Iraq: The Case For Autocracy

Sectarian violence is a nice euphemism. But it hardly disguises much – at least not in Iraq. Since the Feb. 22 bombing and destruction of the Al-Askari shrine, one of the holiest sites of Shia Islam, Iraq has entered a full-scale civil war.
The daily body counts and fear levels attest to this. If not calling something by its name provides solace, then so be it. There’s little to take comfort from in that country any way.
The more important question is: Is the civil war all that surprising? Not for some of Iraq’s neighbors. In the months before the U.S.-led invasion, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa warned that the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime would open the gates of hell. In the Arab world, at least, all the talk about the Iraqis welcoming the Americans with flowers sounded ludicrous.
Once the dictator was ousted, the next job awaiting the U.S.-led forces was pretty obvious: contending with the political, religious, and ethnic conflicts Saddam had brutally kept in check. The transparency and openness the United States intended to encourage in Iraq was bound to expose the fiction Iraq is.
Like Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia, a unified Iraq was something sustained by a repressive regime. The U.S.-led military intervention precipitated the extreme dispersion of political forces. The anti-Saddam opposition was as strong as his regime. Once that edifice crumbled, the votaries of a new Iraq could hardly stop quarreling.
Last December’s elections only inaugurated an intensified conflict in which all the players are seeking to defend and promote their perceived vital interests. No wonder Washington's attempt to broker a power-sharing arrangement acceptable to the Shia, Sunni and Kurds has faltered.
Can the region and the wider world avoid the escalation of the Iraqi civil war? The installation of another authoritarian-type government might help. During his news conference last week, President George W. Bush virtually acknowledged that the United States has no prospect of a graceful exit during the remainder of his term.
President Bush needs to talk straight to the American people. The best justification for invading Iraq was the doctrine of pre-emption. The whole world believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction; the world feared that Osama bin Laden wanted some of them to use against the United States.
If the threat of an alliance between the secular Baathists and the fundamentalist Bin Ladenists still sounds overblown, just try putting a face on today’s insurgency. The U.S. acted in good faith – or at least thought it did. If things went wrong, then that’s too bad. But what if all those WMDs the world couldn’t find in Iraq are already with Bin Laden wherever he may be hiding?
And, by the way, let’s forget this whole democracy business. Those heading a new Iraqi autocracy might turn out to be another bunch of SOBs. With timely American backing, they might end up being our SOBs, as LBJ used to say.