Last night, President Bush announced that he would follow the recommendations of Gen. David Patraeus and would allow a reduction of troops by more than thirty thousand. There is a lot of renewed energy in the office after this. Our celebration is hard earned. However, we know we still know there is a lot of hard work to do.
The thing that sticks out to me most is Bush’s claim that we need to stay in Iraq in order to end sectarian violence. In my experience, that is only setting us up for failure. Reconciliation cannot be completed at the end of a gun. It involves faith and trust. This is something I learned from my time in Northern Ireland.
While the issues in Iraq today differ from the issues of Northern Ireland in the 70’s and 80’s, not by much. The questions of self determinacy, leadership and equal rights under the law all remain the same. And Bush’s tactics of treating a sectarian civil war as an international conflict rather than a national security issue eerily resemble the Thatcher era of the 1980’s. When Thatcher was Prime Minister of the UK, she increased troop levels in the province and imprisoned massive amounts of paramilitary leaders on both sides. What we witnessed was increased violence and resentment. A look at sectarian killings and apathy toward the British and Irish governments were at an all-time high.
It was not until the success of the Labor Party in the early 1990’s and the withdrawal of British troops in Ulster that we saw the decrease of sectarian killings. Ultimately, it took the ending of a military occupation in order to have the Irish Republican Army and the Ulster Volunteer Force to permanently disarm, ten years after the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement of 1997. This has allowed home rule to return to Northern Ireland and a recommitment of its citizens to participate in voluntary reconciliation.
During my time in Northern Ireland, I worked with a NGO that focused on reconciliation among young people. I heard heart wrenching stories from folks who lived through the “Troubles” of the 1980’s. Stories in which their homes were raided in the middle of the night by British Troops and Police. Stories in which instead of fighting back, the parents would ask the troops if they would like a cup of tea or water. Stories of faith that those who were rummaging through their personal belongings were good people.
As long as the Iraqi—and in this case, actual Iraqis—people are fighting over who is in power, this is not our fight. This is a political issue, not a military one. We have a responsibility to aid the Iraqis find their self determinance. We must give the support to rebuild their infrastructure. We must find a way for us to love one another. But we cannot do it at the end of a M16 rifle. We must admit to ourselves that Jeffersonian Democracy is not a proper fit for the people of Iraq. And we must give them the room to find it for themselves.
