Thursday, July 08, 2004
The New York Times and Dr. Allawi
Apparently out of a warped and unrealistic idealism, the New York Times has been campaigning against the new Iraqi prime minister ever since he was appointed. It is true that Dr. Allawi was at one time a Baathist. It is also true that he enlisted the support of the CIA in the 1990s in a failed attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein. However, as mentioned previously here, this does not implicate him in the major crimes of the Baathists, nor does it suggest that he is uninterested in reforming Iraq. He may well have "authoritarian tendencies" as the Times believes, but this may be exactly what Iraq is looking for right now. They want someone able and willing to gather together the threads of authority in Iraq and bring them together for a new beginning. Few Iraqis understand liberal democracy, few have the background necessary for a successful liberal democracy, and liberal democracy is certainly not an Iraqi priority right now.
The latest attack by the Times is in a lead editorial "Shades of the Old Iraq" (July 8). It focuses on the chances for misuse of Allawi's new martial law decree. They fear that Allawi will use the new powers to intimidate rising groups in the society, thereby sounding the death kneel for the possibility of effective democracy, the "main rationale for the war". In doing so, they make two errors. First, they ignore the careful manner in which the degree hedges the power, limiting it in time and requiring that the leaders of the main ethnic groups sign off before it can be invoked. Second, and most important, the reasonable case for intervention in Iraq was to bring to an end the monstrous rule of a leader who egregiously ignored even the most elemental human rights standards who commanded military resources he had not been loathe to use aggressively in the past. We did not invade Jordan or Egypt or Pakistan, even though they are hardly democracies. We work with most Middle Eastern states because they are responsible members of a world community. We would like to see all of them democracies some day. We would like Iraq to be a fully functioning democracies. We might have imposed democracy with a post-World War II sized effort stretched over a period of many years. But we did it on the cheap, and we will probably leave soon, so we have to be satisfied with much less. It is finally up to the Iraqis whether our dream becomes theirs.
Apparently out of a warped and unrealistic idealism, the New York Times has been campaigning against the new Iraqi prime minister ever since he was appointed. It is true that Dr. Allawi was at one time a Baathist. It is also true that he enlisted the support of the CIA in the 1990s in a failed attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein. However, as mentioned previously here, this does not implicate him in the major crimes of the Baathists, nor does it suggest that he is uninterested in reforming Iraq. He may well have "authoritarian tendencies" as the Times believes, but this may be exactly what Iraq is looking for right now. They want someone able and willing to gather together the threads of authority in Iraq and bring them together for a new beginning. Few Iraqis understand liberal democracy, few have the background necessary for a successful liberal democracy, and liberal democracy is certainly not an Iraqi priority right now.
The latest attack by the Times is in a lead editorial "Shades of the Old Iraq" (July 8). It focuses on the chances for misuse of Allawi's new martial law decree. They fear that Allawi will use the new powers to intimidate rising groups in the society, thereby sounding the death kneel for the possibility of effective democracy, the "main rationale for the war". In doing so, they make two errors. First, they ignore the careful manner in which the degree hedges the power, limiting it in time and requiring that the leaders of the main ethnic groups sign off before it can be invoked. Second, and most important, the reasonable case for intervention in Iraq was to bring to an end the monstrous rule of a leader who egregiously ignored even the most elemental human rights standards who commanded military resources he had not been loathe to use aggressively in the past. We did not invade Jordan or Egypt or Pakistan, even though they are hardly democracies. We work with most Middle Eastern states because they are responsible members of a world community. We would like to see all of them democracies some day. We would like Iraq to be a fully functioning democracies. We might have imposed democracy with a post-World War II sized effort stretched over a period of many years. But we did it on the cheap, and we will probably leave soon, so we have to be satisfied with much less. It is finally up to the Iraqis whether our dream becomes theirs.
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