Letter 2 America for June 20, 2014

Dear America,

Two things.

First, President Obama used the term ISIL to refer to the reactionary Sunni Islamist army that is taking over parts of Syria and Iraq.  There are some variations on the element of that acronym, but the most common one used in English is Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.  That fact is significant because it is a reflection of the basic misconception that The West has regarding the region in which all this, and the war in Iraq as well as everything that has happened there since shortly after World War I, has occurred.  The term Levant is somewhat vague in terms of what it comprises, but in general, it is the long used name for the region at the eastern end of the Mediterranean that we used to call the Near East, plus or minus some territory depending on who is using either term.  And just like The Balkans, where Bosnia and Herzegovina--you remember them from the nineties--are located along with Croatia and Serbia, all of which went to war primarily over the socio-religious divide between Christians and Muslims, there is a deep religious schism that prevails over all other social and political considerations in The Levant.  It isn't something that we can empathize over because it isn't in our recent experience, though if there is anyone who remembers the Spanish Inquisition first hand out there, he or she may be the exception.  There is nothing that runs deeper in a culture than religion, which is largely because religion is based on the belief that there is a being out there somewhere who controls everything, and what could be more important than determining what he likes.  In the case of ISIL, they have a very definite idea on that issue, and they believe in it strongly enough that they think everyone else, at least everyone else in The Levant, should agree with them, like it or not.  ISIL isn't a political entity anymore than the crusaders were.  It is a fanatical wave of violent proselytizers who won't take no for an answer.  So, while John McCain and John Boehner continue to posture for political gain, President Obama has it right when he talks about ISIL rather than ISIS, and what he is now trying to do--staunch the Iraqi losses to ISIL while he maneuvers the Iraqis into political reform that is more inclusive in terms of religious sects, thus co-opting those in the country who would be naturally aligned with ISIL--is consistent with that understanding.

Second, David Brooks wrote about this in his New York Times opinion piece today, and while it should be obvious to our politicians in that they have been through this before in other places--the aforementioned Balkans being one of them--it isn't.  These sectarian conflicts are all the same in one respect: if you leave the combatants to their own devices, they will never reconcile their differences, so the only way to quell the conflict between them is to make them tolerate each other.  There are ways to do that, like the Dayton Accord that ended the fighting in The Balkans during the Clinton administration.  But there are other ways too.  The don't include the way in which the British, under the aegis of the entire international community, did it in the 1920's when Iraq was arbitrarily created in its modern configuration.  The vying for power and the violence will never end if you just tell sectarians that they have to live together.  They either have to agree to it as in the case of the Balkans--and that doesn't always hold up--or you have to impose mutual tolerance on them through the control of an autocrat, which is where Saddam Hussein came in in Iraq, and where Kagame, the Rwandan dictator comes in in Rwanda today, Brooks observes.  In his scheme of things, such autocrats can emerge over time through kleptocracy to benevolence, probably next to oligarchy and ultimately to democracy...if we are all lucky.  But in the interim, these autocrats are indispensable, as Hussein was despite the fact that he was a bad person and a brutal dictator.  There were many peremptory killings during his regime, often simply because he didn't like some people or didn't trust them, and he seems to have been merciless in administering his form of governance, but there was no chaos, and life was predictable.  He stole billions from his people, but my impression is that the standard of living was better than the prospect for the present seems to be.  And he performed an essential function: pacification.  Somehow, The Levant has to be pacified, and President Obama is trying to lead all of the parties, and the world, to the first alternative, which is mutual tolerance.  The consensus seems to be that the best option for that kind of outcome is partitioning of Iraq into its natural Levantine components--Shiite southern Iraq, Sunni central Iraq and a Kurdish entity in the north of the country--all of which would be confederated in a single nation of Iraq.  That is the best prospect for a peaceful region of the Levant, and it is eminently reasonable as well.  Those political entities are as close as the indigenous population can get politically to their natural affiliations, and it is the outcome that best portends a kind of stasis in the region, which benefits us all.

So, the next time some political hack tries to impugn President Obama for inertia, indecision or diffidence in his response to the crisis in Iraq, remember what he is dealing with.  And consider the fact that that very situation has been dealt with before in other regions and countries...just the way he is dealing with it.

Your friend,

Mike