Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind. We must not throw more good American lives after good American lives for people who hate others more than they love their own children.The correct phrase, I believe, is reap the whirlwind. But Friedman's message is clear enough: If Iraq's Sunni Arabs don't have the decency to accept the new political order, they should all be killed. Not by American soldiers, of course, but with arms provided by the American government to an Iraqi government that we set up. If it comes to that, Friedman will cheer on this bloodbath more in sorrow than in anger. But cheer it he will.
As it happens, I've been reading up on our own country's Civil War recently, and William Sherman had a similar view of counterinsurgency. "We are not only fighting hostile armies,” he said, “but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.” Also, "We cannot change the hearts of those people, but we can make war so terrible … [and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it."
And you have to admit one thing: It worked. Sherman, however, at least had the decency to be upfront about his attitude.
"War is cruelty," he famously said, "and you cannot refine it."
In the intervening years, however, we've refined it a great deal. Thanks to precision-guided munitions, long-range weapons, night vision, and so forth, it's become possible -- for a rich country at least -- to fight and win a war without visiting wholesale destruction on the adversary's civilian population. Concurrently, a popular view has arisen that war can sometimes be a good thing. Rather than a regrettable occurrence that should be motivated only by self-defense, war can be a way of serving humanitarian ends. It did so in Kosovo. And according to many -- Friedman most prominently among them -- Iraq was such a case as well -- an opportunity to remove a dictator.
It turns out, however, that certain things can't be achieved through fastidious methods. In particular, a method of warfare designed to avoid wreaking havoc on a civilian population does not necessarily change the minds of a civilian population nearly as effectively as did Sherman's methods. Friedman and his ilk promised us that postwar Iraq would turn out like Germany and Japan following the Second World War, but took it for granted we wouldn't be firebombing cities or dropping nukes. But as Sherman knew -- and Friedman is discovering -- there are some things that it's hard to get done any other way. If you want to transform a society through military force, you need to use force against that society, and that means cruelty. But the Civil War, like World War II, was a necessary fight. The nation couldn't survive without winning them. Under those circumstances, and given the technology available at the time, Sherman-esque methods become justifiable. But a war motivated by humanitarian goals must be fought through humane means; scorching the earth won't cut it.
Friedman's solution to this dilemma is to try to wash America's hands of it: "We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind." Under the circumstances, this may well be the best we can do. But to pretend that the war's advocates are somehow blameless in the bloodbath that will ensue is absurd. This is a situation they have brought about through sloppy analogies and wishful thinking. Vicious people lead the Sunni insurgency, and one can have little sympathy for them. But the alternative is not too wonderful, either. I found a copy of Friedman's musings on the Web site of the Kurdistan Regional Government, which evidently looks forward to letting Iraq's Sunni's “reap the wind.” If this country is to avoid further moral disasters of this sort, we must be honest with ourselves -- especially if you're a columnist.
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.
