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SEIFFE:  Insurgency Is Not New

Thursday, December 8, 2005

By Ralf Seiffe

Opponents to the war make the case that 5,000 years of culture combined with 1,400 years of Islam prohibit an American victory in Iraq .  These pundits tell us that there is no history of democracy in Iraq and that the schism between the Sunnis and the Shi’ites is so rancorous that self-government is not possible in the Crescent of Civilization.  No real model for a Muslim democracy exists either; of more than 30 primarily Muslim countries only one can be considered a democracy. Kurds further complicate the situation.   

History and common sense supports the President’s plan to tame Iraq by introducing democracy; despite his critics, the fact is that self-governing nations do not sponsor terrorism or engage in international mischief.  Moreover, the President believes that success in Iraq will be noticed by the people yoked in nearby dictatorships, thereby helping to drain the widespread fever swamps of Mid-East terrorism.  The President’s opponents have a hard time objecting to this noble goal.  Instead,  they indirectly undermine the effort by predicting failure.   

Given nearly a lifetime of American frustration in the Middle East , this seems to be a plausible viewpoint.  The problem in making this argument, however, is that it requires repudiating the pillars on which the American democracy rests.  Our culture is infused with the belief that all men are created equal.  Americans with any sense of history believe that human rights are universally given by God and that government’s purpose is to secure those rights. We also believe that human beings naturally seek to express those rights even as governments attempt to limit them.  By recognizing that individuals are the beneficiaries of these rights and by limiting the powers of government to usurp them, we have created the planet’s most envied political model.  

Presumably, westerners have no monopoly on these divine gifts.  If they are universal, they must be available to any human being, anywhere. That includes Iraq .  

To predict that Iraq will fail to forge a democracy, one must believe one of two things: either the universal rights our founders identified are not available to Iraqis or these rights are available to all humans but that the Iraqis are somehow unable to secure them.  In the first instance, Iraqis have just as much claim on God-given rights as we do and as human beings, they will want to enjoy them.  As Americans, we must agree that no religion, national origin or condition of previous servitude should preclude any human being from exercising their universal civil rights.  If not, slavery, colonization and tyranny are legitimate powers available to other governments.  This is simply not congruent with western thought. 

On the other hand, to conclude that such rights apply to Iraqis but that they are simply incapable of creating a democracy is to judge them inferior to us.   Iraq is a large country with intelligent people and a history of trading with their neighbors.  The economy is growing, oil is flowing and the currency is stable.  They have the advantage of a U.S.-imposed  flat tax.  These are the national assets that form the precursors of democracy and their new Constitution provides the DNA to create the corpus of a functioning, benevolent government.   

The question is whether they have the will to finish the job and what obstacles stand in their way?  

Voter turnout in the elections the country has already staged shows the people have the will.  The long lines at polling places and the purple thumbs on election day showed that Iraqis understood their opportunity and acted even in the face of the insurgents’ dastardly acts.  Even the Sunnis, who boycotted the last election, have come to believe their best course is to participate in the next and their clergy is supportive.  The real surprise is that despite the real chance of death, Iraqis go to the polls in larger proportional numbers than Americans.  

That leaves the insurgents as the obstacle.  The media focuses on the Improvised Explosive Devices killing American soldiers and Iraqis but they fail to put these events into perspective.  As tragic as these events are, they are to be expected.  The deposed but formerly powerful do not like losing their emoluments and they resist with all the assets at their disposal.  For example, after their defeat in May 1945, a group of former Nazis organized themselves under the name “Werewolves” and engaged in a campaign of intimidation and assassination of local politicians who worked with the Allies.  They lasted about three years until ordinary Germans began to understand the value of a stabile and benevolent democracy.  

The Iraqis will follow the same path the post-war Germans did.  As they see the benefits of self-government, fewer Sunnis, Shi’ite or Kurds will tolerate the death and destruction the insurgents offer.  In fact, the insurgents may be a permanent feature of the Iraqi political environment but, that need not prevent an Iraqi success.  Our own history shows why.  “Insurgents” worked their mayhem in the American South after losing the Civil War.  In 1865, the power structure that had always ruled the South was deposed and replaced with a combination of Union Troops and the infamous carpetbaggers.  Southerners organized a form of insurgency and created state political parties to regain their power and prerogatives.  By 1876, they had kicked out the troops, run off the carpetbaggers and taken their place in the national legislature.  It is worth remembering the names: the insurgency called itself the Ku Klux Klan and the political party was called itself Democrat. To this day, both organizations are united in the person of the longest-serving member of the United States Senate.  Americans figured out how to cope---and soon, so will the Iraqis.    

Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader.