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Old Oct 1st, 2003, 04:04 PM        We have met the enemy and he is us
"History teaches that imposing democratic ways on nations not ready for them or interested in them, more often than not, empowers only democracy's enemies."

when will we learn?

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinio...uagmire28.html

P-I Focus: The problem in Iraq is that we're still us

By PHILIP GOLD
GUEST COLUMNIST

It was inevitable -- so depleted has our political vocabulary become, and so sterile our debates -- that the word "quagmire" would recycle from its Nam-era usage. And it was inevitable -- so great our perplexity across the generations with that torment -- that Iraq should come to be cast as "another Vietnam." It isn't, of course. Iraq isn't Vietnam. Iraq is Iraq.

But we're still us. And perhaps that's where the real parallels are to be found. A friend now serving in Iraq, an Air Force colonel who flew with distinction in the '91 war, recently e-mailed me the old Pogo refrain by Walt Kelly: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Yes, we're still us. And we would do well to pause a moment before this particular fountain of sorrow that is our endless attempt to make the world more like us, and try to understand what it is that makes us do it.

Now the things that I remember seem so distant, so small

Though it hasn't really been that long a time.

What I was seeing, wasn't what was happening at all,

Although for a while our path did seem to climb.

But first, about the quagmire.

There are significant resemblances between Vietnam and Iraq, as well as major differences (no Soviet Union, no China to constrain us).

We entered both wars under more-or-less false pretenses. We now know that the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of August 1964, by which Congress played Pilate with the blood of millions, was a "fill-in-the-blanks" White House document, drafted months before. We now know that the second Tonkin Gulf incident, which LBJ used to justify the war and, en passant, neutralize Vietnam as a '64 campaign issue, never happened. And he knew it. (The American destroyers were tracking and firing on friendly commando boats, a fascinating tale in itself.)

As for Saddam Hussein's alleged links to al-Qaida and his world-threatening weapons of mass destruction and his imminent hostile intentions toward us, suffice it to say that a lot of little questions about the administration's rationale are starting to add up to One Big Question.

LBJ lied repeatedly about the extent of our planned involvement, the necessary duration of that involvement and the ultimate cost. No JFK-style "Pay any price, bear any burden" rhetorician, he oft proclaimed that he wanted history to say of him, "He stuck it out." ("We chopped it off," we of draft age later proclaimed.)

After President Bush's recent "$87 billion, please" speech, who doubts that we're back in that prattle again? Certainly not Vice President Dick Cheney and his hints that, not to worry, next year we'll be back for more.

We face in Iraq, as we did in Vietnam, a classic guerrilla campaign. Four basic tactics.


Make us bleed. Attacks and casualties daily, plus occasional spectaculars.


Radicalize the population against us by forcing us to stern repressive measures and to make mistakes.


Kill and intimidate those who would work with us.


Destroy what we build; steal what we donate; use it against us.

Whom are we fighting? Apparently, a very loose alliance of Saddamniks, disgruntled sects and foreigners streaming in by the thousands from safe havens beyond Iraq's borders: Jihadi, America-haters, rich, bored young men and poor, desperate young men.

And once again, it appears, we're increasingly unable to turn military success into political success. This is because Iraq, like Vietnam, is a "mixed" war: part international, part civil, part regional, part political, part ideological/religious. We cannot triumph over all the parts.

And once again, it appears, the troops don't matter. No draftee expendables this time around, but an equivalent lack of concern. Arbitrarily extended tours (especially for reservists), lack of proper support in the field, even the administration's shoddy attempt to cut combat, hardship and family separation pay (and billing wounded soldiers $8.10 a day for hospital meals). Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld can sing paeans to the troops every time they get behind a microphone. But they can't fool them. And there's a price to be paid for trying.

So that's a few of the easier quagmire parallels -- along with an intelligence community whose findings were over-hyped when congenial and disregarded when not ... and an American people who never asked for this war, and who will "support" it (LBJ began the practice of legitimizing war by opinion polls) only until it starts to hurt.

Which brings us to us.

But when you see through love's illusions, there lies the danger,

And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool ...

Perhaps the vital Vietnam analogy, the one about us, may be found, not in the latter '60s, but earlier. When the United States assumed responsibility for South Vietnam after the French pullout, we intended far more than keeping it from the commies. We were going to build them a nice, shiny new country with a nice shiny new government, a democracy of sorts that we'd be proud to show off to the world. Ngo Dinh Diem would be, in LBJ's not-entirely-cynical characterization, "the Churchill of Southeast Asia." And presumably (as we're hearing now about Iraq), the dominos might work in reverse. A prosperous, democratic South Vietnam would be as a City on a Hill, shining forth by example.

Just like us.

In short, we assigned South Vietnam a role to play within our Cold War context. Vietnam mattered so greatly because, and only because, we said it did, whether we were teaching them civics or rice growing or demonstrating our resolve to demonstrate our resolve. We fell in love with the nation we would create, and the show we would put on there.

How often and how easily we fall in love this way. And how often and at what terrible cost, we're disabused.

So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger ...

And once again, within the context of another global struggle, we're assigning a country its role to play. Iraq is vital because we say it is. Therefore, Iraq must become like us, in order to serve as a beacon, just like us, for others of its kind who (we presume), deep down, also want to be like us.

But the loneliness seems to spring from your life,

Like a fountain from a pool.

We -- or, more correctly, the administration and the neoconservatives -- are indeed creating a new Iraq. They're creating it within their own minds and in our media. They'll decorate their creation with all the real-world appurtenances of secular progress: schools, infrastructure, consumer goodies, maybe even sufficient "Baywatch" reruns and harder-core porn to distract the less-than-hard-core America despisers. America will build them a fine-looking new constabulary, a competent but non-aggressive new army, a high-minded intelligence service or two. America will help them write a constitution, hold free elections and sustain a (Dare we use the words?) "fair and balanced" media, or at least take calculated comfort in the proliferation of lunatic outlets. America will teach tribal sheikhs the virtues of tolerance; warlords will learn to celebrate diversity.

And when America's done, in a year or five or 10, the rest of the Arab world will want to be more like them.

Which means, of course, more like us.

And that's why we did it, and do it, and will do it again. Because, deep down and across all our generations, we cannot resist the temptation to imitate the Creator of Genesis, and Make Man in Our Image.

Bible scholars place the Garden of Eden in present-day Iraq. Adam and Eve learned their limits there. Will we? Again?

Or, to ask it differently: Can the United States create a democratic Iraq capable of withstanding the worst that its foreign and domestic enemies may do, once we leave? And if a democratic Iraq survives to inspire and incite the rest of the Arab world, to what might such inspiration and incitement lead? History teaches that imposing democratic ways on nations not ready for them or interested in them, more often than not, empowers only democracy's enemies.

Fountain of sorrow, Fountain of life

You've known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight ....

We didn't lose in Vietnam. We weren't there to lose. By every conventional military standard, we won. Yet we fled. We fled from our own creation, when we could no longer deny its horror and its ugliness. And we fled from ourselves, when we realized that what we'd fallen in love with was a monster of our own creation, an unintended monster, but a monster nonetheless. And how fitting it is that, when we face the marble of The Wall, we see our faces reflected on the names.

We won't lose in Iraq. We won't be there to lose. And someday, when the time comes to design the Iraq Memorial, I'd hope for a fountain, a fountain and a pool, in front of The Wall.

So we can see them reflected there, too.
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