The Iraqi court charged with investigating the crimes against humanity committed by Saddam Hussein have come out with their expected verdict: Death by Hanging.
This shouldn’t be much of a shock for most people with anything more than a brain stem. Saddam was known as a savage on par with Idi Amin or Joe Stalin. Wiping entire villages off the map was considered perfectly sensible by the Hussein gang. Saddam’s Sons of Fun, Biday and Qusay, now currently dead, were known to be just like Dad, except even more violent, savage and out of control.
The US military and the Iraqi Police clamped a curfew on the country in anticipation of all kinds of violence when the verdict was dropped. There are reports of clashes in Sunni areas as various political leaders condemn the decision. Other areas, notably Shiite areas, there has been much rejoicing.
This is where things are going to get dicey. Humans revert to tribes when systems break down. Iraq has been broken for a number of years and as expected, everyone has reverted back to their tribal allegiances. Religious tribes, or village tribes, or familial tribes are the norm. To police this kind of morass, the authorities are trying to make people believe in Iraq first, then tribal groupings. It isn’t working. It isn’t working even a little bit.
By any definition, even if there is a ‘national’ government, Iraq has devolved into a tribal civil war. As history has taught us, time and time again, you can’t stop a tribal civil war. Even Saddam at his peak of craziness couldn’t keep the lid on the Kurds, using gas and bombing: The tribal allegiance is too strong.
What does this mean for the US and, by extension, the rest of the world? First, nothing can be solved on the ground regardless of how much force, short of nukes, that you apply. Second, the US and the rest of us, have created a whole generation of new terrorists who blame the United States for their situation.
The people who are cranking up this new generation of disaffected and violent tribal followers are the tribal leaders. The reason they can crank up a new generation is simple: The US didn’t do the things they needed to do when they invaded Iraq.
I wrote about this on the website in April of 2003 in a posting called So What Now?. The short summary is this: After invading and winning, you must get the lights back on, the water running and enough security up so the regular folks can go to the marketplace to get food. Use the now-civilians from the army to fill in the holes in the road, re-establish the electrical grid and fix the water supply. Pay them a reasonable wage and sift through all of them for the real war criminals.
When the infrastructure is actually working and people can do what they need to do to survive and thrive, then you won’t have too many problems with insurrections, guerilla groups, or a scared, angry, hungry, vengeful population blaming the invaders for their situation. It is a very simple equation and an easy fix.
The folks running the war didn’t do this. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rove, and President JoJo The Idiot Boy decided that a full-fledged Jeffersonian Democracy must be airlifted into Iraq to be some kind of shining Beacon of Hope. Peasants don’t care about democracy. Democracy is a luxury you can afford if you have a full belly and a working country. The US didn’t give or even attempt to provide the Iraqi’s a working country. For that matter, they didn’t give them a working suburb, or city block.
Rumsfeld, Cheney Rove and Dubya spent the years since trying to find the hole to fingerbang their way to Mission Accomplished with meat puppets like Jerry Bremner. There was much posturing, posing and paper generation, but the lights weren’t on and the water didn’t work, except in the Green Zone of Baghdad. More than three years later, no wonder Iraq has devolved into tribal madness. Runsfeld, Rove, Cheney and Dubya were too concerned with appearances, press releases, politics and scoring points at home to actually let the military do the job they needed (and wanted) to do.
It is now too late to fix it. The Iraq civil war and tribal wars have started. Saddam’s execution will be a footnote that kicks off a new level of insurgent actions. The real mistake happened in the spring of 2003.
Solutions? The US is going to need significant defense at home as that whole generation of Iraqis cranked up by the tribal leaders are going to come to the US looking to get some revenge. Iraq has become the biggest, best, most colourful and convincing recruiting brochure for Al Qaeda you could ever hope to create.
You can’t blame the Democrats, or the Republicans, or Liberals or the Religious Right. You can’t blame John Kerry, or Hillary Clinton, or John McCain or Mike Bloomberg. You can’t even blame the soldiers on the ground. The boots on the street tried to help locally but were hamstrung at every turn by a chain of command that was more concerned with pleasing their masters in Washington.
I’ll close with three fake quotes:
"Rummy, you’re doing a hellofa job." "Dickie, you’re doing a hellofa job." "Karl, you’re doing a hellofa job."
RoadDave 