The Mistakes of Conservativism

The article, The Death of Liberalism, was sent to me as “the best single piece of writing I have seen about the election and the Iraq War.” To me this article is highly ironic, but sad.

For those of you who don’t want to read it, the article spends a lot of time trying to set up the final point that the war in Iraq is bringing democracy to Iraq and liberals who oppose the war in Iraq, oppose a democratic Iraq, which in turns helps “the Jihad” which seeks to crush liberty and liberalism.

This point suffers from the serious flaw that invading Iraq will bring the democracy. Before I address that, I would like to point out that “liberation” is a passé excuse for invading Iraq. First it was to stop Saddam from launching his weapons of mass destruction against us at any minute. No threats to American security have been found. Then it was to liberate the Iraqi people. However, that was abandoned as soon as it became clear that Iraqis oppose our presence there. Now it is to fight terrorists, who arrived in Iraq after we did. (I’m sure I missed some there.)

There have been two recent reports on nation building. From them four conclusion can be made.

• Security. Both reports agree that nothing can be achieved if the nation is not secure. People must feel safe to go out and conduct their lives. The Rand report stresses the importance of having a large number of troops on the ground. Kosovo, for example, had 20 troops for every 1,000 inhabitants. “The higher the proportion of troops relative to the resident population, the lower the number of casualties suffered and inflicted. Indeed, most of the post-conflict operations that were generously manned suffered no casualties at all.”
• The country’s internal characteristics. The Carnegie report emphasizes four characteristics that aid nation-building efforts. First, it’s better if the nation is united with a strong national identity. It hurts if the country is torn into factions (e.g., among ethnic groups). Second, nation-building requires local people to be available to take over most of the basic tasks of government. In both Germany and Japan, for example, most civil servants and bureaucrats remained on their jobs. The Carnegie report says that outsiders probably cannot train people to do these jobs and that if outsiders take over the jobs, they may soon be viewed with hostility. Third, it helps if the country is economically developed. The Carnegie report stresses “the difficulty of such efforts in underdeveloped countries.” Fourth, it helps if the nation has had “periods of constitutional rule–characterized by the effective rule of law and binding limits on the government’s power . …”
• Multilateralism. Both reports give examples of failures and successes when the United States acted alone or with other countries in nation-building efforts. So this factor alone, say the reports, is not decisive. Multilateralism can make decision-making more difficult. But it has several advantages. It can be far less expensive, because other nations also bear the costs. It can also confer greater legitimacy to the U.S. military intervention. And the Rand report notes that it’s very important to get the support of neighboring countries in the nation-building effort. “It is exceptionally difficult to put together a fragmented nation if its neighbors are trying to pull it apart.”
• Level of effort. As the saying goes, “Roman wasn’t built in a day.” The same is true for democracy. The Rand report gives five years as the minimum amount of time for successful nation-building. It particularly stresses the importance of great effort. It states: “Many factors–such as prior democratic experience, level of economic development, and social homogeneity–can influence the ease or difficulty of nation-building, but the single most important controllable determinant seems to be the level of effort, as measured in troops, money, and time.”

The war in Iraq fails all of these. We have not secured Iraq, and short of a draft, will not have the man power to do so. Iraq is not a homogenized nation. Iraqi factions are fighting one another. We don’t have the support of Iraq’s neighbors or most of the world. The Bush administration did not plan on a long involvement in Iraq. They thought that they could topple Saddam with a quick strike, award lucrative contracts to companies with connections to the Bush administration, and install a US friendly government. They didn’t count on the Iraqi people having a different plan for their future.

Whatever hope there was for democracy in Iraq, the Bush administration’s policies have destroyed it. The Iraqi people are worse off today then they were before the Gulf War. The administration needs to shape up or they are going to destroy the internal progress Iran is making towards democracy.

I wish everybody could see and appreciate Eyes Wide Open: An Exhibition on the Human Cost of the Iraq War.