The Failure of Arrogance as a Foreign Policy

by Vox

I would like to point out a few things I feel the government is doing terribly, ominously wrong. I am not an expert. I do not have the information they have. I do not know what is in the President's daily intelligence brief. I do not claim to know more than anyone in the higher leves of the government. But I do possess common sense and a good grasp of history, as well as intimite knowldge of Arabs and their way of thinking.

This leads me to believe that the government has committed grave mistakes and lapses in judgment that will cost hundreds or perhaps thousands of lives, American and Iraqi, for a cause that might well be for naught.

The war is not just. Wars never are just, except from the point of view of the victor. Wars are only necessary or unneccessary, vital or secondary. This war is part of a vital and necessary conflict that the United States and Great Britain—along with, eventually, Israel and the rest of liberally democratic Europe, and possibly other traditionally "western" states—must come to recognize as not a war of liberation but one of survival.

In the world dependent on finite natural resources, mortal, total conflict is assured. This has always been and ever will be a fact of life for human beings for as long as we are bound to this earth. The sooner we admit this the less likely we are to watch our opportunity for survival slip through the cracks.

This two part essay means to show first, why our administration’s strategy in Iraq is flawed, and second, what must be done to secure ourselves from annihilation.

[b]Part One: Hubris and the Condemnation of Historical Repetition, or How Those Who Forget History Are Doomed to Repeat It[/b]

The United States has been the dominant military and economic power in the world for the last fifty years. The Soviet Union matched the US in offensive military capability for much of that time, and countered American use of coercive force with its own soft and hard power until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991—actually well before that, to be precise. But during this time, the United States did operate nearly freely of Soviet interference and proxy resistance.

We tried to build a nation in Indochina, with Indochinese leaders and citizens, protected by us. We gave them food, water, a government they hated, and fought for their hearts and minds.

Why did we lose the Vietnam War? This question has so many answers I can't get into them all here, even if I were so inclined as to go back to the books and notes and research them. But some of those answers give us reason to seriously criticize the current Administration's handling of the crises unfolding in the world, especially in the Middle East.

Our civilian government, so anxious about public opinion and political ramifications, imposed stringent rules of engagement on our troops in Vietnam as to hamstring their ability in the field to significantly destroy their enemy, the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army. In that struggle, not the NVA but the clandestine Vietcong were the most savage and irrepressible enemy. In Iraq we see the Fedayeen Saddam and other elements of the Baathists, Tikriti, or simply pro-Saddam Sunni providing the most serious resistance to coalition forces—as well as terrorizing those who would oust Saddam or surrender to the coalition into submission. The Vietcong also coerced villagers in Vietnam to cooperate, when those same would not do it of their own free will. The Vietnamese civilian and the Vietnamese guerilla were indistinguishable. The Iraqi civilian and the Iraqi terrorist are indistinguishable.

The Vietnamese were so willing to fight their occupiers, whatever their nationality, that they repeatedly sacrificed themselves to kill and demoralize American soldiers and the French before them with suicide bombings and grenade attacks. The Arabs in general and now the Iraqis in particular have demonstrated their willingness to destroy themselves in order to kill and demoralize American soldiers, as is evidenced by the recent taxi bombing near Najaf.

Let me break from my comparison to Vietnam for a moment to mention the similarity to another so-so called occupier and so-called humiliator of Arabs: Israel. Let me also point out the ominous portent inherent in the bombing at the Najaf checkpoint by comparing it to the numerous checkpoints in Israel and the territories, and the tactics already in use by Arabs there. The rules of engagement in Iraq, once aimed to protect civilians, will be modified to protect the lives of coalition forces—much like the rules of engagement in Israel have always been to protect the lives of Jewish citizens and soldiers. This means more targeting of potentially harmless civilians, as in Palestine, which in turn means more killings, intentional and necessary or otherwise, of potentially innocent civilians. This is the cycle of violence that Israel has been doomed to since the foundation of the Jewish state and the instigating expansionism of the settlements. It is not a stretch of the imagination to imagine Iraq, spotted by American checkpoints and barracks, every one a target for suicide or rocket attacks. Which brings us back to Vietnam.

The people didn’t care that they lived under the poverty, oppression, and starvation of Ho Chi Minh so much as they despised the constant death caused by American efforts to defeat the VC and NVA. They wanted only to live their lives without constant harassment and napalm, care of the United States of America. They wanted the conquerors out of their country for good, even if it cost them their “freedom.” To quote Kubrik’s Full Metal Jacket: “We’re trying to give them freedom, but they don’t want it. Guess they’d rather be dead than free, poor, dumb bastards.” And the now-infamous remark from a commander in the field after destroying a Vietnamese village being used by the Vietcong: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

Flash to 2003, and the quote from a Baghdadi woman lamenting the Kuwaiti distribution of humanitarian supplies to starving and violent refugees from Basra: “If this is freedom, then we do not want it.”

You mean the Iraqis don’t watch CNN? They don’t watch Fox News? They don’t hear the exciting music and the awe-inspiring graphics that tell them this is Operation Iraqi Freedom? They don’t hear President Bush declare that they “[b]will be liberated[/b]”? That’s too bad. Someone ought to tape a letter to an errant bomb that says “FOR YOUR OWN GOOD,” so they understand we’re doing this for them. The monumental arrogance of the administration to mock the intelligence of the world with this puerile attempt at good-guyism is astonishing. Did they sit in a room for an hour or so, brainstorming how to most effectively bullshit the rest of the world? A more apt name would have been, to quote America’s Finest News Source, The Onion, “Operation Piss Off the World.”

There is far too much ego embedded in this administration, and not enough humility. This is perhaps representative of the American people. I happen to think most people sense the mistakes as they are made—and our good friends the embedded media give us the play-by-play, in case we can’t figure it out for ourselves. I can think of several examples of hubris displayed by the government of this country in this instance, and specifically to several key “principals” of the administration that have allowed their own personal arrogance supercede their judgment.

First, the administration has shown its inability to understand the conflict by ignoring its Pentagon advisers, and opting to go with a bold and risky plan to “decapitate” the Iraqi government. This s in a sense the strategy employed in the first Gulf War, so this perhaps explains the attempt to use it now. The only difference is…the entire dynamic of the war. This is not a police action to eject a military from seized territory. Desert Storm was an example of the ability of conventional American firepower to defeat Arab weapons in a stand-up fight—just as Israel defeated several Arab enemies repeatedly in an open fight. What will happen in Iraq if this approach is taken will be a repeat of what has happened in Israel since the last war, in 1982, and specifically since the ongoing Intifada of 2000. This is not a war to be fought lightly by striking quickly at the head of the regime and watching it tumble down. Though the administration claims that it always expected and warned that the war would be difficult and long and resistance fierce, their own statements show they assumed Iraqi resistance would be token at best, the work of a few thousand zealous and doomed Saddamites and halfhearted conscripts. Only Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz expressed a readiness for extended, tough fighting before March of this year. Chief in this arrogant assumption were perhaps Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, two men who ought to be familiar with the inherent risks involved in nation-building and the necessity for realistic, not optimistic, planning in a war in Iraq.

The Pentagon made clear to its civilian handlers that this was an operation that begged for massive, overwhelming force. The military states its policy is to meet aggressive behavior with instant, massively disproportionate force. This is clearly not the case in the current plan in Iraq, as our long supply lines, logistical foul ups, and failure to reach Baghdad demonstrate. This is only the second week of the war, we have accomplished more than any army has ever accomplished in so short a time. This is the administration’s answer. But the fact remains that the rush to Baghdad involved leaving behind “pockets of resistance” in expectation that they would fall as soon as Baghdad was liberated and the regime toppled. This, as General Wesley Clarke remarked, is not typical military strategy. Typical military strategy expects a moderately worst-case scenario and compensates accordingly. The administration has overruled its military advisers—much in the same with politicians hogtied the military in Vietnam—and opted to plan for a moderately best-case scenario. And it has neglected to go in with a backup plan.

As we watch, our hands seemingly tied, the Bush administration attempts to convince us that the plan is working exactly like they thought it would. While I agree that this war would involve loss of life, fierce resistance on the part of Iraqis, and a potentially long fight—and that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy—I reject the administration’s claim that it planned for the war to unfold like this all along.

Let’s examine a final element of the arrogance and blindness of the administration. A serious mistake was made and is currently being made by an ignorant or worryingly cocksure president, who insists on invoking his religious beliefs again and again in remarks made concerning this conflict. The Crusaders made the same mistake centuries ago, and President Bush went so far as to use the word Crusade in a speech post-9/11. If there is one thing that Bush could do that would most certainly boil the blood of anyone in the Middle East that might possibly be our friend, it is to turn this conflict into one between the Jews and Christians on one side and the Muslims on the other. Call it that in private; analyze the impact of such a war. But in the name of God—pun intended—do not give the Arabs food to stoke their fire. There is immeasurable danger in labeling this war a war between the followers of God and the followers of Allah, and this is that Bush has done, Tawakalna ala Allah.

The culture and history of the Iraqis is something Americans can never allow them to see as our target. Theirs is a people that has seen conquerors, from Alexander to the Moguls to the British, in the same way the Vietnamese had seen the Chinese, Japanese, and French occupy them before the Americans came. Saddam Hussein obviously did not sleep through the history class about the Vietnam War, and his government has taken a page from the Vietcong handbook. In their haste to boycott cheese and rename French fries, the administration has sidestepped the veiled warning from Paris that came in the form of a threatened veto:

We’ve tried this before, we’ve seen you try this before, and we just want you to put down your hamburger, stop watching American Idol, pull your heads out of your asses and pretend the Budweiser and weed hasn’t completely obliterated your memory. We are a very old country, with a long memory; you seem to be very young and eager to repeat your mistakes. And while we won’t necessarily oppose your action, we certainly won’t support it. Especially when those Arabs you piss off illegally immigrate to our country, not yours.

The war effort should have involved 300,000 soldiers, not 150,000 like Don Rumsfeld pushed for in his bid to become the World’s Most Amazing Tactician. The graduated response of this war flat out ignores the Powell Doctrine of the Gulf War: if you go to war, you must ensure an unambiguous objective, overwhelming force, swift victory, minimum casualties and a clear exit strategy.

We’ve certainly failed on the first, second, and last of these objectives. Only time will tell if we succeed on the third and fourth, and whether our administration can stop its catastrophic course in time to get back on track with the others. Unfortunately, time, in this war in Iraq, is as big an enemy as Saddam himself.

end of part one