America's 'Gift' to Iraq
believe in the Iraqi project. Ryan Crocker, U. S. ambassador in Baghdad, who knows the ways of the region, said something that I truly believe in. He said, "In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be much more important than how we came."
The debate thus far has been about how we came. Bush lied, people died, there were no weapons of mass destruction. There's no connection between al-Qaeda, which is religious, and the regime of Saddam Hussein, which is secular. We spent five years and we are now in year six of this debate about the origins of the war and the rationale of the war. We are done with this. We are in Iraq.
The U.S. smashed the Sunni-Tikriti hegemony and we created the Shia-led government. We hadn't really intended to create the Shialed government. The war wasn't about this. But once you destroy the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, then of course the Shia and the Kurds were bound to come into power, because in the end, this was a Shia country in terms of numbers, with a vast Kurdish minority in the north. So the U. S. has already midwifed, if you will, this country. And here, in the middle of this unbelievably difficult landscape of the Arab world, we've installed a binational government in many ways.
Here were the Kurds -- they absolutely were the most betrayed of people. All the nations of the region, all the great powers had betrayed the Kurds. And yet there is now a decent order in Kurdistan.
For the Sunnis, Americans came and stole their country. They believed Iraq was going to be theirs forever. Whenever I'm there I remind the Iraqis that there was no way this tyranny in Iraq could be overthrown internally. Saddam's regime was a reich of a thousand years. It was decapitated in 2003, and we've been watching the pain of Iraq, the disappointments of Iraq.
I look at Iraq and ask myself, does any man own Iraq? When I go to Egypt I know I am in Hosni Mubarak's country. When I am in Jordan I know I am traveling to King Abdullah's country. Who owns Iraq? Is it Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish president? Not particularly. Is it Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a son of the Shia middle class from the middle Euphrates? Not particularly. Is it his deputy, the Kurdish Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih? Not exactly. Is it the Shia vice-president, the Sunni vice-president? So we have created this order in Iraq. And I think President Bush deserves immense credit for both launching this war with the approval of his country and the approval of the Congress, and then for doubling down and staying with this war in January, 2007, when the project was threatened.
Now the Shia, we always worry about the Shia. You know why we worry about them? Because we listen to the Sunnis too much. You have the King of Jordan saying, "There's a Shia crescent" -- stretched, he says, from Iran to Iraq to Syria and Lebanon. But there are no Shia in Syria. So the crescent breaks. But even after 9/11, and even after the attacks of al-Qaeda, which were Sunni attacks, from Sunni fundamentalists, we still believe -- we still believe, and we fear the Shia. We see them as kind of soulmates of the Iranian theocracy next door. When in truth, if you know Iraq and you know the traditions of Iraqi Shiasm, there's a big difference between Iranian Shiaism and Iraqi Shiaism. And the Arab-Persian divide is so deep and so integral to the way Iraqis think about Shiaism and about themselves.
The Kurds, for their part, that's an easier call. The Kurds love America, and are grateful for this war and are grateful for the liberty given them. They understand that there can be no Kurdish state, that America will not countenance a Kurdish state. But it will support Kurdish autonomy. So I think the Iraqi project is coming together reasonably well. And of course, Americans will vote on the Iraq war in November.
The American public will decide whether this Bush project of supporting liberty in the Islamic world is really worth it, or whether it's really kind of a fool's errand, to take liberty to strangers. Because, make no mistake about it, Bush has made this historic decision that the Arabs have the possibility of freedom in their DNA. And that's the message he has taken to them. And that's the message he has remained true to. And that's the message he will leave with on Jan. 20, 2009. This assertion that liberty can stick on Arab soil is a gift that Bush brought to the Arabs.
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