Pearce writes, on Iraq and Saddam:
How would you have dealt with Saddam Hussein?…If you wouldn’t keep him in power, how would you have deposed him? And how would you keep extremists from taking power once he was gone?
Morgue, home sick today, responds:
Okay, assuming the kind of setup that says, instead of launching the Iraq war, the Coalition decided to halt action and say “okay, no war. but we still want Saddam gone. How would you do it then, left-wing person?”
Here are some scratchy-type-top-of-head ideas for a plan.
(Note: I take it as written that the Iraqi people want a democracy, and are capable of democracy. A lot of people dispute this, particularly the second one. I also take as written that democracy, for all its flaws, is the best form of government in the world at present.)
(And note: you don’t need an identified alternative to know that alternatives have not even been explored.)
Strategy:
* chip away
It will take a long time to bring about change without massive destruction – probably decades. Accept this. Improvement for Iraqis will be incremental. Accept this too.
* legitimise and use the UN
The only way to create a justifiable intervention in Iraq is through the UN; flawed as it is, it is also the only way to provide some kind of legitimacy that will prevent actions creating international resentment down the line. All actions should be performed through this body.
* have Arab nations take the lead
The Arab nations aren’t that fond of Saddam. Use this. Have Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Saudi take the lead in all dealings with Saddam. Do not give Saddam the option of calling it a culture war.
And don’t let the US get involved on any organisational level. They can contribute troops and suchlike, but they can’t be involved with policy or be seen to be leading negotiations. The history between Iraq and the US will not lend itself to negotiations.
* use Saddam’s ego to control him
Hussein is cornered and ready to fight. Every time the UN takes action, he should always be provided with an avenue of honorable retreat. Over many iterations, the cumulative effect will be large – his power base will erode, the sacrifices he must make can be made incrementally larger, other avenues will gradually present themselves. This is, of course, how most international politics is done, which makes the utter failure to deploy it against Iraq quite astonishing.
This will probably mean Saddam gets to be a hero, and his sons get to live in luxury. Let them.
* don’t make a big public issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Saddam has his reputation relying on his awesome military power. Getting into public games over what he has and what he wants is not going to lead to anything but a runaround. Keep the demand for inspections high on the agenda, but don’t make it a matter of public image. Progress was being consistently made on this issue.
* prepare a democracy-building plan
So when Saddam is gone, this is ready to take its place. Preferably it will start at the ground level, with elections held in each small region and each chunk of city. This will elect a congress that is actually seen as representative. Part of the problem in Iraq is that the new temporary government has never been accepted. Remember, in some areas Iraqis self-organised elections after Saddam was deposed – and these elections were forcibly shut down by the coalition.
* accept the fact that Iraq will have an Islamic presence in government
And so it should, it’s a democracy. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Islam can be quite progressive. It’s taking massive abuse of power to maintain the oppressive status quo in Iran, and in Iraq the citizens are used to freedom from the excesses of Sharia.
A continued UN presence to ensure Iraq doesn’t fall into fundamentalist hands, as happened in Iran in ’79, will also be necessary I think.
Tactics:
* abandon trade sanctions
This is a human rights imperative. The trade sanctions have to be ended. This is political capital, however. Iraq has always been able to buy itself out of trade sanctions with WMD co-operation, according to resolution 687 – but that’s apparently not going to happen, since the US scotched the deal in the mid-90s. Give them up for something else, but give them up, incrementally if possible.
* attack the regime apparatus at the ground level, starting small
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other organisations have been reporting on specific atrocities in Iraq for a long time. Low-level personnel who are responsible must be targetted whenever they can be identified. (Police officers and police chiefs, for example.)
The idea is to make a big issue about one event, make it a political problem for Iraq (which, remember, has been trying for years to present itself as a responsible player on the world stage.) Then do everything possible to get the regime to sacrifice the person targetted for criminal justice.
Every time this is done, congratulate Iraq and Saddam on its honorable behaviour as a modern state. Then do it again. Keep hitting at the low-level building blocks, and rewarding the people at the top of the chain. Alone, this tactic won’t change much, but as part of a suite of tactics, it should help destabilise the regime’s control structure and ability to project its domination down to those in the street.
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Ach. This is hard. I will return to these ideas some other time.
And I bet George Monbiot has written something cool on this, but my google-fu is not enough to find it.
