August
27, 2002, 9:00 a.m. Spreading
the Wealth
A
response to Claude Salhani.
By David Pryce-Jones
or half a century
now, the rulers of Iraq have been brutally murdered by their successors.
That fate probably awaits Saddam Hussein too, maybe at the hands of someone
as ruthless as he is — for instance his two sons, though he might
be able to kill them first, the way he did with his sons-in-law and grandchildren.
The Iraqi people
know and suffer all this. The day they are free from Saddam, in any case,
they will demonstrate en masse on the streets, hoping for better days.
Until then, we can't know the full horror of what they have gone through,
though courageous Iraqi dissidents like Kanan Makiya and Ahmad Chalabi
and Khidhir Hamza give us the general picture. I have no doubt that if
Iraqis could run their own affairs, they would opt for some form of constitutional
politics; perhaps a presidential democracy, perhaps a parliamentary democracy.
For the moment, Iraqis
have no say in their future, no way to take control of their destinies.
President Bush proposes regime change for them. The question becomes:
What then? Hundreds of influential Iraqis in exile are debating that question.
A number among them are fit to replace Saddam. The fear is that some strongman,
some general, will prove a Saddam clone and take over the secret police
and other instruments of dictatorship, and things will go on as before.
So I floated in NR
the idea of a restoration
of the Hashemite monarchy which revolutionaries brought to an end
in 1958 by murdering as many of the family as they could lay their hands
on. Another branch of the Hashemite family has done all right in Jordan,
in very difficult circumstances. It's a more or less absolute monarchy,
to be sure, but I was advocating a constitutional monarchy for Iraq. That's
a rare animal, but there are examples of it in Europe and Asia. It has
the merit of providing a figurehead who can serve to unite different national
religions or ethnic groups. I mentioned Prince Hassan of Jordan as a possible
candidate for the job. I have met him in private, read his book about
Christians in the Middle East, and heard him speak once or twice in public.
He has a sense of humor, and gravity as well. As far as I can judge, he's
a decent man who wouldn't prove a killer.
My idea has got up
the sensitive nose of Claude
Salhani. With rhetorical flourishes, Salhani accuses me of colonialism,
and oh what a deadly sin that is. Unforgivable. Why, I must be one of
what he calls "a certain group of people" who believe that the
West and in particular the United States should interfere in the internal
policies of other countries. Let me confess outright to conspiracy, I
belong to a one-man group with the belief that it is absolutely wrong
for a ruler to be killing his own people. If it is colonialism to stop
such a ruler, then I am all for it.
"Colonialism
is dead" says Salhani in the tone of someone holding an ace. That's
news. Try telling it to the Tibetans who live under Chinese colonialism.
Try telling it to the Lebanese who live under Syrian colonialism. Try
telling it to the Afghans who were colonized by Osama bin Laden and the
Taliban. Try telling it to the Bosnians and the Kosovars who were colonized
by the Serbs. We can debate the ills and the benefits of these various
enterprises, but to adapt a song of Noel Coward's, Everyone's doing it.
The world is a good
deal more complicated than Salhani thinks. He's trapped in the mindset
of the Fifties which held Western powers to be bad because they were guilty
of colonialism, and emerging nationalist rulers to be good because they
defined themselves as victims. But colonialism, like the tango, requires
two parties. The colonizer succeeds only because the colonized are in
a state of political or social collapse, unable to rule themselves. It
was always so, and always will be. In a recent example, the winners of
the civil war in Sierra Leone have just invited the British back to rule
them because among themselves they can only fight.
Western colonizers
tried to put democratic systems in place. They didn't do it too well,
but a great deal better than the nationalist rulers who succeeded them
and then spent the Fifties and Sixties closing down parliaments and law
courts and building up secret police. That's why we have Islamists in
some countries, and ugly thugs in others. If the people in those unhappy
countries can't help themselves to be free, then outsiders have to help
them, which may mean expedients as unlikely or imperfect as a Hashemite
restoration. Unlike Salhani, I want for others the freedoms I enjoy for
myself.
—
David Pryce-Jones is an NR senior editor whose books include The
Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs,
available in a new edition from Ivan R. Dee.
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or half a century
now, the rulers of Iraq have been brutally murdered by their successors.
That fate probably awaits Saddam Hussein too, maybe at the hands of someone
as ruthless as he is — for instance his two sons, though he might
be able to kill them first, the way he did with his sons-in-law and grandchildren.
