Science > Prophecies-Of-Nostradamus > Iraq Paradox: Cracking Down While Promoting Freedom (I'm actually saying something intellegent for once, a good change for this NG)
| Topic: |
Science > Prophecies-Of-Nostradamus |
| User: |
"Arnold Holbrook" |
| Date: |
27 Oct 2003 10:15:51 PM |
| Object: |
Iraq Paradox: Cracking Down While Promoting Freedom (I'm actually saying something intellegent for once, a good change for this NG) |
This is fascinating. Just like the Soviets learned in Afghanistan that
they could not impose communism at the point of a bayonet, causing the
final blows of the Soviet Empire, the US is learning that it is pretty
hard to impose "democracy" and western style "moderniztion" at the
point of a bayonet. Once it became appearent that communism could not
be imposed by a bayonet, the communists realized that history is not
really on their side, and their commitment toward supporting world
revolutionary movements faded away, and their credibility rapidly
declined. The rest was history when they realized that they were too
poor and too technologically behind to wage the Cold War any more.
Will the US follow a similiar parallel? Will it appear that you cannot
impose democracy at the point of a bayonet? Will the US credibility
begin to fade as a result? Will the US realize that it is probably too
expensive to impose democracy by bayonet on the world? Will the US not
succeed in maintainig its monopolisitc hold on nuclear / military
technological supremacy...because it is too expensive to do so while
the domestic ecnonomy continues to recede?
Iraq Paradox: Cracking Down While Promoting Freedom
By DAVID E. SANGER
ASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — At one of the first meetings of the White House's
new Iraq Stabilization Group, days before the series of attacks on
Monday that left at least 34 dead, President Bush's aides debated the
trade-off between locking down Baghdad and demonstrating to Iraqis
that they now live in an open society, where they are free to shop, go
to work or even protest the American-led occupation.
"It wasn't much of a discussion," one of Mr. Bush's senior aides
reported. "We couldn't turn the place into a police state for long,
even if we wanted to. And if we did, it would be a pyrrhic victory."
Now that question is more urgent than ever.
Even with the number and sophistication of the daily attacks
accelerating, Mr. Bush's response to questions about how the United
States should respond has become almost automatic: The United States
is slowly winning hearts and minds, and making Saddam Hussein's
loyalists "more desperate" each day.
The situation will improve, he argues, as Iraqis themselves take more
and more authority over the security scene.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bush's aides and Pentagon officials describe what is
going on as a war of attrition, against enemies whose resources are
being depleted, suggesting they will eventually run out of steam.
But when offered anonymity, some senior administration officials
acknowledge that some of those answers are beginning to ring hollow.
Retraining the Iraqi Army, as Mr. Bush was reminded again today in an
Oval Office meeting with L. Paul Bremer III, the chief of the American
authority in Iraq, is a slow business — far too slow for the urgency
of the problems facing the occupation forces.
While the mixture of loyalists to Saddam Hussein, foreign infiltrators
and released criminals may not be able to build momentum over the long
term, they have certainly built some in the past few weeks — as
demonstrated by the attack on the Rashid Hotel on Sunday and the
apparently coordinated attacks on the Red Cross and police stations
today.
Targets like those could be cordoned off with new bomb barriers, new
walls, new restrictions on movement.
But then, said one senior official, "you would have Beirut, without
the ocean view."
So the decision for now is to avoid a crackdown, especially one so
disruptive of everyday life that Arabs could seize upon it as evidence
that Iraqis have simply traded one kind of repression for another.
The first test has already descended on the administration: Ramadan.
Only a few hours after the bombing on Monday, Maj. Gen. Raymond
Odierno, the commander of the Fourth Infantry Division, was telling
reporters how his troops had been told to keep their distance during
the most sacred month on the Muslim calendar. He said they should "not
really be patrolling or be around those areas when they are in their
time of — when they're conducting their prayers."
In other words, in the name of a light touch and religious freedom,
General Odierno's troops are creating another buffer zone — one where
Iraqis can observe the holy month, and where holdovers of the old
government and their foreign allies can plan and try to carry out
terror attacks.
It is not clear that there are any other choices. The attack on the
Rashid Hotel on Sunday, during the visit of the deputy secretary of
defense, Paul D. Wolfowitz, underscores the nature of the problem. The
hotel is well within a security buffer, and it is surrounded by a
wall.
Its attackers had to launch their strike from hundreds of yards away,
with a makeshift rocket launcher hidden in a portable electric
generator. A wider security perimeter would probably have halted the
attack, and saved the life of the one American who was killed in his
hotel room.
But it also would have required closing down an entire Baghdad
neighborhood, one filled with Iraqis who, for the most part, have
welcomed Mr. Hussein's ouster from power.
"Locking down Baghdad would take enormous manpower and resources, more
than the administration has been willing to provide," said Michele A.
Flournoy, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies here, and a former Pentagon official in the Clinton
administration.
Even were such a lockdown possible, she said, "It would be at a great
cost — perhaps at the cost of turning the Baghdad population against
us, decisively."
That would be risky at any moment, she said, but particularly now, "at
a tipping point where we must keep the Baghdad population with us, or
at least not against us.
"If we make their life difficult," Ms. Flournoy said, "we may lose
their support."
This is the kind of problem that Condoleezza Rice, the president's
national security adviser, had in mind when she created the Iraq
stabilization group, the coordinating committee inside the White House
that is supposed to hone Mr. Bush's message, keep the Iraqi economy
growing, and balance good military practice and good politics.
It is a balancing act, one senior administration official said during
Mr. Bush's trip to Asia, that is being made all the more difficult by
the absence of vocal support from the rest of the Arab world.
There has been no outcry, he noted, from "neighboring states — our
allies — as the attacks on Americans have mounted. No outcry at all.
Which has got to embolden the terror groups."
Mr. Bush is also increasingly concerned about the infiltration of
foreign fighters from the Iranian and Syrian borders. Measuring their
numbers is nearly impossible, American officials say. But the concern
is that they are a source of continuing funds, technology and strength
for the pro-Hussein forces.
The White House strategy, one senior official noted, depends heavily
on choking off those funds, guns and explosives so that the Hussein
loyalists are gradually starved of resources. "To look at the plan,"
the senior official said, "the starvation effect should have started a
few months ago. It didn't — and that's something to worry about."
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