Imperialism Never Works – Iraq Edition No. MCXVI
Max Boot complains that the natives aren’t being grateful enough:
Sticking points include whether the U.S. will continue to control Iraqi airspace, whether U.S. soldiers and private security contractors will maintain immunity from Iraqi prosecution, and whether the U.S. will continue to have the freedom to carry out combat operations and to detain terrorist suspects without Iraqi approval.
From Washington’s perspective, these are measures necessary to ensure the safety of U.S. troops as long as a substantial number of them remain in the war zone. U.S. commanders could not in good conscience continue to fight with too many restrictions on their ability to protect their soldiers and accomplish their mission.
So why are Iraqi leaders trying to hinder the very military operations that have been making their country safer and thus strengthening their own authority?
One factor is the approach of Iraqi elections — provincial elections this fall, national elections next year. In the competition for votes, Iraqi politicians want to flaunt their nationalist credentials, and one of the surest ways to do that is to make a public show of not being patsies for the Americans.
Let’s translate that for a domestic Iraqi audience. Maliki is supposed to tell his supporters and the people of Iraq that not only does he support a foreign military occupation of his country, but that the occupiers should control their country’s airspace, allow mercenaries to be immune from local prosecution for the crimes they commit and allowing the military to run around the country without approval from the supposedely sovereign government. And although Maliki very much needs American troops to stay in Iraq, he can’t very well maintain domestic support by letting the US gets everything they want.
Boot is right, for the US to engage in an occupation/low intensity counter-insurgency, they probably need full flexibility in the theater, protection from local law and total control of the air. But it’s obvious that any self-respecting sovereign government or sovereign populace wouldn’t want to give all that up under just about any circumstances. But Boot (and the Bush administration, for that matter) will have to continually insist to get everything because they want an essentially permanent foothold in Iraq. The problem is that even the most pro-American factions in the government know that allowing that to happen would be political suicide. For all the US military’s coercive power, the only way to achieve “sucess” in Iraq (if anyone can even define what that means) is for their to be a legitimate, sovereign, popular government we can work with. But if the way to achieving the type of security environment where that’s possible involves asking the current government to make all sorts of concessions they don’t want to make, then that presents a pretty big problem for any hopes for “sucess” in Iraq.
