I saw a wonderful article on Global Post today that just says Iraq is a mess. Seriously. That's what their Facebook status update said about the article. "Iraq is a mess." Nothing else, nothing more. The liberal press is even losing any and all interest in a part of the world that the West has intentionally and routinely fucked up. What is the article about? Fallujah is in the hands of Islamists, and Iraqi security forces are preparing to retake it. Woo. Fucking. Hoo. That's the same story that's been coming out of Iraq since the war started. But, the narrative between liberals and conservatives is the same. One side will say "Iraq needs more security!" the other will say "Iraq needs self-government!" and sometimes they agree and sometimes they flip back and forth, but generally both sides fundamentally miss the point. What Iraq needs is to never have existed at all.
The modern state of Iraq is an amalgamation of territories formerly held by the Ottoman Empire. Various kingdoms have occupied the area and ruled from Baghdad or Mosul, but the region has always been pretty stable. Under the Ottoman Bey system local rulers were allowed to govern how they wanted so long as they paid tribute and maintained allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan. Then WWI happens, the Ottoman Empire is dissolved, the Young Turks create a Turkish Republic, and Britain gets control of "Iraq". As was a popular past time of European powers of the period, the British elevated one group of people to rule over everyone else, exacerbated inter-tribal differences, stoked the flames of religious sectarianism, and then pointed to the problems THEY created as the reason why European "enlightenment" was necessary in the region.
A hundred years on and the problems have resurfaced. Why? Because in the 1950's a part of the general post-colonial Pan-Arab movement saw the creation of the Ba'ath Party. It was nominally Pan-Arabist, but had a great deal of Socialist ideology behind it. Ba'athists came to power in Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, and the Egyptian government was sympathetic to them. What Ba'athism represented was not simply an Arabic Socialism. It was a unifying narrative that bridged the gaps between the differing ethnic and religious groups in the area. Why was it so important to Saddam Hussein to keep Islamic extremists out of the country? They represented a "solution" to the post-colonial question that would only serve to worsen the problems they were trying to solve. In this way, Western Liberalism looks a lot like Islamic Extremism. While the motivations may be different, both offer solutions that only exacerbate existing problems.
With the absolute gutting of Ba'athism (not helped by excesses and abuses of power by Ba'athist leaders), Iraq lacks a unifying narrative. They have been returned to the same position they found themselves when the British mandate was finished and Iraq gained independence following WWI. An entire century has been wasted because of Western imperial interests in the region. The Liberal solution to Iraq has always been "work with and promote groups that are sympathetic to Western Liberal Democracy". This is the same way the British administered the region. And it is having the same effect.
Western Liberalism is doing in Iraq what it is doing in post-colonial Africa--providing nothing but the same--and it is destroying the places and lives of the people the West is parasitically dependent upon. Thank you Global Post for reminding us that even liberal media outlets are ignoring these people since it doesn't bolster your beloved President-Messiah Obama.
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