Teshuvot -- Jewish legal opinions
 The
Liberation of Iraq Back to Divrei Torah (Torah Commentaries)
The image of cheering Iraqis, aided by an American armored personnel carrier
knocking down a giant statue of Saddam Hussein in the center of Baghdad is an
image that most of us will not soon forget.
It will be as sharp in our memories as the images from 13 years ago of joyous
Germans tearing down the Berlin Wall with their bare hands.
It is fitting that the liberation of Iraq occurred a week before the holiday
when we Jews celebrate our liberation from tyranny: Pesach (Passover).
The happy Iraqis welcoming American soldiers reminds of how our ancestors
celebrated at the sea shore by singing Shirat HaYam, the Song of the Sea,
after safely getting across the Red Sea.
The joy and exultation, however, is pretty short lived.
Rather quickly after that exciting moment of redemption comes the realization
that the real battle isn’t over yet—in fact it has just begun. As soon as the euphoria of being safely out of Egypt
wore off, what’s the first thing the Israelites did? Start complaining.
Why’d you bring us out here Moses?
Are there no graves in Egypt, we couldn’t die there, you had to bring us out
here in the middle of this forsaken desert to die?
What are we going to eat?
We’re out of water! I miss the
“flesh-pots” of Egypt. I want to go
home. You think “that was then, this is now?” It’s not so different today. What happened when the Communist
government of the Soviet Union collapsed?
All the states of the Former Soviet Union were caught up in the great excitement
of now being free to establish a democracy.
Five years later, many Russians, especially pensioners on fixed incomes,
were longing for the “good old days” of the Communists. Life might not have been great, but you
had a roof over your head and food on your table. If you ask anyone to state in one word the essence of
Passover, the word you’ll get is “freedom.”
But what does it mean to be free?
As soon as we were brought out of Egypt, as soon as we crossed the Red
Sea, we were free FROM the tyranny of Pharoah.
But what was the point of that freedom?
Why did God go to all that effort?
Did God free the Israelites so that they could sit around the desert and
kvetch about how miserable it was?
Did God free our ancestors so that we could sit at the Starbucks on 2 and Blu
and enjoy a latte? I don’t think
so. If that’s all it was about, we wouldn’t
still be celebrating the seder 3,200 years later: we would have started taking
it for granted about 3,198 years ago. What has kept the seder going, and what has kept the
Exodus in such a central position in the Jewish mind and in the Jewish prayer
book is that the Exodus was about much more than freedom from the oppression of
Pharaoh. It was about being free to
serve God. Not just freedom “from,”
but freedom “to.” Without a goal in
mind—without the idea that “we need to be free so that we can do ‘x’” – freedom
is very shallow. You ask teenagers
what it means to be free, they often immediately think it means being free to
drink alcohol and stay up late.
That’s not what most people over 25 first think of.
The freedom to party is the kind of freedom Janis Joplin immortalized in
song: “freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” Since the REALLY important part is the future, not the
past—not what are we free from, but what are we free TO—it is very appropriate
to ask this question relative to the liberation of Iraq. What’s their destination? What’s the purpose of their freedom? To understand this question, it’s worthwhile to look
for some examples. What has
happened “post-liberation” in other countries? There are examples that could make us optimistic, and
there are examples that could make us pessimistic. After East Germany was liberated from Communist rule, they
quickly became integrated with West Germany and became part of a real democracy.
The integration has been economically and socially difficult for both sides of
Germany, but it’s basically a very positive tale.
But not one that is at all similar to what is happening in Iraq. There is no “West Iraq” standing by to
help their backward cousins integrate into a global society. Poland is perhaps a better example. Poland is a country that prior to 1990
had not really known democracy at all, except for a brief period in the 1920’s.
However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Communists in Poland were
coerced into becoming more truly democratic as a result of the strikes led by
Solidarity in the 1980s. After Lech
Walesa became president in 1990 the Poles were able to forge a true
democracy—not perfect, there was still a lot of financial hardship and a certain
amount of corruption, but undeniably a democratic country. Poland, however, is not a very good template for what
will likely transpire in Iraq. The
biggest factor is that Poland is not a multi-ethnic country. As a result of the Holocaust and post
WWII border adjustments, in 1990 it was found that 98% of the population of
Poland was ethnically Polish. Iraq
on the other hand has three major, substantially different, ethnic groups to
work with. Iraq, as a country, is
an artificial construction of the British who decided to lump together what had
been three separate administrations under the Ottoman Empire: the Kurds in the
north, the Sunnis in the center, and the Shi’ites in the South. The example we are all afraid of, of course, is Iran.
A country that has been ruled by virulently anti-American and anti-Israeli
Muslim fundamentalists for the last 24 years.
I lived in Iran during the Iranian Revolution of 1978-1979.
I was living in Tehran in January 1979 when the Shah of Iran left for Panama,
and I was still there two weeks later when Ayatollah Khomeini returned from his
exile in France. Prior to his
departure, my colleagues and I speculated about what would happen if the Shah
left. Many of my colleagues felt that the
Iranians were not “ready” for democracy.
The Iranians were incredibly divided: we thought that every person would be his
own political party, and they would never be able to actually get anything done
in a democratic government. I felt
uncomfortable with this statement: who are we, I thought, to say whether a
people are “ready” for democracy or not?
But what made me uncomfortable is I felt there might be some truth to it. It is easy to be pessimistic about the prospects for
democracy in Iraq. There is no such
thing as an Arab democracy. Not
one. In the entire Islamic world of
1 billion people, there is only one true democracy: Turkey. In his book “The Threatening Storm: The Case for
Invading Iraq” author and former US Central Intelligence Agency analyst Kenneth
Pollack posited that the US has two scenarios for how to handle post-war Iraq.
The first is what he calls the pragmatic approach: quickly set up a provisional
government of locals, leave the mess to them, and get the bulk of your troops
out of the country as quickly as possible.
More or less the model the US-led coalition has followed in Afghanistan.
The benefits of this approach are that it is inexpensive, and gets
foreign troops out of the country quickly.
The disadvantage is that it is all too likely to lead to a new
dictatorship—if we’re lucky, one like Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, if we’re not lucky
one like Qadhafi’s Libya, or even worse another Saddam Hussein. The second option Pollack presents is what he calls the
reconstruction approach. This
approach starts with the assumption that current Iraqi political and social
structure cannot provide the basis for a stable or legitimate government of any
kind, let alone a democracy. Saddam
Hussein brought more stability than Iraq had known since the termination of the
British Mandate in 1932…but at a cost of mass murder and fierce repression.
The Reconstruction approach says that the US would be involved for a much longer
period of time. The US and her allies would have to
provide for the security of Iraq for a considerable period of time while a new
government and new army are built up.
The US would provide resources and try to create a pluralist and
inclusive political system. As
Pollack points out, it might look different than a Western democracy—but it
might be the first Arab-style democracy. One of the big concerns about this approach is already
apparent. No sooner had the statue
of Saddam Hussein come tumbling down than many Iraqis on the street were saying,
“thanks, America, now go home.”
Arabs are VERY sensitive to the idea of being controlled by what is perceived to
be an occupying force. But the
truth is, without a fairly lengthy commitment from the US, coalition allies, and
the involvement of the UN, Iraq will NOT succeed in creating a prospering
democracy—it will likely simply revert to another backwards dictatorship. William Safire wrote in the NY Times: “The most
insulting question is this: considering their Islamist religious schisms and
tribal hatreds, their tradition of monarchy and obedience to dictatorial
regimes, their turbulent "street," easily inflamed by demagogues — how can any
population of Arabs be entrusted with democracy?” “The answer to that is the experiment on which the
Iraqis are now embarked. Most start with the advantages of being literate, not
fundamentalist and extravagantly oil-rich.” Iraq actually does have two positive models they can
look to in their quest to find their “freedom to.” The only democracies in the Middle East. Turkey and Israel. Both Turkey and Israel have succeeded in creating true
democracies from populations that are very ethnically diverse and that had no
experience whatsoever with democracy.
When Israel gained independence from the British in 1947, they were a
very divided lot: Ashkenazi vs. Sefardi, religious vs. secular—and those
divisions have only intensified over time.
Israel probably has more political parties per capita than any country on
earth: yet they still manage to govern.
There is a lot of yelling, a lot of disagreement, some problems with the
systems—but basically it works.
Both Israel and Turkey have succeeded partly because the founders were motivated
by powerful visions. They knew what
their “freedom to” was—they knew where they wanted to go. Israel wanted to provide a safe home where Jews could be
Jews, and Ataturk was committed to a modern, progressive Turkish state. Iraq now has a golden opportunity to become the first
Arab democracy. It appears that the
US is choosing the reconstruction model: instead of announcing an “interim
government” headed Iraqis, the Americans have announced that there will
initially be a US military administration in Iraq with an Iraqi “interim
authority” working in conjunction with the American administrators. In an interview National Security
Advisor Dr. Condoleeza Rice said that the Iraqi interim authority will NOT be an
interim government. Rice said that
the US plans to maintain a substantial presence in Iraq for at least two years,
although the military administration might only last six months. We should all pray that the United States has the will
to remain in Iraq as long as it takes to stabilize the country and help Iraqis
develop the first true Arab democracy.
If they succeed, there will be a “crescent of democracy” from Turkey in
the north through Iraq to Israel.
Who knows, it might be contagious.
If democracy spreads in the Middle East, the world will be a safer place, Israel
will be more secure and may finally know true piece, and we may be on our way to
bringing about that messianic age of love and good will. As a general rule democracies are more
interested in trading with each other than in fighting with each other. For the liberation of Iraq to be enduring, it needs to
be not just a freedom from the oppression of Saddam Hussein, but it also needs
to be freedom to become a modern, democratic nation. For our story of liberation on Passover to be complete, we
also need to remember that it is about more than getting free from Pharaoh—it is
about becoming free to serve God. Shabbat Shalom
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