Balkinization

Hey Tom, Wake Up and Smell the Napalm

Like many others, I greatly enjoy Tom Friedman's columns at the New York Times. If you read them closely over the past three weeks or so, you will notice a very interesting shift going on. Friedman originally came out fairly strongly in favor of the war, recognizing the risks, but arguing that it would help bring democracy to Iraq and presage a remaking of the Middle East. In short, he supported the war on Iraq largely in terms of spreading democratic values, and creating a progressive model of Muslim democracy for the entire region.

That was the argument he made on January 26th. Since that point, his weekly columns have gotten progressively worried. Friedman has gradually realized that his war isn't Bush's war. He has figured out that Bush isn't really serious about the degree of nation building that is necessary to make the war with Iraq justified in Friedman's terms.

Indeed, what Friedman has gradually come to recognize with increasing alarm in the past month is that he simply doesn't trust Bush to do the right thing. He has been reduced, in his latest column, to wishing that Tony Blair, and not Bush, were calling the shots. The reason is that he thinks Bush is not pursuing the sort of war Friedman wants to fight:

I deeply identify with the president's vision of ending Saddam Hussein's tyranny and building a more decent, progressive Iraq. If done right, it could be so important to the future of the Arab-Muslim world, which is why I won't give up on this war. But can this Bush team be counted on to do it right? Mr. Bush's greatest weakness is that too many people, at home and abroad, smell that he's not really interested in repairing the world. Everything is about the war on terrorism.

Well Tom, it's time to wake up and smell the mocha java. Your hope that Bush is going to a fight the war you want him to fight and expend the resources and time you want him to expend to make Iraq a beacon of democracy in the MIddle East has been a pipe dream. You need to recognize what you already know in your gut: Your agenda is not his agenda. So are you still so gung ho about this war? Because if Bush isn't serious about spending the time and the effort and the money to build a democratic Iraq, he's going to make a very, very big mess, and you know it better than I do.

A recent article in the New York Times shows why Friedman is hoping against hope. A panel of national security experts, drawn from both Republican and Democratic Administrations, has suggested that "the cost of postwar reconstruction of Iraq will be at least $20 billion a year and will require the long-term deployment of 75,000 to 200,000 troops to prevent widespread instability and violence against former members of Saddam Hussein's government."

However, the article continues, that is not exactly what the Bush Adminstration has in mind:

At the Pentagon yesterday, two senior Defense Department officials, speaking to reporters on condition that they not be identified, said the new office charged with establishing a postwar administration hoped to be able to turn over control to an interim Iraqi government within months. But they did not say how they planned to root out the thousands of intelligence and security service agents that Mr. Hussein is known to have placed within virtually every government ministry.
The officials said Iraq's frozen assets might be tapped to pay for the Iraqi government salaries, or some of Iraq's oil revenues might be used to finance the interim government. That had not yet been decided, they said.

I think it's time for Tom Friedman to reassess his position on Iraq. He's not going to get the designer war and reconstruction he's been hoping for. None of us are. Instead, we are going to get stability on the cheap, without democracy, and paid for by Iraqi oil. Or, to put it another way, we are going to get what is, in all probability, a recipe for disaster.

For those readers who think that the reason we should fight this war is to rid the world of a despicable tyrant and replace him with a vibrant democracy, I salute you. I applaud your idealism and your commitment to making this a better, freer world. But you need to realize that your agenda is not Bush's agenda. Your motives are not his motives. He is playing you, and all of us, for fools. Don't be taken in. He isn't serious about making the long term commitment that will be necessary to secure a democratic state in Iraq. And, as a result, he is going to make this world an even bigger mess, and an even more dangerous place than it was before he became President.

God help us. God help us all.

Posted 10:40 PM by JB [link]