The Libertarian View

CATO - Bush White House Guilty of Wishful Thinking

Recall the rosy scenario promoted by the White House: The ouster of Saddam was supposed to usher in a new era of political freedom in Iraq, where the country and its people would be united behind a pro-American and democratically elected government. Iraq would be pluralistic, secular, and committed to women's rights, and would serve as a shining model to the Middle East.

Instead, as the images from Iraq suggest, the repressive military dictatorship of the Ba'ath has given way to political chaos. Real power in the country is not controlled by Ahmed Chalabi and other American puppets, but is in the hands of the religious figures and tribal chieftains and their militias that dominate the three main ethnic and religious groups that constitute the imaginary "Iraqi nation." There are the violent gangs, linked to former Ba'athist and radical Islamists, which rule the neighborhoods and streets of the "Sunni Triangle," and for whom the American invasion is seen as part of a strategy to destroy the power of the Sunnis.

The religious Shiite figures range from the "moderates" (who just hate Americans) to the "radicals" (who want to kill Americans). But they are all content to see the Americans fight the Sunnis. They also hope to establish an anti-Western clerical regime in Baghdad. And the Kurds enjoy their current U.S.-protected autonomy and look forward to cleansing their areas of Arabs and Turkomans as they continue to cling to their dream of establishing a Greater Kurdistan.

That is the current reality in post-Saddam Iraq. It certainly doesn't match with the Wilsonian fantasies concocted by the neo-cons. If anything, it resembles Yugoslavia after the death of Marshall Tito, with the added concern that the election of a an Islamist government in Baghdad and the disintegration of Iraq will play into the hands of anti-American terrorists and force regional players like Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to get involved in a potential civil war.