Part two of a four-part series
“The nation of Iraq—with its proud heritage, abundant resources, and skilled, educated people—is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom,’ George W. Bush said shortly before he invaded that country.
He anticipating a process in which the armed forces would remove Saddam’s government, turn the country over to its political classes, oversee a short and bloodless transition, and quickly depart. This was Plan A.
The problem was that there had been no good intelligence since 1991 when the first Gulf War had ended, during which sanctions on top of war and repression had wrecked the economy, impoverished the middle classes (or driven them out of the country), and left no structure upon which to build.
As a result, Plan B was developed, in which there would be a more prolonged occupation, during which the United States and the United Nations would midwife a shining new national government to which power would then be transferred.
Much time would be spent over the next several years by hundreds of experts on many solutions, many of which would be wrong. The first imposed governments were top-down affairs, with little attempts to involve neighborhood leadership.
The decision was made that for the first elections voters would select party slates, not individual candidates, who would then be given seats in Parliament on a proportional basis, a plan that cut the connection between the voters and their representatives and allowed the more extreme factions to rise.
Decisions were made to bypass local leaders, who were the main pillars of Iraqi society, in pursuit of more westernized versions of ‘civil society,’ which did not exist at the moment: the sheiks were seen by the planners as relics of feudal society who would be out of place in a modern democracy, and after a few early contacts, outreach to them had been dropped.
The result was a government not quite of the people, that did not quite manage to have their allegiance. It could not control them when things became difficult. And things quickly did.
The Kurds in the north embraced the Americans and the occupation; the Shia in the south had accepted them, but the Sunnis, who, though outnumbered had ruled the country for nearly a century, refused to accept a reduction of power, and went into open revolt.
Told by Al Qaeda that it would help them regain their old power, they joined it in a campaign of terror against the Shiia and the American forces, that in the coming three years would increase in ferocity: Bombs would go off in streets, schools, and soccer fields; bodies would turn up missing heads and extremities, and burning cars would become a regular feature in streets and on televised news.
For almost three years, American forces and the frail government held the country (barely) together. Then, on February 22, 2006, Al Qaeda blew up the al-Askari shrine in Samara, killing over 500 people, and the Shiia fuse finally blew.
Iranian-friendly Shiia militias terrorized Sunnis in Baghdad, and established their hold on the south of the country. West of the city, Al Qaeda cemented its grip on large Sunni provinces, instituting its own reign of terror.
From a belt west of Baghdad, it launched incessant car bombs attacks on the capital city. Major cities such as Ramadi, Fallujah, and Baquaba were all in the hands of the enemy. In August, Americans declared Anbar ‘lost.’
Since the bombing, casualties had increased exponentially, reaching a peak in October, which was the worst month of the war. For three years, Bush had put his faith in his belief that Iraqi democracy, nurtured along by American experts, could ‘cure’ the old ills of its tribal divisions, and this had failed.
In November 2006, democracy in America rendered its verdict on Bush’s democracy project, giving the Congress to Democrats. ‘Debacle’ was the kindest word said about it and its author.
Against the stridently expressed will of Congress, the pundits, the establishment and much of his party, Bush decided on a surge of troops into Baghdad and its environs in a last attempt to stabilize things long enough to allow the government to broker a deal that might put an end to the violence. That would not happen. But something else would.
Examiner columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
