For those who want to understand the situation in Iraq there is Steven Vincent's In the Red Zone: A Journey Into the Soul of Iraq. It is shameful that public discussion of the Iraq question so often devolves into name-calling, with the Bush haters on one side and the Bush defenders on the other. Vincent's book offers a rational and informed basis for discussing the problem of Iraq's democratization.
Alexis de Tocqueville argued that democracy was attainable for many peoples, offering special encouragement to the French (whose first experiments in democracy included such charming innovations as the guillotine, Bonapartism and mass military conscription). Deeper and more profound, Machiavelli warned that freedom is problematic for people accustomed to tyranny. He noted that: "Men pass from one ambition to another, and, having first striven against ill-treatment, inflict it next upon others." Sadly, the abused are schooled in the ways of the abuser. According to Machiavelli, "the sequence in which these events occur is such that men seek first to be free from apprehension, then make others apprehensive, and that the injuries of which they had ridded themselves, they ... inflict on others. It was as if it were necessary either to treat others ill or to be ill-treated."
Steven Vincent's journey into the soul of Iraq brings us face to face with this pathology. Only, in the case of Iraq, there are extenuating complications. Vincent sees the war on terror as a sociological crusade against the backward, horrendous folkways of the Islamic Bedouin. Vincent despises the Bedouin's appalling treatment of women. He knows there cannot be peace between modern democratic man and medieval Islamic man. People who are yoked to Islamic law (shari'a) and the ecstatic worship of martyrdom cannot be free. Against political and religious irrationalism, the Iraqi middle class - the decent "center" of society - deserves to be supported. According to Vincent, Iraq needs more American troops (to secure order) and better laws to enforce the right of the individual against the megalomania of sect and clan. Vincent applauds the toppling of Saddam Hussein. At the same time, he deplores the president's retreat on the issue of Iraqi federalism (i.e., a proposed system of regional autonomy to prevent Shiites from imposing shari'a on the country). America liberated Iraq without acknowledging that all cultures and all religions are not created equal. Some societies have a larger share of pathology, a greater tendency to evil and violence than others. Therefore, America needs the moral courage to condemn Iraq's oppressive norms. "On 9-11," Vincent explains, "the despair and self-loathing at the center of the Muslim world was unleashed on America. On that day, tribal Islam became our problem, too. And, being our problem, it demands our solution: democracy."
Despite President Bush's regard for "the religion of peace," Islam is incompatible with democracy and Vincent tells us why. The strict subordination of women and the unwillingness to tolerate free thought (intrinsic to Islam) is not the raw material for building a free society. Worse yet, killing for the sake of family honor, and the looting of whomever stands outside the clan, are part of Iraq's national psychology. No matter how hard President Bush tries, he cannot make a Bedouin nation into a bourgeois nation with slogans and largesse. We are attempting to win the Iraqi people by pouring billions into their country. Meanwhile, we do not have the boots on the ground to stop the thugs from drawing up death lists that include everyone who cooperates with America's reconstruction effort.
Near the end of his book, Vincent describes a desperate Iraqi woman demanding that an American intelligence officer do something about the systematic intimidation of the population by organized Islamic gangs. "We're leaving June 30," replied the officer, referring to the abdication of the Coalition Provisional Authority last year. "As for the Brits, they'll tell you that crime is a matter for the Iraqi police." In response to this, the Iraqi woman cried: "Don't you understand? The Iraqi police are corrupt! We have no laws, no courts, judges are afraid to rule against criminals or the religious parties. You are leaving us to the ignorant men!" The American officer's final reply was unanswerable: "I'm sorry. But what are our options? The more we try to do for the Iraqi people, the more they hate us."
Soft methods will not suffice and political correctness neuters the enterprise. If we cannot condemn Bedouin culture, if we cannot look down on a sick religion that worships death, then we cannot make the forcible changes that the situation requires. Freedom means the enforcement of individual rights against the claims of tribe, against the murderous irrationality of the mullahs and the organized thievery of the Baathist remnant. Without doubling the number of troops, without putting Iraq itself on trial as Germany was at Nuremberg, there isn't going to be any repentance, any reconfiguration or reformation of Iraqi society. The Nuremberg process was founded on American notions of justice - not on German notions. The defeated Japanese were not allowed to write their constitution. We judged the Nazis and Japanese imperialists by our own standards. We imposed a system of individual rights upon them. As a result, Germany and Japan are democracies today and Europe has enjoyed six decades of peace and prosperity. The harshness with which the Germans were treated cannot be denied. But the results are in and the method worked. Today, by contrast, we lack the moral confidence to impose our superior values on Iraq.
There is also the problem of our promise to preserve Iraq as a single nation. Iraq's existence, as Iraq, has always been tenuous. The Kurds and Sunnis and Shiites were told, again and again, that they were Iraqis. The person who told them was Saddam Hussein. Now that Saddam is gone the nationhood of Iraq may not be tenable. How will America revive Iraq's national consciousness?
If you want to intelligently discuss the Iraq question, if you want to understand Islamofascism, you must read Steven Vincent's In the Red zone. "Much depends on the willingness of the American people to 'stay the course,'" he writes. "And this, in turn, depends in a large part on our recognition and appreciation of those we fight and what they stand for." The Islamofascist militias are not "freedom fighters," Vincent explains. "They are fascists. They represent something evil unleashed in the world." We are locked in mortal combat with a Nazi-like anti-Jewish ideology. It is animated by extreme misogyny, instinctive collectivism, authoritarianism, and a political culture that normalizes violence. We are called upon to crush this evil before it emerges into a full-blown regional bloc of countries, dedicated to the West's destruction. The course ahead cannot be easy. Retreat is not an option.
