I’ve been reading Tom Friedman’s From Beirut To Jerusalem. It is, basically, a compilation of his experiences and opinions on the Middle East, gathered during his many years there as a correspondent for United Press International and The New York Times.
As Jeff pointed out when he passed it along to me, it’s not written in the oracular mode of his columns; rather, it’s journalism, combined with a little bit of autobiography.
I’ve just finished the section on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the early 80′s, and I’m fascinated by the parallels with the American situation in Iraq. In that case, after several years of fighting, with nothing to show for it but a body count and the aninmus of the population, Israel withdrew unilaterally. It took a change in government to do it, though.
Friedman is very blunt in saying that the Israeli’s went into a situation that they didn’t fully understand. They found a proxy to run the country, who turned out to be less than ideal. They tried to win the hearts of the population, but failed to do so, and ended up resorting to ever-more-stringent military measures. And in the process, they destroyed the moral of their own military, as their troops were forced into a situation where death seemed to come from everywhere, and every car seemed as though it may hold a bomb.
I wonder if we’re going to find ourselves in the same position: forced to leave a situation of our own creation, without having gained anything from it.
Military strength is one thing, and it has its purpose. But one does not evangelize with a gun, nor does one guarantee security through oppression. That seems a pretty clear lesson of history, and one that the recent history of the Middle East bears out.
And yet…
November 22nd, 2005 at 5:29 pm
America, America, America, Israel, America, France, America, Soviet Union. Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Lebanon, Vietnam, Vietnam, insert latin american country of choice, Afghanistan. Nation building has been tried many times before, and many times before nation building has failed. (While I want to think there’s been a successful case, I can’t think of it. If you want to prove me wrong, please do.) Similarities between any of these cases exist and you’d be naïve to claim they didn’t; though the administration has tried. The general question is can nation building succeed? Can an outside country invade/attack/covertly overthrow another country’s government and create another legitimate, working government? Logically, there appears to be nothing inherent in the scenario that says no. But it’s goddamn arrogant of us to think that we can and should impose our own brand of western, capitalist, judeo-christian government on anyone.
In Iraq, there are those that hate us cause we’re western, those that hate us cause we’re capitalist and a hell of a lot of people that hate us cause we’re judeo-christian. Then there’s the Baathists who hate us cause they used to have the power. And there’re going to be those that hate us because at least with Saddam, they knew who was going to bust into their house and steal their relatives and they knew how to avoid that. Now, if someone shoots your son, mortars your house or kidnaps your husband, well, it could be any one of 10 or 15 groups for 30 or 40 reasons.
We are further along in Iraq than in past exercises. Many of the Kurds and Shiites seem to tolerate us. And some of the Sunnis are starting to come around. This round of nation building maybe might work out, possibly. Though I could just be drinking the Kool-aid (“Oh Yeah!!â€). Of course, even if everything works out, the administration still grossly underestimated the length of time, the cost in money and the number of troops. Which makes them either stupid, incompetent or liars. Or possibly all of the above.
Sorry for the essay. I easily could’ve made it longer though.
November 22nd, 2005 at 11:24 pm
I’m not sure I’m with you in your optimism about the current situation; I don’t think we are any further along in our attempt to build a nation than any of the prior attempts. Maybe we can progress to a further point, and maybe we can use that progress as experience to guide the next attempt, or the one after that, so that it will actually succeed. But I don’t think that we’re there.
The comparison to Lebanon, to the extent that it holds, is instructive in that it emphasizes that degree to which we just don’t understand the situation. Maybe someone in the Pentagon realized that there were going to be 10 or 15 different groups kidnapping people once Saddam fell, but they sure didn’t do much to plan for that circumstance.
Even Saddam had trouble avoiding the situation in which we currently find ourselves — caught in the middle of a multitude of groups, each with a different goal and a different reason for wanting to achieve it. And he had “advantages” that we don’t have: the ability to wantonly murder his own citizens being chief among them.
I agree that it’s arrogant of us to think that we can somehow impose our own political tradition on a nation that doesn’t share it; but is that even a reasonable goal? Is that even possible? If we were talking about imposing, say, tyrrany, I’d say yes. Or oligarchy, or monarchy even. But democracy? How can you impose a system of government that stems from “the consent of the governed”?
Some day, someone is going to explain to us all how we got into this mess. And I’ll be curious to see who it was that got the briefs on the history of the region, the history of the mission, the tensions we’d be facing, and the population we’d be “liberating” — and then decided to ignore them all.
November 23rd, 2005 at 10:17 am
“consent of the governed” is why i’m a bit more optimistic. The Shiites and Kurds seem to be consenting. Or at least that’s what some reports say. In Vietnam and Lebanon, the only people consenting to be governed were the ones who’d actually be doing the governing. Everyone else hated us.
Often times in these nation building scenarios, someone will say “they’re just not ready for democracy.” And immediately someone else says “that’s just an excuse, that what all imperialists say, it was said about the Indians, the Vietnamese, the Africans, etc.” But there is something there. If everytime you get in an argument, you call a fatwah down on the other person’s head (I make it sound like an anvil, don’t I?), then you may not be ready for democracy. To make democracy work, you have to respect the other side of the argument. Ok, I take that back. Many cogressmen have no respect for the other side. I guess you just have to be unwilling to resort to violence. And some of the Iraqis haven’t taken that step.
Now Iraq could become a democratic state, there’s nothing stopping it from happening eventually. But can we realistically guide them the entire way there? Some reports I’ve read say our army is about a year away from collapsing. Some administration official got caught up in an idealistic state – possibly while choking on a pretzel – and said “Iraq? Sure, let’s go. One year, two years tops. What the hell do those Pentagon people know anyway? Where’s my flight suit?”
November 29th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/11/29/fatah_cancels_gaza_primary_election/