The WaPo sends its reporters out on what must have been a very easy quote-gathering hunt: find U.S. politicians looking to blame Iraqis for the mess in Iraq:
“We should put the responsibility for Iraq’s future squarely where it belongs — on the Iraqis,” began Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the committee’s next chairman. “We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves.” He has advocated announcing that U.S. troops are going to withdraw as a way of pressuring Iraqi politicians to find compromises.Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) followed by noting: “People in South Carolina come up to me in increasing numbers and suggest that no matter what we do in Iraq, the Iraqis are incapable of solving their own problems through the political process and will resort to violence, and we need to get the hell out of there.”
“We all want them to succeed,” agreed Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.). “We all want them to be able to stabilize their country with the assistance that we’ve provided them.” But, he added, “too often they seem unable or unwilling to do that.”
Later the same day, members of the House Armed Services Committee took their turn. “If the Iraqis are determined and decide to destroy themselves and their country, I don’t know how in the world we’re going to stop them,” said Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.).
I’ll just make two brief points about this: First, there really are situations in which most people are simply making the best of a bad deal, and the result is much, much worse than anyone wants, and much, much worse than anyone intended. I think it’s a serious mistake to regard collective behaviours in Iraq as anything like the simple sum of a bunch of individuals’ intentions. And it’s a serious mistake to regard the results of collective behaviours as bearing any resemblance to the goals or intentions that the various actors have. This isn’t to deny that a lot of Iraqis have a lot to answer for. But there’s some really simplistic moral reckoning going on here, which is confused as well as tasteless in the circumstances.
The second point is that the bulk of the American political class jettisoned a great deal of the country’s principles in response to the attacks on 9/11. The subsequent erosion of civil liberties, the supine response to, or support of, the invasion of Iraq, and so on, were all made possible by a single attack on a country that is much, much safer to threats than Iraq. If that’s the response of the American political class to a single terrorist attack, I don’t think it’s in any position to be lecturing Iraqis, who live in hell, about sensible and level-headed responses to violence and chaos.
Steve Laniel | 29-Nov-06 at 10:05 am | Permalink
I’ve talked with a lot of people about Iraq, and back in the day about Yugoslavia, and the fairly frequent response I get is, “Residents of Country X are naturally predisposed to sectarian violence, and their problems probably won’t stop until they all kill each other.” Which, if I’m not mistaken, ignores all the post-colonial/post-WW2 historical events that had a large hand in causing the sectarian violence that we see today.
Reminds me of Darwin’s quote (cited in Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man: “If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”
Chris | 29-Nov-06 at 11:56 am | Permalink
Steve,
I agree. Kaplanesque “primal seething ethnic hatreds unleashed” theories simply seem to me to misunderstand the structure and logic of collective action. I’ve written about this much more clearly here, here, and here.
Russell Hardin’s book on the logic of group conflict was helpful for me on this subject, as were many, many hours spent discussing the breakup of Yugoslavia with a (liberal) Serb roommate.