Samizdata

Although war still rages, it is already time to start looking to Iraq’s future.

All but the most willfully blind will have seen that no accommodation is either possible nor in fact desirable with Ba’athist Socialism, and that must shape how the allies act not just now but when victory has been won.

Since 1945, we have had the examples of the overthrow of many totalitarian regimes: National Socialism in Germany, Fascism in Italy, Fascist Imperialism in Japan and Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe… each informs us in very different ways.

In Russia, Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia, Communist totalitarianism was cast off by internal dissent, made possible by a decaying security apparatus and enervated ruling elite that were the inevitable long term result of Marxist economics.

The good thing about the momentous sloughing off of Communist tyranny across the Slavic world was that it came with a relatively small price in blood even in places like Romania. However therein also lies the cost…

Throughout eastern Europe the success of civil and political society breaking out of the toxic legacy of communism has been very patchy indeed. As the overthrow of communism was political, the inevitable political cost was that accommodations with ‘former’ communists were made… in many cases former communists came to dominate the post-communist nations, effortlessly exchanging command economics for so called ‘crony capitalism’. In nations like Serbia, the thuggish national socialist elite retains control over large sections of society as it always did: with assassinations, fear and brutality.

In Germany, Italy and Japan however, the overthrow came not from political processes but at the point of a foreign bayonet. In East Germany unfortunately the bayonets were those of the equally monstrous Soviets but elsewhere it was the Western Allies who crushed the Nazi and Fascist regimes… and brought in their wake a process called ‘De-Nazification’.

In occupied post war Germany member of the Nazi Party were simply forbidden from participating in politics and excluded from any ‘sensitive’ jobs. Leading members of the German National Socialist German Workers Party were put on trial and many were hanged. The British even had what can only be described as military ‘hit squads’ ranging across Occupied Germany in 1945 summarily executing upper and middle rank German officers responsible for atrocities against British personnel during the war.

A ‘De-Ba’athification’ process is what must follow the destruction of Saddam Hussain’s state. Mere membership of the Ba’athist Party must be taken as prima facie evidence that the person is unfit for any political role whatsoever and membership in the Fedayeen Saddam must carry with it a presumption of guilt for crimes. When an anti-Ba’athist Iraqi regime is in place, they must not only not be restrained from conducting their own systematic purging of Iraqi society, but must be required to do so.

Similarly the allies must not get squeamish and should make no apologies for the use of violence to expunge Ba’athist toxins from the Iraqi state and society… Something that many libertarians fail to understand is that when normal civil society has collapsed, normal rules of civil interaction and legal niceties are not just impossible, they are madness. When the guns are out, it is the logic of the lifeboat which applies, not the logic of the lawsuit.

Ba’athist Socialism is institutionalised civil violence and unlike communism, it could have lasted indefinitely as it fed like a vampire on the rich blood of Iraq’s oil wealth. It is not enough to destroy Saddam Hussain’s armies, Ba’athist Socialism too will have to be killed just as National Socialism was, quite literally.

In a similar vein, hopefully the Fedayeen responsible for executing British prisoners and massacring fleeing Iraqi civilians will be summarily shot by British soldiers if they are captured when Basra is finally taken (that may of course happen regardless of any ‘policy decisions’ in London). The most effective way to do this and the best way for Iraqi society in the long run, is simply not to take any Fedayeen prisoners, except a few perhaps for intelligence gathering purposes. Rough justice is the only justice there is at such times.