JINSA Report #567 Iraq Has a Government

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May 3, 2006

JINSA Report #567

Iraq Has a Government

Last week, Iraq created a coalition government derived from open,
multiparty elections; that doubles the club in the Middle East and is a
huge step toward consensual government in the Arab world. We applaud the
Iraqis for finding some give-and-take in a place notoriously hostile to
compromise, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad for keeping
enough-but-not-too-much heat on the parties. But just as having an
election doesn't make a democracy, neither does forming a government.

After the overthrow of Saddam, it was reasonable to expect the citizens
of Iraq to turn first to the most local, most parochial sources of
protection - and revenge. This gave Iraqi terrorists and foreign ones,
including al Qaeda, room to advance disparate agendas: jihad, Ba'athist
resurgence, Iranian influence, Kurdish independence and generalized
anti-American/Westernism. Iraq in turmoil and close to civil war would
provide fertile ground for all of this and more.

The purveyors of upheaval have tried hard - there are increasing reports
of Iranian attacks against Kurds in the north, bombers have wreaked
havoc in the mosques and market places of Baghdad, Baquba and Samarra,
and the mutilated bodies of people executed overnight turn up every
morning.

There is no shortage of people willing to kill, but there is no civil
war. There is, rather, a government elected by a wide majority of the
citizens, determined to halt the violence. "Under fire" is probably the
worst condition under which to begin practicing consensual politics, but
the new government very quickly has to convince the people that the
government is the source of their protection and the address for the
redress of legitimate grievances. Citizens have to be convinced to end
their support for militias and terrorists by a combination of government
strength in counter-terror, equality in application of the law, and the
uncorrupt provision of security and services in the middle of a war.

It is a tall order. Can it fail? You bet. Will it fail? Hedge.

Thus far, punditry has considered it axiomatic that nothing political
could go right in Iraq - a governing council could never be established;
the election for the interim government would never be held; people
wouldn't vote; the constitution committee would never create a draft;
the people wouldn't vote a second time; Sunnis wouldn't vote at all; the
constitution wouldn't pass; the people wouldn't vote a third time for a
permanent government; a coalition would never be created. And punditry
has held it axiomatic that terrorists would indeed foment a civil war
and any political progress that had happened to defy punditry would be
for naught.

Punditry was wrong because it underestimated two things: the bravery of
the Iraqi people and the willingness of stubborn American leadership and
spectacular American soldiers to provide time and space for Iraqi
political development. The first is self-protective and must persist.
The second is based on the understanding that Iraq is a front in the
larger war against terrorists and the states that harbor and support
them, but the physical manifestation of that understanding cannot remain
in Iraq forever.

To view this JINSA Report online click on the link below.
http://www.jinsa.org/JINSAReports/3383

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