‘I WAS WRONG’

To compound the gravity of the various situations we are led into by our political leaders there seems to be a short-circuit in their brains which prevents them recognising their bad decisions and being able to utter those three little words “I was wrong.”

Take the dreadful, bloody mess that is Iraq. Prime Minister Tony Blair has refused to consider that war in Iraq is proving disastrous for all. And President Bush, he is resolutely continuing to throw soldiers and money at the problem, even though the “war on terror” has turned out not to be what he anticipated.

Most politicians are intelligent pragmatists, few are intellectual, ie use pure reason. But they do have intellectuals around them in think tanks who formulate policy, good and bad, which fit into the political agenda, or not. These are more likely to say “I was wrong.” Francis Fukuyama is one of the most esteemed US intellectuals and political analysts and he is doing just that now, in a new book entitled After the Neocons: America at the Crossroads. I have yet to read it but reviews attest to this important climb down.

It’s the second time Fukuyama has been forced to review his political philosophy. The End of History was the book that made him famous (then infamous) in the 1990s. After the fall of communism and the apparent triumph of the West, he argued, essentially, that liberal democracy was political nirvana and we had arrived at it — no more clash of political ideologies. It was never likely, and we now know it not to be true.

In 1998, while Clinton was still in office, Fukuyama and a group of neo-conservative intellectuals belonging to the new “Project for the New American Century” advocated the removal of Saddam Hussein with or without UN approval. Three years later Bush adopted the policy. Fukuyama is the most prominent of the neo-cons to now admit, openly and unequivocally, that the policy was misguided and that the Iraq war was a mistake.

He reportedly believes the Bush administration hugely over estimated the risk that Saddam Hussein would arm terrorists with unconventional weapons and therefore started a “preventive” war that made the US unpopular internationally. He is also clear, apparently, that the US was greatly over-optimistic about democracy taking hold in post-Ba’athist Iraq. I have to agree with him on all counts.

It has always amazed me that the British could get Iraq so wrong when it was they who in the early 1920s created modern Iraq: a European-style centralised state with a constitutional monarchy based on strong control from the capital and little power in the provinces (the legacy lives on in our post-colonial Caribbean states too). Blair should have seen that the removal of Saddam — the leader of the minority Sunnis and Iraq’s centralising force — from the place of excessive power would leave a vacuum.

The truth neither Blair nor Bush would admit is that as a result Iraq is falling apart. It is retreating, unsurprisingly, to its pre-British, three essential geo-economic spheres — the Kurdish north (Kurdistan), the Sunni centre, and the Shia south — nicknamed “Sunnistan” and “Shiastan.” Remember what happened to Yugoslavia and the USSR? They unravelled into their old geo-ethnic parts, unleashing ethno-sectarian conflict in several of the new states. This is all being repeated in Iraq and no amount of wishful thinking will prevent it.

I read that Kurdistan has all but established a de facto state and is attracting foreign investment and non-Kurdish Iraqis to its relatively peaceful region.

Meanwhile, the middle is ungovernable as Sunnis and Shias struggle for control of Baghdad. And the south is waiting to plunge itself into a internecine militia war. You might say there is already a civil war between Sunnis and Shias but things could get a lot worse.

The current coalition plan is not working. It’s time for its leaders to say “I was wrong.” The Turks may not want an independent oil-rich Kurdistan; Washington and nationalist Shias may not want a Shiastan (oil-rich) influenced by Iran; the Sunnis may not want to lose their power base, but that may be the new reality. It will have to be played out.

It’s time for the terrible Don Quijote — Sancho Panza show to stop.

Bush and Blair must get real to curtail a nasty, long, civil war that they would have, in effect, started. If the intellectuals who dreamt up and supported the disastrous escapade are having the courage to admit their error, it may be time for the politicians to be pragmatic. So what’s plan B — could it be a federal state?