The depressing news from war-torn Iraq brings to mind the futility of our attempts at nation building in Vietnam. Perhaps we should recognize the wisdom of Winston Churchill’s admonition, “The thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.”
President Lyndon Johnson plunged into the Vietnam war based on faulty intelligence about our ships being fired upon in the Gulf of Tonkin. President Bush waged war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction. Neither of their facts were factual.
We were outwitted by the North Vietnamese who avoided open combat in favor of jungle guerrilla warfare — unknown to our troops. Taking a page out of the Vietnamese book, Iraq’s fighting forces also avoided open combat, and our troops entered Baghdad almost unscathed.
As the White House glowed over “the quickest and most humane war in history” and “Mission Accomplished,” the Iraqi army melted into the civilian population with its arms intact and fought an urban guerrilla war, again unfamiliar to our military.
If our experience in Vietnam is a foreshadow, we are indeed in for a “long, hard slog” in Iraq. In 1968, Richard Nixon campaigned for the presidency promising a quick end to the war and “peace with honor.” In his Inaugural address, Nixon said, “The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.” But the war dragged on seven additional years, while 20,000 more of our military came home in black bags.
As the battle in Iraq continues, our president has sought help from the United Nations — a body earlier described as “irrelevant.” The most important nations, the “Old Europe,” have been reluctant, however, to join in a war tremendously unpopular outside the United States.
Indeed, it is painfully evident the good will we enjoyed in Europe after September 11, 2001, has largely been squandered — even in Britain, our staunchest ally. The hostility toward our go-it-alone “cowboy diplomacy” can be summed up by the European headline: “Where did all the love for America go?”
The public mood is changing as the names and pictures of our casualties in Iraq appear nightly on PBS television. As the costs, which will be shouldered by our children and grandchildren, sink in, questions arise of whether the gain from the Iraq war can ever offset the loss in blood and treasure.
The rhetoric from Washington also is changing. Mr. Bush no longer taunts, “Bring ’em on,” and does not mention weapons of mass destruction as a reason for invading Iraq.
Today, he complains “Iraq is a dangerous place” and has become the “center of terrorism,” although admitting there is no evidence al Qaeda was a factor in Iraq prior to the start of the war. Mr. Bush also insists “fighting terrorists in Iraq is preferable to fighting them in our country,” but we can assume the Iraqis are not thrilled with his choice of battlefields.
A most important change has also taken place in Islam. While Christian Europe stagnated during the Dark Ages, the Muslim world developed a thriving civilization that made enormous contributions in science, farming and industry to the world.
While Catholic Europe persecuted the Jews, Islam granted a large measure of religious tolerance to the “people of the Scriptures” and offered Jews havens when they were driven out of Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition. Not so today. Anti-Semitism now is rampant among the Arab nations.
Mr. Bush’s goal of morphing Iraq into a freedom-loving bastion of democracy that will spread “seeds of freedom” through the Middle East is a quixotic pipe dream. His pointing to Japan and Germany in the after World War ll era as examples of Iraq’s potential to serve as a model for other Arab nations is an analogy rivaling President Reagan’s oranges-apples comparison of the “star wars” anti-missile defense system with gas masks.
Both Japan and Germany were highly industrialized nations with homogeneous, stable populations that were fertile grounds for American foreign aid. Iraq is a relatively underdeveloped country with the most heterogeneous population in the Middle East, home to at least 12 ethnic groups and three main religions. The population has quadrupled in the past 50 years and will double again in the next 25. This is not guesswork but a demographic certainty, as 41 percent of Iraq’s population is under age 15. Only 15 percent of Japan’s and Germany’s population was under age 15 at the close of World War II.
Given her unsustainable population growth and a 1,300-year unresolved bloody conflict between the Sunnis and Shi’ites, there is little likelihood Iraq will become a Jeffersonian democracy in the foreseeable future. Like the 300-year-old Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland, Iraq’s agonies should be measured in centuries rather than years.
The Iraqi General Council, following the Afghan example, has developed an interim constitution proclaiming a sectarian nation based on sharia (Islamic law) rather than “we hold these truths to be self-evident.” Unlike laws in a secular democracy, Islamic laws are largely interpreted by mullahs and ayatollahs.
The temporary constitution is a triumph of hope over reality. Before the ink was dry on the document, Shi’ite council members said key portions would be amended because it was “pegged to reservations,” and the country’s most powerful religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, declared the temporary constitution lacked “legitimacy.”
Given the caveats accompanying the signing of the new constitution, a military victory in Iraq may prove pyrrhic. Pulling out soon could result in utter chaos and a civil war as the long downtrodden majority Shi’ites settle the score with the minority Sunnis. On the other hand, if we “stay” Mr. Bush’s course, believing his administration can wipe out 13 centuries of religious differences by June 30, we shall remain mired in a morass of our own making.
I join the many Americans who, alarmed by our unilateralism and global overreaching, wish our efforts and coffers were more available for fighting the worldwide terrorism that bridged our protective oceans September 11, 2001 — a far more important mission than nation building in Iraq.
A bit more history: More than 2,500 years ago,a Lydian king saw his army decimated by Persians under Cyrus the Great and lamented, “In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons.” Those words should adorn an Oval Office wall as a constant reminder to future presidents before attacking other nations that do not threaten our safety or vital interest.
Alex Gerber, a clinical professor of surgery emeritus at the University of Southern California, formerly was a health care consultant to the White House and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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