Sinking ever-deeper into Iraq sand
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James O. Goldsborough
Columnist
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
August 4, 2003
signonsandiego.com
I have, in recent months, compared the Bush administration's war in Iraq to the Spanish-American and Vietnam wars and heard it compared to the Mexican and Persian Gulf wars.
But as the quagmire deepens, it becomes clear Iraq is unlike anything this nation has undertaken (though there are foreign parallels). The situation's uniqueness explains why public concerns are rising as President Bush's approval rating declines. Bush's war has produced the hostile, hegemonic occupation of a sullen nation bent on killing Americans until we have departed.
It is the job of soldiers to kill or be killed, some would say, and if the cause is right, it is a price any brave nation is willing to pay.
But what was the cause of Bush's war? If it was Iraq's weaponry (the term weapons of mass destruction is meaningless), where are they? If it was to satisfy Iraqis' hunger for democracy, why are they killing us?
It is these paradoxes that make this war unlike anything before, and why it is so extremely risky. They are paradoxes born of Bush's doctrine of "pre-emptive" war, and the deepening quagmire should be reason to jettison that flawed doctrine for good. Pre-emptive war is war a la carte, and no victim will take it kindly.
Looking back over history, Bush's war in a way resembles the Spanish-American war – also fought over trumped-up charges magnified in the press to create war fever and leading to a long U.S. foreign occupation.
The difference is that, in principle at least, we were liberating Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines from a decadent Spanish monarchy. Filipinos would show no more love for the new rulers than for the old, and 20,000 Filipino fighters and 4,000 U.S. soldiers would die before the islands were subdued.
With Vietnam, the main difference is that Americans were, some thought, defending a nation seeking help in repelling foreign aggression. Our mistake was that South Vietnam was not a nation, but a part of a nation fighting a civil war, and however good our intentions, we should have stayed out.
The Mexican war has little in common with Iraq. It was a border war over Texas. Rep. Abraham Lincoln and much of Congress opposed the war over fears Texas would enter the Union as a slave state, which it did. The war, called "Mr. Polk's war," resembles "Mr. Bush's war" only in that Polk wanted war as badly as Bush.
Bush's war bears little resemblance to the 1991 Gulf War, which was waged by a broad coalition of nations operating under U.N. mandate to reverse Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. A central difference is that the coalition stopped after driving Iraq from Kuwait, rejecting armed occupation of Iraq because of the very dangers Bush has now assumed for America mostly alone.
It should be noted that U.S. deaths from hostile fire in Bush's war already exceed those in the Gulf War, and there will be many more to follow.
The word quagmire suggests Vietnam, and if the differences between Iraq and Vietnam are fundamental, the common point is that quagmires suck you in and don't let go. The longer the Iraq occupation lasts, the more it will resemble Vietnam – soldiers being killed, treasure being drained, no exit strategy, rising discontent at home.
The conflict Iraq most resembles today comes not from America's past, but from France's and Britain's, the imperial powers Bush would emulate.
Think of Algiers, 1954-57. There is a scene in Pontecorvo's great film, "The Battle of Algiers," where the colonel in charge meets the press after crushing Arab street protest.
"They want us to leave Algeria," he says. "But we want to stay."
The French would be swept away.
Think of Baghdad in the 1920s with the British bombing the people into submission. Military government would give way to a pro-British Arab regime under King Faisal I, a Hashemite imported from Arabia.
The occupation was a huge drain on British resources, but London got Iraq's oil, as it got Iran's. Things would unravel in the 1930s, and, in 1940, Iraq sought to join the Axis powers to oppose the now hated British. In 1958, Iraqi nationalists took control, murdering Faisal II and his family, and eventually leading to Saddam Hussein.
There is only one way Bush can avoid dragging America into the same swamp that drowned the British:
If American troops are not to become shooting ducks as our nation is drained of $3.9 billion a month in occupation costs for years to come, we need help from the United Nations.
Yes, that United Nations, the one Bush scorned, insulted and deceived as he planned his war. The administration of Iraq must be turned over to the United Nations so that occupation costs, in lives and treasure, are transferred to a broad group of nations.
Bush won't do it. He'll accept money, and a few nations are offering a few troops (paid for by us), but he will not hand power to the United Nations. Because of that, big nations that could help – India, Russia, France and Germany – won't sign on.
It is another Bush mistake. At this point, we need the United Nations more than it needs us, and until Bush is willing to eat a little crow, we will all pay – our troops more than most.
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James O. Goldsborough is foreign affairs columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and a member of the newspaper's editorial board, specializing in international issues.
Goldsborough spent 15 years in Europe as a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, the International Herald Tribune and Newsweek Magazine. He is a former Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign relations and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment.
Goldsborough's column is syndicated nationally by Copley News Service. |
