A Conversation with US Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill Posted by Shadi Hamid

Last week, I moderated a "conversation" with US Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill at the Brookings Doha Center. In what followed, Hill elaborated in depth on topics ranging from the declining influence of sectarian parties, Maliki’s place in history, the US troop drawdown, and whether the 2003 invasion was justified. The full transcript, which we will release publicly later this week, comes in at nearly 17000 words. There’s a lot in there for Iraq watchers.

Two things, in particular, struck me about the conversation. First, the audience, which was primarily Arab, had a chance to air their grievances to a senior U.S. diplomat regarding one of the most unpopular wars in recent memory. But instead of anger, the audience seemed almost bizarrely subdued. This fits in with something I’ve been noticing recently, although I have little way of quantifying it as an actual trend: Arabs are tired of being angry at the U.S. Their anger has turned into resignation and, increasingly, indifference.

The second thing was Ambassador Hill rather interesting - and, for me, surprising - comments on the decision to go to war. With the elections having gone rather well, and Iraq apparently and relatively stable, it's easy to forget that memories are longer than we like to think. I asked Hill what he would say to those Arab who are angry about the war and continue to hold it as a major grievance against the U.S. Later, an audience member asked about the actual U.S. motivations behind going to war.

Hill's responses are very interesting because they really get to the core of a difficult debate about whether ends can justify means, the responsibility to protect, and what it means to have a "moral" foreign policy at a time when perhaps most non-American see us as an immoral force, or worse. I want to let Ambassador Hill's words speak for themselves:

MR. HAMID: Generally speaking, for Arabs and for others, for that matter, who are angry about the Iraq war and has continued to hold it as a major grievance against U.S. foreign policy, what would you say to them now in light of these elections?  Because this still is something that people haven’t forgotten and won’t forget for the foreseeable future and the anger is still there.

AMBASSADOR HILL:  Yeah.  Now, if someone expresses anger on that, I would want to know why they’re angry.  So what -- why would a person be angry?

MR. HAMID:  For example --

AMBASSADOR HILL:  I mean, if you’re Saddam Hussein’s cousin, I understand why you’re angry.  (Laughter)

MR. HAMID:  Well, I don’t think -- I think most people here in the region weren’t fans of Saddam, and I think it’s a very small minority who were.  I think the issue is the loss of innocent civilian life, and we have the numbers and they’re quite striking in some regard.  So, I mean --

AMBASSADOR HILL:  So people are angry from a humanitarian point of view.

MR. HAMID:  Humanitarian.

AMBASSADOR HILL:  Yeah.  Well, you know, without going over what happened there before, I mean, before my time, I mean, this is actually my fourth assignment in a town that used to be part of the Ottoman Empire, but it’s my first assignment in Iraq, and I certainly wasn’t, you know, part of what was going on earlier.  I will say that anybody who says that this is easy or this has been an easy seven years or anyone who, you know, wants to take a bow over what’s happened in the last seven years should think again.  This has been very, very difficult, extremely difficult.  Civilians have been -- there’s no question there have been many civilian casualties.  Just today there were three bombings in Baghdad with civilian casualties.  This has been an extremely painful process.
               The issue here, the issue that anyone faces is, okay, what do we do now?  What’s the best way to deal with this?  And what I think the Iraqis have concluded is the best way to deal with this is to restore their sovereignty and introduce what is essentially a democratic system.  Now, a lot of people will say, well, why a democratic system?  I mean, there’s never been democracy in Iraq before.  Shouldn’t they introduce something else?  Okay, well, tell me how that works.  How are they going to do that?  Should they, you know, choose a dictator or something?  I don’t think anyone wants that.  Should they have a military coup?  I don’t think anyone wants that either.  I think it’s the system which they have chosen because it’s probably better than all the alternatives, demonstrably better.
                And so as painful as it has been, and certainly historians will have the opportunity to go back through the events starting in just a little over seven years ago and look at why the United States did that and why other countries joined in that, historians can look at all that.  My job -- I mean, historians look back, diplomats look forward.  And my job is to try to work on creating a relationship with Iraq that will serve our mutual interests for decades to come, and that’s what we’re engaged in right now.

(...) MR. BUSHTRA (audience member):  So what is the main reason for the presence of United States in Iraq (after first mentioning the issue of oil)?

AMBASSADOR HILL:  First of all, it’s not about the oil.  And the oil is not ours, it’s the Iraqis’.  And frankly, we get our oil on the world market, like everyone else does.  It’s -- you know, Iraqi oil belong to Iraqis.  And Iraqis should develop the oil sector, but not for us.  They should develop it for themselves.
            Secondly, I’d point out that when you look at those companies that got contracts, there is I think one -- no, two American companies and then there are many other international companies.  So it’s not about the oil and thank you for pointing that out.
            You know, again, I don’t want to re-litigate 2003.  I mean, a lot of people have a lot of different ideas.  I would say one of the ideas that I find compelling and, you know, if you live in Iraq and if you go around and see what happened in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein had to go.  He was a threat not only to Iraq, he was a threat to the neighbors.  He was a person who had no concept of restraint.  He would do whatever he had to do.  He never -- he wouldn’t be content to kill 100 people, he’d kill 1,000 people.  He wouldn’t be content to kill one member of a family, he’d kill the whole family.  It was sort of -- he was the type of person, a leader, who is dangerous not only to his country, but I think to the region.
            And, frankly, you know, again, there are different people who had different motivations, but, at the end of the day, there’s a certain morality that I think we all have to be aware of.  And, you know, how can we just stand by and allow this person to behave that way when we have the capacity to do something about it?
            Now, this gets into a lot of cosmic discussion of, well, if you do something about Saddam, what about so-and-so here and so-and-so there, et cetera, et cetera?  And it’s endless and not very productive discussion.  But certainly when people looked at Saddam, they looked at a lot of different reasons and they looked at the problem from different angles, and many people came up with the same view that this guy has to go.
            I come along in 2009.  I mean, in 2003, I was not dealing with this.  I was still recovering from the wounds of having dealt in the Bosnia issues for so many years.  I was living in a very -- a wonderful country, Poland.  I was up in Warsaw.  So I come along in 2009, and what’s my job?  What should I be trying to do?  Should I be re-litigating the events of 2003?  Should I be, you know, exploring whether we should have done this or should have that?
             I certainly looked at some of the mistakes, which I think is fair to do.  But my feeling is my job is to look forward and to try to make sure that we don’t get another Saddam.  And I think the best way to do that is to have this democracy, which no one is claiming is perfect and no one is claiming is somehow going to be turned into some new kind of aggressive imperialist force in the region.  I don’t think it is.  I think it’s -- Iraqis have settled on a democratic model because there’s no other choice.  And believe me, over the centuries Iraqis have tried just about everything.  So I think it’s the right way to go.
            And I think if we can be helpful to the Iraqis, show them -- you know, be helpful with the understanding that, at the end of the day, it’s their country.  I think it’s the right policy and that’s what I’m trying to implement.

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I feel very sad to hear Mr. Hill's attempts to put a glossy shine on a tragic situation.I have yet to know or hear from one Iraqi who is grateful to the US for invading and occupying Iraq. I knew a couple of Iraqis who were grateful and many who were willing to give the US a chance to offer Iraqis a better world at the beginning of the occupation but they all changed their minds years ago. Their lives are in tatters and so is their beloved country. All the opinion polls I have seen out of Iraq clearly show that Iraqis are not glad they've been occupied and they have wanted the US to leave for years. Who cooks up the opinion polls referred to by Mr. Hill?

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