What if...

Prof. Juan Cole has a thought exercise:

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week?

What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State Department at Foggy Bottom, the White House, or the Pentagon dared venture out of their buildings, and considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal City or Alexandria?

What if all the reporters for all the major television and print media were trapped in five-star hotels in Washington, DC and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely, and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis?

What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of "criminal gangs", but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?

What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial?

Obviously it's not entirely analagous, since there are different starting points. (What if President Clinton had been a murderous thug who dropped mustard gas on Portland?) But then again, as evil as Saddam was, before the Iraq was not dangerous for average citizen nor unstable. In that respect it is analgous.

Comments

[Con Tendem]

Perhaps I am very dense, but I really do not understand the point this comparisons are trying to make.

For one, would not it actually make a difference whether the US Army is bombing and pulverizing rather than, let's say French, or better yet Iranian or Chinese (to have more of a language and cultural gap)? As described, it sounds quite a bit like what Civil War was like.

I guess I would also have a problem with a contention that "as evil as Saddam was, before the Iraq was not dangerous for average citizen nor unstable." This is a common adage applied to all sorts of "stable" dictatorships. I mean the average Kurds were not all that safe, nor average Marsh Arabs, nor religious leaders, but you know, all those other average citizens of upper-middle-class Baghdad neighrborhoods were sort of safe. Provided they did not cross someone more important, or had a comley wife or daughter... In that respect it is not all that analogous, AFAIK.

[Tom Beck]

"As evil as Saddam was, before the Iraq was not dangerous for average citizen nor unstable. In that respect it is analgous."

Sorry, but this is a bogus statement. The situation in Iraq certainly was dangerous for average citizens, given the lack of rule of law and the fact that at any moment anyone could be arrested, tortured, expropriated, etc. That it may not have happened to large numbers of Iraqis does not change the fact that it could have. Nor does the fact that maybe it happened only to a relatively small number of Iraqis excuse Saddam Hussein (I realize you are not attempting to excuse him). The fact that the invasion was wrong and has turned out badly does not mean that Saddam Hussein deserved to stay in his self-appointed office a second longer than he did. I'm glad he's gone, even though I don't think we necessarily had the right to go in and get rid of him at the moment we did it and in the way we did it. Things are terrible in Iraq now, but they were not really all that much better before the invasion. If (and I know this is a hypothetical and counter-factual and ignores the miserable reality that is George W. Bush) we had gone into Iraq with proper international approval and with a real coalition and with a real plan for reconstruction - that's no guarantee that it would have worked out better, although it could hardly have worked out worse - and if we had done things right, no one would be saying that the average Iraqi under Saddam was living under dangerous conditions.