Fouad Ajami: Iraq May Survive, but the Dream is Dead

This blog is in a series of posts from my readings of THE RIGHT WAR? THE CONSERVATIVE DEBATE ON IRAQ. Please contribute your comments. The following is a discussion of Chapter 9, a republished article by Fouad Ajami, May 26, 2004, New York Times.


Ajami is reacting to President Bush’s most recently televised speech on Iraq. He says the speech’s tone reflects the unspoken message “that no great American project is being hatched in Iraq. If some of the war’s planners had thought that Iraq would be an ideal base for American primacy in the Persian Gulf, a beacon from which to spread democracy and reason throughout the Arab world, that notion has clearly been set aside.”

Ajami then talks about how this great project of spreading democracy to the Arab world might have been a mistaken notion, even when he had supported that notion before the war. “We were strangers in Iraq, and we didn’t know the place … we expected a fairly secular society in Iraq … Yet it turned out that the radical faith – among the Sunnis as well as Shiites – rose to fill the void left by the collapse of the old despotism.”

Ajami points out that in the immediate post-war period, when we toppled Saddam, we let the victories speak for themselves and our enemies in the region were taking notice. But now (as of May 2004) “our enemies have taken our measure; they have taken stock of our national discord over the war. We shall not chase the Syrian dictator to a spider hole, nor will we sack the Iranian theocracy.”

Ajami then says, “Back in the time of confidence, we had (rightly in my view) despaired of the United Nations and its machinery and its diplomatic-speak. But we now seek a way out, and an Algerian-born envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, is the instrument of our deliverance. So we are all multilateralists now, and the envoy of a world organization entangled in its own scandal in Iraq – the oil-for-food program it administered and is now investigating – will show us the way.”

I'm not sure I agree completely here, but I do think that he is right, we are all mostly searching to get other allies involved in the process of bringing order to Iraq.

Ajami continues, “We take our victories where we can … The subdued, somber tone with which the war is now described is the beginning of wisdom. In its modern history, Iraq has not been kind or gentle to its people. Perhaps it was folly to think that it was under any obligation to be kinder to its strangers.”

I agree. Perhaps it was folly. But we, as freedom-loving people, bought in to this notion that all people could handle freedom and greet those that opened the door to freedom as liberators and friends. I think the reaction is more complicated than Ajami presents it, but certainly many people do not want us there.