Who Wants To Die For Iyad Allawi?

Looking back over this, the reply here and the discussion in the Winds of Change comments section, some clarification is in order.

I think it's obvious that, as a rule, saying "well why don't you go fight if you're so damn eager to see military action" isn't much of an argument. It does, however, work as what Dan Dennett calls an "intuition pump" -- challenge the advocate of military action to think a bit about how seriously he believes what he says he believes.

Here's the point I was trying to make about Muqtada. He's not, let's agree, a good guy. But at the same time, he's not a direct threat to the United States. And unlike during the 1990s, it's now apparent to me (and to most everyone else) that the USA does face some rather serious direct security threats. As a result, while idealistic activities that would use the American military for purposes other than countering direct security threats should by no means be off the table, the bar needs to be set rather higher than it was in the past. The bar has two main elements, the cost of action (including the price in blood, the price in money, indirect costs thanks to adverse public opinion, and opportunity costs thanks to other possible interventions not undertaken) and the probability of success. Some say that we could do enormous good in Darfur at the relatively low cost of providing American airlift capacity and some air support. Others maintain that several thousand American ground troops will be needed. I'm not even close to being in a position to adjudicate that dispute, but obviously it's relevant to considering whether or not we should "do something" about Darfur.

So thinking about Muqtada, what are our chances of success? If success is defined in terms of killing Muqtada or "smashing" the elements of the Mahdi Army that are currently in Najaf, the odds are pretty good. But that merely pushes us back to the issue of why we would be interested in doing something like this. The answer, or so it seems, is that the United States is trying to build a stable pro-American liberal democracy in Iraq. So what are our chances of succeeding at doing that.

Virtually zero, I think. Let's stipulate away all the armed opposition to the United States -- say John Negroponte waves his magical counterinsurgency wand and it all goes away -- and just think about the public opinion trends. We've got a Kurdish minority in the north that has fairly liberal views, some taste for democratic governance, and does not believe in the goal of a stable Iraqi state. In the center, by contrast, we've got our Sunnis who do believe in a stable Iraqi state (otherwise they get cut out of the oil) but very strongly oppose the notion of a majoritarian Iraq, as that would lead to Shiite domination. In the south are the Shia who, like the Sunnis, support the idea of a stable Iraqi state. The Shia seem split between a minority (Sadrists and SCIRI folk) who believe in clerical rule rather than democracy, and a majority (Sistani's folks and al-Dawa) who would like to create an illiberal, Shia-oriented, majoritarian democracy. Leading the whole mix is Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Baath Party hitman turned would-be coup leader, a CIA operative who, while in exile, was an avowed opponent of a democratic Iraq. Nationwide polling suggests, meanwhile, that while the Iraqi people as a whole favor the idea of a democracy, a majority think that in the short term it's more important to have a strongman who can impose order.

So you've got to ask yourself -- what is a stable liberal democracy built out of? Well, one key building block, or so it seems to, is a population that wants a stable liberal democracy. And a majority in favor of a stable liberal democracy isn't enough. I don't know exactly where the threshold is, but, obviously, it requires supermajority support -- 50 percent plus one can't make it happen. In the Iraqi context, I don't think we're anywhere close to achieving that. Between secessionists, anti-democrats, and illiberal religious fundamentalists we're far from the mark indeed.

Now add the military component into the mix. There's the Mahdi Army in the south, operating in support of its goal of an illiberal, undemocratic, Shiite Iraq. Then there are Sunni insurgent forces in the center, operating in support of their goal of an illiberal, undemocratic, Sunni Iraq. Latent in the north are the Kurdish pesh merga, currently just keeping order, but prepared to spring into action in support of their goal of an independent (or, at the least, highly autonomous) Kurdistan. Not yet on the scene is SCIRI's Badr Brigades which could be called out into the streets at any time. And in addition to Sadrist activity in the Najaf area, all reports indicate that the Chicago-sized "neighborhood" of Sadr City in Baghdad is firmly under their control. The main force able to keep a lid (to some extent) on these forces is the US military which, according to the available polling, is grossly unpopular in Iraq, and which most Iraqis would like to see leave their country. The American military can almost certainly defeat these various guerillas on the battlefield, but doing so will not alter the adverse public opinion trends. Indeed, it will probably make them worse.

This is a mission, then, that has an extremely low probability of success. In all likelihood it will either end with an exhausted America deciding to give up the game (in which case we'd best do it sooner rather than later) or else with a triumphant America having successfully set Iyad Allawi up as dictator of Iraq. He'll go, naturally enough, by the title "president" or "prime minister" but that's what he'll be. This is not, I think, a goal of such overwhelming moral vitality that it's worth expending significant quantities of American blood and treasure to achieve at a time when we face real, direct threats from other quarters. The point of suggesting that Allawi's fans form a Lincoln Brigade in support of their hero is not to call them "chickenhawks" but is recognition of the fact that Allawi is not the bad guy here per se. Someone who chooses to fight for Allawi's dictatorship over Muqtada's could have some very good reasons for preferring the former to the latter, and should be welcome to take up arms on his behalf if that's what he wants to do. But the lowish probability that the US Army and Marine Corps can successfully establish an Allawi dictatorship (and the vanishingly small probability that they can create a democracy) is not a reasonable objective of national policy at this point.

I wish it were otherwise. I wish the strategic mistake of invading Iraq in a precipitous manner while more pressing threats went unaddressed could be redeemed by the creation of a democratic country. And, perhaps, if the occupation had been better managed it could have been. Perhaps wiser management of the country in the early days and weeks of the occupation would have created sufficient positive feelings toward the USA that Iraqis would have tolerated the sort of longish lasting and somewhat heavy-handed policies that would have been necessary to impose a novel political system on top of pre-existing identities and prejudices. Perhaps the challenge was simply to great. But either way, it didn't happen and the moment has passed. Kenan Makiya, I'm told, has left Iraq and returned to the USA, abandonning his dearly held dream of presiding over the birth of a liberal democracy in Mesopotamia. It's time for the many Americans who admire Makiya and his truly commendable dream to think about doing the same.