Winning by losing and vice versa

I admit: I'm one of those people, who lost faith in the "Freedom and Democracy in Iraq" project. Not that I had a lot of faith in it to begin with. Initially I was convinced that the war in Iraq was a mistake, primarily because I did not consider Saddam Hussein - even with the weapons of mass destruction - to be a threat to the United States, at least not as grave as Iran or North Korea. Later, I allowed myself to be swayed by the argument that having a prosperous democracy in the Arab world would change the dynamics in the Middle East, and perhaps have a domino effect in the surrounding medieval satrapies. Yes, it would have been a brilliant stroke - had it had any chance of succeeding. And so I'm back to what I have always believed, which is that democracy and individual freedom are incompatible with the Arab mindset, or even Islam for that matter - the quasi-democratic, deeply corrupt regimes in Muslim countries like Indonesia notwithstanding.

It does not mean, by the way, that I do not believe we can "win" in Iraq, if by "winning" one means suppressing the insurgency and stabilizing the country to the point where we could get out without losing face. The problem is that, unless we stay in Iraq for decades and impose - by any means necessary - our own secularized political and cultural system, Iraq will eventually slide back into bloody chaos soon after our departure. There is just no way around that. Japan and Germany after World War II are often evoked by the proponents of this project as examples of countries that the United States successfully transformed from murderous, aggressive, nationalistic dictatorships into prosperous, docile democracies. However, aside from cultural differences that made Germany and Japan more susceptible to such transformation than Iraq, neither of these two countries was surrounded by neighbors who very much remained in the pre-transformation mold, and who feared the changes taking place accross the border. In order to change Iraq we would have to change the entire Middle East at the same time - an idea as crazy and impossible as it sounds.

The only way a country like Iraq can be "stabilized" is by one of the factions being strong and cruel enough to finish off the others. That's why we can't do it - we are not capable (institutionally more that psychologically, perhaps) of being sufficiently cruel; and by "cruelty" I do not mean faking electrocutions or photographing oneself next to a pile of naked prisoners (none of them dead or being killed). I mean wiping out entire families or clans in reprisal for terrorist acts committed by one of their members; I mean throwing live people into wood choppers; leveling, Hama-like, entire villages and tows, with their inhabitants still inside; mutilating bound prisoners before cutting off their heads and videotaping all this to be shown on TV. I have no doubt that many, if not all, of the insurgent groups currently fighting in Iraq are itching to be the one committing these and other atrocities on a scale sufficient to destroy or scare the others. Mass murder in Iraq is inevitable - the only question is: how quickly will it burn itself out and who will emerge on top after blood stops flowing in the streets?

To be brutally honest, if we play our cards right, the answer to this question should be of no consequence to us. Aside from oil and helping Israel stay alive, we have no interest in this region. The two are huge ones, of course, but the issue of oil could, and should, be resolved by the combination of energy efficiency, alternative fuels, and increased domestic production of oil; this, by the way, would also help diminish the risk of a second Jewish holocaust. How? Without revenues from oil, the countries in the Middle East have no economies to speak of, so they would be forced to go back to nomadic tribalism from before the oil boom, which seems to be their dream anyway.

Whether we get out of Iraq next week or next year, the country will deteriorate into a bloody mess, so we may as well do it sooner rather than later. Yes, the jihadists will declare a victory, but so what? More such victories, and the Arab world will stop being a problem. It's kind of like the "victory" of the Vietnamese, isn't it? However, suicidal idiots that they are, they are not as stupid as to not recognize that while we may not be able to help a defeated country stand back on its feet, we can easily destroy any Muslim country, if it pushes the right buttons. (How long did it take the US military to defeat the Taliban and the Iraqi army, with negligible casualties on its side?) Having a prosperous, strong Middle East at peace with itself might actually be more dangerous to us than having a bloody mess there. Unless they change their culture and abandon their religion, a substantial percentage of Muslims will always want to conquer the world and convert everybody to Islam, so a democratic state would at some point either have to revert to authoritarian rule (like Algeria), or succumb to an Islamic takeover and theocracy. Imagine a country like Japan, with its industrial and technological power, and vast financial resources, becoming hostile and aggressive again?