The decision by Bush&Co. to launch a war of choice against Iraq was based on numerous lies and misconceptions, the supposed WMD being just the most obvious. But there was another huge mistake that was barely noticed.
And so it's back to my dissertation on the origins of the Cold War. The American government believed that Communism was a monolithic movement all across the globe; there was little or no recognition that "national communism" could even exist: that Yugoslav communism was different from the variety practiced by the Vietnamese, that Greek communism was distinguishable from that in the Soviet Union, that Chinese communism was different from Romania's -- in short, that there were national interests involved that sometimes trumped Communist solidarity.
Seeing the enemy as a monolith during the Cold War meant that policies based on that simplistic interpretation of Communism were often ill-conceived and dangerously wrong-headed; diplomatic interventions targeted to specific national concerns tended not to be attempted, the results of which were disasters of one sort or another.
In the case of Vietnam, for example, this short-sighted analysis of Communist nations led to the deaths of more than 54,000 U.S. troops and as many as two million Vietnamese; the U.S. government could not see that Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist communist, and ignored Vietnam's long history of repelling invaders from China, France and elsewhere.
Which brings us to the current Bush Administration and its GOP supporters, who appear to base their policies on the premise that all Islamic jihadists are part of the same monolithic movement.
ONE SIZE DOESN'T FIT ALL
Islamists may be moving in roughly the same direction in some loose, even metaphorical, sense. But the CheneyBush Administration and its supporters don't speculate that way. In the run-up to the war, and even today, many of them conflate those who carried out the 9/11 attacks with the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, as if they were part of a singular Muslim conspiracy -- even though Saddam regarded Islamists as threats to his dictatorial hold on a secular Iraq and murdered them whenever and wherever he found them.
CheneyBush's limited, one-size-fits-all view of the world translates to judging a jihadist in Iraq as being the same as one in Lebanon or Palestine. And thus the U.S. has missed innumerable opportunities to split off Iraqi nationalist fighters from the more extremist Islamist jihadists. Similarly, that attitude has prevented the Administration from talking seriously with neighboring Syria and Iran -- who have their own nationalist concerns with regard to Iraq -- about ways to end the war.
Seeing the world through monofaceted, ideological glasses puts foreign/military policy on automatic pilot, while manipulating the press and public with frightening stories of supposedly imminent attacks by a grotesque terrorist-monster.
Intelligent foreign policy requires a knowlege of history and politics and religion and language, and a whole lot more. Had the CheneyBush Administration possessed some of that understanding (or listened to those that did), they might not have blundered their way into the wholesale catastrophe that is its Iraq War and Occupation.
THE WARNINGS IGNORED
For example, they might have listened to their own experts in the State Department and CIA who issued prescient warnings about the likely consequences of attacking and occupying Iraq. They might have heard their European allies advising them not to make a huge mistake by invading that country. They might have been able to hear what 10 million ordinary citizens all around the globe were trying to tell them as they marched and demonstrated against America's about-to-begin war of choice.
But Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and the rest of the neo-con ideologues were blinded by their technological might, by the fact that the U.S. was the only superpower left standing after the Soviet Union fell apart, and by their feeling they could do whatever they wanted to do in the world since nobody could stop them.
Since the Iraq war was launched on the basis of lies and deceptions (and a load of self-deceptions), and was being carried out by incompetents and greedy exploiters way over their heads, their enterprise was doomed from the start. They were unable to admit their errors in policy and execution, and could not accept the fact that their war had stirred-up a hornet's nest of nationalist rebellion in Iraq and elsewhere in the Greater Middle East. Lacking a "Plan B," they compounded their disastrous war and occupation by doing little but "staying the course" with a failed policy for several years.
THE FAST EVAPORATION OF SUPPORT
Eventually, the barest hints of reality made their way into their illusion-based policy, and, at the last minute -- or, more accurately, way past the last minute -- they admitted to themselves that things weren't going well and so tried for a massive do-over with their "surge" of additional tens of thousands of troops into the fray, with thousands more on their way and the field-generals asking for still more.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
I don't know why the Democrats are taking their time but time is not something that's in large supply. It's clear that we're not wanted in Iraq, very clear:
It's also clear that we must send a message to the nihilists and cynics who perpetrate war crimes under the guise of national interest: your crimes are noticed and will be punished.
Dennis Kucinich, D, OH, who I respect, said that impeachment had to wait until steps were taken that brought the war to an end. Those steps have failed. In the spirit of his outstanding efforts to impeach Cheney, Kucinich, needs to all a name to the imipeachment resolution, the name of the president.
The American public is there, the world is there, it's about time Congress wakes up, stands up.
We don't have any more time.
Excellent article and background. Thanks!
by
Michael Collins (106 articles, 16 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 358 comments)
on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 12:43:06 PM
1 comments
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