I did a close reading of Friedman on Thursday and follow-up with a reading of Brooks today. Now I'll retire before I have an aneurism.
Take a Deep Breath
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: April 10, 2004
Come on people, let's get a grip.
[Keep your eyes on the Abstraction! Do not get distracted by events!]
This week, Chicken Littles like Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd were ranting that Iraq is another Vietnam. Pundits and sages were spinning a whole series of mutually exclusive disaster scenarios: Civil war! A nationwide rebellion!
[You know, it's never happened in human history that a nationwide rebellion and civil war have gone on simultaneously or that the former has evolved into the latter. That little Red/White conflict from 1918-20, never occurred. Vendee, forget about it. You all remember how the Afghan Mujahideen marched into Kabul after the Russians left in 1989 and have ruled harmoniously ever since. Silly liberals...]
Maybe we should calm down a bit. [Yes, indeed] I've spent the last few days talking with people who've spent much of their careers studying and working in this region. [Like "Iraqi scholar" Laurie Mylroie, perhaps?] We're at a perilous moment in Iraqi history, but the situation is not collapsing. We're in the middle of a battle. It's a battle against people who vehemently oppose a democratic Iraq. The task is to crush those enemies without making life impossible for those who fundamentally want what we want.
[Agreed that Sadr and the Sunni insurgents are not democrats, and that we have little reason to doubt that their rule would be a catastrophe, but where comes this breathtaking confidence that Brooks knows that most Iraqis "fundamentally want what we want". I've read millions of words from American leaders and analysts and I'm still not sure what "we" want, if we means Brooks and his "national greatness" crowd. Anyone who thinks he knows what most Iraqis want is deluded; I doubt very much that most Iraqis know what they want partially because they have no idea what "we" want. But I do think Brooks would be very disappointed by the results of a poll of Iraqi Arabs right now as to whether they want what we want.]
The Shiite violence is being fomented by Moktada al-Sadr, a lowlife hoodlum from an august family.
[All evidence suggests Sadr is a violent, totalitalitarian type, but how exactly does it help us understand things - and we really do need to understand things - to call him a lowlife hoodlum; Sadr speaks a crude Arabic, but has more years formal education than Brooks. He is an intellectual, if an exceptionally distasteful and crude one. The "lowlife hoodlum" language is taken from the pro-American middle class Iraqis (check out the English-language blogosphere for plenty of examples), who have a contempt for the lowlife scum of Sadr City, i.e. Baghdad's Shiite impoverished ghetto. I understand fully well why the educated, cultured Baghdad middle class, those who would staff the civil service of a democratic Iraq, feel this way about those who would support a new dictator, but we have to keep firmly in mind. The electoral candidate of the Baghdad middle class will get 3-5% of the vote in a free and fair election. Take a look at Russian electoral returns over the last fifteen years for a parallel.]
The ruthless and hyperpoliticized [now that's rich! says the PBS commentator, NYT columnist, Weekly Standard pundit!! How dare that lowlife engage in politics] Sadr has spent the past year trying to marginalize established religious figures, like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who come from a more quietist tradition and who believe in the separation of government and clergy. [Sistani opposes clerical rule; he most certainly does not support the separation of government and clergy] Sadr and his fellow putschists have been spectacularly unsuccessful in winning popular support. The vast majority of Iraqis do not want an Iranian-style dictatorship. Most see Sadr as a young, hotheaded murderer who terrorizes people wherever he goes.
[Neither Sadr nor the theocratic project have, to the extent one can measure it, anything remotely approaching majority support in the Shiite community, but it never ceases to amaze me how not only our "national greatness" neocon pals, but the mainstream media have for the past week repeated this canard that he has been spectacularly unsuccessful in winning public support, while he has just taken over several entire cities and large portions of several other cities, including the capital. Keep your eyes on the Abstraction! Don't get caught up in those messy facts! Journalists who have actually gone and talked to poor Shiites - like Nir Rosen of Asia Times or Tish Durbin of the NY Observer - have warned for months about his support. Yes, it's not majority support. Yes, Sistani is acknowledged as the Shiite spiritual leader. But Sadr is clearly one of the five most influential political leaders in Iraq.]
He and his band have taken this opportunity to make a desperate bid for power, before democratic elections reveal the meagerness of their following.
[Still richer! The CPA closed down his newspaper and arrested his assistant, and we now know (and can imagine he knew or suspected) planned to arrest Sadr and so he responded with a counter-offensive. Had he feared "democratic elections" (in which he would of course and his movement would be barred from contesting) he would have created his own "opportunity". Anyone who knows anything about the situation in Iraq knows Sadr would get a bunch of representatives in any free and fair election. How many. Who knows?]
He has cleverly picked his moment, [again, the transparent deception from someone who has the misfortune to be too intelligent to be able to lie credibly] and he has several advantages. He is exploiting wounded national pride. He is capitalizing on the Iraqis' frustration with the American occupation (they continually overestimate our competence, then invent conspiracy theories to explain why we haven't transformed Iraq).
[Here Brooks and Friedman finally converge. Those damn Iraqis, we overestimated them... blame the victim indeed]
Most important, Sadr has the advantages that always accrue to fascist thugs. He is vicious, while his opponents are civilized.
[He is indeed vicious, no doubt about it, but it is also true, as Brooks fails to mention in his entire column, that his civilized opponents (and no, I do not think the US is uncivilized; the civilized are also capable of great violence when they have an Abstraction in focus) have just created the newest mass grave in Iraq's sad history on the soccer field of Falluja.]
Sadr and his band terrify people, and ride on a current of blood. [true] They get financial and logistical support from Iran. [probably true] They profit from the mayhem caused by assorted terrorists, like Imad Mugniyah [pure rumor], who are sowing chaos in Iraq. [true] They need to spark a conflagration to seize power. [Again, who sparked this particular conflagration??]
Sadr's domestic opponents are ill-equipped to deal with him. [true] The police have revealed their weakness. [true] Normal Iraqis are doing what they learned to do under Saddam; they are keeping their heads down. [true] Clerics like Sistani, who operate by consensus, do not want to be seen siding with outsiders against a fellow Muslim. [only too true]
Nonetheless, Sadr faces long odds. [true] Iraqis may be frustrated with the Americans, but they don't want to jump from Baath fascism to theocratic fascism. [true] In a February poll, only 10 percent of Iraqis said it was acceptable to attack Americans. [true, though one shudders at what the next poll might say] In Kut yesterday, CNN reported, local tribesmen, disgusted by Sadr's violence, rose up against his troops. [The only "fact", if it is, that our "national greatness" friend can seize on; as opposed to, say, the mass gathering of blood and food in Baghdad and the march to Falluja to aid the besieged, or etc. etc. etc.] If you'd listened to the recent hysteria, you never would have expected that to happen. [No indeed, keep your eyes on the Abstraction; it is so beautiful...]
Furthermore, many of the most influential Shiite groups in Iraq, such as the Dawa and Sciri parties, are invested in the process of building the new Iraq.
[Now that's a lovely choice of verb - "are invested in" - passive voice, as even Brooks wouldn't dare say the two major Islamist parties are actively invested in building "his" new Iraq]
Their policies don't jibe with ours, but they have a stake in a democratic future and would love to see Sadr eliminated.
[No indeed, though perhaps Dobson et al would find some points of agreement, but being "invested in" building the "new Iraq", these Islamists are also "invested in" not providing inflammatory quotations for the likes of David Brooks, not yet...]
There are even signs that the Iranians themselves regard Sadr as hopelessly volatile.
[Presumably not "the Iranians" that are giving financial and logistic support; Iran is sufficiently divided that one can say "the Iranians" support almost anything; but it's true that the theocrats in Iran do not necessarily want a rival theocracy in Iraq anymore than Stalin was one hundred percent enthused by Mao's triumph in China]
Most important, leadership in the U.S. is for once cool and resolved. [music swells, the Abstraction rises..] This week I spoke with leading Democrats and Republicans and found a virtual consensus. [alas, such a consensus surely exists] We're going to keep the June 30 handover deadline. [of course Biden and Lugar think it will be a disaster but, yes, technically speaking, they expect it to occur] We're going to raise troop levels if necessary. We're going to wait for the holy period to end and crush Sadr. As Joe Lieberman put it, a military offensive will alienate Iraqis, but "the greater risk is [Sadr] will grow into something malevolent." As Charles Hill, the legendary foreign service officer who now teaches at Yale, observed, "I've been pleasantly surprised by the boldness and resolve."
Nonetheless, yesterday's defections from the Iraqi Governing Council show that populist pressure on the good guys is getting intense. [true] Maybe it is time to pause, to let passions cool, to let the democrats marshal their forces. ["the democrats"? "their forces"? Ah, I forgot again, the Abstraction, it hovers there, gleaming, beautiful...] If people like Sistani are forced to declare war on the U.S., the gates of hell will open up. [Oh no, he'll quickly become a highlife thug, or some such thing...]
Over the long run, though, the task is unavoidable. [South Vietnam must be defended; The West Bank must be settled] Sadr is an enemy of civilization. [Ho Chi Minh is an enemy of civilization; Arafat is an enemy of civilization] The terrorists are enemies of civilization. [The Communists are enemies of civilization; the PLO are enemies of civilization]. They must be defeated. [Yes, they must, but to defeat them, one must first see them as they are.]