Mr. Bush Resurrects the Domino Theory
by Jeffrey Simpson of the Globe and Mail ( 8th October 2005 edition)
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The Vietnam War cost 58,000 American lives. The war, in hindsight, had nothing to do with the threat Communism posed to democratic societies, although the war was sold in that way.
The same can be said of the Iraq War: If ever Islamic terrorism is defeated, the Iraq war will not have the same cause, even though its defenders link the war to the defeat of terrorism.
Vietnam was explained as a test case of U.S. resolve: to defeat Communism and halt its spread from that country to neighbouring ones. This "domino theory" --- Vietnam first, Laos and Cambodia next, then Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines --- tragically misunderstood the roots of indigenous Vietnamese Communism, the historic rivalries of the region, the limited influence of the Soviets and the Chinese, and the true stakes involved.
Blinded by ignorance but seized of a messianic mission, the U.S. waged war in Vietnam, insisting that it was freedom's protector not just for the Vietnamese but for oppressed people everywhere. We are "watchmen on the walls of world freedom," declared then president Lyndon B. Johnson.
Whole libraries are now filled with books about the follies and tragedies of the Vietnam War. A haunting memorial in Washington, D.C., commenorates those who fell. Tens of thousands more wear the physical and mental scars of that war. The war even figured in the U.S. campaign. Democratic candidate John Kerry underlined his military service in Vietnam, whereas detractors minimized it.
This week the Vietnam War reappeared, indirectly but powerfully, in President Bush's continuing justification for the Iraq War.
Iraq, said Mr. Bush in a major foreign policy speech, was the prime takeover target for "militant networks." The president continued: "The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."
If successful in taking over Iraq, and from there establishing this "radical Islamic empire" spanning half the globe, the militants will "develop weapons of mass destruction, destroy Israel, intimidate Europe, assault the American people and blackmail our government into isolation."
Here is the domino theory gone wild, a complete misreading of the pre-war Iraq, and a tragic reversal of cause and effect.
Vietnam was never part of any Communist's drive for world-wide domination. The same could have been said for Iraq before the U.S. adventure.
Al-Qaeda and allies despise Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi tyrant. He was a secularist; they were religious fundamentalists. Their interpretation of Islam was foreign to most Iraqi Sunnis, Saddam's community. They headed for Afghanistan because a political vacuum existed into which had stepped the Taliban.
The Americans toppled Saddam. They created a vacuum that the militants are now trying to fill, rather than the other way around, as Mr. Bush suggests. The president argues that "they've set their sights on Iraq." Indeed, they did, but only after Saddam fell. Mr. Bush's cause-and-effect relationship is backwards.
Now, in addition to wreaking havoc in Iraq, the Wall Street Journal reports that militants are leeching into neighbouring countries such as Jordan and Egypt, the very development that presidents of those countries warned the U.S. about before the Iraq invasion.
The notion that the "militants, "once established in Iraq, will create a radical empire from Spain to Indonesia updates the old domino theory that so misled the U.S. policy-makers in the 1960s and 1970s. They thought Vietnam to be part of a worldwide pattern, whereas it was a unique conflict of no consequence in the broader struggle. The same can be said of the decision to wage war in Iraq.
The Bush warning about the "radical empire" ignores profound religious differences within Islam, ancient hatreds, entrenched cultural differences, power politics. It forgets the repeated failures of pan-Arabism, the Iran-Iraq war, the tensions between India and Pakistan (and within both countries) and Syria and Iran, the civil wars of Lebanon, the interbnal rivalries of Iraq (Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis), Syria (where minority Alawites rule and Afghanistan, the primal influences of tribe and family.
The Bush warning brands the Islamic world as a monolithic bloc, or at least a large group of dissimilar countries capable of being fused into such a bloc by a nasty ideology spreading from one place.
The warning represents a grotesque misreading of ancient and recent history to justify to an increasingly skeptical U.S. public a foreign policy initiative of that has already cost almost $600-billion (U.S.) and thousands of lives, Iraqi and American, and from which no early exits exists.
Mr. Bush has been, and remains, correct that Islamic terrorism does represent a world-wide threat, as many nations have learned to their sorrow, and not just the United States. He is right that Iraq is now a frontline battleground between terrorist groups and political authorities in Iraq, to say nothing of their U.S. overseers.
There was a struggle ahead against this insidious ideology and its murderous adherents. The battleground, however, was not Iraq, until the Americans made it so by invading under false pretenses and rediscovering the old domino theory.
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