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Then
and Now: The Haunting Past in the Iraq Policy Now
that the war in Iraq is over and the process of rebuilding the country
has begun events will undoubtedly demonstrate how defying they can be
of our expectations, even competing ones. The analogy conflict that
has been waged between those who believe the Iraq policy will be another
failure like Vietnam and those with the conviction that Iraq can be
rehabilitated like Germany and Japan were will be resolved as to which
one applies better. Of course, neither should at all. Nothing can be
more unwise than making simplistic analogies to the past which obscure
both the real lessons which can be gleamed from it and the unique nature
of present realities.
As we have already seen the suicide bombing of American troops and the subsequent suspicion that it breeds we can only hope that the one analogy which will definitely not apply is that of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. But consider the consequences of an occupying force of some 100,000 American troops in a country roughly the size of France. They make quite an appealing target for terrorists in the region. Security and 'force protection' may have to be so constraining that the Americans begin to look more like conquerors distrustful of Iraqis than the friendly liberators they desperately want to be viewed as. Traffic across Iraq's borders, bogged down by security measures to prevent terrorists from slipping into the country, can stifle trade with Iraq's neighbors and belie the attempt at building a democracy which, by definition, requires an open society with free-flowing trade. Ever present in the failure of Jay Garner's short tenure is evidence that security arrangements hindered efforts to provide effective administration of the country. Proving that the issue of security vs. trust & cooperation is as central here as in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. This is just one question one can pose and it is not to be obscured by that ill-fitting analogy. But that such a central issue can be cast aside as perhipheral by both administration thinking as well as by those in the media charged with questioning assumptions, then perhaps past American hubris warrants a revisiting, wherein lie the lessons of crumbling assumptions. Parallels to the Vietnam era are uneasily present in the conduct of this war and subsequent occupation. We see it in the contempt for major allies, international institutions such as NATO and the UN, and the contemptuous use - and bribing - of minor ones. In the failure of the military to communicate effectively with the local population. In the irony of believing in a sort of democratic domino effect in the Middle-East. The discounting of nationalist or Arabist sentiment in the region. A Defense Department run by a micro-managing former CEO. The soft McCarthyism of the right wing which readily shouts down any dissent. The mindless, statistically-laden press briefings and rhetorically filled presidential speeches absent all context. The glaring isolation of a President from the mood and opinion of the world and the political leadership's utter inability to understand a foreign culture and civilization. It has been widely acknowledged that in Vietnam the US simply did not understand the kind of war it was in. Fighting a guerrilla/political war with conventional military, state-on-state means and mentality. This is not entirely accurate. Any cursory reading of history will tell you that from the early days of the Kennedy administration, when the original commitment to Vietnam was made, talk of counterinsurgency and guerrilla warfare was in vogue. There was a consciousness about fighting an unconventional war, about finding innovative ways to fight communist insurgencies in the third world. But it just never sunk in. American leadership, much like today, plainly refused to relinquish the illusion of advantage that its technological and military power granted their side of the fight. One always has the tendency to overvalue what one possesses. Many neo-conservatives to this day still believe that the war was lost not because it was unwinnable (you are always on the wrong side of history when fighting a nationalist revolution, which is what Vietnam ultimately was) but because of political interference in restricting military options. Jay Garner was quoted in the New York Times as saying that had Bush been president back then the Vietnam war would have been won. The failure to grasp such a fundamental lesson of history is astounding. What we also see again today is the imposition of the Pentagon on the affairs of state diplomacy. Dean Rusk was a marginalized Secretary of State (just ask the average pedestrian on the street which name they recognize, Dean Rusk or Robert McNamara) while Secretary of Defense McNamara, former Ford executive and modern technocrat, went about Southeast Asia and Europe conducting American foreign policy before the cameras. During the early and mid 60s all the "best and the brightest" minds worked at the Pentagon. The enthusiasm for fighting the Cold War were coming from there, while the State Department was still languishing from the scourge and purges of the McCarthy era. Today,
Colin Powell, a first rate talent and a close and loyal friend to Bush
Sr., seems constantly outmaneuvered within the administration in influencing
the president and trying to wrest control of Iraqi policy and governance
from the Pentagon. It is two time Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
persistently overruling his generals and creating his own war and reconstruction
plans, who is the true spokesman for Bush's foreign policy as he executes
that policy in administering Iraq. What a great irony that Powell, a
soldier-statesman whose outlook on military intervention is shaped by
the Vietnam experience, vowing never to repeat that same mistake, should
find himself in such a similarly tamed position as Rusk. Noteable still
is the fact that the abject mess and failure that is the current state
of American diplomacy is something that probably no one blames Secretary
Powell for, notwithstanding the attacks levelled at the State Department
by Newt Gingrich. In the
satirically toned thriller The Manchurian Candidate, a communist conspiracy
aims to put a McCarthy-type Senator in the White House, as this would
serve Soviet-Chinese interests in destroying American democracy. The
plot of Seven Days in May revolves around a right wing general, played
by Burt Lancaster, who plans a coup d'etat against a president ready
to sign a radical arms treaty with the Soviet Union. Beyond inventing
the political thriller genre, these films spoke from the heart of America's
democratic principles. Where are the cautionary tales in film and the media today as Hollywood is busy manufactuing violent and adolescent schlock? One of the most under-acknowledged characteristics of the anti-war movement was how the protesters not only campaigned against the war, but against the media's coverage of it as well. The news media and the whole of the pop-culture apparatus have abstained from playing any critical role in posing the questions that should be put to the bold assumptions being made in the Iraq policy. When looking for intelligent dissent in the opposition we find the Democratic Party chronically hindered in challenging hawkish presidents for fear of being seen as 'soft'. They have surrendered their constitutional role as members of Congress to the dictates of a media age that concentrates attention on the presidential center of power; embodied by a handful of coherent White House and cabinet voices. No one is able to popularly articulate any meaningful doubts. That American leadership can be so blind to the opinions and concerns of the rest of the world is something we have never seen before. People today simply do not believe in American good intentions as they did back in those days before Vietnam. The Western Alliance is divide with European public opinion clearly opposed to the policy. The Arab world is rife with suspicion, resentment and outright anger at the United States. This cannot but affect such an ambitious nation-building effort, making success a much less likely outcome. The adage
'know thy enemy' is one of those universal truths the US military clearly
understands the meaning of when taking the fight to the battlefield.
Less clear is this administration's ability to understand its friends
and allies, the Arab world or the Iraqi people. The more appropriate
saying may be another less impersonal cliche, though no less untrue;
'you are your own worst enemy'. |
