Iraq: So what happens now?

I watched very little news last weekend. Instead, I spent most of my time playing with… I watched very little news last weekend. Instead, I spent most of my time playing with my two lovable pooches and screen-printing “Next stop: Damascus!” T-shirts for my online business, Warprofits.com. I saw the footage of Saddam Hussein statues being pulled to the ground by crowds of hundreds and I thought Operation: Iraq You Like A Hurricane was over. Time to move on to greener pastures, I thought. Time to gear up for the Syrian Smackdown.

So imagine my shock when I flipped on CNN and realized Iraq was still in chaos. I thought this war had been over for days – what’s with these people? I’m not entirely sure, but I believe the founding fathers had American democracy up and running within a week. Of course, they had Tommy Jefferson going to bat for them, but surely the military planners had seen this chaos coming and had, dare I believe it, cloned the entire Continental Congress. They were waiting for just the right moment to deploy them.

Then again, maybe freedom is more elusive than I thought. Maybe it’s a complicated, fragile thing that doesn’t just spring up out of bomb craters. Maybe not even android Founding Fathers could efficiently bring freedom to Iraq, because, as one marine in a Reuters article put it, “Goddamn Iraqis will steal anything if you let them.” I think that quote can go without comment. It gives you a nice glimpse into the mindset of the liberators.

So, OK, where do we go from here? That’s up to Halliburton! Ha, no, I’m just kidding. They’ll get their half-billion, but they can’t answer the question of just what America is going to do now that Iraq is our blob of clay. How do you bring real freedom to a country rife with ethnic, religious and political divisions, in which most of the population is armed?

The prime objective – the thing we still haven’t done in Afghanistan – is to establish stability. Hussein’s dictatorship was both a pressure cooker and lockbox – by eliminating most of his formal opposition, he was able to keep the rival forces in check, but rivalries only grew more heated for being stymied. Iraq has often been described as a patchwork nation held together only by Hussein’s iron fist, and that patchwork is now unraveling with potentially disastrous results. The Kurds are poised to seize key oil cities in northern Iraq, which would likely inflame the Turkish government. America can’t allow Turkey to invade, but our political influence in that country is about as potent as Tom Daschle’s in this country. In the south, Shia Arabs – the two-thirds majority in Iraq – have long been oppressed and will naturally want some part in the post-war government. They’ll be supported in this desire by that other Axis of Evil superstar, Iran. If the Shias gain power, the new Iraq will look much like the same old Iran; if they don’t, whoever does wield power will have an unhappy two-thirds of the population to deal with. Unhappy, marginalized majorities in that area of the world do not bode well for lasting freedom or peace.

The real question is whether there’s anyone capable of sorting out this mess. I’m not sure even the heavyweights of the Constitutional Convention could have untangled this spaghetti, and I’m near certain that the Bush administration can’t. Unfortunately, it’s very possible this chaos is going to get worse before it gets better.

Jesse Hicks has dropped his mask of “verbose pseudo-intellectualism!” Congratulate him at jhicks@pittnews.com.