From the issue dated November 8, 2002
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A Counter-ScenarioThe best way to envision Iraq five years removed from a successful American
A belligerent Iraq will have consequences in a region where there is already much belligerence. Some will take their cues from the failure of U.S. will, just as did Osama bin Laden as he signed off on 9/11. Perhaps the mullahs of Iran will step up their support for Hezbollah. With Syria's blessing, that group could escalate terrorist missile firings at northern Israeli population centers, until the Israelis respond with ground sweeps and air assaults against both Hezbollah and Syrian forces in Lebanon. All of these risks are too often ignored by those who see only the risks that attend military action or the brief U.S. occupation of Iraq that must necessarily follow. And those latter risks are greatly overstated. Suddenly the Iraqi troops who were surrendering to television news vans a decade ago have become tigers of the desert, capable of turning the U.S. advance into a costly war of attrition. The military rabble that could barely reach Basra have become supermen capable of adroitly transforming Baghdad into Stalingrad. America's Israeli ally, which used conventional weapons with its survival at stake in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, will now go nuclear at the first whiff of toxic gas. The United States, which, as occupier, turned Hitler's Germany and Imperial Japan into models of democratic prosperity, will face hatred and resistance from a talented and educated people breathing free for the first time in a generation. But another outcome is far more likely. Eleven years ago, when the Kurds and Shiites rose up against Saddam Hussein, the first Bush administration left them twisting in the wind. Had Saddam been deposed, American forces would have remained in Iraq overseeing a political arrangement to get the country back on its feet. Power would have been divided along regional lines reflecting the ethnic divisions of the country. A purer form of democracy would have developed in local elections. Resurgent oil revenues would have helped rebuild a domestic infrastructure of highways, electrical grids, communications. A central government of limited powers would have been formed, along with an independent judiciary, and a military strong enough to remain a player in the Persian Gulf but mindful of civilian authority. Yesterday's broken promise is today's bold vision. A reasonably free, justly governed, prosperous Iraq may or may not be able to transform the entire Middle East. But five years down the road, it appears a far better gamble than inaction. Robert Zelnick, chairman of the journalism department at Boston University and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 49, Issue 11, Page B13
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Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education