The New Road

"Lowering expectations" about Iraq

The new administration line on Iraq appears to be lowering our expectations about the outcome:

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society where the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

I'm not worried about my own expecations. Sending us to a war based on a set of lies is not right, no matter what the outcome. And I'm worried that the administration cares more about being able to paint this as a limited success to their base, then about the Iraqi people. Though I don't find that surprsing.

Let's just look at this in the large as a set of before and afters. The before picture in Iraq is pretty bad. There is a dictator who squanders what little funds come into the country through the sanctions on his own lifestyle, and who kills anyone who protests.

Now what we are saying is that the sanctions have been lifted. But the country is in a shambles after two years of war and an ongoing insurgency. There is no continuous power. Potable water and food are in short supply. The number one cause of death is "by mistake" where people are gunned down simply for being in a traffic jam. Jobs are non-existant, and the nation's one source of wealth, it's oil generating capacity, is shot to hell.

And that's just on the ground. Politically it's even worse. Most of the country will be governed by sharia law where women can't hold office, must dress in burkahs and are second class citizens. And the government will be made up of religious sects with probably warlords duking it out for power. Which is the same state you would see in a place like Ethiopia or Afghanistan pre-Taliban.

One has to look at the before and after in a "at what cost" to judge this war. Saddam was bad to be sure. Ousting him from power is a fine result. But would that be worth say, killing every man, woman and child in Iraq. Obviously not, right? So there is a line somewhere that defines what is an acceptable cost for the goal of removing Saddam and what is not. I'd argue that the cost to America for having gone into this war on a false pretext. Combined with the cost to Iraqis of a country which is effectively in ruins where their daily lives are far worse. That is over the cost line.

It would have been far better to leave Saddam in power and confined than to have this result.

Actually, let me put it a different, perhaps more succint way. Our first reason for going into this war was WMDs. Obviously everyone knows that there were no WMDs so that part of the war was a failure. Then came the second reason, which was to liberate the Iraqi people from the clutches of a madman. Well, you can't liberate people only to hand them over warlords and call it a success. And saying this: "The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy..." means that there will be warlords, dictators and the like.

This is sad but was inevitable after the election of November 2nd.