The Mustache of Misunderstanding

One of the more irksome qualities of Tom Friedman's writing is his earnest statements of the obvious that this Mustache never applies to any sort of larger Understanding.

Friedman opens today's column thus:

One of the most troubling lessons of the Iraq invasion is just how empty the Arab dictatorships are. Once you break the palace, by ousting the dictator, the elevator goes straight to the mosque. There is nothing in between — no civil society, no real labor unions, no real human rights groups, no real parliaments or press. So it is not surprising to see the sort of clerical leadership that has emerged in both the Sunni and Shiite areas of Iraq.

Now, the first obvious point is that this shouldn't come as a news flash for this friend of cabbies everywhere known to sidewalk idlers traversing the length and breadth of the Arab Street. Surely Mr. Friedman thought such an obvious point relevant before now? Might such conclusions even have caused this Mustache to re-evaluate his Understanding of the chances for success in Iraq?

Unfortunately Mr. Friedman can count, but he can't add.

One could unwind the tangled skeins of Friedman's banal gee-wiz pensees until the cows come home. Short work, really. But our focus today shall be one glaring bit of horse puckey in the aforementioned opening graf. Here's the offending sentence again:

There is nothing in between — no civil society, no real labor unions, no real human rights groups, no real parliaments or press.

Really? One of the reasons the "elevator goes straight to the mosque" is that Iraq has no institutions of civil society - such as labor unions? Funny he should mention that. I wonder if there's any special reason Iraq doesn't have strong unions?

From a 2005 Washington Monthly article by Matthew Harwood:

But from the time the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) took possession of Iraq, the Americans running the country not only declined to engage the labor movement in the process of building a nation, but also worked actively to undermine labor's ability to play a constructive role.

First, during his tenure, CPA chief L. Paul Bremer repealed virtually the whole Iraqi legal structure with his so-called 100 Orders. He did not, however, repeal Saddam's 1987 Labor Code, which forfeited the right of public sector workers to bargain collectively. That decision, though deeply foolish for purposes of nation-building, made perfect sense to the movement ideologues staffing the U.S. occupation. Much of the CPA's effort in Baghdad was devoted to helping create a conservative's ideal state, complete with a 15 percent flat tax on individual and corporate income. Bremer's crew was so zealous that they tried, in September 2003, to privatize virtually the whole economy--200 state-owned firms. Legalizing labor unions would not have been helpful, to say the least, to these privatization plans. As Bjorn Brandtzaeg, a former CPA team leader for trade and industry, wrote in the Financial Times, "Instead of focusing on restarting the main industrial complexes as soon as possible after the end of hostilities, a team of ideologically motivated CPA officials with close ties to the US administration pursued a narrow privatization strategy. The result…[s]everal hundred thousand people remained out of work."

What the Mustache doesn't quite Understand (nor does he seem to recall or even have read), is that these "lookee here!" bits of flotsam Friedman believes have just washed ashore are instead durable realities constructed with intent. Friedman holds up these shiny objects for our inspection, but unlike Friedman, those of us who have actually read the news over the years have seen it all before and know its source.

And we can both count and add.

Continuing:

What's especially maddening about the U.S. government's attitude towards the IFTU [Iraq's largest trade union] is that organized labor has repeatedly played a vital stabilizing and democratizing role in situations that, in some cases, come close to that which Iraq finds itself in today. In Poland, Solidarity quickly evolved from a labor crusade into a social movement that peacefully brought down the communist regime and, once in power, established a system of regular, free elections. The trade-union movement in Brazil had a similar effect, helping to end 21 years of oppressive military rule and usher in 15 years of representative government. But perhaps the most significant precursor comes from South Africa. There, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) not only agitated for the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, but, as the apartheid government was losing power, helped keep the country from splintering along racial and tribal lines. "Labor organizations are based on social class identity and as a result cut across divisions of tribe and culture so that you'll find Zulu and Xhosa workers of COSATU," said Professor Mike Bratton of Michigan State University. "In that sense, COSATU is one of the major organizations that helps build a sense of national, non-tribal identity." Instructively, all of these countries have remained democracies: According to Freedom House's annual survey, each country is ranked "free" in its commitment to both political rights and civil liberties.

Groups like the IFTU, then, are precisely what Iraq needs to make a successful transition to stable self-government. Iraqi political leaders seem to understand this. In January 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council recognized the IFTU as "the legitimate and legal representatives of the labor movement in Iraq." America's allies in Iraq also seem to get it. By March of that year, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, speaking before the House of Commons, named the IFTU as the legitimate representative of Iraq's labor movement, England's union partner in the rebuilding of the war-tattered nation.

Well shoot. Too bad we just discovered that the country we went in to smash had no alternative social structures beyond its radical clerisy? Too bad we found out too late that there aren't any labor unions to buttress a fledgling citizenry after three decades of autocratic rule!

Too bad the Mustache lives in a Mystery Spot of his mind.

Getting The Stories Straight

Minister mentioned this in the comments, but L. Paul Bremer is refusing to be the fall guy for George Bush's massive incompetence, producing documentary evidence that the President knew all about the disbanding of the Iraqi Army.

"We must make it clear to everyone that we mean business: that Saddam and the Baathists are finished,” Mr. Bremer wrote in a letter that was drafted on May 20, 2003, and sent to the president on May 22 through Donald H. Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense.

After recounting American efforts to remove members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein from civilian agencies, Mr. Bremer told Mr. Bush that he would “parallel this step with an even more robust measure” to dismantle the Iraq military.

One day later, Mr. Bush wrote back a short thank you letter. “Your leadership is apparent,” the president wrote. “You have quickly made a positive and significant impact. You have my full support and confidence.”

It strained credulity that Bremer, who is no saint, just made that decision on his own. He was in Iraq for just weeks at the time that he made the order, and was getting most of his information from Rummy and the Pentagon.

This is a case of everybody trying to blame everybody else for the purposes of keeping their lagacy intact. Hey, I've got news for you guys: NONE OF YOU are going to come out of this looking good. In fact, the only way it'll go without mobs carrying torches chasing you everywhere you go is by acknowledging your mistakes.

Preznit Gotta Book Cummin Out

I think I have to elaborate on the nutty Bush biography coming out this week and the quotes released to the press over the weekend, although Vernon Lee did a fine job with it in her own right. The whole thing is pretty surreal, from the boasting that his main goal after his term ends is to make a lot of money giving speeches, to the "fantastic Freedom Institute" (you know, the FFI) that he's totally going to build (right around the time that Jonah Goldberg finishes Liberal Fascism, I'm thinking), and on and on. But a couple things leaped out at me. First, the fact that he can't remember why the Iraqi Army disbanded. In the film "No End In Sight" it was revealed even further what a massive error this was. Not only did Paul Bremer toss 100,000 heavily armed men out onto the streets with no job prospects, but behind the scenes top CPA officials were actually making the contacts necessary to reform the Army within a matter of weeks. There could have been a ready-made security force in place that at least would have been an improvement over starting from scratch. And yet ideology trumped reason and Bremer disbanded it. And Bush doesn't know why.

"The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Bush told biographer Robert Draper in excerpts published in Sunday's New York Times.

Draper pressed Bush to explain why, if he wanted to maintain the army, his chief administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, issued an order in May 2003 disbanding the 400,000-strong army without pay.

"Yeah, I can't remember; I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?' " Bush said, adding: "Again, Hadley's got notes on all this stuff" -- a reference to national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley.

What a strong, resolute leader this guy is, huh? That's the great fiction of the Bush Administration - he's actually clearly the delegate-in-chief, as much of a figurehead as Queen Elizabeth, strutting around in flight suits and cowboy boots and different Village People outfits while ideologues run the country into the ground.

The other part that knocks me over, which Vernon Lee actually summed up well, is the part where Bush admits that his goal is to force his successor to stay in Iraq longer.

Bush says the goal of his Iraq strategy is to play it out until “October-November.” That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: “To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence,” and, he said later, “stay longer.”

So success in Iraq is now measured by a constant military presence. And furthermore, let's view his upcoming policy decisions with this in mind. It seems that the goal would then be to make Iraq MORE dependent on US military support, so that leaving would set off the tragic chain of events that Bush clearly WANTS set off, so that Republicans can blame the outcome on Democrats. Bush, or rather Bush's team, is setting a mousetrap. The lives of millions of Iraqis are the bait.