Dying for Ideas
    By Serge Truffaut
    Le Devoir

    Wednesday 22 March 2006

    Three years ago, while the first bombs were falling on Baghdad, the Bush administration guaranteed that democracy would blossom in Iraqi surroundings before spreading just about everywhere in the Middle East. Thousands of deaths later, the country is prey to civil war. Democracy? You must be kidding ...

    In the months before the conflict began, a contingent - imposing in number - of intellectuals occupied every possible soapbox and grandstand to thunder out that the war in Iraq was a just war. For the collaborators of the Weekly Standard, including the famous William Kristol and Robert Kagan, the events of September 11 constituted the long-awaited opportunity to realize their ambition, i.e., to transform Iraq into a laboratory of democracy in that part of the world. Between these two events - September 11 and the Iraq offensive - those called Neoconservatives had established a cause-and-effect link that even today leaves us stunned. As far as anyone knows, there was no Iraqi on board the airplanes that destroyed the World Trade Center, and no proof of connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda has ever been established.

    We suspect that that dream, or more exactly, that desire to pick a fight with the Iraqis, was shared by politicians: at the head of the line, the Secretary at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld and his Number Two, Paul Wolfowitz, parachuted in as World Bank President in the meantime. Between the Gulf War under Bush senior and the Gulf war of Bush junior, this duo, augmented by former CIA heads and other bonzes, never ceased militating for an assault on Baghdad. Moreover, it's Wolfowitz who, five days after September 11 - five days only! - suggested to Bush that he take the road to Baghdad.

    We know the results. Prisoners of their altogether messianic ideology, these gentlemen who always know what's best for others joyously decided, the end justifying the means, that a big fat lie was necessary even if it should prove to be eminently harmful to the future of international law. Obviously, I am thinking about weapons of mass destruction. I'm also thinking about the British scientist - expert in chemical weapons - who was the first to make known the proof that what Tony Blair had been charged to do in that regard was, in fact, quackery. That honorable man's name is David Kelly. He committed suicide.

    We must retain one fact from this Act One. Former head of the National Security Council under Bush senior General Brent Scowcroft signed a column in the Washington Post before James Baker, former Secretary of State, also under Bush senior, did the same in the Wall Street Journal to signal his opposition to this war. Their motive? This war would inevitably undermine the war on terrorism. Must I remind you that Osama bin Laden and many of his seconds are still at large? Must I call attention to the fact that the engagement in Iraq has convinced hundreds of young men to join up with the terrorist network, has been an excellent recruiting sergeant?

    Yet it remains the case that three years later, the country is plunged into civil war. President Bush can deny that fact as much as he likes, but not a day passes without some 50 to 80 Iraqis being killed for ethnic reasons, religious reasons, or both. There are no more Iraqis. There are Shiite Arabs, Shiite Persians, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds. Instead of making a home for democracy, this conflict has made one rather for sectarianism and for clannish reflexes.

    And what do the intellectuals named above suggest? The opening of a second front in Iran. In addition to being the mess we've come to know, this history confirms once again that when ideas come to power, they are never the right ones.