20060522
    The World Watch Preview is a post that takes a look at news items that are currently making their way through the never ending 24-hour news cycle. The Preview calls attention to and provides a quick commentary on some of those events. This week: ‘Iraq Forms a Government’ and ‘The Consequences of Iraq’.
Iraq Forms a Government
    The acceptance of the Iraqi cabinet proposed by recently appointed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on 20 May 2006 marks another milestone in Iraq’s progress toward autonomous sovereignty in the wake of the toppling of the Baathist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein by the US-led coalition in April of 2003. While the approved cabinet is not perfect, it represents the colossal step of a Muslim Arab country forming a democratically elected unity government in the face of a domestic insurgency and ongoing sectarian violence.
    Critics of the Iraq war and its aftermath will immediately point out that the new Iraqi government is imperfect and incomplete, ignoring the fact that such a criticism describes most governments, including the ones under which they live. This new government undoubtedly has great hurdles to face in the coming months as it begins to deal directly with Iraq’s problems, both those vestigial from the Hussein regime and those that are a result of the end of that regime. Nonetheless, these problems can now be dealt with by a popularly elected parliament and a ministerial cabinet formed by constitutional process.
    This reality means that Iraq is now in a position to take over taking care of itself. With a government in place, the Iraqis can begin to take greater responsibility for the rebuilding and defense of their nation, thereby reducing the role that the Coalition has played in those tasks to date. The next several months will prove to be the crucial test of this new government as the Coalition forces will likely begin to draw down, placing more tasks in the hands of their Iraqi counterparts. As that drawdown occurs, the Iraqi government will be tested through continued insurgent and sectarian violence. How that government deals with that new responsibility will show what the future of Iraq will hold.
    Ultimately, the formation of the Iraqi cabinet represents another success in the ongoing effort to reshape Iraq as part of the ongoing War on Terror. Every step Iraq takes away from tyranny and chaos is a step the world takes away from the forces of fundamentalist Islam that want the West to be defeated in Iraq. Success in Iraq equals defeat for those forces both in Iraq an in the world at large.
The Consequences of Iraq
The Anniston Star via Michael Yon
    Joe Galloway is an amazing man, as anyone who has read the book We Were Soldiers Once… And Young will gather. Yet, I believe Mr. Galloway, as savvy and insightful of a journalist as he might be, has come down on the wrong side of his evaluation of the consequences of the war in Iraq.
    Mr. Galloway’s arguments fall wrong because his criticisms are the criticism of war in general, not just the war in Iraq. War, as Mr. Galloway should know, is an unfortunate, messy business that leaves all of its participants bloodied and scarred, both in body and mind, for the rest of their lives. War is also an incredibly imperfect business, a fact that Mr. Galloway should again realize from his own experience. In wars, even the winning side makes tragic mistakes, colossal miscalculations, and misses great opportunities for success. These facts are the reality of war in all of its chaos and violence. Criticizing anyone for failing to counteract the very nature of war therefore becomes futile.
    Unfortunately, Mr. Galloway’s criticism is also the popular criticism of both those who say the Iraq war should have never happened and those who now chose to criticize how that war was conducted. This criticism comes from a position of unrealistic pessimism borne from an idealistic notion that the US should somehow be able to avoid the inviolate consequences of war. Because this popular criticism is the darling of the media and the pundits, it is the opinion taken on by many Americans who simply do not know any better. As a result, the majority of the nation has taken on an opinion that is neither factual nor realistic.
    Mr. Galloway takes his criticism one step farther by judging how history will judge those who engaged in the war in Iraq and its aftermath. Such judgments are a risky business because history is a fickle judge, often finding the core of fact where even those living through the events missed them. How history will judge the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq is yet to be seen, as it is an event still unfolding. Yet, some observations can be made, and made from the perspective of a history many of the critics of the Iraq war fail to see or understand. How those observations are received tells a great deal about both the critics and the state of the war and its place in history.
    Consider that the war in Iraq is the culmination of a twelve year long conflict that began with the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein invading the sovereign nation of Kuwait without provocation. This conflict included the brutal savaging of that nation, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands or millions of Iraqis whose only crime was not being Baathist, a scandal that has irrevocably tainted the world’s largest diplomatic body, and the very real fact that Saddam Hussein and the Baathists were part of a global network of despot states supporting terrorism around the world. Even considering that stockpiles of WMDs were not found in Iraq in 2003, there is no doubt that Iraq had the capacity to produce those weapons, had produced them in the past, and had used those weapons. Any argument that the Baathist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein was not a threat that needed to be dealt with falls flat when confronted with such facts.
    Consider also, that any war ever fought has been fought, indeed, with the military the warring nation had at the time the war was fought and with the leadership that was already in place. Any criticism that the war could have been fought better is made from the unfair advantage of hindsight and seeing what issues have already been faced and what mistakes have already been made. There is no legitimate way to realistically say that war should have been delayed because some better leadership, strategy, or equipment might have been available, because those observations are almost always true and always meaningless to the reality of the day.
    Finally, consider that the war in Iraq is a war that has never been fought in the history of the world. The US-led Coalition invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein was launched to bring liberty and democracy to a region and a people who, frankly, have never known such things. This attempt is being made against the backdrop of not just 40 or 50 years of history, but against the 1400 year long history of Muslim Iraq in the wider history of the Muslim Middle East. This is a brave and unknown attempt, so what basis does any criticism of the attempt rest upon? The success or failure of the efforts in Iraq and their potential consequences decades or centuries later will be a unique factor of history because they will be the first.
    Ultimately, these criticisms, borne out of a cynical pessimism that fails to see reality through obscuring ideals, fail to deal with the facts of war, the specific war in Iraq, and the history of the region, its people, and its religion. There is still great chance for both success and failure in the war in Iraq, but now is not the time to judge. Let history do that on its own.
DLH
