Bush has decided to cut and run from Iraq before the next 2008 Presidential election. What a mistake.
August 7 2005

Leaving Iraq in the hands of Islam, due to crass politics is immoral and short-sighted. While the coverage of the Iraq war and reconstruction has been almost entirely negative and incorrect in most aspects, there are some valid criticisms one can level at the Bush administration over Iraq. Post war planning was poor, border security non-existent, ministries and other ammunition depots were not secured, and disbanding the entire Iraqi army was counter productive. Not being more ruthless in dealing with the terrorist attacks and in controlling troubled areas with more troops has also been a self evident problem. But an even worse mistake is being made in the writing of the Constitution which is part of the greater Bush strategy of leaving Iraq in time for the next US election. It is this error in judgment and political opportunism, which poses an even greater long term risk to US strategy in the Middle East than the current terrorist ‘insurgency’, which will be defeated within 18 months.

Iraq was invaded for a number of reasons – 23 of which are cited in the US declaration of war and reiterated in Bush’s speech on the rationale for war in the late winter of 2003. No serious person maintains that we are not better off and safer, with a democratizing Iraq in the middle of the world’s worst neighborhood. However, the entire struggle in Iraq is on the verge of being thrown away as the US allows, incredibly, the imposition of Islamic law on a country that needs modernity. It is doing this in the vain hope that it can achieve political peace, and then bring home its troops. The last thing Iraq needs is Islamic rigidity and its destructive ideology stultifying future development.

Imagine the US in 1945 allowing Hitlerian fascist elements to impose aspects of Nazi law upon the new German Constitution. Imagine the US allowing Nazi judges and jurists to preside over part of the new legal process. Imagine the US allowing Nazi politicians to form parties and acquire financial and political support to run for office. Imagine in post 1945 Germany the US accepting a large percentage of Nazi ideology in the re-building of the German state, because it was the ideology of a large segment, say 25 % of the population. After all in 1945 most Germans still advocated, according to polls conducted at that time, that a strong leader and one party state was needed to rebuild the country. Allowing any of the above would have been inexplicably ridiculous. It took 8 years to get Germany stabilized, and it will take at least that long if not a lot longer to get a non Westernized Iraq back on its feet.

Imagine then in post war Iraq the US allowing Islam to triumph. Islam is a political and social failure. No where on the planet, where Islamic law reigns, is there a stable, mature, prosperous nation, which is a peaceful member of the world community. Why then are the Bushies allowing the dominance of Islamic law in the Iraqi Constitution ? It is obvious that the US has either lost control of this process, or naively assumes that whatever political deal can be brokered between ethnic, secular and religious elements in writing the Constitution is fine. Irregardless of the reason the result is going to be a disaster. Iraq needs the exact opposite of Islamic rigidity. It needs Western styled political, constitutional and legal systems.

There is no point in invading a fascist state, deposing its government, enduring a vicious terrorist uprising and war, to then meekly allow politicians to impose on a brutalized population, the tenets of anti-Western philosophies premised on 7th to 9th century regulations. Allowing Islam to be Iraq’s state religion which is what the current Constitutional draft suggests, is a mockery of 1800 US GI deaths and 15,000 dead Iraqi civilians. Islamic law, represented by the Sharia code, is a set of judgments that were frozen by leading Islamic jurists in the 9th century. Such a code has little relevance in the 21rst century. Sharia law is open ended, based on local and oftentimes political interpretation and has no resonance with female rights, minority rights, freedom of expression or basic habeas corpus rights as evinced in the legal and constitutional rights found in every advanced Western nation. Sharia code is an irrelevant pre-modern, anti-Western and anti-rights based formula for political control through arbitrary religious interpretation. It is illiberal and dangerous.

US and Pentagon officials must certainly be aware of the lunacy in allowing Sharia and Islamic law to control the legal and constitutional development of Iraq. The question then is why are they allowing it? An Islamic Iraq is not what the West needs. We need a pro-Western state, with Western institutions and a market economy where we can export modernity to the rest of the Middle East. If we don’t mandate modernity now, as the formation of a Constitution proceeds, what then was the purpose of the war? To subject the freedoms of Iraqi civilians to arbitrary 9th century Islamic law is almost criminal. Freeing a population that desires to be Western in order to try and broker a political settlement with terrorists who want, need, and demand Sharia law is irresponsible and immature.

If the media wants to get angry over Iraq then this is the great cause that should embitter both pro-and anti-war supporters. Throwing away 1800 GI lives to try and placate a 5.000 man terrorist army by allowing Sharia law to control the Constitution will certainly doom US policy in Iraq and the region. If you want to destroy Islamic terrorists, you kill the fascists involved, with ruthless energy and overwhelming strength. You don’t try to buy them off. Fascists don’t give up. If you allow them to control the Constitution and legal processes, then one day, they will eventually, under various names and disguises, be back in political power running Iraq. At that point the rationale for the invasion and occupation of Iraq will be completely repudiated.

Bush was right to go into Iraq and begin to drain the fetid swamp waters of the Middle East by imposing democratic reform. But to go into the region and then allow politicians to trade off ‘peace’ by imposing the prison of Sharia and Islamic ideology is absurd. Nowhere in the Islamic world has a modern healthy state, resplendent in the various fascist interpretations of the Sharia code, been built. A fair question that the media should be asking is, ‘If you allow Iraq to become an Islamic caliphate why then did we go to war ?’ For Bush and the US the political and long term failure of US policy in Iraq, by allowing an Islamic based Constitution will be overwhelming. Iraq needs to be rebuilt in the image of Western success, not Islamic failure. To appease domestic liberal media and voting elements by ‘respecting’ Islam is nonsense. Radical Islam is and was the problem in Iraq. It is certainly not part of the solution.

We should have learnt from our success in the rebuilding of post war Germany and Japan. There is still time in Iraq to reject Islam and accept reality. It remains to be seen if crass politics gets in the way of liberty and freedom. If it does then the 23 good reasons for the invasion of Iraq, were just rhetorical fantasy and 1800 good men are dead for no reason. One hopes that the political price for such incompetence is expensive. Bush is handing the Democrats, if they have the intellect to accept the chance, a great opportunity to highlight Republican perfidy and immaturity in managing a post war state. More importantly however, regardless of US domestic politics, one should feel pity for the Iraqi people.

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