...like we need a bullet in the head. To the French, we Americans are a young power, desperately in need of the enlightenment of our betters. Especially when it comes to turning tail. France's problem with us, literally, is that we do not know when to run.
At least, that's the point made by one Dominique Moisi, a senior advisor at France's Institute of International Relations, who says "Now That You Need Us, We have Something to Say."
There are lessons to be taken from France's experience in Algeria. Washington's ambitious revisionist attempt to democratize the Middle East could benefit from the sobering humility of a former colonial power.
First, Iraq isn't Algeria. Algeria (and Vietnam,too) was a French colonial posession. France wanted control over it permanently. Despite all the confusion introduced by the radical left, Iraq is not a new American colony. We do not intend to be a permanent occupying power. We are only going to be there until we are satisfied that Iraq has an infrastructure, a political structure, and a civil society strong enough to survive without any outside help, including from us. We are still in control of Iraq because we have not reached that point yet. The terrorists attacking us in Iraq are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims, operating in the Sunni heartland of Iraq (Baghdad, Tikrit, Fallujah, and the surrounding areas). We have had only a few prominent incidents with the Shi'a of southern Iraq, and virtually none with the Kurds in the north.
Let us contrast this with the French experience in Algeria.
Algeria was, for all intents and purposes, considered as much a part of France as Normandy or Lyon. Algeria was divided into departments, essentially, the French equivalent of U.S. states. France had conquered Algeria in the 1830's. History takes over from there.
"In addition to enduring the affront of being ruled by a foreign, non-Muslim power, many Algerians lost their lands to the new government or to colonists. Traditional leaders were eliminated, coopted, or made irrelevant; social structures were stressed to the breaking point. Viewed by the Europeans with condescension at best and contempt at worst--never as equals--the Algerians endured 132 years of colonial subjugation. Nonetheless, this period saw the formation of new social classes, which, after exposure to ideas of equality and political liberty, would help propel the country to independence. During the years of French domination, the struggles to survive, to co-exist, to gain equality, and to achieve independence shaped a large part of the Algerian national identity."
Read that again. Not two years. Not three years. One hundred and thirty-two years. If we stayed in Iraq for 132 years, made the 18 Iraqi provinces into the next US states, and eliminated all sources of native political opposition, then the Iraqis would have every right, indeed, the duty, to kick our asses. But we have only been in Iraq six months, and we have no intention of staying in Iraq for anything close to 132 years. If France is trying to warn us away from being the next colonial power, we're way ahead of them. We were devolving the Phillipines when the French were strutting around Algeria and Vietnam like they owned the damn places. And they did.
"The French military command ruthlessly applied the principle of collective responsibility to villages suspected of sheltering, supplying, or in any way cooperating with the guerrillas. Villages that could not be reached by mobile units were subject to aerial bombardment. The French also initiated a program of concentrating large segments of the rural population, including whole villages, in camps under military supervision to prevent them from aiding the rebels--or, according to the official explanation, to protect them from FLN extortion. In the three years (1957-60) during which the regroupement program was followed, more than 2 million Algerians were removed from their villages, mostly in the mountainous areas, and resettled in the plains, where many found it impossible to reestablish their accustomed economic or social situations. Living conditions in the camps were poor. Hundreds of empty villages were devastated, and in hundreds of others orchards and croplands were destroyed. These population transfers apparently had little strategic effect on the outcome of the war, but the disruptive social and economic effects of this massive program continued to be felt a generation later. "
Gee... Sound familiar? Resemble any other international crises/flaming bags of dog shit dumped on our doorstep by the French? Anyone remember what happened the last time we did as the French did? (I'll give you a hint: "It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.")
"Sobering humility?" I should hope so. But I hope in vain. On the contrary, the advice Mr. Moisi gives is neither sober nor humble. Instead, it confuses history and the present. Discuss.
Moisi sees in Iraq what happened in Algeria:
This is what the French can tell America: Military strength will take you so far and no farther. What America needs in Iraq now is not more soldiers, but policemen and administrators. Just last week, American soldiers killed eight Iraqi policemen by mistake in a desert firefight. This is the kind of error that must be avoided. This is the kind of act that leads to a sense of oppression and repression. And we can tell you from our experience that repression in cities creates anger, and before you know it, the liberator has become the brutal oppressor. Hegel said that men make history but do not know the history they make, and his famous warning seems to describe the consequences of American policy in Iraq perfectly. The entire region has changed, but has it changed for the better?
Of course! Bad things are in the headlines, so all must be going badly, no? Yes, what happened to those Iraqi police is a tragedy. Such is war, things do go wrong. But take a look at the stuff that's going right, just today:
Two steps forward, one step back. Us being the military top dog, far from worsening things, is the only reason why things are getting better. But try telling that to Messr. Moisi.
"Forget the tactical lesson and go to the heart of the matter. Get the Iraqis involved. You may think your presence in Iraq will be indefinite but not infinite. This is wishful thinking. Unless you change your strategy, you'll be stuck in Iraq for the long haul and forced to have a massive presence there." America should transfer authority to Iraq as quickly as possible."
It depends what you mean by indefinite, my friend. And yes, the Iraqis are involved. Iraqi police, Iraqi soldiers. Iraqi schools and universities, Iraqi oil workers, Iraqi builders, an Iraqi cabinet. But the problem is that the Iraqis have not yet rounded the learning curve. They still have to re-learn how to run a country without resorting to terror, mass murder, and killing your poltical opposition. The process is happening on its own schedule. Transferring authority now sounds really good, but it is a recipe for diaster.
That is why France wants a new U.N. resolution on Iraq, a new division of responsibilities and a new calendar of events.
OK.
Paris would probably be happy with a triumvirate to run the reconstruction, with an American general in charge of security under a U.N. mandate,
Cool.
an Iraqi interim government given many more political responsibilities
Could we give the new Iraqi interim government a few more months to get their act together and start working as a team? Or is that too "colonial" for you?
and a U.N.-designated representative having overall responsibility for the process and for organizing elections on a shortened schedule of a few months. Ideally, though not necessarily realistically, power should be returned to the Iraqis before the beginning of next year.
No, no, no, no. This is inviting major problems. Iraq currently has no electoral law, no electoral rolls, no political parties, no constitution, a weak central government, two neighbors with their own agendas who would like nothing better than a power vacuum, a bunch of Baathist yahoos shooting at the people who took their money away, and Saddam still hiding in a cave someplace. And you want to be have elections and have out of there by next year? Have you learned nothing from your last experiences with decolonization? How all those carefully cultivated colonies in Africa and Asia you left are now either kleptocracies or dictatorships, where the rule of men prevails over the rule of law? Maybe the French are satisfied with that. It's not our problem anymore, they say. Let me clue you in. If the US screws up Iraq, it will continue to be our problem for a very long time Terrorism will flourish there, and it will come knocking at our door... maybe even yours too. And if you want to screw up Iraq, this "wham, bam, thank you ma'am," election strategy is a good way to do it.
"These conditions are probably unacceptable to Washington, which would see them as an admission of its own failure."
Yeah, right. It's all about us stupid Americans and our easily wounded pride. The fact that doing elections in Iraq now is a really bad idea has nothing to do with it.
I am, in fact, not convinced that the French alternative would be any more successful than the American.
So why bother with it?
Nevertheless, it is worth a try. I believe we French must step up to the plate and extend our assistance to Washington. One thing is absolutely clear: America did not need its allies to win the war in Iraq. But it does need them if it wants to avoid losing the peace. For both sides, the time has come for what John Foster Dulles called an "agonizing reappraisal" of our respective positions.
I said it before and I will say it again: outside help would be nice. Help is always nice. But it is not necessary. We can handle Iraq all by our lonesome selves. It'll just take longer. If you really want to see Iraq suceed, put your money where your mouth is, give us a few thousand troops and a few billion Euros, and we will show how how to re-build a country.
Mr. Moisi's analysis, and French foreign policy in general, is falling prey to what is called "mirror imaging." It is when people of one country project their own modes of thinking, with all the biases that come with them, onto another country. France sees us occupying Iraq, France looks back on its own history and deduces we're just another power-hungry colonial empire. Never mind the fact we are pursuing a radically different course than what the French did, and that we are motivated by a completely different rationale. Mirror imaging is always a danger in any kind of foreign policy analysis, for it does not allow assumptions to be questioned, nor does it allow alternate theories to develop. Mirror imaging is how America ended up with Pearl Harbor and the Iranian hostage crisis. It will prove to be the downfall of France's Iraq policy as well.
No, Mr. Moisi. We do not need you. We do not need your defeatism, nor your willingness to live with a bad situation rather than tackling the problem head-on, nor your failed ways of doing business, nor your flawed analysis. And we have something to say to you, too. In the words of John Stuart Mill,
"When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice--is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
I like what my friend said about what to do with France: "'Y'know, we should just walk over to Germany and say 'Remember WWII? Our bad. Here, have some tanks.'" At least it would remind France and Mr. Moisi of the consequences of running away from a problem of their own making.
UPDATE 2003-09-16 2:23 PM: Fareed Zakaria agrees.
UPDATE 2003-09-16 11:48 PM: Reuel Marc Gerecht explains why the "Iraqification" that France wants is a really bad idea.
Posted by Thief at September 15, 2003 02:55 PM