An Important Milestone in the Iraq War
Today marks the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraqi urban areas, the result of a deadline contained in the Status of Forces Agreement (SoFA) that the Bush administration negotiated and the Obama administration embraced. It is a milestone on the road to Iraqi sovereignty and a useful moment, I think, to consider three widespread — and to some extent inter-related — arguments that were made about Iraq in recent years.
The first is that the difficulties in Iraq proved that the underlying theory behind President Bush’s “Freedom Agenda” was wrong. It was said that the effort to promote liberty in the Arab world was a fool’s errand; the cultural soil was too hard and forbidding. There is no existing undemocratic culture that will allow liberty to succeed. Some peoples and cultures are destined for despotism and unsuited for self-government. Tribal and sectarian allegiances are much stronger than national identity, especially in an artificial state like Iraq. Elections merely deepened sectarian ties and b