Iraq Needs a Secular Dictator

From the department of no shit, Sherlock:

Imposing a strongman to end the chaos resulting from Iraq's civil war is an option rarely raised in America's anguished debate over Iraq.

But Michael Oppenheimer, director of New York University's Centre for Global Affairs, claims a dictatorship is now the most likely route to salvage Iraq.

"If you can find a more authoritarian, non-constitutional figure in Iraq, you should probably go for it," he said.

"Everyone else is clinging to threads that are things are improving when they are not." ...

"An authoritarian government is scenario No. 1 in Iraq," he said. "It's the only one that allows the US and the UK retrieve a modicum of our interests. We should start thinking about how to make it happen."

Mr Oppenheimer does not subscribe to calls for an immediate American troop withdrawal. Indeed he suggests that it will take up to three years of American military involvement to engineer a viable dictatorship in Iraq.

While New York University is ordinarily viewed as a bastion of America's liberal elite, Mr Oppenheimer says he has no misgivings about installing a more "benign Saddam Hussein".

He suggests that none of Iraq's current swathe of leaders fits the bill.

A strongman will most likely be found in the middle to higher ranks of the Iraqi Army.

Who the fuck could have foreseen that?

Update: Oh, and by the way, this is both smart military policy and good politics:

Even as they call for an end to the war and pledge to bring the troops home, the Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years.

John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, would keep troops in the region to intervene in an Iraqi genocide and be prepared for military action if violence spills into other countries. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York would leave residual forces to fight terrorism and to stabilize the Kurdish region in the north. And Senator Barack Obama of Illinois would leave a military presence of as-yet unspecified size in Iraq to provide security for American personnel, fight terrorism and train Iraqis.

These positions and those of some rivals suggest that the Democratic bumper-sticker message of a quick end to the conflict — however much it appeals to primary voters — oversimplifies the problems likely to be inherited by the next commander in chief.

I know a lot of people who I agree with 99% of the time, people I respect a great deal, see this kind of stuff and it makes their blood boil. I understand, I really do. But as I have said before, Bush has well and truly fucked us. He drove us into a ditch in Iraq and it's not a simple matter to extricate ourselves; at least, not without guaranteeing much further damage. And there are no good options. We could stay for years more and try to rig some sort of stable situation and then see it fail.

I think the problem is that Bush and his people have lied so much about the reasons we need to stay that when someone tells the truth about why we need to stay, the good reasons get lumped together with the lies in peoples' minds.

I can't believe I am saying this, but: The next President will need to maintain a significant military presence in Iraq for at least another 2-3 years.  The numbers of U.S. troops will probably fall next year - if I understand what people who know are saying about the numbers and lengths of troop rotations - but there will be nothing like a full withdrawal under the next President.

I guess it doesn't matter whether we all agree or not. Every major Democratic candidate agrees we need to stay. So Nader was right? No. If you elect a Democrat, we keep troops there for one term. You elect a Republican, it's 10 years.

Comments

[Phillybits]

I'm probably one of those people whose blood boiled but after reading your post, you're right.

They have royally screwed the pooch here and I don't see how they can lay claim to any kind of victory here which brings me to my next point.

For a long time, conservatives used to say that history would judge Bush kindly for invading Iraq and transforming the Middle East into a flourishing democracy.

Clearly that isn't going to happen, at least not soon, not easily, not peacefully, and not in a manner that will reflect kindly on Bush. It will take the actions of dedicated politicians from probably numerous administrations to achieve some tidly-idly fascimile of a stable environment and no one will honestly be able to look back on this and say "Hail to George Bush. if not were his visionary prowess, none of this would've been possible!"

History will look back and say "George Bush, through fear and a lockstep Republican party which offered up no questions and no obstruction to the march of war, created an absolute disaster. Fortunetly, some smart people realized they had to do something to fix this problem they've created and this is what they did. It's not perfect but it's holding for now."

In the end, we probably will just install yet another dictator, bringing us right back to where we started. How history could remotely look back with a favorable eye on Bush for these circular actions at the expense of thousands of US soldeirs and billions, if not trillions of dollars over time, would be beyond my scope of human comprehension.

It just ain't happening.

[Mithras]

at the expense of thousands of US soldeirs

At the expense of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives as well as thousands of US servicemembers' lives.

[Andrew]

Yes, on balance I think you're right that there's some confusion about what "withdrawal" means. But I think the Times article is setting up a straw "primary voter" who thinks that the next president will just give the word and the troops will all march onto the nearest C-130. The number of people who actually think that is probably very small. What real primary voters want is for "leaving" to be the policy, not "staying" like it is now. And that *can* be just the matter of a president giving the word. I'm frustrated as all hell with the current situation, but I'd be a lot more patient if we were arguing about how best to leave rather than how best to continue staying put.

[dped]

I can't pretend know even the slightest bit of what it would take to draw down in Iraq. What is curious to me, nonetheless, is the assumption that withdrawing the military from that sad mess will be voluntary and executed according to plan. The situation is obviously different from Vietnam in 1975, so it's doubtful that we'll see people hanging on to the landing gear of Air America helicopters. But the assumption that we can expect no surprises in how the war unravels makes little sense and even worse policy.