Frank StaheliMoral Support for Liberty - A Lesson for Iraq?
December 13, 1981 signaled, in retrospect, the downfall of the Communist Polish government, rather than the feared failure of Solidarity and the struggle for freedom.
Janusz Reiter, Poland’s current ambassador to the United States, has this to say about that event:
The United States made the right decision. President Ronald Reagan accurately perceived that Poland offered the fulcrum needed to move things forward from the so-called Yalta pattern of a divided Europe. The United States gave the Solidarity opposition the support it needed most — moral support. By doing so the Reagan administration followed in the footsteps of President Jimmy Carter’s administration, which had listened to the advice of its national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and strongly supported earlier dissident movements.
Ambassador Reiter then says of the dissident movement in Poland:
there was never a doubt that Solidarity was a movement developed from Polish tradition and experience, and that the Poles knew what was best for their country. The United States respectfully accepted this.
Two differences immediately jump out at the way Poland and Iraq were treated by the United States.
- Moral support versus invasion and occupation
- Prior level of presence and organization of a dissident movement
If George W. Bush had used the same tack for Iraq as Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan did for Poland, would Iraq be in a better situation today? In light of recent historical events in Iraq, if America steps back militarily from Iraq, will it be possible to provide moral support for the Iraqi “dissident movement”, or is it too late?
A longer version of this post now appears at servingiraq.blogspot.com.Â
December 17th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
U.S. attempts at promoting regime change via moral support sometimes fail due to mixed messages that create false expectations of military support, for example Hungary 1956 and southern Iraq 1991. So these things have to be done very carefully. I’m sure Frank is concerned about Iran, where a new generation that doesn’t have experience living under the Shah or Ayatollah Khomeni will eventually come to power. Peaceful change can happen under the right circumstances.
Iraq has no democratic tradition whatsoever, therefore it’s a poor laboratory for experiments in western-style governance. Before the U.S. invasion, Saddam was contained and posed no threat except to his own people. He was very, very good at heading off coup attempts. It’s been said that President Bush believes there is a Jefferson or Madison hiding behind every sand dune, however in reality Iraq’s Sunnis since the Ottoman Empire have considered themselves the rightful rulers. They won’t give up without a fight. It doesn’t matter if there are Coalition forces in country or not, it’s a civil war out of our control.