Nowadays we’re expected to believe that political alignments derive from moral commitments. Most media reports that I see or hear contain a tacit assumption that like and dislike are the only factors that count. That is only true for a minority of people. For most of us, human nature being what it is (largely weasel, in Scott Adams’ definition), there isn’t a single key question to ask about political conflicts. Alongside the question ‘who is in the right’ we weasels always place – if quietly – the question ‘who’s going to win?’
This is a long-winded version of OBL’s phrase about the strong horse. It’s by way of leading up to a comment on a post by Dan Drezner about the trajectory of things in Iraq, a post which he founds on a report which notes the way assassination by Baathists is preventing moderates and liberals, and middle-class people generally, from taking too high a profile in support of the government. This fact is used by the reporters, and Drezner, to suggest that the trajectory is a bad one.
He might be right in one respect, but not, I believe, in the way he thinks. Assuming that Fallujah is reduced soon (you can take that as 99% likely), the Baathist/Islamist alliance will still be out there, with thousands of experienced triggermen still ready to shoot anyone who gets with the programme (i.e. supports the new government and the electoral process, etc.). There are two possible ways of dealing with this threat, so far as I can see.
The best way would be for the new Iraqi security forces to arrest these men – which will become more possible once their safe havens are eliminated – and for them to be given a fair trial and then, if guilty, imprisoned or shot. (I have no serious qualms about the death penalty in these circumstances.)
That’s not going to happen. The problem is real now, it’s vast and urgent. The new security forces are not up to the job yet. Some of the new Iraqi units are excellent, so far as one can tell, but there aren’t enough of them. For the rest, corruption, incompetence and treachery will palsy their efforts for years. Similar problems are likely to affect the judiciary, who are also the people most likely to be intimidated. It was bad enough back in the ‘70s and ‘80s when judges in Italy, for instance, were prime targets for the Red Brigades (and later the Mafia). And it was in Colombia, I believe, where the drug cartels and terrorists (increasingly two sides of the same coin) came up with the phrase: silver or lead.
The point is that tackling those thousands of hard cases is not something that the new Iraq will be able to do very well. Not, at any rate, by legal means. Which means a tried and tested method will come into its own: pro-government death squads. Small groups of policemen and intelligence officers, who know and trust each other, will identify who is doing the killing, and will contract with lower-ranking policemen to shoot them. Off duty, of course. Or they’ll pay gangsters to do it, in order to get maximum deniability.
We may deplore this, but quite frankly, us pajama-wearing types aren’t the ones risking our lives every day. It’s that wicked old human nature at work again, saying: ‘why should we just sit here and take it? We know who they are, we know they’re guilty as sin, no-one’s going to weep much if we bend the rules a little.’
This sort of thing will probably be combined with an awful lot of the hard cases being shot while resisting arrest. The government will not spend too much time investigating. They need to look like strong horses.
To use a cant word that was much in fashion at the Guardian after September 11th, it’s kind of inevitable. And besides, I’m sure the Guardianistas wouldn’t want to impose their standards on others, would they? That’d be colonialist. Perish the thought.