TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT IV
No pretext
Sometime this fall, I realized John Kerry was in trouble when I heard an NPR report about a pro-Bush rally somewhere in the midwest. During the course of the rally, Kerry supporters began shouting at the crowd, causing the Republicans to chant--not "FOUR MORE YEARS" or "GEORGE W. BUSH," like you might expect--but "USA! USA! USA!" I tried to imagine the situation reversed: would Democrats at a Kerry rally attempt to drown out hecklers by booming "USA! USA!"? The idea seemed oddly ridiculous--like a Belgian street-gang--and therein lay the problem. Bush supporters felt comfortable identifying their man with a gut-level sense of America; Kerry people did not. (Remember "nuance?") This, in turn, energized Republicans to claim the patriotic high-ground and frame the campaign so that, in their own minds, an attack on Bush was an attack on America itself. In warfare, politics and rhetoric, such esprit and belief in the cause means the difference between victory and defeat.
I thought of this incident yesterday as I read Thomas Friedman's column in the New York Times. As usual succinct, informal and dead-on the money, Friedman laid out the importance of Iraq's January elections. The current war, he wrote, pits
Sunni and Islamic militants against the U.S. and its Iraqi allies, many of whom do not seem comfortable fighting with, and seemingly for, the U.S. America cannot win that war...That is a civil war in which the murderous insurgents appear to be on the side of ending the U.S. "occupation of Iraq" and the U.S. and its allies appear to be about sustaining that occupation.
Rather, Friedman continues, we want a situation where the terms of engagement are more favorable to us--in short, a war that ranges
a democratically elected Iraqi government against the Baathist and Islamist militants. It needs to be clear that these so-called insurgents are not fighting to liberate Iraq from America, but rather to reassert the tyranny of a Sunni-Baathist minority over the majority there. The insurgents are clearly desperate that they not be cast as fighting a democratically elected Iraqi government--which is why they are desperately trying to scuttle the elections.
It comes down to legitimacy and justification. At this point in the conflict, the paramilitaries feel they can still make a valid claim--to their followers, the Arab world and "useful idiots" like Michael "Minuteman" Moore and Ted "Collaborator" Rall--that they are the true Iraqi patriots. God willing, after the elections their lie will prove impossible to maintain. They will appear to the world--and increasingly themselves--for what they are: paramilitary gunmen seeking to launch a fascist coup against an elected government.
Of course, that is how many of us saw them from the first day of the war. Nothing has changed, except which each moment, the hope of democracy in Iraq comes closer to some realization. Sharing our understanding of the significance of this possibility is none other than Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In February, Coalition authorities intercepted a letter that the terror-master wrote to unknown confederates where, among other topics, he addressed the biggest danger facing the terrorist cause.
How can we kill [Iraqi] cousins and sons and under what pretext, after the American start withdrawing? The Americans will continue to control from their bases, but the sons of this land will be the authority. This is the democracy, we will have no pretext.
Pretext. In other words, a legitimization, a plausible reason, a fig-leaf of morality to justify the unjustifiable slaughter of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. That pretext is nonexistent. Surely he doesn't think Allah will provide it for him?
Moqtada al-Sadr does--or at least wants to appear so. Braying from the other side of the terrorist junkyard, the renegade Shia cleric has been issuing futile declarations attempting to brand the elections as part of the "occupation"--and unIslamic, to boot.
The elections aim to separate the Iraqi from his religion. When people vote for politicians, secularists, those who cooperate with the occupation -- they will not think of God.
Unfortunately for him, Ayatollah Sistani has proclaimed the opposite: that Allah demands each of the 16 million Shia go to the polls, with refusal bringing eternal damnation.
This voting is still weeks away, but already its effects are visible in the ethereal realm of memes. Slowly, the notion of an "Iraqi government" is taking root in public awareness. Press reports now speak of the "guerrillas"--not, as before, "resisting the occupation"--but "trying to derail upcoming elections." With each suicide bomb or IED, increasing numbers of people are beginning to ask themselves--if they haven't already--why are the Sunnis doing this? What do they hope to gain? Why do they fear democracy? In the answers to those questions lies the ruin of the so-called "insurgency."
Assuming the elections take place and are perceived as reasonably legitimate, this ruin, this moral bankruptcy, will be all but apparent. Only in the hotels and villas of Amman and Damascus will ex-Baathist leaders continue to view their drugged-up mercenaries as "resistance" fighters ("resisting" what? Peace? A decent future for Iraqi families?). Only in the backstreets of Ramadi or the caves of Waziristan will jihadists laud Zarqawi as a hero. And when bin Laden's "emir" is caught--as he will be, betrayed by an Iraqi who has lost faith in the "cause"--we can hang this sign around his neck:
This is democracy. You have no pretext.
Lastly, after the elections, the Left will no longer escape the dilemma that has confronted them from the moment the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1441: in opposing the war, they have opposed the fight of democratic forces against fascism. No longer will they be able to justify their unwillingness to act, their desire to remain cocooned in apathy, ignorance and self-reinforcing Bush-hatred by claiming that the war and "occupation" are "immoral." A question will haunt their actions, as it has from the onset of this conflict: if you do not support democracy in Iraq, where will you support it?
None of this means we are winning this war. In fact, we--the U.S. and the Iraqis--are perilously close to losing. As Reuel Marc Gerecht points out in this week's Weekly Standard, how can we claim momentum toward victory when our forces cannot even keep the road from the Baghdad airport free of terrorist ambushes?
No, the tide has not yet turned. We have horrific weeks to endure before ballots are cast. And even after the elections, the bloodletting will not stop, Iraq will not become a democratic-minded polity overnight--nor will American mistakes and crimes find magic absolution. The war will continue. But if events on January 30 go reasonably well, the difference could be stark: the enemy, finally, will have exhausted the lies they have used to justify their nihilistic murders. At the same time, the Iraqis who have sided with the future will find their morale boosted, their courage fortified. They will be fighting for their homeland, a legitimate democracy. And that is a moral high-ground from where few dedicated combatants have ever failed.