[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 123 (Wednesday, September 25, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1649-E1650]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           POST-HUSSEIN IRAQ

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. STEVE ISRAEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 24, 2002

  Mr. ISRAEL. Mr. Speaker, as we begin to discuss our options in Iraq 
it is important that we recognize the difficulties of a post-Hussein 
Iraq. I commend Thomas Friedman's column

[[Page E1650]]

of September 1, 2002 to my colleagues, which I ask to have inserted 
into the Record.


       ``As I think about President Bush's plans to take out 
     Saddam Hussein and rebuild Iraq into a democracy, one 
     question gnaws at me: Is Iraq the way it is today because 
     Saddam Hussein is the way he is? Or is Saddam Hussein the way 
     he is because Iraq is the way it is?
       ``I mean, is Iraq a totalitarian dictatorship under a 
     cruel, iron-fisted man because the country is actually an 
     Arab Yugoslavia--a highly tribalized, artificial state, drawn 
     up by the British, consisting of Shiites in the south, Kurds 
     in the north and Sunnis in the center--whose historical 
     ethnic rivalries can be managed only by a Saddam-like figure?
       ``Or, has Iraq, by now, congealed into a real nation? And 
     once the cruel fist of Saddam is replaced by a more 
     enlightened leadership, Iraq's talented, educated people will 
     slowly produce a federal democracy.
       ``The answer is critical, because any U.S. invasion of Iraq 
     will leave the U.S. responsible for nation-building there. 
     Invade Iraq and we own Iraq. And once we own it, we will have 
     to rebuild it, and since that is a huge task, we need to 
     understand what kind of raw material we'll be working with.
       ``It is instructive in this regard to quickly review Iraq's 
     history before Saddam. Romper Room it was not. It was a saga 
     of intrigue, murder and endless coups involving the different 
     ethnic and political factions that were thrown together 
     inside Iraq's borders by the British. In July 1958, Iraq's 
     King Faisal was gunned down in his courtyard by military 
     plotters led by Brig. Abdel Karim Kassem and Col. Abdul Salam 
     Arif. A few months later, Kassem ousted Arif for being too 
     pro-Nasserite. Around the same time a young Saddam tried, but 
     failed, to kill Kassem, who himself executed a slew of Iraqi 
     Nasserites in Mosul in 1959.
       ``In 1963, Arif came back from exile and killed Kassem. A 
     short time later Arif, and the Baath Party thugs around him, 
     savagely slaughtered and tortured thousands of left-wingers 
     and Communists all across Iraq. Arif ruled until 1966, when 
     he was killed in a helicopter crash and was succeeded by his 
     brother, who was toppled in 1968 by Saddam and his clan from 
     the village of Tikrit. That's when Saddam first began sending 
     away his opponents to a prison called Qasr al-Nahiya--`the 
     Palace of the End.' Since 1958, every one of these Sunni-
     dominated military regimes in Baghdad began with a honeymoon 
     with the Kurds in northern Iraq and ended up fighting them.
       ``The point here is that we are talking about nation-
     building from scratch. Iraq has a lot of natural resources 
     and a decently educated population, but it has none of the 
     civil society or rule of law roots that enabled us to quickly 
     build democracies out of the ruins of Germany and Japan after 
     World War II. Iraq's last leader committed to the rule of law 
     may have been Hammurabi--the King of Babylon in the 18th 
     century B.C. So once Saddam is gone, there will be a power 
     vacuum, revenge killings and ethnic pulling and tugging 
     between Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites.
       ``This is not a reason for not taking Saddam out. It is a 
     reason for preparing the U.S. public for a potentially long, 
     costly nation-building operation and for enlisting as many 
     allies as possible to share the burden. There is no avoiding 
     nation-building in Iraq. Because to get at Iraq's weapons of 
     mass destruction we'll need to break the regime open, like a 
     walnut, and then rebuild it.
       ``What's worrying about the Bushies is that they seem much 
     more adept at breaking things than building things. To do 
     nation-building you need to be something of a naive optimist. 
     I worry that the Bushies are way too cynical for nation-
     building.
       ``My most knowledgeable Iraqi friend tells me he is 
     confident that the morning after any U.S. invasion, American 
     troops would be welcomed by Iraqis, and the regime would fold 
     quickly. It's the morning after the morning after that we 
     have to be prepared for. In the best case, a `nice' strongman 
     will emerge from the Iraqi Army to preside over a gradual 
     transition to democracy, with America receding into a 
     supporting role. In the worst case, we crack Iraq open and it 
     falls apart in our hands, with all its historical internal 
     tensions--particularly between its long-ruling Sunni minority 
     and its long-frustrated Shiite majority. In that case, George 
     Bush will have to become Iraq's strongman--the iron fist that 
     holds the country together, gradually redistributes the oil 
     wealth and supervises a much longer transition to democracy.
       ``My Iraqi friend tells me that anyone who tells you he 
     knows which scenario will unfold doesn't know Iraq.''

     

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