Iraqi Progress? How those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it

In the 1980’s, Reagan and his administration broke from prior American policy and began to forcefully confront the Soviet Union. He met the “Evil Empire” on 3 fronts: economically, militarily, and through clandestine operations. The most infamous of those clandestine operations is probably his unfettered support of the Afghani mujahideen, who fought against Soviet invasion from 1979 to 1989. Operating on the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” doctrine, Reagan (and to a lesser extent Carter) provided arms, training and money to the “holy warriors” courageously resisting the grasp of Communism.

Even pop culture got behind them – 1988’s Rambo III had the mujahideen helping Rambo to rescue his friend from the oppressive Soviet occupiers.

But the mujahideen were not a truly unified force. After the Soviets left in 1989, and American support dried up, different divisions began vying for power. A group known as the Taliban eventually emerged as the dominant faction, and the rest, as they say, is history: after September 11, 2001, America launched a war against the Afghani leadership it had, not 15 years earlier, funded and trained.

The irony is so thick, you could spread it on a bagel and call it breakfast.

What lessons might we have learned from this particularly ignoble exercise? That “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is not sound foreign policy? That meddling in the affairs of unstable foreign institutions for ambiguous reasons is probably a bad idea? That supporting radicals for whatever reason is almost always a bad idea? Or none of the above?

The December Iraqi elections signaled a sort of milestone of America’s interests in the region: it was one major first step in achieving the Bush administration’s highly touted National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. “Success in Iraq,” it reads, “is an essential element in the long war against the ideology that breeds international terrorism.” And success, the Strategy is clear to show, will rely heavily on our support and training of an autonomous Iraqi police and military force, capable of – in the short term – confronting and defending itself from insurgent and terrorist threats. And, as President Bush has often stated, “as the Iraqi army stands up, we will stand down.”

One wonders what the long-term effects of our support will be.

A new, democratic and autonomous Iraq will, for example, almost certainly fall back on theocratic notions of church and state. Even the October 2005 constitution affirms that Islam is the official religion of the State and the basis of its laws. And it is the majority Shi’ite – repressed under Saddam and the big winners in the December elections – who are the most virulently in favor of institutional Sharia.

Sharia, of course, is the fundamentalist Islamic code of laws that, among other distinctly seventh-century practices, completely subjugates women, demands a strict dress code, eliminates freedom of speech and press, and mandates execution for civil and religious offenses. It is not what I, nor I expect anyone else, would think of when imagining an Iraq that opposes “the ideology that breeds international terrorism.” In fact, this kind of fundamentalist extremism is what I would think of as a fertile breeding ground for it.

Certainly, the common Iraqi citizen has grown disturbingly tolerant of insurgent attacks, and increasingly impatient with American occupation. Polls conducted last summer indicate that more than half of the Iraqi population supported attacks against coalition forces, and more than four-fifths were “strongly opposed” to foreign troop presence. Even the troops we’re training are not so committed to the cause of national unity: a recent report tells us that instead of preparing to defend collective interests, “some troops that are formally under U.S. and Iraqi national command are preparing to protect territory and ethnic and religious interests in the event of Iraq’s fragmentation, which many of them think is inevitable.”

One is forced to question the wisdom of providing arms and training to a nation so close to the brink of a popularly mandated, violently splintered and American-backed fundamentalism. If our troops leave before stability is assured, Iraq may suffer – as Afghanistan did – from battles for power among competing religious and political sects. If, like Afghanistan, the most brutish and repressive regime seizes control, they will have it with the benefit of years of American training, funding and support. If we truly give Iraq the power to “defeat the terrorists and neutralize the insurgency,” we will have created (as Rob Corddry deadpans) “a military and economic superpower, ruled by Islamists with an enormous grudge against the United States.”

But if, on the other hand, we make the choice to stay until stability is guaranteed, we could easily find ourselves in a colonial-style occupation that would know no end, wreak unimaginable financial devastation on our own economy, and absorb in an unending and ultimately inconsequential thirst our military resources. Not exactly a bold step toward protecting our national security.

Those who dismiss the parallels to Vietnam are either ignorant, or fools. Maybe both.

I don’t pretend to have the answers to these problems. But I certainly question the wisdom of any leadership that can’t even acknowledge them. We’re making progress in Iraq? Study history, study our foreign policy, research what’s actually happening, and ask yourself: progress toward what?