Redstate

By streiff Posted in War — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Much of the post-Iraq elections coverage has been devoted to turning a stunning victory for the Iraqi people into a stunning defeat for the administration.

There are two schools of election-results-equals-defeat. The first, most ably represented by Larry Kaplan in the New Republic, The Tragic End to a Liberal Iraq objects, in its main, to the Iraqis choosing a government that represents their religious and cultural traditions. According to this school, the success of the United Iraqi Alliance, the slate of candidates tacitly endorsed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani means hopes for a liberal, secular Iraq have been dashed and therefore the elections were a defeat for the Bush administration.

The second school of thought is best represented by the Washington Post’s Robin Wright channeling for the omnipresent Juan Cole. According to this school of thought the Shi’a are in the pocket of Iran and therefore it is now Iran who is calling the tune in Iraq. Needless to say, this means the elections were a huge defeat for the Bush Administration.

Read on.

The jury is clearly out on the extent to which Kaplan’s fears will be realized. An Iranian-style mullahocracy seems increasingly unlikely and the underlying thesis smacks of both ethnocentrism and of a belated attempt to move the goalposts. RedState’s own Pejman Yousefzadeh puts at least a 20-penny nail into that theory today. However, it, at least, is an item for debate.

The Iran-in-charge meme merits consideration only for the reason of batting it down. It is based on three mutually supporting pillars: 1) there is no sense of Iraqi identity or nationalism, 2) that all Shi’a are the same, and 3) that those members of the anti-Saddam resistance who based themselves in Iran are more loyal to Iran than to Iraq or even to themselves.

Iraqi nationalism is a real force. During the Iran-Iraq War Iraqi Shi’a did not defect to the Iranian cause. Had they done so the war would have quickly ended. In fact, the most brutal fighting took place near Basra on the al-Faw peninsula. Sources as varied as al-Jazeera, the WaPo’s Jim Hoagland, and the New York Times all agreed last year that Iraqi nationalism would be the graveyard of the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy and that it was a driving force in the insurgency.

Iran’s insistence that the new Iraqi government pay reparations for the Iran-Iraq War does not seem like the actions of a nation anticipating a pliant puppet state on its border.

All Shi’a are not the same. Much has been written by many more conversant than I on Islam in the different political philosophy embodied by Sistani and that represented by Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini, the long term rivalry between Qom and Najaf-Karbala as the seat of Shi’ism.

But rather than engage in a theoretical discussion, the recent history of Iraq proves pretty conclusively that Iraqi nationalism trumps religious identity. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq War Iraqi Shi’a constituted the overwhelmingly majority of the Iraqi Army. That army stayed in the field under brutal conditions and resisted a very active Iranian propaganda campaign that encouraged defection. The Iranians attempted to foment insurrection in the Shi’a south, to no avail. Had religious affiliation triumphed 60% of Iraq would have gone over to the Iranians bringing the war to a quick close.

The final claim is that because many of the Shi’a opposition movements were headquartered in Iran during the Saddam regime, these parties are actually fronts for the interests of Tehran. There is no doubt that many of the significant figures in the present and future government of Iraq were sheltered by Iran. To get from this indisputable fact to the assertion that the elections were a victory for Iran requires one to believe that receiving shelter in Iran equates to loyalty to Iran.

There is no evidence to indicate this. Given the long standing antipathy of Arabs, in general, and Iraqis, in particular, towards Persians it is difficult to imagine a scenario where Iraqis would subordinate their own national interests to those of Iran, just as one would not expect them to toady to the United States.

Even were some of the Iraqi parties merely Iranian pawns it is less than conclusive that this makes much difference. The United Iraqi Alliance substantially underperformed in the January 30 elections with 48.2% of the vote (major kudos to Patrick Ruffini), though under the weighting formula this results in the UIA being awarded 140 of 275 seats. These 140 seats will be apportioned among the parties that comprise the UIA, by no means a homogenous group.

It is even more difficult to imagine the leaders of the 21 or so component parties of the United Iraqi Alliance giving up a chance at real power to be Iranian puppets. One only has to look at deGaulle, Franco, and Bernadotte for examples ungrateful clients who betrayed their patrons.

There will, to be sure, many hurdles to clear as the new constitution is written, submitted to a plebiscite, and ratified. In light of the facts, however, it would seem that fears over Iranian domination are very overblown.