The Confederate State of Iraq

Posted on March 28, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi

“The attacks we’re seeing are bizarre — technical vehicles [pickups] with .50 calibers and every kind of weapon charging tanks and Bradleys,” Wallace added, referring to the M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles used by the Army. “It’s disturbing to think that someone can be that brutal.” — “General: A Longer War Likely,” Washington Post, 3/28/2003

Well, that’s true, if one is actually trying to win a war.

But I suspect the Iraqi forces aren’t trying to win, exactly. They’re trying to do two interrelated things:

a) Cause the Americans and British delays to allow diplomatic outrage and political maneuvering, which will presumably work in Saddam’s favor;

b) Set themselves up as valiant martyrs against the evil aggressors (that’d be us).

The first of these is pitched to the world at large, since there are apparently still people and nations who are under the impression that a ceasefire is possible. I think this belief is charming and sweet, but as I doubt that, short of an actual religious conversion, Dubya has ever changed his mind about anything, so the first point here is moot.

However, the second point is pitched to Muslim and/or Arab states and people, and I suspect that it’s likely to have some appeal. A mindset that sees suicide bombing as a legitimate tactic is more likely to see three Iraqis in Toyota attacking an M1 as gutsy rather than just plain stupid. In the short term, such admiration is of questionable value, but in the long term, mythologizing the Iraqi resistance is one way to build an antagonistic identity among Arabs and Muslims across borders. And of course that’ll be no good for the US, especially if we have it in our mind to go all imperial across the Middle East (which would be a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean it’s not being considered).

If you think fighting a losing battle with style doesn’t have an enduring, long-term appeal that will lead a people to do stupid, self-defeating things decades and even centuries later, head to the American South sometime and listen to some its more ignit citizens give you a mouthful about the glory of the Confederacy and how awful that War of Northern Aggression was, and watch them pretzel up into wrathful, foaming anger when you suggest the Confederacy was a hateful, evil thing that’s well put into the ground, stake through its heart.

Make no mistake, Saddam, in his way, is attempting to make the Iraq the Confederate South of the Middle East. If it takes stupidly sacrificing thousands of his people to do it, well, of course, he doesn’t mind.