Part Two: "I'm Confused With All This Pro-Saudi, Anti-Iraqi Stuff"
In Nicholas Lehmann's article "After Iraq" in the Feb. 17 issue of The New Yorker, he says that the most compelling argument for war is "that removing Saddam could help bring about a wholesale change for the better in the political, cultural and economic climate of the Arab Middle East." He writes, "Unlike other justifications, it is both a reason for war and a plan for the future." This idea has also been proposed in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs by Fouad Ajami, a favorite of the Bush administration. He sees a "reformist project that seeks to modernize and transform the Arab landscape," with Iraq as a starting point. Deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz proposes that war with Iraq could spark a current of democracy to flow through the Middle East. Richard Perle, one of the loudest voices for war, proposes that Syria and even Iran should be the next targets of "regime change" in the Middle East, with the goal of reforming these countries into "civil societies."
Even for skeptics, this idea is too attractive to ignore. The domino effect is supposed to bolster Iran's moderate mullahs, weaken Saudi Arabia's influence on American policy and even end Palestinian violence. In other words, this vision, proposed in various forms by hawkish Bush administration officials, accomplishes the goal of attaching a strategy and definitive goal to "winning" the war on terrorism. Yet it must be noted that none of the above moves are possible without first achieving victory in Iraq.
What's more, these visions' fallacy is their Americanized perspective: They assume democracy is infectious, that once a nation rubs elbows with soldiers of a free nation, it will embrace democracy. This seems naïve: On March 26, reporters covering the humanitarian campaign in liberated Safwan described how the mood went from excited to "chaotic" and that Iraqis "cheered for Saddam Hussein" and "the death of Bush" after scrambling desperately for food. Of course, these people are still fearful of Saddam, but they are also skeptical of American soldiers, whose hopeful appearance and subsequent abandonment 12 years ago led to the murder of thousands of Iraqi dissidents (and, for that matter, non-dissidents). Even with regime change seemingly assured, the most essential question remains: Will the Iraqi people embrace American-enforced reform, especially under the current Bush administration plan of occupying Iraq with a military governor and American officers in the main ministries, under the command of the Pentagon?
Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil famously declared, "All politics is local." So what of the local politics of Kirkuk, Basra and Baghdad? The Feb. 15 edition of The Economist reports that Iraq's opposition "is dismayed at plans for an American occupation in Iraq." The leaders of six politically, if not popularly, influential dissident groups met with American officials late last year to learn that "America intended to turn Iraq over to an American military governor for a year or so, and to put American officers in the main ministries."
The Iraqis expressed "a sense of betrayal" at "the unworkable plan." One opposition leader said that Iraqis will "regard America as an occupying force." Of course, "unsupervised democracy" could have widespread negative consequences, but the Iraqis' request for a federalized Iraq administered by Iraqis, supervised by coalition forces, has been rejected by the American envoy. "Their own democratic credentials may be pretty dubious," The Economist states, "but the opposition groups now increasingly question the sincerity behind America's stated desire to shine a beacon of democracy into their benighted corner." This is where art like Three Kings becomes especially useful: It takes a perspective different from that of policy-makers', describing the human issues surrounding abstract proposals, thus investigating the practicality of these ideas.
Part Three: The Shock and Awe of a Bullet Entering the Body
