On The Road In The Kingdom Of Fear

Democracy or Empire? by Billmon

Tapped takes note of a new op-ed from Larry Diamond, one that reminds us how little we know about the Cheney administration's true motives for invading Iraq -- or what its intentions there are now.

Diamond was a senior political adviser to Bureaucrat Man (aka Jerry Bremer) and the ill-fated Coalition Provisional Authority (aka the RNC branch office on the Tigris) from January to April of 2004, when he quit (in disgust?) to return to his regular gig as a fellow at the right-wing Hoover Institution at Stanford.

Diamond describes himself as an opponent of the war (whether on pragmatic or moral grounds, I don't know) who neverthless decided he wanted to do what he could to try to make the occupation work. He is, I'm told, a "democracy" expert -- as the American foreign policy elite understands the term. Whether his work for the CPA added or subtracted from the sum total of Iraq's misery I don't know. But his intentions seem to have been good. He was, in so much as such a thing exists, the benevolent face of neo-colonialism.

Diamond's article is the same repetitive litany of incompetence, stupidity, arrogance and ideological blindness that we have come to expect from the Cheney administration. (If you want the long version, check out his article in Foreign Affairs last fall.) He offers up a couple of anecdotes that speak volumes about the RNC branch office's approach to "democracy" in Iraq. Like this one:

One of our colleagues stormed into the office after a late-night meeting of the Iraqi Governing Council, uttering: "We have a problem. And no one wants to deal with it. The Governing Council is issuing orders and the ministers are starting to execute them." Several of us burst out laughing. We were fostering a transition to sovereignty and democracy. We had established the Iraqi Governing Council. But God forbid it should actually seek to start governing!

The RNC guy was probably thinking: Shit. If a manipulated pseudo-democracy is good enough for Americans, it ought to be good enough for the goddamned Iraqis.

The most telling point, though, is Diamond's uncertainty about exactly why the administration invaded Iraq in the first place, and what it had hoped, or still hopes, to gain from all this blood, sweat and tears (few, if any of them, George W. Bush's.)

The administration has repeatedly denied that conventional strategic objectives -- like, turning Iraq into a bastion of American military power in the Middle East -- were among its motives for going to war. But Diamond isn't so sure:

To achieve lasting peace in Iraq, America will have to make concessions, including an explicit commitment not to seek permanent military bases in Iraq. Perhaps no issue in the coming years will more clearly expose the real purpose of the Bush administration's postwar mission in Iraq: to build democracy or to obtain a new, regional military platform in the heart of the Arab world. (emphasis added)

One would have hoped that the guy nominally in charge of Operation Democracy during a very critical period in the occupation would be able to offer at least a glimmer of an answer to that question. As Diamond himself says, if the real objective is to turn Iraq into a country-sized version of Fort Apache, then the American public can look forward to being "mired indefinitely in a violent quagmire in Iraq."

The thing is, I've never been entirely sure in my own mind whether the administration really believes Bush's democracy preaching, or whether -- as with any number of TV evangelists -- it's just good cover for a little old-fashioned fraud and fornication.

You can look at the photo gallery of top U.S. officials doing the grip and grin with "Crockpot" Karimov, the Uzbekistan parboiler, and think, Jeez, this all a crock of shit. When these guys talk about democracy, what they really mean is: Crank up the voltage on that guy's testicles.

Maybe that's true, but not all of the administration's actions can only be explained as cynical opportunism. Helping undermine the corrupt post-Soviet boss of the Ukraine, despite his eagerness to offer up human sacrifices for Rummy's foreign legion in Iraq, is one example. Coaxing the House of Saud into holding partial municipal elections, and encouraging Kuwait's parliament to give women the vote, are others.

Even Bush's half-assed support for a Palestinian state, albeit one with borders drawn by Ariel Sharon, is more than what U.S. domestic politics would seem to require, and far more than what his own party supports. (Although it may just be a sop to Gunga Blair. The Downing Street minutes suggest as much.)

Relatively feeble stuff, I know. But again, more than the purely domestic Machiavellian calculations of the Rovians would lead you to expect. And Bush, in his simple-minded way, really does seem to believe in his own preaching, at least abstractly.

Even the neocons, for all their viciousness and totalitarian gut instincts, sometimes show signs of taking their white man's burden seriously. After all, a passion for democracy -- American-style democracy, under the close supervision of Americans such as themselves -- is one of the characteristics that's supposed to divide them from the evil Kissinger and his minions.

While that passion wasn't exactly evident during the death squad days in Central America, the neocons probably would argue that times were different back then -- communist threat on our doorstep, etc. And compared to some of the real moral basket cases of the Reagan administration (Bill Casey, for example) most, although not all, of the neocons emerged with less blood on their hands. They were at least partially responsible, for example, for the decision to cut Ferdinand Marcos loose and back the People Power revolt in the Phillipines -- one of the few cases I can think of in the global south where the Reagan administration actually did the right thing.

Maybe I'm seeing distinctions where none actually exist. But for me the dichotomy between evil and foolish and just foolish was symbolized during Bush's first term by the Pentagon's neocon power couple: Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz.

In addition to being the stupidest fucking guy on the planet (to use Gen. Frank's term) Feith is, as far as I can tell, only a few steps removed from being an out-and-out fascist -- of the Ze'ev Jabotisnky revisionist persuation. People who I know and trust, and who have talked to Feith socially and off the record, describe him as the ultimate "Greater Israel" hawk, a fanatical supporter of the Israeli settler movement who sees the Palestinians as a misfortune and the Arabs in general as savages who understand exactly one thing -- and it ain't democracy.

Wolfowitz, on the other hand, seems to have a genuine streak of misplaced idealism. I'm not even 100% sure that he's a Likudik. Unlike Feith, Wolfowitz was not one of the signatories to the infamous "Clean Break" strategy memo that the Project for a New Israeli-American Century put together for Benjamin Netanyahu. If Wolfie is a Likudnik, then I would describe him as a "wet" one -- willing to trade some land for peace (more than Arial Sharon ever would, I suspect.)

The summer before the invasion, I happened to catch Wolfowitz on C-Span telling a booing crowd of pro-Israeli demonstrators in Washington that the Palestinians are people too, and deserve their own state. I can't prove it, but I think he meant it.

Accepting that Palestinians are also human beings is not, I admit, much -- although God knows it's way too much for the gang over at Little Green Footballs. But accepting the right of the Palestinians to a state would definitely put Wolfie in a different category than the Doug Feith neocons, who see blocking a Palestinian state (overtly if possible; covertly if necessary) as a key part of their life's mission.

What does this all have to do with Iraq? Simply that, if the decision to invade sprang from many bureaucratic motives -- as Wolfowitz himself has said -- I'm reasonably sure Doug Feith's had nothing to do with exporting democracy to the Arab world, and everything to do with planting the army of a friendly nation (i.e. the USA) between Israel and its most dangerous remaining strategic enemy, Iran.

I'm not as sure about Wolfowitz. Most likely, he saw and probably still sees no contradiction between the two objectives. The same may be true of the Cheney administration as a whole. It strains credulity beyond the breaking point to think Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld really give a flying fuck about democracy -- in Iraq or anywhere else. But they, too, may not have seen any contradition between their strategic goals and the democracy-building aspirations of the neocon "wets."

What the "wets" lack in cynicism and evil, however, they more than make up for with arrogance and naivete -- of the kind that must have made Ahmed Chalabi lick his chops in anticipation. It's pretty obvious that democracy and empire will not walk hand-in-hand in Iraq. Not now and probably not ever. Which one will the Cheney administration choose?

Some have argued that the construction of 14 "enduring bases" is proof postitive the neocons have absolutely no intention of disgorging their strategic prize. That may have been true when construction started. But anybody who thinks Uncle Sam wouldn't walk away after pouring all that concrete doesn't know much about government contracting.

As citizen has already pointed out over at Moon of Alabama, pouring concrete is a good in and of itself to the Pentagon -- just as pouring money into Halliburton is a good in and of itself to the Cheney administration. After all, bases abandoned in Iraq mean bases that must be built somewhere else.

No, I don't think the administration would blink twice about abandoning the entire Iraq adventure if sunk costs were the only issue. But the stakes are obviously a lot higher than that. Putting empire ahead of democracy (bases ahead off security and stability) would seem like a recipe for an even bigger disaster down the road. But letting Iraq choose its own destiny could result in chaos -- or, even worse from an Israeli-American point of view, in an Iraq that slides steadily deeper into Iran's orbit.

Which horn of the dilemma will the administration choose to impale itself on? Beats me. I'm way more in the dark than Larry Diamond is. But if and when he figures it out, I hope he'll tell us.

posted by Alexander Try @ 2:05 pm