Culture » June 29, 2005

Original Sin

By Chris Barsanti

It is convenient to attribute the current anemic state of the anti-war movement to the ephemeral attention span of the iPod generation, but the shift is more likely due to hopelessness. The problem may lie in the suspicion that there are no easy solutions and the only way out may be forward, with more blood to be shed before peace can be glimpsed.

In his book Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, Larry Diamond has a name for this damned-if-we-do-damned-if-we-don’t viewpoint: original sin. An unnamed “distinguished diplomat” gave the concept to Diamond, saying, “‘The war itself was the original sin. … When you commit a sin as cardinal as that, you are bound to get a lot of things wrong.’” Or, for the less theologically minded, “‘When you enter a one-way street in the wrong direction, no matter which way you turn, you will be entering all the other streets in the wrong way.’”

Although Diamond’s book is essentially another entry in the mini-genre of books about how the United States entered that one-way street, the fact that he actually participated in the creation of the Iraqi government gives a little more heft to his complaints than the usual recitation of Pentagon blunders and miscalculations. A Stanford professor, Hoover Institution senior fellow and coeditor of the Journal of Democracy, Diamond also happens to be an acquaintance of Condoleezza Rice—but not so close that he was expecting her call in November 2003. After a couple months of bureaucratic wrangling, Diamond was finally cleared to leave for Baghdad, where he would stay until April 2004.

His description of those four months of duty in the heavily fortified Green Zone makes up the bulk of Squandered Victory, and although it can be a slog at times—his admirably clear prose can’t completely hide the fact that Diamond remains a policy wonk—the minutiae involved in creating a democracy from the ground up is as fascinating as it is exhausting.

When Diamond arrived in Baghdad, he found himself billeted in one of Saddam’s former palaces, “a sprawling maze of marbled halls, carved and gilded doors, dusty chandeliers … and generally grotesque excess,” where he and other members of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) would plan the nation’s democratic infrastructure. A dyed-in-the-wool democratic idealist, Diamond was also a war skeptic. He didn’t accept Rice’s offer because he was a neocon ideologue with dreams of fashioning a Western-style government in a foreign land. Rather, he felt that as someone who had “studied, observed, and assisted democracy-building efforts in some twenty countries over the previous two decades,” he was honor-bound to help build something out of the wreckage of totalitarian brutality.

Although Diamond has little patience for blowhards like Paul Wolfowitz or incompetents like Jay Garner, he was initially quite impressed (as were the Iraqis) by Paul Bremer’s dramatic, MacArthur-like demeanor, which Diamond says symbolized “the best and worst of the United States.” Unfortunately, the muddy work of fashioning coalitions and compromises among the elaborate patchwork of Iraqi political and religious forces proved far more complicated than the constitution that MacArthur famously drew up for postwar Japan in six days. Through the torturous negotiations, Diamond is disturbed by the myopia of the CPA and the White House. At one point he is “appalled” to see Iraqis raised under a dictatorship take the more democratic side of a constitutional argument than the Americans.

By the time Diamond finally quit Iraq, the security situation had started building to the numbing pitch of nihilist violence characterizing the conflict today. “It is ironic—and tragic—that an administration so bold as to launch a war to topple Saddam Hussein blanched at the prospect of confronting a much smaller bully like Muqtada al-Sadr,” Diamond writes. It seems a Catch-22: There can be no democracy without security, yet the lack of security comes directly from anger at there being no democracy.

And so, by the end of Squandered Victory, Diamond is reduced to forlornly cataloging mistakes made and listing the reasons why today’s Iraq has all the ingredients in place for a Lebanon-style civil war. All one can do is hope that the next batch of nation-builders will read the grim conclusions of Diamond, and think again before leaping off the cliff.

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• Reader Comments

  The war in Iraq has the potential to free millinos who had been brutalized by a very evil man for decades. I have yet to see what better alternative we had. The one that comes most quickly to mind - do nothing - led to hundreds of thousands of deaths due to sanctions and Saddams brutality. Another would have been lifting sanctions and would have allowed Saddam to revive his (well documented) aggresive ambitions and continue to kill his own people in droves.

  Still, the hell with the Iraqis. I too would have preferred them to suffer and die - rather than expend any US blood to help them. Still i do have to acknowledge the benefit the war has brought about - even if far from perfect.

  Posted by howSilly on Jun 29, 2005 at 2:29 PM

  http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/063005D.shtml

  This is good.  See article at above link.

  An Iraqi Peace Process
  By Robert Dreyfuss
  Tom Paine

  Wednesday 29 June 2005

  Posted by pick of the litter on Jun 30, 2005 at 1:12 PM

  “Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.” - Abraham Lincoln

  Posted by Lefty on Jun 30, 2005 at 3:25 PM

  howsilly said: “The war in Iraq has the potential to free millinos who had been brutalized by a very evil man for decades. I have yet to see what better alternative we had.”
  The original US plan was to set up a caucus - handpicked by the occupation admin - which would then elect Iraq’s leaders. The admin only allowed one-man-one-vote after Grand Ayatolah Sistani brought thousands of protesters into the streets and threatened civil disobedience. The American military-industrial establishment is now in Iraq because of the oil. Everything that happens in the middle east happens because of oil. Buying into the we-are-here-to-spread democracy myth helps people to forget that unpleasant fact - who was it who said human beings cannot take too much reality?

  Posted by A to Z on Jul 1, 2005 at 4:05 AM

  Everything I read about the Iraq conflict has failed to change my initial prognosis - mainly that it has become an anti-colonial war of independence. You can talk “terrorism” and “foreign insurgents” till the cows come home but the basic energy driving it is old-fashion patriotism or nationalism. Just as in Vietnam where all the talk was about the threat of communism but the basic energy driving it was patriotism. Every conflict with this configuration has resulted over the long run in the victory of the nationalists - starting with the American war of independence against the British.

  Posted by A to Z on Jul 1, 2005 at 4:32 AM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 46 posts.

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