From The Mailbox

A Bad Plan Is Better Than None At All?
This article came in from Walk-Off HBP.
You sort of wonder about commitments to Iraq when Americans, even if they're only journalists, start saying that maybe Saddam Hussein should be brought back to control Iraq?

At the outset of the war, I had no high hopes for Iraqi democracy, but I paid no attention to the possibility that the Iraqis would end up with a worse government than the one they had. It turns out, however, that there is something more awful than totalitarianism, and that is endless chaos and civil war.

Nobody seems to foresee the possibility of restoring order to Iraq. Here is the basic dilemma: The government is run by Shiites, and the security agencies have been overrun by militias and death squads. The government is strong enough to terrorize the Sunnis into rebellion but not strong enough to crush this rebellion.

Meanwhile, we have admirably directed our efforts into training a professional and nonsectarian Iraqi police force and encouraging reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites. But we haven't succeeded. We may be strong enough to stop large-scale warfare or genocide, but we're not strong enough to stop pervasive chaos.

Hussein, however, has a proven record in that department. It may well be possible to reconstitute the Iraqi army and state bureaucracy we disbanded, and if so, that may be the only force capable of imposing order in Iraq.

Chaos and order each have a powerful self-sustaining logic. When people perceive a lack of order, they act in ways that further the disorder. If a Sunni believes that he is in danger of being killed by Shiites, he will throw his support to Sunni insurgents who he sees as the only force that can protect him. The Sunni insurgents, in turn, will scare Shiites into supporting their own anti-Sunni militias.

Everybody's (well, mine anyway) favorite political scientist Niccolo Machiavelli said that all forms of government have their failings, whether it be Principailities or Republics or Oligarchies. There are good and bad things about each of them. The most important attirbute of good government however is not what form it takes but what fruits it provides. That is to say a stable government that provides stability for its citizens is a superior government to one which cannot secure such stability.
To put it bluntly, a stable Principality is preferable to a weak, chaotic Republic/Democracy, any day of the week.

It seems counter to the present day ideological position of the First World to say so when most of us go around mouthing the benefits of Democracy (and there are many of those). However it seems in this instance of Iraq, we are seeing a scenario whereby a stable dictatorship is looking far more attractive than a chaotic fledgeling democracy. This is no accident, as the works of Machiavelli tell us. While he didn't have all the answers to all the problems, Old Nic-Mac certainly provides with valuable tools to understand the nature of our crisis. The question is, would we be willing to back another strong man dictator in Iraq in order to let ourselves out of this mess?

Before we throw 'The Prince' back at his face, we should keep in mind that Machiavelli himself favored the Republic the most, for he felt that a stable Republic was one which was capable of providing more utility to more of its citizens than any other type of government - but I digress.

The issue comes down to whether we support a strong man in Iraq to put a lid on all this sectarian violence, as Saddam Hussein once managed, or do we commit to our ideological position and wait until the Iraqis learn how to run a democratc state without killing each other? Can we begin to analyse this problem from purely a point of utility? Or do we cite ethics, in which case who's ethical system is actually equipped to deal with this mess?

What will/can our consciences stomach? My guess is not much, and so we'll be committing to the fledgeling Democracy because it makes us feel better about the mess we have made in Iraq, rather than the ugly but effective solution of backing a strong man dictator.

In case you haven't noticed, the carriage of state power is an ugly business.