Princess Leia Organa's quip to Captain Han Solo in Star Wars* came back to me early this morning as I heard about the latest round of attacks against the Iraqi recovery infrastructure. After pondering that for a second, I realized what was going on, and that there was a historical parallel to this, one I dimly remembered from a class in Russian history:

Right about the time that the Russo-Japanese War was winding up (ca. 1905), Czar Nicholas II had committed to a program of some liberalization. From what I remember, things started to turn around somewhat, and things got "better" in Romanov Russia. People started believing in the government, and thus the imminent threat of revolution subsided.

The revolutionaries** were distinctly unhappy with this, because the peasant lake they swam in (to borrow from Mao Tse-tung) was being drained in direct proportion to the success of the liberalization program. Therefore, they had to take some action, and soon ramped up their campaign of terror and assassination.

Naturally, the government had to respond to this, and Nicholas' idea of response was to clamp down on the reforms et cetera that were being put into place. This response was a bad idea, and helped kick off a cycle of violence leading to the further undermining of the Romanov rule.

I think we face similar circumstances in Iraq. The yeoman work that L. Paul Bremer and company are doing is paying off, and Iraqis aren't necessarily supporting what seems to be some quasi-professional Baathist remnant operation. Iraqis are welcoming the Americans and are helping to forge a better future for Iraq. The Baathist remnant can not allow that to occur, so they're lashing out at anyone they can hit, to stop the improvement of the lives of Iraqis. This particular operation happened to turn an eye to the International Committee for the Red Cross.

The attack on the ICRC didn't make any sense in a present-day context, and I had to wait until I thought of the historical parallel*** to understand its significance. On the other hand, attacking the American compound earlier on made complete and total sense from a present-day context.

The overall point I'm trying to make is that the Baathists sat down and decided that things were going badly for them, perhaps even getting worse. They saw that Americans weren't going to be easy targets, and they probably thought of their prior success with the U.N. compound. They needed a symbolic hit on a bastion of improvement, so they chose the ICRC and set things in motion.

I believe the lesson is clear: We're doing something right in Iraq. The Baathists will continue to lash out and there will be more deaths. We might even wind up facing some new assault similar to the Tet Offensive. No matter what happens, the task for the United States and other groups operating in Iraq is to keep up the pace of reconstruction and complete the liberation of the Iraqi people. The more Iraqis that prosper under the new government, the less trouble we'll have from Baathists and when ten or fifteen million Iraqis have their stake in the new Iraq, we'll find that we're outstripping the madrasas in production of believers, and Secretary Rumsfeld might (I hope) see the ratio of costs move from American billions vs. Islamist millions to American hundreds of millions v. Islamist tens of millions. It's a long shot, but worth going for.

* Yes, Star Wars. I learned it that way through the 1980s, and I'll be darned if I grant cinematic recognition to the abominable prequels or the revisionist effort put in place by Lucasfilm to 're-brand' the original trilogy.

** For the most part anarchists and/or what we'd recognize as Communists, I think. I'm not entirely sure.

*** This is something I learned from President Richard Nixon. When in doubt, think about history. He once wrote that leaders needed a historical context to frame current events in, so that they could best comprehend the challenges and opportunities facing them. I don't place myself in the shoes of a leader needing Nixon's counsel, but historical parallels can provide useful advice for anyone.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 10:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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