What We Owe Iraq

Selected reviews of What We Owe Iraq are featured below:

The Washington Post

Sunday, November 21, 2004
Many Americans don't understand what they're currently up against. Al Qaeda has often been depicted as the superpower of terrorist and jihadist networks, commanding the allegiance of jihadist groups throughout the world and influencing global terrorist operations through a steady flow of money and recruits. In fact, al Qaeda has become a relatively small operational component of a violent, global movement bent on waging holy war.

This jihadist movement, at the risk of oversimplification, can best be described as four concentric circles. The inner circle consists of the core of the al Qaeda organization, which now largely serves a symbolic, spiritual and ideological role in the greater jihadist movement. The second circle consists of active members and devotees of numerous jihadist groups that are often called "al Qaeda-related." The denizens of the second circle tend to be even more radical and dangerous than their inner-circle colleagues. The third circle consists of those who believe in the jihadist cause or identify with parts of its ideology; they may provide moral support, and some might offer a jihadist group logistical or financial help. The outer circle is the wider Islamic world. While the core of the jihadist movement consists of devoted terrorists, they depend on the less ideologically hardened "outer" circles of sympathizers, which the inner core targets for recruitment and fundraising efforts.

The jihadist threat is uniquely dangerous because it has become simultaneously more decentralized and more radical since Sept. 11. Never before have we faced a threat whose leaders enjoy so much financial and operational independence. Nor have we ever faced a threat whose "membership" can fluctuate daily and whose recruitment rate increases as the United States stages large-scale military and intelligence operations to eliminate them.

Americans also often don't quite grasp how dangerous the Iraq misadventure is. One key to the overall U.S. response to the jihadist threat is understanding how U.S. actions affecting one of these four concentric circles affects the others. Supporting a democratically illegitimate government in Iraq or conducting counterinsurgency operations there that kill significant numbers of civilians may eliminate many al Qaeda members -- but also generate sympathy for al Qaeda and jihadists throughout the Muslim world. That could draw members from the outer circles to the inner ones, giving terrorist operatives better logistical resources, fresh recruits and more money. The lines between the outer and inner circles are also the frontlines of the war of ideas, and the United States needs to pay close attention to how its actions affect the movement among them.

The hard reality is that the U.S. presence in Iraq makes it extraordinarily difficult for Washington to contribute successfully to the battle of ideas within the Islamic world. We are also clearly losing that same battle within Iraq. Popular support for the Iraqi insurgency is increasing not only inside Iraq, but also in the greater Arab world. As the United States fiercely fights insurgents in Iraq's Sunni triangle, it is missing the forest for the trees -- winning tactical victories in Iraq while rapidly losing the global war of ideas.

Noah Feldman, a law professor at New York University and a former senior constitutional adviser to the Coalitional Provisional Authority (CPA), provides a cogent analysis of U.S. efforts in Iraq in What We Owe Iraq. Feldman details the behind-the-scenes power politics of the U.S. occupation and delivers a persuasive appeal for a more grassroots approach to nation building -- that is, an approach seen by most Iraqis as legitimized by local input. He argues that nation-building can be an effective long-term strategy to fight terrorism if its purpose is to create stable democracies. Feldman surmises, correctly, that terrorism festers not only in weak states but also in strong but undemocratic ones such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Feldman's approach offers preventive medicine against insurgency and terrorism as well as a practical strategy for a longer-term global war of ideas. He recognizes that nation-building efforts stained by what is seen as illegitimate governance will be counterproductive. Every day that force is exercised "illegitimately" means many more days spent fighting to gain the ethical high ground. This is not a defeatist's calculus; it's an acknowledgment that successful nation-building requires the consent of the governed. Furthermore, it recommends a strategy that seeks to reduce anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Some may criticize this strategy, arguing that nation-building and the global war on terrorism are too important to be bounded by complaints from Muslim nations. The reality, however, is that the global jihadist movement feeds on the fruits of popular anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism and perceived oppression at the hand of illegitimate governments backed by Washington.

Unfortunately, the nation-building effort Feldman describes in Iraq has not made it a priority to win hearts and minds. He details the absence of any overall plan, coupled with the "shamefully, shockingly low" number of Americans in the CPA who spoke Arabic. He portrays a military whose operations in Fallujah alienated Sunnis who lost relatives in the fighting, had their homes invaded by American soldiers and were searched at daily checkpoints.

Feldman also describes the United States' biggest blunder in the nation-building effort: the failure to send enough troops to ensure public security after the invasion. He argues that the resultant chaos forced citizens to find safety within traditional religious groupings, which in turn provided the initial fodder for the current prolonged insurgency. Feldman's book is insightful, accessible and highly recommended for policymakers and readers interested in understanding the opportunities and hazards that will confront America as the world's foremost nation-builder. -- Richard Clarke

The New York Times

Sunday, November 14, 2004
In the spring of 2003 the Bush administration sent Noah Feldman to Iraq to advise American occupation authorities and the Iraqis on constitution making. The choice was remarkably apt, for Feldman possessed a rare blend of talents. A young and respected professor of constitutional law at New York University, he spoke and read Arabic fluently and held a doctorate in Islamic studies. Nor was his the normal Bush appointee's resume. A self-described liberal Democrat, Feldman had clerked for Associate Justice David Souter and litigated for Al Gore in the Florida ballot melee in 2000.

Feldman's most important quality, however, may have been his deep belief in the compatibility of Islam and democracy. He belongs to a small but growing movement among scholars of Islam, a group diverse enough to include Gilles Kepel of France and Reuel Marc Gerecht of the United States, that believes the real promise of democracy lies with devout Muslims. In Feldman's first book, "After Jihad," published just before he left for Iraq, he argued that the desire for democracy is widespread among Muslim believers, much more than the desire for violent jihad, and that Islamists should therefore be given a chance to rule.

Scholars don't often get to test their theories in the field. Feldman did in Iraq. As a constitutional adviser, Feldman helped shape Iraq's Transitional Administrative Law, the interim constitution and political road map for the country's transition from occupied territory to sovereign, democratic nation. "What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building" is a product of that experience. The book, like its author, is an unusual blend: part theoretical treatise, part political analysis, part memoir. Above all, it is a plea to the American conscience to take seriously the responsibility the United States has assumed to help the Iraqi people build the democracy Feldman believes they need and deserve.

When the United States invaded Iraq, Feldman argues, it did more than topple a tyrant. It undertook a "trusteeship" on behalf of the Iraqi people. Aware of "the legacy of paternalism . . . inherited from the ideology of empire," Feldman argues that the nation-building task can be "salvaged ethically only if it is stripped down to the modest proposition that the nation builder exercises temporary political authority as trustee on behalf of the people being governed." Readers unfamiliar with the style of academic discourse Feldman often employs in this book may wish to remain so. But the core of his thesis is powerful and important.

And it's not only the Iraqis who have an interest in Iraqi democracy, Feldman says. The United States and Europe have for too long erred both morally and strategically in supporting authoritarian governments in the Arab world. In Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, Islamist terrorists "have long been motivated by their grievances against the authoritarian states in which they live." Feldman points out that it was a "cadre of Egyptian Islamist terrorists, defeated and thus displaced from their traditional battle against the Egyptian state in the 1990's," who "joined forces with Osama bin Laden to create Al Qaeda." The answer to the threat of Islamic terrorism, he says, is to engage in nation-building "aimed at creating democratically legitimate states that would treat their citizens with dignity and respect."

While many argue that the Iraqis are not ready for democracy, Feldman insists it is the only system that can work. Without exaggerating what elections can accomplish, he makes a practical point often overlooked by skeptics. The diverse complexion of Iraqi society, he observes, means that no single group has the power to impose peace and stability. In order to succeed, an Iraqi government must be accepted as roughly legitimate by a broad cross section of Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis. But how can American officials or any outsiders, or even any Iraqi, know what the people will consider legitimate without asking them? Democracy, Feldman writes, is "not merely the best political arrangement," it is "the only option other than chaos." It helps that Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani appears to be the kind of Muslim leader Feldman is counting on: a Shiite cleric who by word and deed has so far proven himself sincerely committed to democracy. One gets the sense that Feldman and Sistani were tacit allies in pushing for an Iraqi state that can be both Islamic and free.

Feldman writes little about his own work in Iraq, and readers will be left wanting more. Probably he did not wish to violate the confidences of the Americans and Iraqis with whom he worked. He is the un-Richard Clarke, a public servant with an ethical compass. Still, there is no mistaking his disappointment with some of the Bush administration's failures in Iraq.

The most tragic was the failure in the early days after the invasion to fulfill the "first duty" of an occupying power: providing basic security. Much has been made of the looting that occurred immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, but Feldman notes the essential point: by allowing the looting to proceed, American forces sent a clear message "that the United States was not in charge, and that no one else was, either." Iraqis had to seek security for themselves in what was for a time a state of anarchy, and it was hardly surprising that they turned to their own kind for protection. Feldman says that it was not "ancient" ethnic and religious differences that empowered armed militias, but the human instinct for survival. "Had there been half a million U.S. troops on the ground," he insists, "it is highly likely that there would have been little looting, no comparable sense of insecurity and therefore a reduced need for denominational identities to become as dominant as they quickly did."

The United States failed the Iraqi people again, he writes, when, in the winter and spring of 2004, it did not take the necessary steps to put down the growing insurgency. Although Feldman does not say so, much of the blame for this moral and strategic failure must fall on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whose responsibility it was to have enough forces on the ground -- not only for war fighting but also for the nation-building that followed. America's efforts in Iraq have never fully recovered from this monumental error.

Despite this and other American mistakes, however, Feldman believes success is still possible -- but only if the American people understand and make good on the moral obligation they have incurred. He worries that the next administration will be looking for exits, and that "no one is asking what obligations we might have to the Iraqis whose government we deposed and whose country we occupied." And by "we," Feldman writes, he really means "you, the reader . . . no matter your views on war and reconstruction in Iraq or elsewhere." As American citizens, Feldman insists, we are all responsible for what happens in Iraq.