“War of Words” at the American Enterprise Institute – Part 1
(On May 17, 2006, AEI hosted the “War of Words” veterans in a panel discussion entitled “Veterans Speak Out on the Coverage of the Iraq War.” DD will publish their statements on May 17, 18 and 19.)
Cpl. Richard Gibson
U.S. Marine Corps
The War of Words project predated its formal organization. Here’s how it started. A number of Iraq war veterans from Kansas and Missouri, irritated by the media coverage, started speaking out. We’d talk pretty much anywhere – civic clubs, political gatherings, Rotaries. We didn’t know each other at the time. But we all shared some common opinions. We believed that the removal of the Ba’athist regime was justifiable as national security, international law, and simple humanitarianism. We believed that it was a good thing to eradicate the mass-murdering, expansionist, WMD-obsessed, terrorist-harboring regime of Saddam Hussein, and replace it with a democracy in the Arab heartland.
As soldiers in the greatest fighting machine in human history, we contributed to that mission. And we were – we ARE — proud of that fact.
Fresh from our tours of duty in Iraq, we got back home and turned on our TVs. And frankly, what we heard on the nightly news amazed us. The war we fought was totally different from the one the American people saw.
In the war on TV, American soldiers regularly mistreated civilians. But in the war we fought, American forces consistently restrained our overwhelming firepower superiority in order to save lives, even at risk to our own.
In the war on TV, Iraqis detested the coalition military, and treated us as hated conquerors. In the war I fought, traveling north through Bagdad on the spearhead of the invasion, the streets were thronged with cheering crowds – 60 miles of Iraqis clapping, carrying flowers, holding up their babies.
Now, I don’t want to put too fine a point on this. I’ve seen marines cut down by shells mere feet from where I stood. The guys shooting at us were Iraqis, too. When an invading army liberates a country, the relations between soldiers and citizens are complex, not simple.
But every time I hear some commentator sneer at Vice President Cheney because he said we’d be greeted as liberators, I have to smile. I know what I saw.
In the war on TV, the Iraqi security forces do little more than get blown up at recruiting stations. But in the real world, the Iraqi army and police are now the most highly respected institutions in the country. They outnumber coalition forces by two-to-one, and are involved in roughly 60% of anti-insurgent operations.
In the war on TV, Iraqi insurgents are portrayed as triumphant heroes. In the real war, they are unable to operate effectively in 14 of Iraq’s 18 states. They are hated everywhere, and their internal correspondence is filled with despair.
But I think the thing that bugged us veterans most was that in the war we saw on TV, America and its Iraqi allies were losing. We were in a quagmire, as some would put it.
That’s not true. The Iraq conflict has gone through several phases – and we’ve won them all. We flattened the military opposition. Then, with the growth of the Iraqi security forces, we destroyed the ability of the insurgency to hold territory. And now, with the help of the Iraqi people, we are destroying the ability of the insurgents to wage civil war.
In the war on TV, pro-Democracy Iraqi politicians are portrayed as incompetent amateurs incapable or reaching agreements, or as ideological fanatics pursuing a theocracy, or as partisans of gun-mad militias. In reality, Iraq’s new leaders have progressed steadily toward a genuine democracy, crafting a constitution that protects minorities. They’ve conducted high-turnout elections, and crafted a constitution that protects minorities. And just recently, the factions formed a unity government to negotiate the really big problems they face.
Given these solid accomplishments, one wonders why they get such dismal press.
On April 5th, Senator John Kerry summed these attitudes up nicely. He wrote in the New York Times: — quote –
“Our valiant soldiers can’t bring democracy to Iraq if Iraq’s leaders are unwilling themselves to make the compromises that democracy requires… No American soldier should be sacrificed because Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their ethnic and political differences…”
He continued:
“If Iraqis aren’t willing to build a unity government in the five months since the election, they’re probably not willing to build one at all.”
But in the real world, Democracies aren’t formed by groups that have resolved all of their ethnic and political differences. Rather, they are entered into by groups – generally armed groups — that agree to limit their independent exercise of power in order to confront common problems.
Let me cite an example from our own history:
The Articles of Confederation took 16 months to formulate, then another three and a quarter years to ratify. There was a shooting war going on the whole time — the American Revolution. Contemporary historians believe that roughly a third of the population leaned Tory in sentiment.
Had the French based their naval alliance with the Continental Congress on John Kerry’s principal of 5 months and out, we’d all be singing “God Save the Queen,” having lost the battle of Yorktown.
It’s instructive to look at some of issues Iraqi democrats struggle with in the light of our own experience.
Iraqis argue over boundaries. The Kurdish parties want Kirkuk to be included in one of the Kurdish governates. The oil of the region is an obvious motivator. So is history. Saddam, following a pattern of Mesopotamian autocrats dating to biblical times, resettled strategic areas of the north with populations loyal to him – particularly Sunni Arabs. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were made refugees in the process.
Iraqi democrats have already framed the basis for compromise. There will be a vote – a referendum over the status of Kirkuk. What remains at issue are important details: who will monitor the election, and who will be permitted to vote.
Would our Founders have allowed such a minor sticking point to interfere with the establishment of representative government, equal rights before the law, and the provision of a common defense?
Well, in fact they did. The Articles of Confederation, submitted to the states late in 1777, were not ratified until March of 1781. Maryland, the last holdout, refused to sign until Virginia and New York relinquished their claims to lands in the Ohio valley.
Let’s take another controversy: resource allocation. Ninety-plus percent of the hideously distorted federal budget of Ba’athist Iraq came from oil revenues. Under democracy, will this revenue be controlled by the provincial governments, by regional governments, or by the central government? The Iraqi constitution establishes all three principles as legitimate, but defers the decision to the legislature, the National Council.
Now it is true that that our Framers engaged in no such dispute. That’s because the national legislature they established had no powers of tax collection whatever. General Washington, who was tasked with keeping a Revolutionary Army in the field without money to pay it, commented on this more than once in his letters. It doubtless influenced his later decision to accept the presidency of the Constitutional Convention.
Here’s another matter about which Iraqis quarrel: the ongoing role of extra-governmental armed groups. There are four sizeable militias operating in Iraq, two Shi’ite, and two Kurdish. The necessity of integrating them into a national defense force is generally accepted, but the terms of that integration, and its pace, are still open questions.
America had this problem, too. The supremacy of government over militias was not clearly established in law until the Militia Acts of 1792 and 1795, nor in fact until the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. The subordination of the states in the raising of militias was unsettled until the dissolution of the Confederacy at the end of the Civil War.
What John Kerry wants Iraqis to resolve in five months took us more than five decades. But that did not seal the fate of our democracy. The establishment of our republic did not await the final disposition of these disputes. Long before these issues were resolved, our democracy functioned, and our nation flourished.
The relation of religion to the state is another problem that Iraqis, like Americans, continue to argue. It was the New England clergy who formed the core opposition to the British monarchy. And it was the Shi’ite clergy of Iraq who formed the core opposition to Saddam Hussein.
There, as here, theology and democracy converged. We all know about Ahmad Chalabi and Iyad Allawi, and the Iraqi liberals. But the Shi’ite Dawa Party, whose adherents include prime ministers Ibrahim Jafaari and Nouri Maliki, also favored democracy. The Dawa platform asserted that the people, as vice regents of Allah, should hold legislative authority. It is in this light that we should understand Article II of the Iraqi Constitution, which states that “No law that contradicts the principles of democracy may be established.”
So you see, neither the issues that exercise Iraqi Democrats, nor the pace of their resolution, is unique.
The project of planting a democracy at the heart of the Arab world, with all the good that could bring for them and for us, is neither simple nor certain. Powerful forces, internal and external, oppose the effort.
But I would point to one more characteristic that the Democratic politicians of Iraq share with the Founding Fathers who established our democracy: failing of success, they are unlikely to survive the effort.
Their struggle, like those of our soldiers, should command our respect – not glib chastisements in Congress and the press.
Thank you.