My views on nation-building in general and nation-building in Iraq in particular are, as is said, “complicated.” Perhaps we can begin this way: In many ways, the Iraq War was not a “mistake.” Much good was accomplished, and much human misery was averted. We managed, if nothing else, to end the random genocide of the Kurds and help secure their safety and freedom. We did help establish some semblance of democracy, chaotic as it is, in the whole of Iraq. It’s a place where few of us would want to live — except when compared to Iran or Syria or Saudi Arabia, or the old Iraq of Saddam Hussein and his sons.
Still, especially when compared to all our high hopes, we fell short, far short. As is said, “Mistakes were made.” The thought that we could turn Iraq from despotism and toward a just and liberal democracy that would be a model for freedom and prosperity in the Middle East in large measure failed. We were under the illusion that overthrowing tyranny and establishing a democratic government was going to be easy. We seemed to think that setting up democratic forms, especially voting, was more central than stability, order, or encouraging civil society with all its myriad ways of teaching people how to rule themselves and live together. We had fancy slogans that we thought were true: “Bring all stakeholders to the table.” “Don’t all people want freedom?” “Those who would trade freedom for temporary security deserve neither.” “Don’t all religions seek peace?” Being slow to learn, we later repeated much of these utopian sentiments as we rooted for the coming of a grand “Arab Spring!”
In Iraq, we by and large had no good notion (and perhaps I don’t mean “we” all; perhaps it was mostly the State Department types who seemed most to live by simplistic sayings) of what both freedom and democracy entailed. We disbanded the military and the police, and when ordinary Iraqis were being kidnapped, extorted, and killed, we said we really had little to do with “Iraqi-on-Iraqi crime.” When hospitals were looted or schools and universities destroyed or murderous old religious feuds reignited, we exercised, much to our shame, amazing restraint.
Sometimes it seemed that we even did everything in our power to make both freedom and democracy distasteful to the people we liberated. For example, we Americans were aghast at Abu Ghraib. “Torture!” we said. “Waterboarding!” we said. The Iraqis knew all about the goings on in that prison, but I never heard one ever mention torture. But I did hear every time whispers about degradation, about forced homosexual acts, about nakedness and ridicule. And those working in the prison passed it off as “fun.”
Soon, freedom came to be seen by ordinary Iraqis as another word for licentiousness, a partner of immorality and chaos where everything was allowed no matter how many cultural or religious laws were discarded. Freedom was instability. Freedom was “messy.” Yet, after decades of tyranny, what the Iraqis most wished for was peace, respect, orderliness, and security. It was on those pillars that freedom and democracy could be built.
WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON OF THE IRAQ WAR?
It was in Iraq that I realized how badly educated Americans could be. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t know the difference between Shiite and Sunni or the historical tensions between Iraq and Iran. The saddest part was how little our compatriots knew about America. Simple things such as: “Why is it that America votes for its leaders on the basis of geography, not on the basis of occupation, tribe, or religion?” “Why is it that America has a modified, moderated democratic system and not a more thoroughgoing plebiscitary democracy?” “If liberty is good and democracy is good, what steps are needed to get them to work together?” “Do we really think that liberty can exist anywhere without order, personal security, and the rule of law?” “How do we handle the tension between liberty and tradition?”
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So, yes, mistakes were made. But in all honesty, they were more the mistakes of the mind than of the heart. Our mistakes, from the top levels of our political leadership down to all of us who were there to help the Iraqis with their hospitals, banks, schools, and farms, were the mistakes of generous and concerned Americans, people who understood they lived under a good and praiseworthy system of free government but who, sadly, had scant idea what habits, what ideas, what preconditions free government needed to survive.
John Agresto is the former president of St. John’s College and the former chancellor and president of the American University of Iraq and has served in senior positions at the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the author of The Death of Learning: How American Education Has Failed Our Students and What to Do About It.
