw in the other regional players into propping up their preferred (Shia South - Iran, Sunni rump -Saudi and or Syria, Jordan. Kurdistan has security arrangements with Israel etc,) statelet against the others. This scenario doesn’t sound like a resolution of anything, and it’s geopolitical consequences are terrifying. Callous as this sounds, Iraq is more important than the Balkans, because it sits on the world’s second-largest proven petroleum reserves, forms a barrier of sorts between Iran and the rest of the Middle East (which is why the US, the Soviets and France were so keen to support Saddam in the first place), and is awash with millions of small-arms, high explosives and people willing to use them.
This goes beyond Bush and the war. Wether people believe the US should have invaded in the first place (I certain don’t, and never did - it didn’t take Nostradamus to see a lot of this coming) healing the big sucking wound of the occupation/invasion is in everyone’s interests. The stakes are just too high.
In the darker moments I sometimes I agree with Rob and think that it would be better to let the Iraqis sort it out themselves. However given the mistakes of past the CoW owes it to the Iraqis to try and help them through this. The latest pro-war assessment is that it will take decades before whether we know if the war was worthwhile or not. This is an accurate statement but it would have been nice that such honesty was around in 2002 and 2003.
The will is weakening within the Bush administration and they are moving onto Iran (as much as Afghanistan was forgotten when Iraq became the focus). The trouble I see is if there is any military action in Iran it could spill over and inflame another Shia insurgency in Iraq. This would almost put paid to any attempts to stabilize Iraq.
A way forward? To being with some honesty from the CoW regarding past mistakes. Empty rhetoric needs to be abandoned. Then a firm and realistic policy to deal with Iraq needs to be formulated. If troop numbers are inadequate then make them adequate. Also rebuilding Iraq needs specialists not combat troops in helping to get towns and the people back to normal. And the end to cronyism in regards to contracts in Iraq. Billions have been wasted in granting companies such as Halburton exclusive contracts. This was, and is, blatant corruption.
Packer included a few comments by Iraqis that are telling in regards to the perception of the US. Many Iraqis believed that the US would help. Being a superpower it had the capability to right wrongs and rebuild the country. However once the Iraqis saw that things did not improve as expected the ability of US power was rightly questioned. Part of the problem was the Iraqis had overestimated US ability but they had plenty of promises from the US that they indeed could rebuild Iraq.
Y’know I’m pretty much in agreement with Jack here.
But I do think that now we have poked our noses in, we should try fix things up. It’s just the current US administration can’t even fix itself a snack without choking.
An interesting observation someone made recently on some other site was that the nation of Iraq was basically invented in a London club some 80 years ago. After a very long lunch I suspect.
While the story of “Winston’s Hiccup” is sadly untrue, it’s indicative of the um..spirit in which the whole region was carved up post-WW1.
Shaun: “…if troop numbers are inadequate then make them adequate…”
I think part of the reason troop numbers are ‘inadequate’ is because Bush cannot politically afford to impose a draft. The reason he cannot afford a draft is that it would cause such a ruckus in US society, esp. among the youth. Part of the reason for this (we’ll put post-Vietnam ‘youth knee-jerk reflex’ in brackets for a moment) is that Bush was never politically [or even, well, ‘actually’] honest about the motives and reasoning and costs of the war. Suddenly the perils of not going to war with a straight face in a democracy become apparent.
This is the reason the Founders were so careful to delegate the war-declaration authority to the congress, not the executive. A democracy should go to war publicly resolved and mobilized, after a frank and thorough debate; the debate in this case was manipulated from the get-go. These cynical exercises in executive ‘fake’ war-making bear strange fruit, if you’ll forgive misappropriating the expression.
on a side note (and please correct me, those who are better informed) I am under the impression that the problem with ‘rebuilding’ Iraq is far more down to the insurgency than to US ‘incompetence.’ The country was not exactly laid waste indiscriminately in the initial incursion; the problems with things like water and power, as I understand it, is that the infrastructure is continually targeted by the insurgency in order to provoke the populace. It’s not as if Americans don’t know how things like plumbing and electricity work…
Fair point j_p_z re the insurgency and its targetting of infrastructure. Though infrastructure projects (as I understand it) still suffer from funding issues based on politics.
Yes the US forces are stretched thin and I admit I have no idea how extra soldiers will be found. If the US does attack Iran (even with an series of air strikes) it will make matters on the ground even worse in Iraq. And security is a big problem in regards to getting the country up and running again.
j_p_z does make a very good point and one often overlooked by opponents of the war. It is the insurgents that are responsible for the current mayhem. Absent their determination to prevent the rebuilding of the civic infrastructure, and their murder and terrorising of Iraqis willing to contribute to the restitution of public order and security, the COW could well have done its work, pulled out and been gone a year or more since.
Unfortunately the old fable of the frog and scorpion holds some kind of immutable truth for the Middle East. There, things almost always turn out for the worst, not the best. Bush and Co. should have reflected rather more deeply on this before committing to this adventure in democracy restoration.
Of course the Shia/Sunni/Kurd issue is an inescapable element of that treality too.
I disagree. Part of the reason there is an insurgency in the first place is that the Coalition Provisional Authority was undermanned, corrupt and thoroughly staffed with total incompetents, and hence was never in a position to supply any kind of security or prosperity in the first place. In the crucial first months of the occupation they failed to take any of the necessary steps: major weapons dumps weren’t secured, Baghdad dissolved in total chaos in the first few weeks and never fully emerged, millions, possibly billions of dollars in reconstruction aid were skimmed off by contractors and middlemen.
Worst of all, despite massive troop shortages and the chaotic law-and-order situation, Bremer made a colossal mistake by disbanding the entire Iraqi Army, which automatically put 400,000 unemployed men with millitary know-how out on the streets. The Occupation got off to a bad start but they really shot themselves in the foot with that. Any opportunity to establish some semblance of security was lost in mid-2003.
Yes, I concede a lot of what you say, Leinad. Some gross tactical and strategic mistakes were made in the aftermath of the ‘real’ combat. But Bremer was between a rock and a hard place. Politically, it would have been very hard to maintain the Iraqi army in arms. Imagine if when the Allies had defeated Germany they had handed over internal security to the SS and the Gestapo.
But strenuous attempts have been made over the last year or more to recruit into the plolice and military services, including from among the former members of the Iraqi military. These are now the favoured target of the insurgents, being a softer target than the COW. The insurgents have a vested interest in promoting instability and chaos, which radically impedes the ability of the government to govern, and the ability of ordinary Iraqis to resume some kind of normal life, and at the same time increases diasffection with the presence of the COW, who are blamed — rightly at least in part — for being responsible for the whole mess anyway.
Off topic.
Keep this link (top line) for the next spelling flame:
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/tough_nuts/
Rob, I don’t think the SS/Gestapo comparison is particularly accurate, as we are talking about the regular Iraqi army, not the Republican Guard or the Mukhabarat. The regular Iraqi army was largely conscript soldiers, and while it’s officer corps might have been Baathist at the time, this wasn’t Nazi Germany; the CPA was so short on manpower that it just didn’t have the luxury of choosing - it needed all the boots on the ground it could get.
Rob,
The insurgents are taking advantage of poor planning by the CoW in regards to security and reconstruction as Leinad points out. Of course it doesn’t help the effort and an insurgency of some form was likely anyway. However the CoW could have done a lot more to contain the effectiveness of the insurgents even before the war started.
I don’t know about that, Shaun. It looks a bit like wisdom in hindsight. In any event, containing the present insurgency is one thing that has to be left to the military experts. I certainly don’t know enough about the tactics of practical counter-insurgency to make any sugggestions about how to better go about it other than what the COW is doing at present, and it does seem to be paying off, albeit slowly.
Fair point about the Mukhabarat. I guess the US felt that their moral case against Saddam’s regime would be compromised by reliance for security in post-Saddam Iraq on any of his creatures. Agreed, that was a mistake, but I can understand why it was made.
I’d be interested in the evidence on which you’ve formed that conclusion, Rob. Just askin…
Rob,
It is well documented that the Bush administration was warned of a possible insurgency in Iraq but this was discounted by Rumsfeld and Franks in their pre-war planning for post-war Iraq. The lack of adequate planning for security is not wisdon in hindsight. There was plenty of wisdom before the war that indicated a need for such planning.
The question should be why were such warnings ignored?
Rob, the US embassy and military don’t seem to share your view that the insurgency is being countered effectively.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/09/news/report.php
It’s what they are paid and trained for, Kim. If they can’t get it right, what are the odds that you or I could? — as armchair generals or Monday morning quarterbacks, I mean
Rob, you seem to think that starting a war and then pretending to be surprised when people fight back is not disingenuous.
Rumsfeld summed up the true attitude of the Americans very early on in this war. He said that in war “stuff happens”. The US has Iraq right where it wants it at the moment. There is no crisis. Iraqis are now weak and divided and at each others throats. This is the friggin idea. From Iraq and Afghanistan, they can constrain Iran with more success. Certainly put a crimp in Iran’s ambitions to open up big time trading to that big south-east asian country called India.
Wish people would stop buying into this dumb fairy-tale PR about spreading freedom and democracy. I understand that we are only australians, but still and all, it’s unedifying.