The Dream Palace of the Empire: Is Iraq a "Noble Failure"?

Iraq's Sunni minority and outside Arabs linked to al Qaeda put together a fearful mix of insurgency and suicide bombing. Even from within the ranks of the majority Shiites -- clearly the greatest beneficiaries of the overthrow of Saddam -- came trouble. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, despite occasionally giving Bremer fits from afar, was basically a positive force, but Muqtada al-Sadr, a young firebrand from a distinguished religious family, organized resistance to the occupation and challenged the Iraqi Shiite leadership. Meanwhile, Sunnis throughout the Arab world, wedded to the pan-Arab myth undergirding Sunni dominance, began to demonstrate more openly what had always been their concern about the U.S. occupation: it would bring about an "unnatural" increase in Shiite and Kurdish power in the region. The resulting violence and the failure of the occupation to provide basic security and development have lessened the potential demonstration effect that the overthrow of Saddam might have had on Arabs beyond Iraq's borders.

That, as Ajami sees it, is how things stand in 2006. Whether this "noble war" will end in "noble success" or "noble failure" remains to be seen.

WE NOW KNOW

This brief abstract scarcely does justice to the many insights and asides in Ajami's narrative. Itemizing just a few gives a hint of its range: a positive view of the role of the Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi, including the arch observation that the Shiite Chalabi came to be labeled a carpetbagger while the Sunni Adnan Pachachi, equally long exiled, did not; his harsh appraisal of UN representative Lakhdar Brahimi; the comment that "monarchies in the Arab world had proven better and more merciful than the despotic regimes and national security states that had run down this unfortunate Arab political order"; and the poignant story of the Iraqi-Jew-turned-Israeli-scholar getting back in touch with an old friend, an Iraqi Kurd with whom he had once traveled in the same stimulating leftist and intellectual circles of Baghdad. Ajami also compares the present social and intellectual climate in the Arab world to that of Europe in 1848 -- a comparison that, although perhaps wide of the mark, does serve to tear down the "otherness" of Arabs that is so often implicit, if not explicit, in Western discourse.

Returning to the story line, however, there is a significant matter that is misrepresented or marginalized in Ajami's accounting: the question of why the United States invaded Iraq in the first place. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was not an obvious target following the horror of 9/11. We now know that a few individuals, inside and outside the U.S. government, who had long been pushing for regime change in Iraq won over an administration probably already so inclined in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. We also know that the Bush administration clearly misread and misused intelligence in making the case against Saddam. Ajami does not ignore these matters, but he presents them as peripheral. "There may have been," he writes, "no operational links between Iraq and Al Qaeda; Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker in the September 11 attacks, may or may not have met with an Iraqi intelligence operative in Prague; Al Qaeda may have been 'religious' whereas Baghdad was 'secular' in its ways. These distinctions did not matter: the connection had been made in American opinion."

Ajami also discounts the impact of those conventionally labeled "neoconservatives," scornfully maintaining that this was not Deputy Secretary of Defense "Paul Wolfowitz's war." (Of course it was not, but surely a handful of protagonists -- including Ajami -- played a not inconsiderable role in bringing about this war.) With equal scorn, he adds that of course the United States did not get the approval of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan or French President Jacques Chirac.

Telling the story in this way airbrushes out the strong case to be made that Congress was misled into authorizing the war and the even stronger case that invading Iraq was a war of choice, not a response to a clear and present danger. It ridicules the broader consideration that the United States, as a matter of sound statecraft, might be advised to work with others rather than opt for a go-it-alone role as the global hegemon. This latter policy choice was starkly set out in the Bush administration's 2002 National Security Strategy, and such thinking was very much part of the context in which the invasion of Iraq was launched.

Even so, in the history of the world's wars, many a good cause has been poorly sold (and many a bad one has been sold well). Ajami's good cause was to rid the Iraqi people and the world of a terrible regime and to kick-start an ambitious plan to bring peaceful and democratic ways to the Middle East. The first goal all can heartily applaud (and regret that the sins of Saddam are now obscured by complaints against the occupation). The second offers the prospect of continued intensive involvement, perhaps with more regimes to be changed.

IMPERIAL BURDENS

It is obvious, but at times overlooked, that both planks of Ajami's good cause are essentially Arab and Middle Eastern, rather than American, in their focus. He speaks of Arab "rage" against the United States and of the need to "take the fight to the Arab world itself." But what, as foreign policy realists might ask, is Washington's interest in pursuing this assertive policy? The United States could have stuck to the unfinished work of tracking down al Qaeda, pressured all states to tighten up on terrorism, and continued to play an active role in Middle Eastern politics while stopping short of wars of choice and ambitious efforts to reorder the region.