George Bush, father of the Islamic Republic of Iraq

Shiite happens

The end of the American illusion in Iraq - the idea of turning Iraq into a model democracy that would in turn transform all of the Middle East, referred to in James Fallows’ unheeded warning as “the ruminations of insane people” - begins this week. That Islam will likely become embedded in the constitution as an arbiter of Iraqi law is a surprise only to those who mistook means for ends, who conflated symbols with substance, who confused the trappings of democracy - purple fingers and the like - with democracy itself. The political triumph of Islam in Iraq became assured on the very day that the Saddam’s statue was toppled in a made-for-television event. Again, symbolism trumped substance. American triumphalism blinded the Bush administration and its supporters to the glaring inevitability of an Islamic state, blinded them to the limitations of U.S. power. The warning against national hubris was loud and long, but to paraphrase renowned mathematician and dinosaur hunter Ian Malcolm, it is astonishing how few people cared to hear it.

This is only the beginning of the great disillusionment. Year Three of George Bush’s debacle in Iraq is going to make a lot of things clear at last to some thoroughly confused people. Standing at the Corner at NRO, Andrew McCarthy announces that he is officially “off the bus“:

As those who follow these pages may know, I have been despairing for a long time over the fact that the principal mission has been subordinated by what I’ve called the “democracy diversion” – the administration’s theory that the (highly dubious) prospect of democratizing Iraq and the Islamic world will quell the Islamists.

Now, if several reports this weekend are accurate, we see the shocking ultimate destination of the democracy diversion. In the desperation to complete an Iraqi constitution – which can be spun as a major step of progress on the march toward democratic nirvana – the United States of America is pressuring competing factions to accept the supremacy of Islam and the fundamental principle no law may contradict Islamic principles. [...]

If I suspended disbelief for a moment and agreed that the democracy project is a worthy casus belli, I am as certain as I am that I am breathing that the American people would not put their brave young men and women in harm’s way for the purpose of establishing an Islamic government. Anyplace. [...]

If the United States, in contradiction of its own bedrock principle against government establishment religion, has decided to go into the theocracy business, how in the world is it that Islam is the religion we picked?

Ian Malcolm could explain it, I’m sure.

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