On Friday Andrew Sullivan, apparently paraphrasing Thomas Friedman, laid out an interpretation of the violence engulfing Iraq and the Levant.  It reads like Friedman, in that it proposes a theory that purports to explain everything.  I disagree with it almost entirely, but rather than quoting the whole thing I'll just encourage you to read the post on Sullivan's site.

I won't knock it for not being full of facts and reportage; it's a summary of someone else's op-ed column.  But there's a difference between arguing in broad strokes and putting forward an argument that's unmoored from reality.  Sullivan concludes with, "Democracy is being strangled in its cradle. We are the midwife. It's time to get serious."  Believe me, people here are serious.  The soldiers and Marines on the ground are serious; the guys advising the Iraqi security forces are serious; the people at the US Embassy are serious.  The Iraqi government is very serious—if the situation here gets truly out of control many of those men will be dead or in exile by this time next year.

Maybe Sullivan means Washington needs to get more serious.  But the problem is not an insufficient level of seriousness; the problem is the constraints imposed by reality.  Saying that "democracy is being strangled in its cradle" is poetry, not a description of events.  It's a dangerous way to argue because it creates a narrative instead of acknowledging the confusing and chaotic nature of the conflict.  Of course, politicians and soldiers can't throw up their hands and say, "I give up—this is too confusing and chaotic."  They strive for the best possible outcome.  But commentators aren't under any obligation to make sense of a senseless situation, or to propose a solution where none exists.

For example, there's Sullivan's proposed solution of redoubling efforts to train Iraqi security forces.  The problem is not the competence and commitment of the transition teams working with the Iraqi security forces.  I'm in no position to pass sweeping judgments about how well they're doing their jobs.  But from what I've seen they're as highly competent and committed as any other soldiers and Marines I've met in Iraq (and that's a high standard).  The problems they face are problems that America simply cannot solve on its own:  the problem of a Ministry of Interior that does not effectively supply its own police, the problem of security forces infiltrated by militiamen and insurgents, the problem of an army that's overwhelmingly Shiite operating in overwhelmingly Sunni western Iraq.  The Americans here are working around these problems as best they can, but it's frivolous to advise, essentially, that they just try harder.  It's even frivolous to advise George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld to try harder.  Try harder to do what?

Sullivan says that the problem in Iraq (and Lebanon and Gaza, but I'm focusing on what I know) is that "Islamist factions in their elected governments, having seized a sliver of power through the ballot-box, are now using it to radicalize the Arab 'street.'"  This sounds like an argument about Hezbollah and Hamas, with Iraq tossed in to complete the trifecta.  It's an absurd explanation for the Sunni insurgency.  The insurgency was born and began to thrive before there was any hint of democracy in Iraq.  In 2003 the country was ruled by an American appointee and security was provided entirely by the United States military.  The insurgency doesn't derive its power from democracy, the attempt to create democracy, opposition to democracy, or anything of the kind.  It derives its power from its military capability and the tacit or active support of a significant number of Iraqi Sunnis.  It can attack the United States military and the Iraqi government.  Some Sunnis in the government may have connections to the insurgency, but they do not direct the violence and the past month has probably proved that they can't stop the violence.

The insurgency began to thrive in the chaotic aftermath of the invasion, but saying the collapse of Saddam's regime has had violent and unpredictable consequences is an entirely different point from saying that the process of creating democracy is causing the violence.  If this is just the painful birth of democracy then things are simple—we support democracy and oppose anti-democratic forces (even if those anti-democrats have been duly elected, I guess).  But if this is factional and sectarian warfare, and if the policies and pronouncements of the American and Iraqi governments have little or no predictable impact on events, then things are a lot more dire and a lot harder to understand.

For example, it's actually true to say that democracy has empowered Islamists.  But the most important of those Islamists—SCIRI and Dawa—are our allies (for the most part) within the Iraqi government and have won the overwhelming support of Shiites at every stage of the democratic process.  If you think we need different allies in Iraq then you're really arguing we shouldn't be in Iraq at all.

 

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