Thinking about Iraq

Last night, after a sufficient amount of turkey, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes had been ingested I finished reading The Forever War, New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins' account of both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Filkins begins the book in what most Americans probably remember as the halcyon days of 1998. While many people in this country were busying themselves checking on their stock portfolio Filkens sat in a soccer stadium in Kabul watching the Taliban mete out its brand of justice of hand-choppings and executions.

From here he documents life in the country through life under the Taliban and Al Qaeda through its conquest by the combined forces of the U.S. and the Northern Alliance. The majority of the book, however, is dedicated to Iraq. Heading into Safwan, Iraq on the Kuwaiti border only hours after the U.S.-led invasion, Filkins chronicles life in the country from the first chaotic but hopeful days after Saddam's ouster through its descent into insurgency and civil war.

As Iraq fades from the headlines -- perhaps the best measure of real progress there is given the media's aversion to good news -- it's becoming easier to forget just how bad the situation was. Filkens speaks of mornings where up to a dozen bombs, often by suiciders, would explode before breakfast (which he quickly realized was the product of a desire to target people during the rush hour as opposed to getting a head start on the day's activities). He bore witness to a systematic destruction of society in which everyone from garbagemen to teachers were targeted, producing heaps of both trash and ignorance. Shia death squads would dump dozens of bodies overnight in the streets of Baghdad invariably filled with holes produced by electric drills while Al Qaeda sadists kept collections of skulls from their victims. No matter how many accounts you read of such matters it never loses its ability to shock.

Now, of course, the situation in Iraq has considerably changed. The addition of troops through The Surge along with a change in tactics and alliances formed with former Sunni adversaries has led to a complete turnaround. Ramadi, described by Filkins as a modern day Hue or Stalingrad, is peaceful while quiet has come to formerly strife-torn neighborhoods in Baghdad. Some bloggers recently declared Victory in Iraq Day.

In light of this success I can't help but wonder if all of the suffering of the past few years was necessary or pre-ordained. What if we had used more troops from the start? What if we had different tactics from the beginning? What if U.S. officials actually had a clue about the country they were operating in? Such questions abound.

It is tempting to think that with some policy changes that much of the chaos could have been avoided and there is absolutely plenty of blame to go around. But even if we were given the benefit of hindsight part of me believes that at least some of the bloodshed was unavoidable. I am just not sure that there was anything that could have been done to placate either the Sunnis or the more extremist Shia in those early days.

My reasoning has largely to do with the frequent irrationality and non-linear thinking exhibited by so many Iraqis that the book reminded me of. Filkins speaks of Iraqis that told him they thought Saddam Hussein was an agent of the Americans. In the wake of a car bombing Iraqis who had witnessed the attack with their own eyes would swear that it was the result of an American Apache strike. When two candidates for elected office asked for questions from a group of Iraqi workers one of the first queries was what they proposed to do about Israeli agents operating within the country. Nothing was taken at face value and a conspiracy was the inevitable explanation for the most innocuous of events.

Although tempting to dismiss such thinking as the product of a weak mind Filkens comes to the defense of the Iraqis, noting that life under Saddam was similar to that of an insane asylum. He points out that one of the most popular selling items in the country were DVDs of torture by Saddam's secret police and walking in on a group of Iraqis employed by the Times watching such a video of a man's forearm being beaten with a metal pipe until it broke into two pieces. Their minds reflected the environment they were raised in.

Whatever the reason, the reality is that the Americans entered a country in which the people simply refused to believe that they were truly there to bring democracy and full of goodwill. While a rational person might point out that such an approach was rather consistent with past U.S. behavior -- rebuilding Germany and Japan after WWII and bringing democracy for example or even the invasion of Panama that deposed a dictator and installed a popularly elected head of state -- the Iraqis lived in a world riven by naked aggression and rapaciousness where such an approach was simply incomprehensible. U.S. motivations had to be borne out of something more than a desire to help Iraq, it had to be the oil, or the hand of the Jews or some other nefarious explanation. When confronted by such a conqueror the natural reaction is to reach for one's gun.

I'm also mindful that the decline in violence did not take place until after the Sunnis became sickened and appalled by the crazed excesses of Al Qaeda while the Shia had exacted some measure of revenge on their former rulers during the insanity that followed the Samarra mosque bombing of 2006. Was this violence just a result of long-simmering tensions under Saddam that finally exploded? One almost imagines Saddam as the lid on a boiling pot that, once removed, cleared the path for considerable spillage of blood.

I don't write any of this in an effort to excuse the misjudgements and sheer incompetence on the part of various U.S. officials, but I also wonder if the violence in Iraq over the past five years could have been totally prevented. I don't offer any answers, just some questions.