I vividly remember being about 8 and learning about history – from the Crusades through the American Revolution, from the Civil War through two World Wars, and then the American involvement in Korea and Vietnam. And I remember thinking to myself, almost condescendingly about my ancestors, “wow, the world was crazy back then.”
Fast forward to today, when ISIS troops are descending on Baghdad and unraveling in about a week what the United States (presumably) fought ten years for. As this woefully predictable undoing happens faster than Jon Stewart can find a clip of George W Bush in front of a Mission Accomplished banner, I can’t help but think to myself “no, the world wasn’t crazy back then…it’s just crazy.”
Now, for an eight-year old to think that history stopped and the future began on the day his textbook was printed…I’m not proud but I’m not embarrassed. But for an entire nation to act on the hubris that it can just install democracies whenever it wants? We should know better. As it’s been said, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and there’s plenty of history that we didn’t bother to consider in this case, namely:
1) The Middle East as we view it is not ripe for democracy
2) Even our own democracy took lots of time (and included some pretty rough treatment of citizens)
3) We’re, um, not very good at this
With these items in mind, the only surprise is that it took this long for civil war and sectarian violence to rage again in Iraq (well, and the surprise that we didn’t expect this in the first place and just stay away). So let’s dig in:
1) The Middle East is not ripe for democracy
And that’s not a knock on the Middle East. If we’re talking about Western arrogance, let’s talk about the borders of Iraq, or Syria, or Jordan. Mesopotamia has been under varying control for millenia – it was Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Ottoman. It’s been tribally segmented and dynastically united several times over. Iraq is just the latest definition and set of arbitrary lines, and it’s by no means the best. There are Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites all wedged into a set of British-colonial borders without a common identity or reason to want to be unified. And the magic of the most recent dictator? Saddam Hussein was Sunni in a Shiite majority, but somehow convinced the population that there were more Sunnis and that his control was justified. Now? In a democracy no one wants to be the minority, so who knows? Maliki in charge is Shiite and may have a majority; Sunnis under ISIS feel justified that they deserve control. Kurds have their claim. And the real question for Americans is this:
Why did we think this would work?
Our glee at spreading democracy sure made for great sound bytes, but did democracy ever stand a chance in a region so divided? Middle Eastern culture and politics is extremely centered on religion, and the Sunni/Shiite feud is a central theme in Middle Eastern religion. How was any resolution of majority rule going to satisfy the masses? In America our Republican/Democrat feud is easily soothed – if you’re a Republican and your guy loses, you turn up Limbaugh or Toby Keith in your pickup and head home to watch Duck Dynasty; if you’re a Democrat and your guy-or-girl loses, you crank up NPR in your Prius and head to yoga class. Our democracy has evolved over centuries; we can cope. In Iraq? These tensions have been going on and becoming more heated for thousands of years.
And the point is really this – we went to Iraq and fought for a Polaroid snapshot of regional borders. Iraq as it stands probably shouldn’t still exist – when Ottoman control shifted to British control these were the borders, but the British are gone now. History shows that this region is always in flux; the ISIS-controlled areas near Syria should probably be Sunni; the Fertile Crescent zone between the Tigris and Euphrates maybe should be Shia; and the northern areas maybe ought to be Kurdish. Or…honestly I don’t know. But something tells me that lines drawn by a British aristocrat over a century ago might not be the best markers for a fledgling democracy in a land of Sharia law that’s been under totalitarian rule since before Christ.
Especially because…
2) Our own democracy (has) had its problems
If anyone should understand how difficult it is to make democracy work, particularly in a land of ethnic diversity, it’s the United States. Consider our history:
-Our first “constitution,” the Articles of Confederation, was scrapped within ten years after some nasty sectarian violence (ah, Shays’ Rebellion)
-Like it or not, we ethnically cleansed some folks to even get the land “Western” democracy-ready in the first place (although some survivors still own casinos in the desert)
-Our current constitution still includes a line equating people of a certain ethnic group to only count as 3/5 of a “real” person for voting purposes (albeit a portion that has been amended…but still!)
-It took us 75 years and a horrifying Civil War to grant minorities the right to vote*.
-It took over 50 years from that point for us to allow women the right to vote.
-*It took us ANOTHER 50 years after the women thing to remove that asterisk and get rid of Grandfather Clauses and Poll Taxes and finally make voting universal. And we STILL have problems with voting rights with portions of THAT act having recently been chopped down.
My point? Even when democracy is “of the people, for the people, by the people” and not imposed from afar it’s STILL really, really challenging. We of all nations should know. Where do we get the arrogance to think that we have it right and that it’s easy to implement? Just because you can cover American history in two semesters doesn’t mean that you can implement American democracy in that long. We’re at almost 240 years and counting and it’s still a work in progress. Iraq isn’t doing anything we didn’t do – we sectarianly-violenced our way out of both colonial occupation and our own first constitution. We dealt with minority populations in embarrassing way. We have parties that actively try to restrict voter participation in order to maintain a tenuous majority. And we’ve been doing this forever. How did we think we could snap our fingers and make this work in a land that didn’t ask for it? Especially when…
3) We’re not good at this.
The American military is a combination between 1980s Mike Tyson and 2000s Mariano Rivera. When have we been at our best? We’re phenomenal closers like Rivera – when World War I and World War II were well underway, Britain and France called to the bullpen and we came in and threw heat. We finished the job, relatively quickly and with a ton of power and innovation. We’re amazing at that…no one ends an ongoing/stalemated war quite like the US.
And we do it with Tysonian power. 1945, 1991, 2003 – we shocked and awed our rivals like Tyson destroyed Spinks. Whether it’s Enola Gays or Patriot Missiles or drone strikes, we can put together a quick strike combination that shatters hopes, dreams, and teeth. Like Tyson in his prime, there’s really nothing scarier or more powerful.
But…like Tyson against Buster Douglas, once the round start getting late and it’s clear we’re not going to win by knockout, we’re not at our best. We’re like Great White sharks – you shouldn’t survive the first encounter, but if you do you’re probably safe.
And that’s not a knock on our troops – they do an amazing job carrying out their missions. That’s just about our core competencies – we spend a ton of money on weapons that, if anything, should be deterrents and not actual-use weapons. Give us ten 1944 Germanies and we’ll go 10-0 with ten KOs. But we’re not great occupiers – we struggled occupying in Vietnam and we’ve struggled occupying in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our troops aren’t built to be crossing guards and (if you’ve seen the great documentary Restrepo) goat negotiators. We have a militia that would make Hitler and Caesar cry on each other’s shoulders in awe, but based on our postmodern view of history – that it covers everything from the Big Bang to the day we learned it, but that it’s a new era now – we don’t go for the killshot anymore…or maybe it just doesn’t exist. 100 years ago we’d be using Iraqi oil as salad dressing and hair gel we’d have taken so much of it in triumph after a massive victory; today, we don’t conquer and loot, but instead hang around and wait to get blown up by IEDs while we help blacktop the driveway of a preschool.
And I’m not saying we’re wrong – we’re just not very good at it (and if we’re not, maybe no one is) and need to plan our exit (and entrance) strategies accordingly. We entered Iraq like it was WWII, dropping bombs over Baghdad like Outkast (for the kids) / Dresden (for the adults). And we were amazing at it; but then came the slog of protecting against guerilla/sectarian violence and trying to build a nation. And that’s where predator drones and stealth bombers and nuclear submarines just don’t help.
So where does that leave us? I think we need to learn from this – we can’t hold the Middle East to Western norms and borders. We can’t assume democracy is one-size-fits-all / your colonial parents put it together. It still doesn’t entirely fit us even after 200+ years. And we need to know our strengths but also our weaknesses. The world is going to have civil war – just because ours ended 150 years ago doesn’t mean that other countries are on our page. And we’re at our best when we’re all in to win; we’re not when the mission is more passive and less decisive. This week’s events in Iraq are a tale as old as time – there was bound to be a power vacuum and civil war when we left. Next time…let’s think a little before we get there in the first place.
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