Mayor Daley: A Man for All Seasons

Reading David Brooks’s column this morning in the New York Times, I was reminded of a famous malaprop committed by Mayor Richard J. Daley, of Chicago. After the Chicago police became the big story at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Daley had the impossible task of defending a police riot reminiscent of the Nazi era. Indeed, in a speech during the convention, Senator Abraham Ribicoff, a mainstream politician, had referred to “gestapo tactics” in the streets of Chicago by the police. Afterwards, Daley classically lectured the press that “the policeman isn’t there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder.” And that’s about what where we are in Iraq. It’s going to be interesting to see who turns the light out when we finally leave. I had thought Bush was the last person in America still speaking in earnest about staying the course. (I’m not counting McCain who’s got to be doing it for political effect – presumably, he’s staking out the “I told you so” concession for the 2008 election). But after reading Brooks this morning, it looks like Bush still has some company with him guarding the light switch. I suppose that even the most ardent advocates of leaving Iraq, and I count myself in that number, have to allow the possibility that a quick American withdrawal will lead to even greater disruption. If that were to happen, who knows? Maybe Brooks is right, and the chaos would spread like wild fire. I don’t happen to believe that, but I wouldn’t presume to make any predictions about anything in the Middle East at this point. But the tenor of Brooks’s column is that our exit from Iraq is a catastrophe waiting to happen. The problem, of course, is that the catastrophe has already been with us for almost four years and we all know what caused it. It’s clear what kind of problems the American occupation is causing every day for the Iraqi people and our beleaguered soldiers. The far more compelling school of thought is that our departure is the only way to help this infection to start to heal, however long that might take. It’s difficult to see anything positive in our continued presence, unless, as Mayor Daley might have put it, you believe that we are in Iraq to “preserve the disorder.”