In the 1990s, we became more aware of the importance not only of I.Q. to success but also of “E.Q.” — “emotional intelligence quotient.” Authors like Daniel Goleman explained E.Q. in part as an ability to assess, adjust to and influence the emotions of others.
These days, as we grope for a new policy in Iraq, we desperately need that kind of emotional intelligence, particularly toward overseas nationalism. Insensitivity to nationalism may be the biggest foreign policy mistake the U.S. and Europe alike have made in the last half-century — from Vietnam to Suez, Mexico to Algeria — and we’ve been repeating it in Iraq.
One of the essential paradoxes is that even well-meaning efforts to stabilize Iraq with our military presence inflame Iraqi nationalism and bolster nationalist extremists. Inadvertently, because we’re not sensitive enough to how our actions are perceived in the Iraqi cauldron, we end up empowering extremists who destabilize the country.
Exhibit A is the shadowy man who has won a reputation as perhaps the single most brutal mass murderer there, Abu Deraa. He is a Shiite who in the late Saddam years was apparently just a petty forger, according to Terrorism Monitor, a publication of the Jamestown Foundation.
Abu Deraa won renown as a “patriot” who attacked U.S. armored vehicles. Then he diversified into criminal kidnapping, which generated cash to make him a player and finance his band of gangsters.
The whispers about Abu Deraa and his torture of the Sunnis he captures — he specializes in using electric drills on their skulls — have won him increasingly mythic status. Some of the biggest and boldest attacks in Iraq are attributed to him, and he brings creativity and economies of scale to his murder enterprise. An Australian news account described how he once drove a fleet of ambulances into a Sunni neighborhood and used loudspeakers to call on young men to donate blood to help fellow Sunnis injured by Shiites. Dozens of young men came forward — and were executed.
Abu Deraa told Time magazine, in an interview through an intermediary, that his fight is against “occupiers, their supporters” and Sunni insurgents, and he painted himself as a pious Muslim driven by a “sense of holy duty” to attack American forces. Those arguments resonate among some Shiites, who see him as a hero and protect him, even as he helps tear his country apart.
At bottom, Abu Deraa is a psychopathic thug who terrorizes fellow Iraqis. But he has been able to use his attacks on American forces to win political cover to foment civil war.
So as we Americans plan our own strategy for Iraq, let’s show more emotional intelligence. The Iraqi Study Group is right about needing to consult with neighbors like Syria and Iran, but that doesn’t resolve another central problem in Iraq: Our open-ended military presence, perceived by Iraqis as a grab for Iraqi oil and bases, ends up legitimizing extremists like Abu Deraa and aggravating civil war.
Our military presence risks expanding the civil war in another way. As we side more openly with the Shiite government in its struggle against Sunni insurgents, Saudi Arabia — already nervous about the rise of Shiites — is hinting that it may help the Sunnis defend themselves. We could end up with a war in which Iran and Iraqi Shiites battle against Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraqi Sunni Arabs. (That’s when gas prices reach $5 a gallon.)
So let’s raise our E.Q. and take account of Iraqi emotions and nationalist sensitivities, particularly alarm about American bases on Iraqi soil. For starters, we can (as Don Rumsfeld noted in his leaked memo) quickly give back up to 50 of our 55 military bases in Iraq.
We should also state clearly that we will not keep any permanent military bases in Iraq. That’s not going to persuade the extremist insurgents, but polls suggest that such an announcement would reduce the support that extremists get from ordinary Iraqis. That’s a simple step that would save American and Iraqi lives.
The same logic argues for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, ending by November 2007. Granted, there is a real risk that the bloodbath will worsen significantly when we leave. But Iraqis themselves say overwhelmingly in polls that our presence is inflaming the violence rather than reducing it, and a timetable would be a useful signal that we really are going to pull out and that Iraqi factions need to conciliate and address their own problems.
We needn’t cut and run. But let’s post a schedule, and then cut and walk.
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