Iraq palindromes

I have been looking over a report from the US Institute of Peace report “Global terrorism after the Iraq War.” This appears to be a fairly balanced report, focused on how well the US is doing against al Qaeda and what it needs to do to make its “war” more effective.

There are several things that struck me. I am a big fan of a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report from May concerning the chances that Iraq can be rebuilt and democratized. The report uses case studies from throughout history of US successes and failure. To give a brief summary:

• Reconstruction succeeds in creating a solidly democratic nation-state when the country to be rebuilt already possessed many liberals values. Germany and Japan were successes because they were governments that had taken a wrong turn on the path to liberalism and democracy.


• Reconstruction succeeds the longer that the US stays involved and the more resources that it puts into it.


• Reconstruction succeeds when the US appears to be interfering less in the operation of the country to be rebuilt


• Reconstruction is not likely to succeed. Within a decade of the removal of US forces and the end of reconstruction aid the most countries have devolved: their democratic institutions are compromised, they veer toward dictatorships and oligarchies, and they become major regional security threats.

In short, we cannot expect reconstruction of Iraq to succeed, but the US must stay in Iraq because it might become more of a security threat than before . It is a big shitburger that we must now all eat. I must as well, even though I never wanted the Iraq war. ($87 billion will not be the last appropriation that will go to Iraq.)

What concerns me from this new report is that the Islamists who are streaming into Iraq to fight against US soldiers are undermining–indeed, delaying–reconstruction:

The potential cost to the reconstruction effort is considerable: until the US forces can concentrate more on supporting the rebuilding and less on force protection, we will be challenged to deliver the kind of future that Iraqis expect, and that, in turn, will affect US standing throughout the region.

In the past weeks I laughed at the administrations reports that claims that the situation in Iraq has improved over conditions six months ago. I laughed because the Iraqis were fighting a war against a world power six months ago, so I was hardly convinced by the improvement. What this quote points out is that there may be diminishing returns from these improvement efforts: Iraqis will not judge the US based on material improvements, but their expectations . Ouch!

The remainder of the report goes over recommendations for fighting al Qaeda beyond military action and intelligence. These are: democratization of regimes in Muslim countries, improvement of regional educational systems, economic liberalization. In short, nation-building. Can Americans commit to this? Put in these terms, all republicans and half of all democrats will balk.