[Mb-civic] Law of Unintended Consequences Careful what you wish for in Iraq. Robert Scheer

[Michael Butler]

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer8feb08.story
ROBERT SCHEER
Law of Unintended Consequences
Careful what you wish for in Iraq.
Robert Scheer

February 8, 2005

In a heightened display of saber rattling, President Bush, Vice President
Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been saying nasty
things about Iran's "unelected mullahs."

This is apparently so we'll be able to tell the difference between the
theocracy in place in Tehran and the one coalescing in Baghdad. Although
things are looking slightly brighter for Iraq after its debut election, it
is still not clear why the United States has spent incalculable fortunes in
human life, taxpayer money and international goodwill to break Iraq and then
remake it in the image of our avowed "axis of evil" enemy next door.

In his State of the Union address, Bush denounced Iran as "the world's
primary state sponsor of terrorism." At the same time, he celebrated an
Iraqi election that handed power to Shiite ayatollahs who were sponsored for
decades by their co-religionists in Iran and who share much of Tehran's
vision of religion and politics. Does this make sense to anybody outside of
the White House?

The final returns from the Iraqi election are not in, but it seems clear
that the slate headed by the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution is going to have a clear majority in the new constitutional
assembly. This is a classic example of how, in the real world, there is a
lot more gray than an administration that sees everything in black and white
wants to admit.

After all, Rice can call Iran's hyper-conservative religious leaders
"loathsome," and Cheney can claim, paternally, that the United States knows
many "responsible Iraqis," but the fact is that deeply religious Shiites
with strong ties to each other will be in control in both Iraq and Iran.

And if what the mullahs have wrought in Basra and other parts of Iraq is any
indication, the cause of human rights is in deep trouble ‹ particularly for
women, who enjoyed freedoms in the secular world of Saddam Hussein that are
denied under fundamentalist Islamic law. Those photos of Iraqi women dressed
in identical shrouds lined up to vote for candidates handpicked by the Grand
Ayatollah Ali Sistani were, to say the least, an ambiguous advertisement for
democracy.

"Public freedom should be regulated based on the country's Islamic
character," said a top Sistani aide last week, opening the door to the
institution of Islamic law, or sharia, that would lower the legal status of
women in all important family matters ‹ from inheritance to their basic
rights in a marriage.

What we are witnessing here is a startling application of the law of
unintended consequences: A U.S. president who is intent on breaching the
wall between church and state in his own country on issues such as birth
control and the "sanctity of marriage" has now used the world's most
powerful military to pave the way for a new Muslim theocracy in the heart of
the Arab world. Furthermore, Bush has unwittingly strengthened the hand of
Iran, a nation allegedly developing weapons of mass destruction and
supporting global terrorism.

For now, of course, the slate is fresh for Iraq's incoming leaders. But it
would be naive for the White House to think that a winning coalition headed
by self-defined Islamic revolutionaries long nurtured by Iran would not
emulate key aspects of their former Tehran hosts' thinking.

Mind you, there is certainly no harm in the U.S. strongly urging that
minority and individual rights and the separation of church and state be
written into Iraq's coming constitution. Washington might seem a bit
hypocritical on this, however, considering the tight ties the U.S. and the
Bush family have with the totalitarian theocracy in Saudi Arabia.

Bottom line, though, is that the Shiite ayatollahs have held the keys to
Baghdad since Hussein's predominantly Sunni military regime was dismantled
after the invasion. They successfully demanded an election in the midst of a
Sunni insurgency and boycott, and they won it.

Washington has crashed against the limits of foreign military power as an
instrument for crafting a culture of freedom for another people. It does not
help that our motives are corrupted by a rapacious thirst for petroleum, our
vision blurred by an insufferable ignorance of the complexity of local
cultures and our presumption exaggerated by the effrontery of our own
leader's claims to the wisdom of God.

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