Early in the American Invasion of Iraq

June 2nd, 2008 Posted in Social Class, Iraq

The time is the beginning of the Second Iraq War in 2003. The American invasion comes in three waves, one military, the other two not.

(1) The shock. The American Army offensive goes in and overruns the Iraqi Army quickly. The formal classical war is completed in a few weeks. Elements of the Iraqi social order have been destroyed. The tenor of ordinary Iraqi life changes radically.

(2) The camp-followers. Civilian business types, journalists, and a rag-tag of international adventurers and eccentric travelers follow closely. Energetic elements of this grouping meet and interact with curious and responsive Iraqi civilians (most obviously in Baghdad) and together construct an unexpected through truncated and transitional social order.

(3) The rump. A large number of overseers and late witnesses descend for official tours like crows on a corn field. A category of very important persons (VIPs) made up of American legislators and politicians and the famous and the wealthy from around the world who claim to study the situation and see things for themselves. The trip and the tour become (and continue to be) a hot ticket, hosted by the U.S. military and the emerging upper ranks of the Iraqi polity.

It is a mixed metaphor pattern. Each sector is very different yet there they are in the reality of the event and the model we describe is merely a reflection of what was.

In the analysis of the concrete we look for pattern, in this case at a low level of abstraction. We are not sure where it will lead but we make a start. Here is a violent physical strike that disrupts an on-going social order and brings with it elements of a temporary replacement. Social order is as we find it–the seemingly institutionalized and rock-solid (an illusion fostered by certain classical architectural styles) can be replaced by a transitional, temporary, fleeting order and all the mixed states between. We describe and speculate about this passing social reality. The order is in the pattern. The time in place is part of the pattern. Short or long, the pattern is the fact.

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War is interactive, the unit act applies. The sides engage like a violent chess game or a debate. Their actions are contingent, one upon the other, and the unrolling of the event is the concrete consequence. On the Iraqi side the image is a series of beaches.

(1) The first beach is the Army and the regime’s state apparatus. They hold out briefly, spew propaganda and raise an ambush and violent initiative where they can but as soon as they are overrun they close shop. Tutti a casa, everybody go home. The system of order from the top collapses.

(2) The second beach, the people in all their variety, fall back to a combination of ethno-religious-kinship survival forms. They are the ones who gather each morning around the hotels where the America second wave stay and essentially shape up–present themselves as translators and drivers with cars, and skilled workers in government and crafts looking for a connection with the brand new but still unformed regime.

(3) The third beach are the hidden ideologues, the warriors, the intransigents, the criminals and crazies who are to initiate and participate in the terror counter-attack that will end this short moment of an American-Iraqi Eden.

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I am speculating off my recollection of the information offered by the news media over several years. I am trying to find a sociological way into the immediate and the concrete. It is imperfect but, for me, a step beyond the crude political posturing of all of our U.S. political candidates.

 

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The social make-up of the American waves is starkly different. The membership of each is recruited from different sectors of our society. In my speculation I will be exaggerating distinctions. Social life in its multiplicity thwarts the simple understanding. So think of the differences as a matter of emphasis. In the distribution of a characteristic there will be expected differences in probability for each grouping.

I’ll chart the characteristics of each group with an emphasis on differences…

Army

Rural-small town, Younger-older, High school–Jr. College, Employee for wages, Physical, Fundamental faith, Hierarchical, Practical, Local, Get by financially.

Camp-followers

Urban, Younger, University, Self-employed-contract, Secular, Intellectual, Egalitarian, Theoretical, International, Comfortable financially.

Evaluators (Rump)

Suburban, Older, Law School, Professional practice, Political, Waffling on religion, Collegial, Self-centered, National, Financially secure

 

The parts the members of each wave play are determined by the career lines their families and local communities tend to emphasize and make real. The direction one takes has some relationship to where one starts. This is not perfectly determined but the vaunted social mobility turns on directed energy and mentors. Most of us are comfortable in following the way of family and friends. With an all volunteer military the distribution of the three kinds of activists suggested by the chart would seem to make sense. With the decades of draft mobilization these differences in career lines were obliterated though over time the pressures that distorted the mass mobilization of the 1940s and 1950s to the biased and twisted mobilization later were in response to the different career lines of different sectors of our society. The history of draft avoidance by so many of our political leaders now is a reflection of what we could call our social class and status career patterns.

In this Second Iraq War the majority of the American people are not involved actively. The three waves have volunteered and opted in. On this prior choice we have another question. The avoidance of a mass mobilization is historically determined. The experience of Vietnam with a biased mass mobilization for an unpopular war leading the radicalization of an entire generation has set the limit. So against the three waves we have the unmobilized rest of the U.S. society. The current political rejection of the inept and error-prone leadership is about as radical as we are likely to get now.