The L word: how to gain legitimacy in Iraq?(At War)

MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE was fond of citing this sentence from a Manchester Guardian editorial--"One is sometimes tempted to believe that the Greeks do not want a stable government"--as the epitome of high-minded liberal

cant in foreign policy. Substitute "Iraqis" for "Greeks," however, and in the light of current events it seems more like hard-headed realism. In particular it illuminates the difficulties surrounding a major theme of current U.S. policy--the quest for a legitimate Iraqi authority.

Legitimacy in Iraq today is considered vital for two reasons: The Iraqi people would presumably be more willing to give active support to a governing authority that had some legitimacy, and such a government would have the moral confidence to suppress riots and punish troublemakers like Moqtada al-Sadr. But where is such legitimacy to be found? Who can claim it?

The U.S. can claim only short-term legitimacy as an occupying power. Right of conquest is no longer considered the basis of legitimate government internationally. Nor does the U.S. wish to establish a permanent colonial government in Baghdad. And even if it did, the fact that the U.S. is not an Islamic power would maximize popular opposition to its permanent rule over Muslims. Its legitimacy would need to be constantly replenished by force--in effect, by successive conquests--as British rule was in the 1920s. Very few people in Washington want that.

The United Nations is sometimes cited as the fount of legitimacy in similar situations. Its authority has sustained protectorates in, for example, East Timor and Kosovo. But it cannot provide legitimacy in Iraq because its own legitimacy is questioned there. The U.N. is stained by its acquiescence in Saddam Hussein's flouting of its own inspectors, and by the corruption of the "Oil for Food" program. And the Shiites, suspecting that the U.N. is hostile to their demand for early elections and majority-rule democracy, are reluctant to grant it much power.

Sometimes regional organizations can confer legitimacy on new regimes. But the Arab League is even more distrusted in Iraq than the U.N. It supported Saddam to the bitter end, and its most important members--Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia--are hostile to experiments in democracy in the Arab world. Iraqis reasonably fear that serious involvement by the Arab League would undermine the legitimacy of any new Iraqi government.

Democracy is, of course, the formula for legitimacy prescribed by the U.S. And a stable government rooted in popular consent would certainly start out enjoying full legitimacy. But how likely is such a phenomenon? And how long would it last? Democracy works only in societies in which people feel a strong sense of political community, and have no fear that they will be dispossessed, repressed, or even murdered by their political opponents. Iraq's Sunnis plainly fear such a fate at the hands of the Shiite majority; hence they are unlikely to accept a Shiite election victory without protest and perhaps rebellion.