This is an interesting article pondering what will happen after an invasion of Iraq deposing Hussein. How much time, money and blood are we willing to invest in stabalizing the area? There are a lot more complexities to this situation than have been presented by either the President, or the Congress. From the New York Times, 9/24/02 The Day After By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF AJAF, Iraq — As soon as American troops are rolling through Saddam Hussein's palaces, the odds are that this holy Shiite city 100 miles south of Baghdad will erupt in a fury of killing, torture, rape and chaos. The Shiite Muslims who make up 60 percent of Iraq — but who have never held power — will rampage through the narrow streets here. Remembering the whispers from the bazaar about how Saddam's minions burned the beard off the face of a great Shiite leader named Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr, then raped and killed his sister in front of him, and finally executed him by driving nails through his head, the rebels will tear apart anyone associated with the ruling Baath Party. In one Shiite city after another, expect battles between rebels and army units, periodic calls for an Iranian-style theocracy, and perhaps a drift toward civil war. For the last few days, I've been traveling in these Shiite cities — Karbala, Najaf and Basra — and the tension in the bazaars is thicker than the dust behind the donkey carts. So before we rush into Iraq, we need to think through what we will do the morning after Saddam is toppled. Do we send in troops to try to seize the mortars and machine guns from the warring factions? Or do we run from civil war, and risk letting Iran cultivate its own puppet regime? In the north, do we suppress the Kurds if they take advantage of the chaos to seek independence? Do we fight off the Turkish Army if it intervenes in Kurdistan? Unless we're prepared for the consequences of our invasion, we have no business invading at all. So après Saddam, le déluge? That's only a guess, of course, but it's exactly what happened the last time Saddam was in trouble, at the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. With the central government tottering, a Shiite uprising began in Basra and quickly spread. Here in Najaf, rebels tossed officials out of the windows of the Baath Party headquarters to be hacked apart by others below. Rioters raped and killed children in front of their parents. Saddam's suppression two weeks later, as U.S. forces stood by passively, was equally brutal, with rebels hanged from lampposts and dragged to their deaths behind tanks. Not surprisingly, when I asked people in the bazaars about the uprising, they mostly turned pale and remembered urgent business elsewhere. "It hurts my heart when I remember it," said Nasseem Jawad, a 40-year-old jeweler in the Najaf bazaar who was one of the few to admit to being in the area at the time. "They burned the supermarkets, destroyed the laboratories, schools and hospitals." Mr. Jawad was prudent enough to adhere to the government line that the rebellion was the work of Iranian provocateurs and would not happen again, but I'd bet otherwise. In Basra, I asked a senior Baath Party official if he wasn't worried that he and his family would be targets of mob wrath. He protested so passionately that I couldn't help thinking he had spent a few sleepless nights considering the possibility. In the north of Iraq, the challenge for the U.S. will be different. Many Kurds will demand at least quasi-independence, and there will be a ferocious struggle for the city of Kirkuk, which floats on a sea of oil. Kirkuk is aggressively coveted by Kurds, by the Turkish-backed Turkmen minority and of course by the Iraqi Arabs who now control it. More broadly, if the United States brings democracy to Iraq, it will mean seizing power from the 17 percent Sunni minority who dominate the army and government and giving it to the 60 percent Shiite majority. The upshot could be greater influence for Iran, a fellow Shiite country with close ties to Iraq's Shiite cities. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini spent 13 years in exile here in Najaf, and many top Iranian ayatollahs stayed for shorter periods. Iranian hard-liners are probably salivating at the thought of America naïvely creating a Shiite Iraq so that the two countries could pool their nuclear resources and build the bomb together. Of course there are happier scenarios as well. Iraq also has a 95 percent literacy rate and a secular middle class that could eventually be fertile soil for a democracy that would be a model for the Arab world. So it's fine to hope for democracy, as long as we brace for civil war. If we invade Iraq, it must be with eyes wide open. The most ticklish challenge ahead is not overthrowing Saddam but managing the resulting upheaval for a decade afterward.
A good article. If we overthrow Saddam and then just walk away we're apt to be in some deep ****. Iran is indeed looking at Iraq with covetous eyes. We have to be prepared to be in a long involvement and one difficult to end. I would feel better about things if the "progressive" elements in Iran had more power and influence with the military than the Mullahs. The people are behind the progressives, in general, but seem to be powerless to effect democratic change of a significant degree. In other words, they have a limited influence on events. It's a bizzare structure heavily weighted towards the Mullahs. At least that's what it looks like to me. (no IMHO, BJ)
I find it interesting that some play both sides at the same time. 'Why is Iran in the axis-of-evil?' they say. 'Iran is filled with moderates,' they say. And then from the other side of their mouths they say 'Iran covets Iraq,' and 'Iran wants to build the bomb WITH Iraq.' This is an interesting turn around from Hitchens... HITCHENS: WE MUST FIGHT IRAQ By Christopher Hitchens IT is almost certainly a mistake to assume anybody's position on Iraq is determined by evidence alone. After all, last year there was overwhelming evidence of the connection between the World Trade Center aggression, al-Qaeda and the Taliban - and a decisive UN mandate for action - but many on the left opposed military action in Afghanistan, and still do. I have the feeling that Tony Blair would feel happier making the moral case that Saddam must go. He could then lay more stress on the atrocious character of his regime, the plight of the Iraqi people, the aspirations of the Kurds and - perhaps most importantly - the opportunity to turn the tide against despotism in the wider Middle East. But as Prime Minister of a nation which has a permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations, he is obliged to be somewhat legalistic. It must be obvious to anyone who can think at all that the charges against the Hussein regime are, as concerns arsenals of genocidal weaponry, true. Saddam has been willing to risk his whole system and his own life rather than relinquish this goal. And the resolutions of the UN are neither recent nor ambivalent. I doubt that even if this evidence could be upgraded to 100 per cent it would persuade the sort of people who go on self-appointed missions of mediation to Baghdad. These people further fail to see that governments now have a further responsibility to their citizens - namely to see that something is done to prevent future assaults on civilisation. President Bush calls this the doctrine of pre-emption, which obviously has its perils and could be used to justify very rash actions. Nonetheless, anybody with any sense must confess that there can be no return to the security posture adopted before September 11, 2001. A leader who was not trying to take the war to the enemy would be delinquent in the extreme. However, in the end the moral case for action is the strongest one. WE have inherited, along with the right to destroy an illegal system of aggressive weaponry, a responsibility for the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples. They are compelled to live with scarcity and fear in their daily existence, as a result of the policies of a homicidal megalomaniac. One day, this man's rule will be at an end. On that day, we want to be able to look these people in the eye and tell them that we cared about them, too. And a friendly Iraq, free again to trade and to make contact with the outside world, could transform the atmosphere of the Middle East. To take one small example, Iraq would no longer be supplying the more thuggish elements around Yasser Arafat, or offering subsidies to suicide bombers. And it might be noticed democratic forces among the Palestinians have begun to insist on a mini regime change of their own. I am a political opponent of President Bush and at best a lukewarm supporter of the British Labour Party. But I think it is inaccurate and unfair of the opponents of regime change in Iraq to refer to the Prime Minister as "Bush's poodle". This glib expression has become a substitute for thought, among people who were never conspicuous for originality in the first place. It overlooks the fact Mr Blair pushed a wavering Clinton into taking action in Kosovo, and that he also decided to act on his own to prevent another Rwanda-type bloodbath in Sierra Leone. A British government that thought Afghanistan was only America's problem would have been a shameful and stupid one. There's nothing to apologise about in being an American ally at this moment: it belongs in the better tradition of the Labour Party's internationalism. ISOLATIONISM also overlooks the fact that Britain has friends and interests of its own in the region, as well as a long and deep connection with Iraq, and a correspondingly large stake in the outcome. Just on the material aspect - I love it when people darkly describe the coming intervention as "blood for oil", or equivalent gibberish. Does this mean what it appears to mean, namely that oil is not worth fighting over? Or that it's no cause for alarm that the oil resources of the region are permanently menaced by a crazy sadist who has already invaded two of his neighbours? There is another base rumour in circulation, to the effect that Bush is doing all this for electoral reasons. It's hard to imagine a sillier or nastier suggestion: the American public does not want a war and, as usual, prefers a quiet life. Every newspaper in the country reflects this mood, and prints a huge daily output of misgivings. But one proof of the worthwhileness of this enterprise is its riskiness. Nobody can guarantee a successful outcome, and both Bush and Blair know they could face great reproach for failure. But the long period of unwise vacillation and moral neutrality seems to be drawing to a close, and this is a good thing in itself.
