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« Back to Iraq: The Bullet and the Ballot, Part Two main page    Transcript for: Iraq: The Bullet and the Ballot, Part TwoTHINK TANK WITH BEN WATTENBERG#1307 FUTURE OF IRAQ, PART TWO FEED DATE: March 24, 2005 Reuel Marc Gerecht Opening Billboard: Funding for Think Tank is provided by... (Pfizer) At Pfizer, we’re spending over five billion dollars looking for the cures of the future. We have 12,000 scientists and health experts who firmly believe the only thing incurable is our passion. Pfizer, life is our life’s work. Additional funding is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I’m Ben Wattenberg. In January of 2005, Iraqis headed to the polls for their first free elections in half a century. But as the new government takes shape, a violent insurgency and ethnic tensions continue to threaten hopes for a stable Iraq. What is the future of Iraqi democracy? What are the implications for the broader Middle East? What are the stakes for America? To find out, Think Tank is joined this week by Reuel Marc Gerecht, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, former CIA analyst, and author of “The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy.” The topic before the house: Iraq: The Ballot and the Bullet, Part Two, this week on Think Tank. MR. WATTENBERG: Reuel, welcome to part two of our discussion. We were talking, obviously, about Iraq. Let me ask you this. This democracy thing, you know, it’s easy to sort of dismiss it as Bush has been taken over by a cabal and he didn’t find the weapons of mass destruction so he said “well, let’s make the big issue democracy.” But, you’ve had elections in Afghanistan; you have had elections in Iraq; not too far away - I mean, it’s probably 7 – 800 miles if I had to guess - you had this orange revolution in Ukraine; and you have this suddenly new situation in the matter of Israel and Palestine where you had a free election on the Palestinian side and the possibility at least of a settlement. Now you put that all together and - I guess they call it the Bush doctrine, whatever you want to call it - but that’s big news, isn’t it? MR. GERECHT: Oh, no; I think it’s very big news. I mean the real truth... MR. WATTENBERG: It’s the biggest news we got. MR. GERECHT: The real truth is that if you were to go back and you would look at the Arabic press, you would look at the Arabic media, the discussion of democracy since 9/11 has exponentially increased in the Muslim world. It has even increased in the controlled presses that exist inside of Arab countries, let alone the expatriate presses that are published in the United States, London, Paris, which – and places where it has exploded. And what is issue – I mean, again, there is this notion here in many corridors that the Arab world is sort of doomed to dictatorship. And I think that is fundamentally false and it’s a fundamental misreading of actually the political evolution inside of Arab societies. It’s certainly – it is a complete misnomer when you look at Iran, where I would again say they are probably on the cutting edge. I would stress that in Iraq we will see, I think, the rapid development of a democratic culture. It could go off the rails. But I’m skeptical that it will. MR. WATTENBERG: And the pictures of waving that finger “I voted despite the insurgent violence”, that’s pretty hard to fight. MR. GERECHT: No, I – absolutely. I think . . . MR. WATTENBERG: I think you got that spot on. I mean, I’m no expert on it . . . MR. GERECHT: I think that was particularly powerful when you saw those pictures coming over Arab satellite stations which have been very hostile to the American presence in Iraq, to the fall of Saddam Hussein, and to the attempt to establish democracy in Iraq. I think things have flipped actually. And that’s why it’s not at all surprising why you will see for example, (inaudible) or King Adbullah or others actually become more worried about what’s going on in Iraq. It’s not the possibilities of chaos or violence which they find disturbing. It’s actually the possibility of success. Because if Iraq succeeds - if you actually start having people argue and debate and have a democratic national assembly, develop and having this move forward - they are going to debate all the issues which are actually pertinent in places like Egypt and Algeria and Jordan that are actually the defining issues in the Arab world. And it will create a pressure cooker. Now, other things have to happen to see evolution, for example. MR. WATTENBERG: What might some of those issues be? MR. GERECHT: Well, I think first and foremost just the simple fact that people have the right to vote. Once you get beyond that then you’re going to have serious discussions. For example, what is the role of Islam in politics? I mean, the Iraqis are set to have a very serious discussion about this. That’s what you need to see. That is part of what I would describe as this reformation process of having people openly argue these issues. There’s nothing wrong, for example, of having the Iraqis sit down in a democratic setting and start fighting about to what extent you want to see Islamic family law in civil courts. Or to argue... MR. WATTENBERG: And if this is televised, I mean it becomes almost a soap opera and people get a civic – civic education. MR. GERECHT: Sure. Absolutely. And it will be - I mean, that’s one of the great things about, I mean, Arabic, actually, is that the majority of people in the Arab world are going to be able to follow the Iraqi/Arab discussion of this because the Arabic is going to be understandable to them. MR. WATTENBERG: The dialects within the Arab community, I mean, you can go from Morocco to Iraq and understand each other. MR. GERECHT: Well it gets a little complicated. I mean, Moroccan gets a little complicated. I mean you go to the edges and it starts getting a little difficult. But... MR. WATTENBERG: But the heartland... MR. GERECHT: The vast majority – an Egyptian can listen to the Iraqi debates and understand everything. MR. WATTENBERG: Let me just interrupt for a minute. Your almost ten years experience at the CIA. . . Are you allowed to say whatever you want or is there information that you would still feel – not feel, but by CIA rules and regulations not be permitted to talk about or not be permitted to say X, Y and Z? MR. GERECHT: Well, the only thing that I won’t talk about in my agency past - I will never talk about individuals who worked for the agency. MR. WATTENBERG: On the ground in Iraq? MR. GERECHT: On the ground. I mean, that is inappropriate to discuss. MR. WATTENBERG: When their lives are at stake. MR. GERECHT: Foreigners who... Well, their lives may not be – I mean, there are many instances for example of Europeans who worked for the agency that if it became known that they worked for the agency their lives would not be in jeopardy. It might in fact tarnish their reputations or it might add to their reputations, depending on the country. But that is inappropriate. You never, never, never discuss agents; and there are certain types of operations that I certainly wouldn’t discuss. Some I would. I mean, I think they’re – I mean, it’s – I don’t think there’s anything wrong, for example, in discussing the 1953 coup d’etat in Iran. That is a historical subject that is worthy of discussion and you should discuss it, even though the agency, for example, has been enormously reluctant – was enormously reluctant - to release the few files that remain on that coup d’etat. MR. WATTENBERG: Alright. So the Shias, who are the majority party in Iraq, won and won big. Will the minority so-called insurgents, the Sunnis, will they in your judgment ultimately get on board creating a unitary democratic Iraq? MR. GERECHT: I’m not so sure the Sunni insurgents that are presently in the field will get on board. What I do believe is going to happen is that the Sunni community as a whole is going to compromise and they are going to join the political process. I think it’s fairly clear they’re going to do that. The reason I say that: one; culturally the differences between the Arab Shia and the Arab Sunni aren’t that much, they’re actually essentially one people. Two; the discussion of the violence in Iraq I think has been inaccurate. If you look at the – I mean, if you look at the death toll I’d be willing to bet that the majority of people who have died since the fall of Saddam Hussein from the insurgency have been Sunnis. If there is really (unintelligible) strife in Iraq, that (unintelligible) strife is primarily in the Sunni community. It’s not the Sunni against the Shia; it’s not the Sunni against the Kurds; it’s the Sunnis against the Sunnis, which is what you would expect. MR. WATTENBERG: Meaning the Sunnis who collaborated with the Americans - or versus the Sunnis who wanted to kill the Americans and the pro-democratic forces in Iraq? MR. GERECHT: Yes. I mean, I think there has been –- This is where I think American foreign policy sort of veered off after the fall of Saddam Hussein, is that there was the desire that has increased to figure out some way to propitiate the Arab Sunnis, to essentially to bribe them. I mean, if you had to describe in one word what American foreign policy has been towards the Iraq/Sunni community since the fall of Saddam Hussein, it has been bribery. What we have tried to do is essentially what Prime Minister Allawi has tried to do, which is suggest to the Sunni community that you are going to have positions of power inside the government which are not necessarily democratically checked. In particular that the... MR. WATTENBERG: We, the Americans have told them that? MR. GERECHT: Well, the – no, the – Allawi has told that with American support. One of the reasons we liked Allawi is that Allawi was going to go to the Sunni community being an ex-Baathist, being the Iraqi national cord, his organization which had a lot of Sunni Baathists in it, that he was going to be able to go to them and say, “listen; I’ll make a deal with you.” And a big part of that... MR. WATTENBERG: And give him seats in that assembly. MR. GERECHT: Not the – necessarily assembly, but give them seats for example in the military, give them seats in the national police, give them seats in the intelligence service. I think this has actually helped create a dynamic that worked against the Americans. It actually helped energize the resistance. I was recently in Jordan and it was striking when you’re in Jordan to find the number of elite Iraqi Sunnis who are, quote, ”vacationing” in Ahman, who maintained an attitude before the January 30th elections which I would argue is surreal. Now these are individuals who ought to naturally want to compromise. They have money, they have property, they have family, they have interests. They really don’t want to live an expatriate life forever. Yet these individuals sort of believe that somehow they were going to pull off a Sunni victory. That somehow the old order wasn’t completely dead. Now I think January 30th has changed this and changed this forever. MR. WATTENBERG: What is the psychological mechanism that makes that happen? Is that – is it your view that once people feel that they are in some way through democracy in control of their own destiny, that this sort of takes off the table the idea that they have to act as terrorists. MR. GERECHT: Well, I mean with the Middle East in particular and Islam extremism -- I mean, Islamic extremism, the type that we have seen develop, which we can call bin Laden-ism, has really grown up under the dictatorships and kingdoms of the Middle East in association with Islamic fundamentalism; often because fundamentalists were oppressed, often because they were supported. And what has developed is this really perverse understanding inside of the Middle East that, one; the United States has been supporting the dictatorial regimes in the Middle East - which is true for the most part - and that the society itself is to some extent under siege by the westernizing rulers of the region. And what has not happened is that people have not become actually responsible for their own fate. MR. WATTENBERG: If you look around the world until very recently, the Arab world was the only part of the world where there were no democracies. Zero. And now all of a sudden... MR. GERECHT: No. I mean there are... MR. WATTENBERG: And the potency of emulation in other countries because of the communications technology is immense. MR. GERECHT: Oh, it’s enormous. And I think again, the people don’t properly realize that the West –- or the incubation period in the Middle East or western ideas has actually been going on now for over 200 years. It really kicks off with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 and then it starts to gain speed. And what has to be clearly understood is that western ideas in and of themselves had found enormously fertile territory in the Middle East. Some might even make an argument – my old professor Bernard Lewis occasionally does so - that in fact it was too fertile. That the Middle East was able to grab on very effectively and very profoundly to such ideas as socialism, fascism, communism, national socialism. Now what has proven more difficult has been the democratic ethic. Now, I would suggest to you that again, it has been bubbling. And in places like Iran it’s not even – it’s out in the open the extent to which democracy is debated and seen as really the only legitimate political authority. MR. WATTENBERG: And if you follow the data from say, Freedom House or whatever, democracy itself is drawing all over the world very rapidly. I mean, you can say it’s a process that started with the American Revolution. There are a lot of things you can say, but in these last ten to twenty years, at least, you have had a particularly rapid growth. Even you have twenty to thirty percent of the countries in Africa that are now democratic. MR. GERECHT: It is a mistake to – to not realize the interconnectedness of the Middle East with the rest of the world. I mean these people are not blind. I mean they see very well what’s going on around them. This is in part a process. I mean to some extent bin Laden-ism is actually part of westernization. It is a reaction to it, it’s a by-product of it, it incorporates actually some of the ideas that you see. I mean, I would argue that bin Laden-ism couldn’t have occurred without westernization. And it is what you might call the dark side of the modernization. MR. WATTENBERG: You mean all the terrorists with cell phones and... MR. GERECHT: Take terrorist’s cell phones. I mean if you look at, for example, the men who have been effective, who were part of the – those who attacked us on 9/11, by and large they were highly westernized, young Muslim men. Westernization is actually part of the process that makes these people the most lethal. If you find a traditional Muslim who looks like a traditional Muslim, the odds of him being associated with any terrorist enterprise I would suggest were very, very small. It is in fact that western component that adds to the elixir and gets – really gets – turns these individuals into very lethal holy warriors. Now, what has to happen here is that actually the other – the good side of westernization has to become more competitive; and it’s out there. I mean, people have learned by the opposite. I mean, Egyptians know very well what dictatorship is all about. They have had more or less an unending chain of dictatorship since the British left. They have seen their country increasingly fall apart; they have seen corruption skyrocket. There are enormous problems in that country. And they recognize that in fact the system they have does not work properly. Now do they have what you might call a democratic reflex now? I’d say no, but the way you get that is by in fact, starting the process. And certainly what they can see is they can look abroad, they can see what’s going on in other countries, both in the Arab world and in Europe, and they know in fact, you know, there is freedom out there. And another factor that the people tend to, I think, not judge – give sufficient weight to is the influence of expatriates. And this has been an enormous factor in Iran. That no matter what the clerical regime would say... MR. WATTENBERG: In Iran; not Iraq. MR. GERECHT: In Iran, right. That no matter what the clerical regime would say about the United States, there were hundreds of thousands of Iranians living abroad that had families back in Iran who would tell them what was really going on in the United States or in Britain or in France. They knew very well what existed in the United States and they knew very well... MR. WATTENBERG: And that tom-tom is something you really can’t stop in the modern world. MR. GERECHT: Absolutely not. MR. WATTENBERG: I mean in the old days you could, but you can’t now. MR. GERECHT: Absolutely not. And the same thing exists elsewhere. It exists for both Egyptians, for Palestinians, for Jordanians. It’s not as massive it was in the case of Iran because it had so many people... MR. WATTENBERG: I mean, you just get in a cab in Washington and probably eighty percent of the cabdrivers in Washington are foreigners - many of them from the Arab world, many of them from Asia and Africa. They’ve all been home a year ago or two years ago and, I mean, the world is talking to each other. MR. GERECHT: It’s a significant – I think it’s a very significant factor in having reliable information passed. And I would stress - I mean, we’ve had a problem in the United States. We’ve sort of operated under the assumption, the hope, that what we’d see in the Arab world primarily is what we saw in Turkey. And that is you would have some Ataturk develop; you would have some enlightened dictator who would eventually... MR. WATTENBERG: Ataturk being the old leader of Turkey... MR. GERECHT: Turkey. MR. WATTENBERG: ...who made it into a modern... MR. GERECHT: Took it from the Ottoman Empire, made Turkey a western country. I mean by force. That some parallel to that would happen in the rest of the Middle East. MR. WATTENBERG: He went so far as to outlaw the feds. MR. GERECHT: Oh, he outlawed the feds, he put soldiers with bayonets on railheads outside of Istanbul to keep the peasants from coming in. I mean, he said some amazing things. I mean, he was very clear. He said... MR. WATTENBERG: But Turkey now is a democracy but with an Islamic president? MR. GERECHT: Yes. I actually think it’s a much healthier situation. I believe that... MR. WATTENBERG: Well, it’s an Islamic population. MR. GERECHT: That’s why I would say the, Turgut Ozal, the late president of Turkey and former Prime Minister, actually is the greatest Turk since Ataturk because he allowed and encouraged, I would say, a better and more healthy balance between the Islamic identity the Turks have and also their western/European identity. MR. WATTENBERG: Let me interrupt you and ask you two questions before we get out here. First are you optimistic or pessimistic the way the Iraq experiment is going to play out? MR. GERECHT: I’m pretty optimistic. MR. WATTENBERG: And secondly, as any good geo-politician must do, I mean, we went to war, we lost a lot of guys - the Iraqis lost a lot of guys, or guys and girls, boys and girls. They’re really kids. Let’s assume that your optimism is born out. Was it worth the cost? MR. GERECHT: Sure. Absolutely. I mean if – if Iraq – if the democratic experiment works in Iraq then you really will have begun the process of transforming the Middle East. And by transforming the Middle East, by encouraging democracy in the Middle East, you will end bin Laden-ism. And that in and of itself is absolutely worth the gambit. Because again, I don’t see otherwise a solution to this problem. MR. WATTENBERG: What about what they called an exit strategy in Vietnam? I guess McNamara at one point famously said “we’ll have the boys home by Christmas”. This was in 1963 or ’64. In your judgment, when will and when should American troops come out of Iraq? MR. GERECHT: I think that’s going to be pretty straightforward. I think the American troops will come out of Iraq when the Iraqi parliament tells them to come out of Iraq. And again, I don’t expect that to be immediate but I do expect to see a very vivid debate quite soon in the Iraqi parliament, led actually by the Shia, for a timetable for the withdrawal of the American troops. Now, that’s not to say that they believe in any way, shape, or form that the Americans are responsible for the insurgency. I mean, you begin to hear that argument here that somehow it’s the American presence that is causing the Sunni insurgency. I don’t think there are many Shia who believe that at all. However, the Iraqi Shias really are the progenitors of Iraqi nationalism. And it is very difficult for . . . MR. WATTENBERG: The Iraqi Shia, again, they are the majority who won. MR. GERECHT: They are the majority. If you look at it historically, they really are the fountainhead for Iraqi nationalism. It has been, and it will continue to be, very difficult for them to openly accept freedom from the Americans. I think they have done so, with the possible exception of the followers of the radical cleric. . . MR. WATTENBERG: And as soon as they can more fully train their police cordon, the sooner we can get out. MR. GERECHT: There is no doubt that the Iraqi Shia community - I’m not sure that’s true for the Kurds – but the Iraqi Shia community would want us to get out of Iraq sooner, not later. I actually don’t worry very much at all about the Americans staying in Iraq for years and years and years and years. I think that is highly unlikely. MR. WATTENBERG: You’re talking about one or two or three years. MR. GERECHT: Again, I would be surprised if you saw the parliament tolerate - and I think tolerate is the right word - anything that would go beyond three years. I would be very surprised, for example, to see significant American bases in Iraq after, assuming this process moves forward, I think it’s unlikely. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, Reuel Marc Gerecht, thank you for joining us on Think Tank. And thank you. Please, remember to send us your e-mails, we think it makes our program better. For Think Tank, I’m Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our show better. Please send your questions and comments to New River Media, 4455 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite C-100, Washington, DC 20008 or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank, visit PBS online at pbs.org and please let us know where you watch Think Tank. Funding for Think Tank is provided by... (Pfizer) At Pfizer, we’re spending over five billion dollars looking for the cures of the future. We have 12,000 scientists and health experts who firmly believe the only thing incurable is our passion. Pfizer, life is our life’s work. Additional funding is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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