It took Thomas Friedman of the New York Times less than two weeks to offer possibly the worst, if not most offensive, analogy for hurricane Katrina. Mr. Friedman’s folksy “letter” to Iraq’s Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni Leaders first quotes Michael Mandelbaum’s theory that “the U.S. military presence in Iraq today is like the dikes and levees that were protecting New Orleans from the flood”. Well, Tom, if that’s the case, then we’re one helluva leaky dike, for if levees and dikes are meant to protect human life and property, the number of dead Iraqis and the destroyed infrastructure since shock and awe began points to a somewhat less than secure barrier.
Friedman goes on to tell his Iraqi “friends” not to worry: we won’t be pulling out right away. But he wants these friends to come up with a constitution that will be fair and supported by all the parties, including the Sunnis. Then, there won’t be a civil war, we can leave, and the President Bush will live happily ever after. Tom’s warning at the end of his letter, that “if the dikes of stability that the U.S. soldiers are holding together in Iraq give way, well, you all (not y'all?) will envy the people of New Orleans,” is sure to elicit a guffaw from any Iraqi reading it. Stability? Perhaps Mr. Friedman should spend a few days outside the Green Zone.
Friedman’s patronizing tone whenever he’s writing about those troublesome Arabs who don’t know what’s good for them is bad enough; his continued defense of a misguided American mission is astonishing. The reason there isn’t an all out civil war in Iraq has nothing to do with the strength of the U.S. levee, I mean military, there. The sole reason lies with Iraq’s true supreme leader, Ayatollah al-Sistani, who has so far decided not to call his Shia followers to arms. Sistani is allowing the U.S. to do some of the dirty work: fighting foreign terrorists and the Sunni insurgency, and spending bucket-loads of dollars to rebuild the country. Both sides are bleeding, and when the U.S. does leave, the Sunnis (many of whom only want the occupiers to leave) will be weaker and the Americans will fed up enough not to return. Then, if the remaining war-minded Sunnis decide to take the battle to the Shias and the Kurds, they will be crushed by a jihad the likes of which has not been seen. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Basij forces are just itching for an invitation from their fellow Iranian, Sistani, to cross the border and settle a few scores with the Baathist and Sunni Iraqis. The zeal with which the Sunnis fight the Americans will quickly dissipate against legions of Shia martyrdom troops for whom dying on the holy soil of their Imams’ graves is the highest honor possible, and northern Sunni towns will envy Falluja after the not-so-Geneva Convention-minded Kurdish Peshmerga are finished with them.
No, Mr. Friedman, if the U.S. leaves Iraq tomorrow there won’t be a civil war because the Sunnis aren’t that stupid, and if there is, it will not be Lebanon redux. The Sunnis will quickly be defeated or quietly succumb to an Islamic Republic of Iraq, albeit at that point a client state of Iran, rather than the U.S.. (The Kurds have already demonstrated that despite being Sunni, they can get along with their Iraqi Shia brethren and their patrons in Iran.) Iraqis will then figure out how to build an Iraqi levee.