regime change

The elections just concluded have changed the American political landscape. For someone involved in peacemaking the big news is that the elections are being seen by everyone, in retrospect, as a referendum on the Iraq war. Donald Rumsfeld has resigned, indicating that the administration understands the vote count in that way. The President is now a lame duck with a hostile legislative branch. That is quite a change in two days.

What does it all mean for issues of war and peace?

Being the opposition party allows one to complain and cast aspersions on the character of those one opposes. What happens when the opposition suddenly becomes the majority and has to govern? Speaker to be Pelosi ran against the war, but never did offer a plan for ending it. What is the right thing to do in a situation like this? The United States military destroyed Iraq's ability to police itself, let alone defend itself from attack. If we were to simply leave now the incipient civil war and the adventurism of neighboring countries would have free reign. Those areas of Iraq with strong ethnic majorities would seek to create their own states. All that prevents those things now is the US military presence.

The question remains whether the US should be the decisionmaker in this case. That area of the world has been a rough place for millennia. Empires have come and gone. Tribal warfare has continued through all that time. The US invasion is little more than a blip on a very long chart, and that chart only includes the idea of democracy in the last couple of years, scarcely noticeable on the chart. The US military is playing the role of a guest in the country now that there is a democratically elected government.

The basic question is whether there ought to be an Iraq. It is a recent invention, and one that was never accepted by all its citizens. If it is US policy to maintain the territorial integrity of Iraq, we will be there for a long time. If we are comfortable with the Balkanization of Iraq, we can leave. It will be interesting to see how America's new rulers choose between those two.