Pelosi , Iraq, Fantasy and "Neo-Dems".

Nancy Pelosi, representing the San Francisco [Califonia 8th District] in the US House of Representatives, and new Speaker of the House, repeats the mantra that Iraq needs " regional diplomacy". And "military re-deployment". And the Baker Report is similarly uncritical. Great, provided several other things could be taken for granted, or at least readily commanded. But can they ? And are "regional diplomacy" and "military re-deployment" any more than code for slow retreat, but under a thick smoke-screen ?

Is each player - be it outside or within Iraq - [a] playing by the same rules, [b] playing by any rules, or [c] committed to the same objectives, or [d] able to deliver ? Can Nancy be serious ?
And is Iraq even worth preserving ? And at what cost ? And can it really be preserved at any cost ? And does Iran not want continuing chaos in Iraq, with the US bogged down, and unable to tackle the emerging Iranian nuclear threat ?

To take the question of whether Iraq is worth preserving, lets remember Iraq is purely an invention of British Colonial Administrators after World War I. Nothing more. Three separate Provinces of the pre-1917 Turkish Ottoman Empire were cobbled together as a centralized, UK-run entity, with no unity or shared history or identity. And they never developed any coherence since then. Two Provinces [Mosul in the North, and Baghdad in the Center] were predominantly Sunni Muslim, but ethnically and culturally divided, with either Kurdish or Arab influence predominant, while the two Arab Provinces [Baghad, and Basra in the South] were religiously divided, with Basra Province predominantly Shia Muslim. And the Sunni minority dominance over the Shia majority under the Ottoman regime still continued - until Saddam was toppled.

The post-Ottoman Iraqi state saw ongoing Kurdish unrest, and no development of either democracy or "civil society". The 2003 liberation from the Saddam tyranny by the Coalition Forces was unlike the 1945 situation in Germany, which was ethnically and culturally united, and had some experience of both democracy, and "civil society", on which to construct a post-war constitutional democracy.

Further, there is no model of a successful Arab democracy, and the whole dynamic of "freedom" in Arab rhetoric and politics has been, and remains, mainly negative, "freedom from" [in Isaiah Berlin's phrase], about xenophobia, and anti-Western movements, not "freedom for" individuals and parties and speech and civil society. The Islamic cultural and educational heritage is also not exactly conducive to such values. Nor is the predominant Islamic attitude to women.

Bearing in mind that Western Democracy was a centuries-long and uneven growth, and with deep foundations in the Hebraic and Greek Civilizations, the very idea of "instant democracy" is naive in the extreme. That is not to suggest that some peoples are incapable of self-rule, but that it must be a quite slow, and organic process. The gradual evolution of Morocco, and the emergence of recent reforms there, suggests that "revolutionary democratization" is neither necessary, nor possible.

What is most worrying about Pelosi-ism is that it reverts [but in a covert and incoherent manner] to a sick era in US Foreign Policy. There have been, and are, many streams in US academic/diplomatic thinking and in popular/media sentiment, regarding its role in the world.

There is [a] the Machiavellian Ruthless, Cynical Realism embodied by Kissinger and Nixon, and now re-emerging as Bakerism. There is [b] Isolationalism, still alive and well, and beating in some Democratic as well as conservative breasts. There are also elements of [c] Neutralism, [d] Pacifism, [e] hard-left "anti-Imperialism", [f] "multi-culturalist" relativism, [g] Multi-lateralist Proceduralism, as well as [h] Principled Internationalist Interventionism. That robust but idealistic Trend h, the "liberal hawks", is really the Democrats inheritance, that of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman and JFK, with pre-Reagan Republicans historically being tarnished with a and b.

The successful confrontation with the Kremlin under Reagan saw a former Democrat, and Trade Union President [ like myself] turning the Republicans into the "neo-dems". A political reverse take-over. The mis-described "neo-cons" are really "neo-dems", like Reagan himself, both in origin and outlook, and like those FDNY firefighters who instinctively abandoned their historic blue-collar Democrat allegiance when they [quite rightly] perceived that party as radically abandoning them, their values, and their security. Bush and Rumsfeld may have been criminally incompetent in implementing the neo-dem strategy in Iraq, but he [unlike James Baker, or Colin Powell] is a true radical, not a con or neo-con. As was Reagan.

That same kind of historic shift saw Thatcher in the UK gain the support of the skilled craftsmen, the electricians, plumbers, etc, when British Labor was captured by their hard-left, by "Tony" Benn [originally Lord Anthony Wedgwood-Benn !! ], George Galloway, Jeremy Corbyn 19th Century Class-Warrior types. Such elements in eg France or Italy are in the Communist Party, or in Trotskyite fringes. It took a long battle, by Neil Kinnock, John Smith and finally Tony Blair, to recapture their Party, and re-position it firmly in the center.

Ironically, the ascendant "left" Dems like Nancy Pelosi, or Cindy Sheehan, or John Kerry or Howard Dean, who ignore that British lesson, are a confused mixture of all 7 [a to g] reactionary trends listed above, with their de-selection of Senator Joe Lieberman indicating how far they have shifted from their own party heritage. Scoop Jackson, like Wilson, FDR, Truman or JFK, would not belong either.

And the "liberal social agenda" of the Left Dems confined their appeal and base to the Coastal Elite. Just as the broad appeal of Tony Blair's New Labor confined his Tory opponents to the English SE. The November 2006 elections saw many emerge like Senator Jim Webb [decorated ex-USMC Capt and Vietnam veteran ] in Virginia - that was the real significant story, the emerging re-capture of the Dems by their own true historic spirit. The sad spectacle of the first female House Speaker being utterly blind to the coming burial of Howard Dean by Jim Webb, suggests that the return of the Dems to their own roots may be slow, if not abortive, but equally, the battle for the soul of the Republcians may be long and inconclusive. But perhaps the next President, Senator Hilary McCain, will prove to be another neo-dem, but hopefully a less incompetent one. And a less fiscally flawed one. The world beyond the Beltway, not to mention beyond Foggy Bottom, depends on the outcome.

And the last people to grasp the deep shifting sands in the US will be, as in UK, the trendy Media/Cultural/Academic Elite who, in each country, nearly destroyed the historic party of social reform, for the sake of their fashionable, rigid, superficial ideology. But US Dems may not produce a Tony Blair in time to regain their place in the sun. Remember that old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times". And rember the systematic betrayal of democratic values by the inter-war appeasers of the European "Intelligentia" who fawned on Stalin, or ignored Hitler, until it was too late. You are either with the Firefighter, or the Arsonist, with the Drug Squad, or the Drug Gang, the Bomb Squad, or the Suicide-bomber. And life, politically as well as personally, often allows us only the choice of the lesser of two evils. We have been warned.