Earlier this month, The New Yorker‘s George Packer talked up a plan to break up Iraq proposed (in a New York Times op-ed) by Joseph Biden and Leslie Gelb, who argue the U.S, in collaboration with Iraq’s neighbors, should broker a divorce between the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites. Iraq may be in process of splitting apart but it seems strange to push that program at a moment when Iraq’s politicians seem (finally) to be on the verge establishing (what one observer calls) a “civil-war-preventing government.” The new Prime Minister of the country, Nouri al-Maliki, is apparently known for his faith in ‘Uraqa – Iraqi national identity – (as well as in the 12th Imam) and he’s distanced himself from the previous PM Jafaari’s plan to match the Kurds’ federal entity with a separate statelet for the Shiites. According to Barham Salih (the Kurdish politician whose speech to the Socialist International in Rome in 2003 made the strongest moral case for the invasion of Iraq), “This is the opportunity for genuine reconciliation between the communities in Iraq.”
But why should anyone expect Iraqis will seize that opportunity? Operation Iraqi Freedom and its aftermath have made optimism suspect. When I look back on my own pre-war emails to friendly opponents of the invasion, I see myself being beamish – “isn’t this going to be over pretty fast – I mean who is going to fight FOR Saddam?” While I never assumed ousting Saddam would lead to the establishment of democracy in Iraq – and neither did Barham Salih who told European Socialists “democracy, albeit messy at times, could emerge in a process more like your own” – I didn’t begin to imagine the mayhem that’s accompanied the long hard slog toward (what Austin Bay describes as) “an open political system that will deal legally and politically with deadly disputes.”
According to Bay, the fact that Iraqis continue to creep forward on this front “is astonishing news, but it is slow news.” It’s no wonder to George Packer. The audacity of hope has come to seem like a killing joke to him – a lie of the mind with deadly consequences for Iraqis. Skepticism isn’t defeatism, of course, but Packer’s readiness to substitute blackishness for beamishness may have an even deeper downside than “cakewalk” talk or “Mission Accomplished” triumphalism. Last month, Packer wrote a piece on the successful American counterinsurgency effort in Tal Afar. He underscored then that victory in Iraq would require painstaking molecular work and he quoted one general who worried about a “rush to failure.” Only a month later, Packer seems to have joined that rush – patient engagement is out and Viet Nam analogies rule.
Packer invokes the famous moment when elder statesmen and retired generals known collectively as the Wise Men told LBJ it was time to disengage from Viet Nam and he ends his piece on a plaintive note – “If there are no more Wise Men in Washington, can there at least be wisdom?” Even Republicans share Packer’s exasperation at Bush’s failure to provide direction (and explanations), but Iraqis will have to fill that vacuum rather than party pols and DC think tankers. I assume The Talk of the Town will get around to addressing what the new leader of Iraq plans to do. Leader-mongering, though, is never sufficient to expose the crackpot realism of the Foreign Policy Establishment. If you’re looking for wisdom on Iraq, I urge you to keep up with the brothers Mohammad and Omar – regular Baghdadis who blog at iraqthemodel.blogspot.com.
Echoing the suggestions of another Iraqi blogger, Omar has made a case for bolstering efforts to secure Baghdad “for a few months.” He proposes Iraqi and American troops shift their attention from denying insurgents safe havens to creating them (from the “center out”) for civilians in the capital. His focus on Iraq’s mixed-up metropolitan core implicitly contradicts those over here who mean to dismember his country along ethnic and confessional lines. His new post elaborates on a previous one by his brother Mohammad spelling out a process for disbanding the Shiite militias that are now “arguably” the greatest threat to security in Iraq (since the bulk of the Sunni insurgents’ potential constituency is being drawn into the political process).
But the brothers’ tactical advice is less significant than their capacity to model authentic democratic movements of mind. On this score, Omar’s recent post explaining the need for Iraq to develop a tradition of political opposition is exemplary. His affirmation that Iraq’s secular democrats should embrace the role of nay-sayer – “to be the watchdog we need to make sure the government is functioning as it should” – rather than attempt to finagle their way to the top stands as a rebuke to generations of would-be revolutionaries (and sure-to-be-tyrants) who have equated the achievement of state power with redemption.
Omar apologized in that post for making a point about “checks and balances” that might seem like conventional wisdom to readers living in constitutional democracies with a history of peaceful transfers of power. But he and his model-brother are too modest. Their “small and peaceful family” has paid much more than most of ours ever will for the right to live in freedom (and opposition). Last month, their brother-in-law – a young doctor who’d returned from abroad with his wife “to build a medical center to serve the poor who cannot afford going to expensive clinics” – was murdered in Baghdad.
The brothers stopped blogging for a week as they cared for their sister and her two little children. Despite their family’s suffering, they came back online to keep building their “bridge to a better world:” “April will always be there to remind us of the sacrifice and of the dream we fight for.”
“What abides?” Karl Marx was once asked when he was an old man. “Struggle” was his answer. Iraq’s agonies have taught the model-brothers that home-truth (though, like Marx, they’re not Marxists). The brothers’ will to struggle offers a striking contrast to George Packer’s doomier angles on Iraq. The narrative of Packer’s widely praised book on the invasion and occupation, The Assassins’ Gate, slides around set-pieces of disillusionment that feel arty if you’re used to reading undaunted (and/or haunted) Iraqi bloggers. While it’s easy to identify with Packer’s disdain for the Bush Administration’s “criminal incompetence,” there’s something off about his aggrieved tone and the new journalistic animus he directs toward Kanan Makiya – a man he claims to “love” and blames for providing rationales that caused his heart to rise as he contemplated the invasion of Iraq. “Sweets and flowers” notwithstanding, Makiya was much more realistic about the prospects for democracy in Iraq than Packer lets on. And though Packer may have been Makiya’s fellow traveler before the invasion, the implication he was misused seems shaky. It was my impression Packer preserved a kind of deniability in the pre-war period, placing himself as an observer of Makiya, not as an ally “in solidarity.” I don’t recall a daring entrance into the debate over the war in Iraq. I do recall Packer on the road with Todd Gitlin, who opposed the invasion, as part of a touring group promoting The Fight Is For Democracy – an anthology edited by Packer that sought to outline a flag-waving liberal alterative to Bush’s pursuit of a “War on Terror.” (Back in that day, First of the Month’s Charles O’Brien referred to Packer, Gitlin et. al. as the Mouse Pack.)
It seems telling that Todd Gitlin thinks The Assassins’ Gate is a “splendid” account of the “Iraq disaster” though he’s posted criticism (at www.tpmcafe.com) of his “dear friend’ for portraying the pre-war Peace Movement as objectively pro-Saddam. Gitlin focuses his complaints there on Packer’s version of a now historic pre-war NYU panel that featured (among others) Kanan Makiya and Gitlin himself. (For a transcript of Makiya’s remarks on that occasionm, see “Inside the Whale” at this website.) Gitlin rejects Packer’s assertion that Makiya’s “electric” remarks went unanswered that night. Asserting he refuted Makiya’s arguments, Gitlin quotes extended passages from his own lecture. While his old text confirms Gitlin distanced himself from Saddam’s apologists in the anti-war movement, it’s something less than the last word on Iraq. Even Gitlin allows it might seem “self-serving” for him to offer his original comments as the definitive Good-By To All That. Yet narcissism isn’t the chief problem with Gitlin’s response to The Assassins’ Gate. What won’t do is his absolute assurance the liberation of Iraq constitutes a “disaster.” Like so many of the old leftists whom he disdains, Gitlin can’t bring himself to acknowledge April 9th, 2003 made it possible for Iraq’s democrats to win important battles. Iraq’s initial election may yet turn out to be a great historical turning point. And though the momentum from that moment of collective autonomy (and last December’s vote) was lost, Iraq’s politicians seem to be limping ahead again and everyday Iraqis won’t forget what it feels like to lay claims on those leaders. Not as long as Iraqis like the model-brothers live to blog. Mohammad and Omar will stay in struggle in Iraq though they are not fighting men – “we never carried arms and we never will.” Their outside presence – as Iraq’s pols develop an insiders’ game – should inspire anyone who truly believes The Fight Is For Democracy.
I.
The brothers’ earned sense of possibility matters because it’s rooted in “the shit” the Baath Party left behind (to use Kanan Makiya’s phrase) not faith-based uplift. While the brothers expressed pride when their fellow Iraqis defied fascists who meant to prevent elections in Iraq, they know many of their people are less than perfect candidates for a democratic “project.” Mohammad just reported on a trip to his neighborhood barbershop where he encountered patrons who presumed Americans had already captured Zarqawi and were propping up Al Qaeda to justify collateral damage that would enable Bush to reduce Iraq’s population to 6,000,000 – the size of his favorite Arab country, United Arab Emirates. The model brothers must often “bear such lunacy” because it can be dangerous to resist rumor-mongering and conspiracy theories.
The “radical” cleric Moqtada al-Sadr may now be the Iraq’s chief beneficiary/promoter of persecution manias. Sadr’s rants often invoke the specters of Israel and/or the Jews. He recently railed against the Jewish Conspiracy to seduce Muslims through soccer.
What does it mean to see a man, big tall and wide and…Muslim, runs after a ball?…We find that the west, and especially Israel…er, habibi the Jews, have you seen them play football? Ever seen them indulge in games like…the Arabs indulge?…They left us to waste time on football and other things while they left it…Ever heard the Israeli team, something be upon it, damn be upon it, reached for example or took the world-cup?…They let us waste time on it…singing, football, and smoking and stuff and satellites…they left us to do forbidden things and they mostly turned to scientific things and thingy things.
Sadr now pursues his Muslim thingy as a player in mainline Iraqi politics. His people are pressing for his political faction to be given the education ministry in the new government. (Now that would be a disaster.)
Sadr’s fantasies cry out for Mel Brooks but the humor has been lost on me since I just learned new details about the ties between Arab pathos and the Final Solution. A History Channel program devoted to Saddam Hussein’s Hitler fetish taught me one of the most revered spokesmen for the Palestinian cause – the Grand Mufti, Al-haj Amin al-Husseini – went into exile in Berlin after the defeat of 1942 Arab Revolt in Iraq. The Mufti was friendly with Adolph Eichmann and visited Auschwitz, where he is said to have pushed those tending the gas chambers to work harder. Not content with propaganda activities, he became an SS General and military units he was associated with were notorious for committing war crimes in Yugoslavia. The Mufti evaded prosecution at Nuremburg and retuned to rabble-rouse in the Middle East where he ended up becoming a mentor to his nephew Yassir Arafat who celebrated him as “our hero” in a 2002 interview (though Arafat may have shortened his own name to obscure his relationship with his Nazi uncle).
Statements like that led John Berger to write the following justification after visiting Arafat’s grave last year.
[Arafat] was nicknamed the walking catastrophe. Are loved leaders ever pure? Aren’t they always full of faults, not weaknesses, flagrant faults? Is this maybe a condition for being a loved leader?…
Berger’s perception that human failings in a leader encourage deep identity politics seems wasted on Arafat. But it fits the case of another Middle Eastern local hero, Mohammad Mossadegh. According to All the Shah’s Men, Steven Kinzer’s riveting account of events that climaxed in the CIA coup that ousted Mossadegh from power in 1953, the Iranian Prime Minister was a deeply quirky sort who suffered from a variety of illnesses that “led to fits and breakdowns.”
Neither purely medical nor psychosomatic, [Mossadegh’s illnesses] both reflected and became part of his persona. He was as dramatic a politician as his country had ever known. At times he became so passionate while delivering speeches that tears streamed down his cheeks. Sometimes he fainted dead away, as much from emotion as from any physical condition. When he became a world figure, his enemies in foreign capitals used this aspect of his personality to ridicule and belittle him. But in Iran where centuries of Shiite religious practice had exposed everyone to depths of public emotion unknown in the West, it was not only accepted but celebrated. It seemed to prove how completely he embraced and shared his country’s suffering.
Kinzer’s account of the passion of Mossadegh is immensely pertinent today. It lives up to Harry Truman’s line – “There’s nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” – which serves as the book’s epigraph.
Mossadegh was Iran’s first democratically elected prime minister and his “epic” battle with Britain’s imperial Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now known as British Petroleum), led Iran to nationalize its oil business. The infuriated Brits tried to overthrow Mossadegh (after taking their case to the World Court and losing). They then established a military blockade and began pressing the U.S. to make a coup. Harry Truman turned down their insistent requests. During his administration, American diplomats protested against BP’s “reactionary and outmoded” policies and dismissed the hypocritical arguments of British government officials (who refused to pick up on the logic in the musings of the Labor Party’s Ernest Bevan: “What argument can I advance against anyone claiming the right to nationalize the resources of their country. We are doing the same thing here.”) So the Brits changed their tune, pumping up fears of the Communist threat in/to Iran and downplaying narrow economic interests. When the Dulles brothers came to power (at the State Department and CIA) with Eisenhower, American policy toward Iran changed.
Clever critics of anti-Americanism have lately mocked myths of CIA omnipotence. Christopher Hitchens treats the CIA as a diminished thing: “I like Edward Luttwak’s formulation in the March 22 Times Literary Supplement, where he writes that ‘there have been only two kinds of CIA secret operations: the ones that are widely known to have failed — usually because of almost unbelievably crude errors — and the ones that are not yet widely known to have failed.’” Luttwak, though, allows the coup in Iran (along with those in Guatemala and Chile) are exceptions to his formulation. And Kinzer’s lowdown on the CIA machinations against Mossadegh suggests Hitchens’ high pleasure in Luttwak’s contrarianism is way out of time.
The Great Satan is in the details here. Kinzer explains exactly how CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt – Teddy Roosevelt’s nephew – orchestrated an in-country campaign against Mossadegh. Roosevelt bought mobs, generals, newspaper editors and clerics who enabled him to destabilize the country, which then allowed the Dulles brothers to convince Eisenhower Iran was coming apart and required a coup to prevent Stalin from stepping in. Roosevelt failed the first time he tried to take Mossadegh down, but he improvised another coup attempt which succeeded in re-installing the Shah (who ruled Iraq until he was overthrown in 1979 by an even worse tyrant, Ayatollah Khomeini).
Kinzer allows Iran may not have been ready for democracy in 1953. (It was too easy for the CIA to put Mossadegh on the ropes.) And Mossadegh wasn’t blameless. He refused to consider compromises that might have given his people a chance to preserve their dignity and their fledgling democracy. Still, no-one should trash this victim. When members of the Tudeh, Iran’s pro-Soviet party, asked Mossadegh to give them weapons to take on CIA-sponsored mobs in Tehran, he refused – “If I ever arm a political party, may God sever my arm.” Many Iranians shared Mossadegh’s admirable political imperatives. All the Shah’s Men tells the story of democratic struggles in Iraq, beginning with the 1906-1911 Constitutional Revolution, which was eventually crushed with the help of foreign powers (chiefly Russia and the UK), but “only after it had laid the foundation for a democratic Iran.”
A Constitution had been written and adopted, and under its provisions there would be regular elections, which meant political campaigns and at least a semblance of open debate. In the years to come, Iranian rulers could and would ignore, overrule, and act against public opinion, but they would never manage to extinguish the people’s conviction that they were endowed with rights no government could take from them.
Kinzer notes Iran’s democrats tended to identify with Americans during the first half of the 20th Century. He opens his book by recalling a conversation he once had with an Iranian woman who assured him her people “loved Americans” until the coup against Mossadegh.
But after that moment, no-one in Iran ever trusted the United States again. I can tell you for sure that if you had not done that thing, you would never have had that problem of hostages being taken in your embassy in Tehran. All your trouble started in 1953.[1]
Kinzer makes large claims about the coup’s historical consequences, linking it to the rise of the Taliban and 9/11.[2] That may be a stretch, but Charles O’Brien’s line on the recent Danish Cartoon controversy connects even more dots. O’Brien suggests threats against the cartoonists and the fatwa against Salman Rushdie have been wrongly framed as free speech matters. (“The fatwa was about sovereignty. Do subjects of the United Kingdom, resident there, get to live under the U.K.’s laws?”) He places these instances of Islamist censoriousness as part of a pattern of assaults on sovereign nations that began with the Iranian attack on the U.S. embassy. Kinzer’s account of the 1953 coup adds a dimension to an O’Brienesque sense of the past by illuminating what seems to have been the originary subversion of sovereignty. According to one Iranian quoted in All the Shah’s Men, Mossadegh himself saw the basic issue separating Iran and England “as one of national sovereignty:”
Mossadegh did not care about dollars and cents or numbers of barrels per day…Iran’s sovereignty was being undercut by a company that sacrificed Iranian lives for British interests. This is what infuriated him.
Mossadegh’s anger, though, must not be confused with Islamist fury. Blowback isn’t payback. The Mullahs who rule Iran are not Mossadegh’s heirs; they’re sworn enemies of his legacy. (As a young man, Ruholla Khomeini rejected Mossadegh because he believed Iran’s liberals had “forsaken the Koran.” And the most important Mullah in Iran back in that day, Ayatollah Kashani, conspired with the CIA.) Iran’s secular democrats now invoke Mossadegh – praising his legacy or waving his portrait – to implicitly challenge the principles of Islamic rule. An Iranian acquaintance of Kinzer’s explains:
The main thing about Mossadegh is that he represents freedom. In his time there was free speech, there were free elections, people could do what they wanted. He reminds us that there was a time in Iran when we had democracy. That’s why our government is afraid of him.
There’s a more immediate danger to that government, though. Memories of Mossadegh are less scary to Iran’s mullahs than the prospect of Irag-the-Model on their border. The best way for America to extend Mossadegh’s legacy in the Middle East (and make up for 1953) is to resist efforts to subvert Iraq’s sovereignty. According to a recent Washington Post column by David Ignatius:
The most important fact about Maliki’s election is that it’s a modest declaration of independence from Iran…The Iranians waged a tough behind-the-scenes campaign to keep Jafaari in office. Tehran issued veiled threats to Iraqi political leaders, in written letters and through emissaries, that if they didn’t back Jafaari, they would pay a price. In resisting this pressure, the political leaders were standing up for a unified Iraq…‘Maliki’s reputation is as someone who is independent of Iran,’ explained Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad.
All politics is local and the road to Tehran does not go through Baghdad. Still, Iraq’s “modest” declaration of independence might end up encouraging Iranians to stand up to the Council of Guardians that constrains popular sovereignty in their own country.[3] Winning the peace in a unified Federal Republic of Iraq could help America avoid war with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Notes
1 Kinzer doesn’t address the apparent contradiction between this woman’s statement and what he found on a (relatively) recent visit to Iran where everyone he met “detested the Islamic regime and thought well of Americans.”
2 Kinzer’s new book, Overthrow, dilutes the power of his case here by placing the coup as one of “14 regime changes” engineered by America during the past century.
3 Of the 1000 people who applied to run in Iran’s recent Presidential elections, all but eight were disqualified, including every female.