One Year Later

By Frank Gruber

It's not often that Americans have the opportunity to commemorate the first anniversary of invading another country on a preemptive basis, so forgive me if I use the occasion of the first anniversary of the start of the Iraq War to write about something other than Santa Monica.

But then I could not resist the urge a year ago to write about the invasion itself. I would like to say that revisiting the issue would at least provide the opportunity to see if I am good at predicting the future, but the fact is that if you reread my column from March 19, 2003, you'll find that when it came to prognosticating, I cheated, or, rather, to put a nicer spin on it, I hedged my bets. ("WHAT I SAY: A Fateful 48 Hours")

I said that if the Iraqis welcomed the Americans with open arms, prospects for success would be good. But if Iraqis resisted, or merely met our troops with resentment, then the prospects would be bleaker, and our last troops might end up leaving Iraq from the roof of our embassy.

As it happened, the Iraqi reaction was all over the map (in fact, more determined by the map than anyone then expected), and no one, myself included, is any closer to predicting the outcome now.

Most Iraqis appear unhappy with the security situation, but happy that Saddam is gone from power and happy with their greater liberties.

Other Iraqis, a minority, are resisting the occupation in ways that are disturbingly reminiscent of Vietnam in the early days of American involvement.

The problem is that there is not one Iraq but at least three. When I say "most Iraqis" above I am referring to the Shi'ites and the Kurds, and even for them it's lucky they live hundreds of miles apart. The "minority" who resist are the Sunni Arabs, who are a majority in the center of the country.

The American occupation of Iraq could be the most wise and benevolent occupation in the history of occupations, but there is nothing we can do to make Shi'ites, Kurds, and Sunni Arabs like each other. Nor is it likely that they will give America much credit for keeping them away from the others' throats.

Even assuming that the Arab and Islamic worlds were ready to ride the wave of history to modern democracy (a big assumption), the administration's hopes for a stable and democratic Iraq are riding against other, even stronger historical tides, those of nationalism and self-determination based on ever smaller affinity groups.

Let's put it this way: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria could save everyone a lot of trouble if they would let the Kurds form their own state.

As the revelations of Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke make clear, the Bush administration was obsessed with Iraq. The fact that the British over several decades of influence could not create a stable country within Iraq's inherently unstable borders was not enough history to make them doubt that we could do so in a year or two with the help of such paragons as Ahmad Chalabi.

Even if one is willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt and accept in good faith the "neocon" rationale for invading -- to use a democratic Iraq as the lynchpin for solving all the problems of the Middle East -- one must conclude that they did not factor into their analysis the relative probabilities of good and bad outcomes. (Where was the RAND Corporation when we needed them?)

Now it's become apparent that one bad outcome has been the effect of the Iraq War on the war against terrorism.

I watched nearly every minute of Richard Clarke's testimony before the 9/11 Commission. The whole of the testimony is much more revealing and important than any excerpts you may have seen or heard, and I urge anyone who didn't see the whole thing either to listen to it (you can find it on the web) or to read a transcript.

While Clarke's testimony is gaining most attention for its political impact, because he has illuminated even better than Paul O'Neill just how stubborn and ignorant the Bush team was (and by their reaction to him, still is), the greater importance is historical.

Clarke's testimony (and presumably his book, which I have just begun to read) is the first blow by blow policy account of how the world has changed from one defined by the revolutions and wars of the 20th century and the Cold War, essentially internecine struggles between competing western ideologies, to one defined by the clash between modernized and modernizing cultures on one hand, and reactionary traditionalists on the other.

Although at the moment I am happy along with everyone else on the left to revel in Clarke's unveiling of right-wing hypocrisy and incompetence, Clarke raises disturbing and challenging issues for anyone who during the Cold War opposed America's excessive or aggressive use of its powers, or the imperialism of our materialism.

To put it mildly, Clarke was a hawk when it came to fighting terrorists. Before others in government were willing or saw the need, he wanted to kidnap or kill terrorists unknown to most people, lob missiles at Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, arm the Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban, and take other similar actions.

Today, if Clarke had had his way, would we look at such actions as having been preemptive and wrong, or, with 20-20 hindsight after 9/11, defensive and right?

Keep in mind that the people who attempted to kill 50,000 in the Twin Towers and who are no doubt looking for their next chance to do so or worse, are the same people who would globalize the market for burkas and institute a worldwide theocracy.

We are not talking about fresh-faced leftists seeking justice for campesinos or higher wages at the garment factory.

The politics are exciting, but the Clarke story is much less about politics than it is about the big decisions this country needs to make about how to secure its future.