Unfurling Idiocy

So, the US has posted a new Iraqi flag. I'm trying with no luck to figure out how to post it on the blog.

(Editor added it afterward)

It's a white flag with a blue religious symbol (crescent) in the middle and two blue stripes. Sound familiar? Israel's two blue stripes are above and below the Star of David - here they're both below with a yellow stripe in the middle. I suppose the only more foolish design would involve thirteen red and white stripes.

Now, what kind of complete moron missed the fact that the new Iraqi flag (a) looks like the Israeli flag, and (b) has dropped the pan-Arab colors (red/green/black/white)? Well, the latter answer is that the Wolfowitz crowd thinks they are going to re-make Iraq in their own image, and that means ditching the pan-Arab colors. But why drop the secular pan-Arab colors in favor of the religious crescent. Are they insane? The Saddam flag had no reference to religion until 1992, when it added the Arabic "God is Great" to the flag. The lone crescent makes this even more blatant. The crescent somehow belongs to the idea that we can just "tame" Islam by finding "moderates."

What's going on here is a really kindergartenish view of international politics that neo-conservatives fall into. The pro-Israel lobby - which they adhere to -would have it that Israel is a democracy that deserves the unconditional support of every democracy. In other words, any truly democratic country would naturally support Israel. Of course, the truth is that reasonable people can and do differ over Israeli policies with regards to the occupied territories. Add to that the naive Tom Friedman "no two countries with a McDonald's ever go to war" theory, then we see the Wolfowitz idea: make Iraq "democratic," put in a McDonald's, and poof! Israel gets accepted. The whole Middle East just becomes democratic by following Iraq's example, which NATURALLY means that they all become pro-American, start shopping at Wal-Mart, and maybe even start turning to Jesus. Of course, this all descends from a black-and-white "you're either with us or you're agin' us" theory of the world that GWBush and that ilk foster.

This view is naively buttressed by an unrealistic view of the end of the Cold War. As soon as Soviet Armies left, Eastern Europe became free and pro-American, even more so than "Old Europe." This is why knocking over the statue of Saddam Hussein, a la Lenin, was so significant on April 9, 2003. It confirmed everything that Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Cheney/Rice junta needed to know about how the world "really works." All we need to do is get Iraq to reach, as Francis Fukuyama put it, "the end of history."

The truth of Vietnam is that ideology blinded us to the facts on the ground. This is why Iraq is starting to look like Vietnam: irrational ideological commitments will keep us there but prevent us from finding the only solutions that will work (e.g., asking the Arab League to drum up a peacekeeping force and oversee nation-building, or having the UN oversee partitioning Iraq and tell the Turks to go PKK themselves, or inviting Iran to participate). As Sandy Berger said last week, "More troops and more money is not a strategy." I would add, that "perseverance is no substitute for strategy."