Madam, - Charles Krauthammer's columns have attracted a lot of criticism in this newspaper, some of it from me. However, I have always preferred him to his predecessor, Mark "Kill them all" Steyn. Last Monday's column by Mr Krauthammer was one of the most honest and sober appraisals of the situation in Iraq yet penned by a neo-conservative commentator ("A partitioned Iraq better than the mess it is in now", Opinion, September 10th).
Recently this paper also carried Michael Ignatieff's own mea culpa for supporting the Iraq war, in which he lamented the lack in Washington of that "sense of reality" which prevented wars and ideological campaigns conducted on the basis of dogmatic certainty. Well, reality has bitten Charles Krauthammer at last.
Gone are the fanciful notions of 2003, when a democratic Iraq was going to lead to democratic regimes across the Middle East, when Iraq was going to be a strong, stable ally of the US, taking pressure off Israel and dealing Islamic terrorism a fatal blow. "Victory" has been abandoned, and the result of the war will be a fractured Iraq in some sort of equilibrium, peaceful but weak, like a larger Lebanon.
In fact, by calling this "not the best outcome", Mr Krauthammer is admitting almost total failure of the US effort in Iraq, with the ending of the Saddam Hussein regime as the only silver lining. He does not discuss whether or not the overthrow of that regime was worth hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. Indeed, he cannot help embellishing the effects of the "surge" strategy. In fact, ordinary Iraqis see no change according to a BBC/ABC poll, and the flight of refugees has continued unabated.
Mr Krauthammer believes his own realistic appraisal of a de facto partitioned Iraq is not generally shared around Washington. This is a great pity, because swift action now might bring a quicker withdrawal of US troops.
It seems there will still be a lot of death and destruction before a sense of the realities of power returns to the White House, hopefully with the successor to the abysmal George W. Bush. - Yours, etc,
TOBY JOYCE,
Balreask Manor,
Navan,
Co Meath.
Madam, - When Charles Krauthammer quotes from Caesar to propose that Iraq be partitioned, he confirms the perception of the war in Iraq as an imperialistic venture (or misadventure).
Even worse is his attempt to exonerate the US for the civil conflict it has provoked in Iraq, saying: "The US tried to give the Iraqis a republic, but their leaders turned out to be too driven by sectarian sentiments." What arrogance! After all, a republic is a "res publica", a thing of the people, not a thing of the empire, "Imperium Americanum".
The constitution imposed on the Iraqis by the occupying power was and is a recipe for ethnic and sectarian conflict, as Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies wrote in March 2004: "The Constitution calls for a federal system of government, in which. . . the sectors are almost certain to be determined by Iraqis' ethnic and religious identity. . . A system based on ethnic or religious sectoral interests is inherently unstable, in most cases giving minority and majority populations too little or too much power, and undermining national identity as Iraqis."
Also, by banning high-ranking members of the Ba'ath Party from standing for office, the forces of occupation excluded the most powerful force for secularism from peaceful political dialogue in parliament. Among those banned were competent civil servants, army officers and even teachers, who might have helped to create a new, united, secular and stable Iraq.
We cannot now blame the Iraqis for the violent ethnic and sectarian conflict that has emerged under the political conditions imposed on them.
Krauthammer explicitly expresses the needs of the empire in comments such as this: "Nonetheless, the US needs some central government." Since Krauthammer's views reflect American interests, his analysis is of more use in outlining the problem than in finding solutions that serve the people of Iraq.
In contrast, the board of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research has recently drafted a 10-point plan for peace in Iraq. The board includes Hans-Christof von Sponeck, a former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq.
The plan can be found on the internet under the title: "Towards Peace In and With Iraq: A Constructive Proposal from The Transnational Foundation". - Yours, etc,
Dr COILÍN ÓhAISEADHA,
Bóthar Inse Chór,
Cill Mhaighneann,
Baile Átha Cliath 8.