Just because terrorists are trying to bomb us out of Iraq, it does not mean that we have to stay there. The time has come to recognise that the policy which sent L Paul Bremer to govern Iraq, with troops and contractors working on a myriad projects around the country, has failed and will continue to fail, at ever greater cost. Coalition forces should not abandon Iraq, but they should withdraw to remote desert garrisons and let Iraqis try to govern themselves.
Both the economic and the political aims of the occupation have proven impossible to achieve. This is not because a waning number of Saddam's gunmen, and a growing number of Islamist volunteers from Saudi Arabia, Syria and elsewhere, have started a guerrilla war. If they alone were the problem, US and British forces far superior in numbers and skills could cope well enough. What guarantees failure is not even the sad fact that some sabotage and a vast amount of theft are visibly gaining on the reconstruction effort, so that Iraq is regressing in everything from electrical supply to the number of real, paid jobs. Bremer's remedy-to have US taxpayers send aid faster than Iraqi gangs can steal it-may be rejected by the US Congress in an election year, but at least in theory it could be a solution. Nor does it matter overly that some prominent Iraqis excluded from the Iraq governing council are campaigning against it, while Ahmad al-Kubaisi, "leader of the resistance," is still being allowed to raise funds in the Gulf, and address "anti-imperialist" rallies in Europe. For that too there are remedies.
But there are no possible remedies for the fundamental cause of failure: most Iraqis simply do not believe that the occupation is benevolent, and therefore refuse to collaborate to make it a success. They do not report guerrillas, saboteurs and thieves unless they are personal enemies. They do nothing to protect the water and electrical supplies on which they themselves depend, let alone oil facilities. They are not helping the troops who are repairing schools and hospitals for their own families. It is therefore sheer fantasy to expect Iraqis to collaborate to establish the structures of a pluralist democracy under US guidance.
Nor is there anything perverse about these refusals, given the Iraqi worldview. Saddam Hussein's one moment of genuine popularity came immediately after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, when Iraqi troops on leave returned to their families with their loot, everything from bits of clothing to solid gold doorknobs.
If the US-British invasion of Iraq had been followed by the organised looting of Iraqi museums and bank vaults, and the prompt sale of oilfields to US and British companies, Iraqis would of course have protested bitterly and tried to resist, but at least they would have understood.
As it is, they are being asked to believe that Bush and Blair-both Christian imperialists as they see it-unaccountably want Iraqi Muslims to be prosperous and free. They consider that a childish deception, an insult to their intelligence. The Iraqi editorialists now writing in the newly liberated press do not agree on the real purpose of the occupation-is it to undermine Islam? Destroy the Arab nation? Over-produce Iraqi oil to wreck Opec? Iraqis no doubt believe in a mixture of motives-none of them good. Mentalities change, of course, and after two or three decades of relentless benevolence, Iraqis might overcome their incredulity-but that would require more blood and money than the entire middle east is worth.
On his recent trip to Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld claimed that no more troops were needed to secure the country. Probably not one of the 120,000 or so US troops now in Iraq would agree. Italy, with more than double the population but infinitely more advanced in every way, with no ethnic or religious conflicts, and a total territory two thirds the size of Iraq's, has a police:population ratio higher than Iraq's, counting all coalition troops and Iraqi policemen recruited so far.
Perhaps the biggest lie about Iraq is that its population is ready for democracy. It is not, for its several mutually unfriendly minorities dread majority rule by Shi'is. Prominent advocates of the war still describe the Iraqis as if they were all well educated-even "enormously talented," in the words of Richard Perle-while in fact illiteracy (or near enough) is widespread, as is a tribal mentality inimical to democracy.
There is an alternative. Now that the Iraqi governing council is in place, our officials can be recalled, and reduced US and British garrisons can be moved to desert bases, with everyday security left to the police and the Kurdish and Shi'i militias. That way, any Ba'athist resurrection or foreign intrusion could still be prevented, reconstruction will become an Iraqi responsibility funded with Iraqi revenues, and Iraqis alone will design their government. There is nothing shameful about high ambitions and an excess of benevolence, but to persist now would undermine the world's faith in the rationality of American statecraft. As for the credibility of US resolve in the middle east, there is nothing to worry about there: the march of the marines with their landing craft all the way to Tikrit took care of that for a few generations to come.
