I’ve been editing the Carnival of the Liberated for almost two years now and, during that period, I’ve offered very few comments there on the many posts (in some weeks hundreds) that I’ve read. I try to ensure that differing views are represented. Most of all I try to ensure that the posts that I link to in the Carnival are the very best that the English-language Iraqi blogosphere has to offer (from time to time I’ve tried to enlist translators so we can get some idea of what the extensive Arabic and Kurdish Iraqi blogospheres are saying).
That doesn’t mean that I don’t have opinions on the posts that I read only that I’m resolved not to use that forum for exposing them.
In the post of his to which I linked this morning 24 Steps to Liberty wrote:
Saddam Hussein came into power in the early 1970s as a vice president and stayed in power until the Iraqis allowed the United States Army to enter Iraq and help them to topple Hussein and his regime.
My immediate reaction to this was that it was poppycock and historical revisionism. The Iraqis put up as strenuous a resistance as they could muster and it was about as much use as tissue paper in a tornado. And some have done so ever since.
On further reflection I realized that this wasn’t a simple lie but was an indication of the emergence of a foundational myth for the new Iraqi state. The Iraqis have never been defeated; they allowed the Americans to enter Iraq so that the Americans could handle a few problem areas while the Iraqi people removed Saddam Hussein. The choice that the Iraqis had was whether to live or die. Successful opposition to our entry into the country was never an alternative.
Now, I believe that foundational myths are necessary for people. We have ours—George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac, the “shot heard ’round the worldâ€, Paul Revere’s ride, and so on. They’re mostly harmless, it’s irrelevant whether they’re literally true or not, and they’re essential in creating a sense of identity as a people.
But I happen to think that this particular foundational myth is dangerous: it implicitly encourages armed opposition to the American military in Iraq which in my view is the only force opposing the centrifugal forces which would cause Iraq to fly off in all directions. It also encourages Iraqis to think that the immediate departure of those American forces would be a good thing for which I see precious little evidence.
This would also tend to support my opinion that in order for a decent stable state to be constructed in Iraq (at least in the short term) it was necessary to subdue the populace as well as remove the government and we never committed the degree of force (which to many would have been a crime) or the necessary level of resources to do that.
The political impossibility of doing that was a good part of the reason that I opposed the invasion in the first place.
