# Posted 10:40 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

AMERICAN EXPERTS BETRAY IRAQI DEMOCRACY: Yesterday, the Council on Foreign Relations issued what it describes as an "integrated, coherent post-conflict strategy" for Iraq. I'd simply call it an embarrassment. I admit that I have been talking about the importance of postwar planning for a long time now. But this report remains stunningly silent on the political future of Iraq while focusing extensively on the reconstruction of its oil industry.

Let me sum up the problem this way: If you search the text of the CFR report for the word "democracy", you won't find it. All you will find is a vague reference to a "government based on democratic principles." If you search for the word elections, you will find it once, in the following context: "The United States should also encourage Iraqi-led efforts toward a new constitution, census-taking, local elections, and convocation of a new parliament." Encourage? Encourage?

Perhaps someone should have told CFR that democratizing Iraq is not just an option, but rather the heart of President Bush's vision for the reform of the Middle East. A true "integrated, coherent post-conflict strategy" for Iraq would provide considerable detail about how exactly one might go about introducing democracy to a nation that has no experience with it. When will elections be held? Who will supervise them? What sort of party system can be expected to emerge? What sort of judicial and police institutions will be able to defend a democratic order? What can be done to ensure that the Iraqi army stays out of politics? A list of questions like this could go on and on. None of them are answered in the CFR report.

In addition to ignoring such questions, the report explicitly denies the relevance of America's experience in democratizing Germany and Japan. As it observes,

The continued public discussion of a U.S. military government along the lines of post-war Japan or Germany is unhelpful. After conflict, Iraqis will be a liberated, not a defeated, people. While considerable U.S. involvement will be necessary in the post-conflict environment, such comparisons suggest a long-term U.S. occupation of Iraq that will neither advance U.S. interest nor garner outside support.

Why won't an extended occupation advance US interests? In light of the fact that the CFR report says nothing about how to ensure that Iraqi democracy survives its infancy, there is every reason to believe that a long-term American presence will be critical. And why wouldn't an American presence garner outside support? Admittedly, the Saudi and Syrian governments would not appreciate the presence of an American occupation force committed to creating an actual Arab democracy. After all, that might convince ordinary Saudis and Syrians that democracy in the Middle East is possible now.

While France and Russia tend to object to whatever the US proposes, there is good reason to believe that they would support an extended occupation as well, provided that their oil interests are taken care of. No one in Europe objects to the extended occupation in Bosnia or Kosovo, whose purpose is to prevent ethnic violence and restore democracy. That would be the purpose of an occupation force in Iraq as well.

Finally, the distinction between a liberated Iraq and the defeated Axis powers is misleading. While there it is probable -- but by no means definite -- that Iraqis resent Saddam more than the Japanese and Germans did their rulers, simplistic distinctions ibetween defeat and liberation ignore the fact that liberation does not just come from the fall of a hated dictatorship, but rather from its replacement with a functioning democracy. Like most Arabs today, the Japanese and (to a lesser extent) the Germans simply did not see democratization as a viable option. When the Americans imposed it on them, they realized that only then had they been truly liberated.

Another embarrassing aspect of the CFR report is the following passage:

It is possible that Saddam will be overthrown prior to the end of hostilities, with a new Iraqi strongman or a national salvation committee taking power in Baghdad. Assuming that such a government makes a clean break with Saddam's reign of terror and pursuit of WMD, the United States should be prepared to work with it and to help it establish the broadest, most favorable terms for post-conflict international involvement on disarmament and reconstruction.

Prepared to work with a "strongman"? Strongman? What could be more glaringly hypocritical than getting rid of one dictator but working with his successor? While it might be possible to persuade a strongman or "national salvation committee" to commit itself publically to democratization, experience shows that unelected governments tend to focus on preserving their own power while doing almost nothing to advance the democratization process. Besides, would there be any reason to believe than an unelected government would actually give up all of its weapons of mass destruction?

While I could go on for quite a while about the report, I'm going to end with one last criticism: the report's failure to mention even once that the most critical determinant of Iraq's future will be a personal commitment by the President to ensuring that Iraq becomes stable and democratic. Nowhere does the report suggest that the absence of presidential interest in Afghanistan has resulted in a return of warlordism and chaos. Instead, the report endorses Donald Rumsfeld's assertion that Iraq's future government "is not for the United States, indeed not even for the United Nations to prescribe. It will be something that's distinctively Iraqi". In other words, Rumsfeld will work with a dictatorship if he has to.

Perhaps the only thing worse than the CFR report was the NY Times article about it. The Times reports that

The study, sponsored by the Baker Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations, warned that "a heavy American hand" would only convince the Iraqis, as well as "the rest of the world, that the operation against Iraq was undertaken for imperialist, rather than disarmament, reasons."

Actually, the CFR report said that a "heavy American hand" specifically in the oil sector would validate speculations that this was another war for oil. To CFR's credit, the report does not say that a strong American presence in postwar Iraq would undermine the justification for war in the first place. It seems the NY Times paranoid fear of criticism from the left has been influencing its reporting. I'd call that liberal media bias if it weren't so touchingly naive.

(1) opinions -- Add your opinion