The greatest political and moral challenge of today is what shall we do with Iraq.
This week the war in Iraq lasts longer than American involvement in World War 2.
One challenge I see is whether we take the civil unrest and killing of Muslims by one another as our problem. Although the invasion of the US set it off and predictably for anyone who understood the tribal nature of that society, I do not see that issue as resting on our shoulders. But can we exit the country without doing all we can reasonably do to help provide security and help quell the unrest and killing? Ah. here is the moral and political dilemma. This thoughtful article is worth considering. Paschal Baute, November 25, 2006.
Long After We Withdraw
By DAVID RIEFF
New York Times Magazine, 11.25.06
As the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate and as policy makers debate how to extricate the United States honorably from what increasingly appears a war without end, it is worth remembering that all wars do end eventually, and that postwar relationships between the bitterest of enemies can turn out surprisingly well. President Bush’s recent trip to Vietnam, where he attended the annual meeting of APEC — the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization — illustrates this reality and even offers a measure of hope at a time when battlefront reports are almost unrelievedly bad and when America’s foreign policy seems to lurch from crisis to crisis.
It often seems as if the U.S. presence in Iraq has created so many new enemies in the Muslim world that the clash of civilizations described by Prof. Samuel Huntington has gone from being the hypothesis of a Harvard political scientist to a historical inevitability. Even many of those who resist the notion that Islam and the West are on a collision course still worry that the harm that has been done in Iraq to relations between the U.S. and the Islamic world will be almost impossible to undo.
And yet the example of Vietnam suggests otherwise. If anything, the trauma of the Vietnam War on the American psyche was and for some still is far deeper than anything the Iraq war has yet produced. These days we speak — probably too glibly — of an America almost evenly divided between so-called red and blue states. But for anyone who remembers what this country was like during the Vietnam era and in its immediate aftermath, these contemporary divisions seem rather shallow. Vietnam truly split the country and brought millions of people into the streets against their own government. People died protesting the Vietnam War on campuses like Kent State. On the battlefield, there was also tremendous savagery. Think of the C.I.A.-run Phoenix program of targeted assassination or the systematic torture of American prisoners of war by the North Vietnamese.
Nevertheless, 30 years after the end of a war that left Vietnam in ruins and America in turmoil and confusion, the issues left over — accounting for the missing in action, reuniting families and even paying compensation for Agent Orange-induced maladies — are far less central to U.S.-Vietnamese relations than issues of trade and investment. America is now Vietnam's leading trading partner, and Intel has just announced the expansion of its factory near Ho Chi Minh City. While Congress dealt a temporary setback to President Bush’s efforts to promote trade with Vietnam, few doubt that such efforts will succeed. As Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, has put it, Vietnam is "reforming" and "booming." (Of course, he might have added that it is hardly a paragon of human rights.)
Remarkably, President Bush's cordial reception to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai in 2005 was accepted with little protest except from small groups of Vietnamese-Americans. On the Vietnamese side, the dour commissars who fought the French and then the Americans, at the cost of more than a million of their own dead — “born in the North, die in the South” was a well-known saying in the North Vietnamese Army at the time — have given way to proud capitalists who, despite their Communist affiliations, are far more interested in deepening trade relations with America and in warding off their historic rival China than in pulling the scabs off old wounds.
Is there a lesson here for Iraq? The answer is that, in fact, there are many. The first, and perhaps the most important, is that history is not predictable and even the most deep-seated enmities can evaporate over time when the conditions are right. As President Bush himself said when he was in Hanoi last week: “History has a long march to it. Societies change, and relationships can constantly be altered to the good.” There is no iron law of history that says that the bad relations between America and the Islamic world, and even between the United States and radical Shiite groups like the one led by the militant cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, are fated to continue this way indefinitely and immutably. Nor is there any reason to believe that an American withdrawal from Iraq will harm these relations any more than the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam permanently damaged U.S.-Vietnamese relations.
After the searing experience of Iraq, few among us believe that outsiders can impose democracy at the point of a gun. Nations and peoples simply have to find their own way. Of course, it is crucial not to romanticize this process. For the Vietnamese, the first decade after the fall of Saigon in 1975 was an appalling one — an era of mass repression and mass hunger. It is entirely possible, likely even, that in Iraq the situation will get considerably worse after a U.S. withdrawal, as it did in Vietnam. To put it starkly, however, the effort to foster democracy in Iraq has failed, and with that failure, short-term suffering may have to be the price of long-term coexistence. Is this perspective harsh to the point of cruelty? Perhaps. But it may be a necessary and sober one as well.
No one in his right mind should imagine a rosy future for Iraq — regardless of whether American commanders choose to preserve the status quo, start withdrawing or even add more troops to try a "final push" this spring. But again, all wars do end eventually. And in their aftermath, in the peace that follows, possibilities arise that seem almost unimaginable as people lie bleeding. It is conceivable that 30 years from now, one of President Bush's successors will travel to Baghdad not for crisis meetings in the Green Zone or to serve Thanksgiving turkey to the troops but to talk about peacetime matters like trade, tourism and the environment. Yet given America’s inability to guarantee the security of ordinary Iraqis after an occupation that has lasted almost as long as our participation in World War II, it is possible to speculate that the sooner American forces leave Iraq, the sooner such a trip is likely to happen.
David Rieff is a contributing writer for the magazine.
One challenge I see is whether we take the civil unrest and killing of Muslims by one another as our problem. Although the invasion of the US set it off and predictably for anyone who understood the tribal nature of that society, I do not see that issue as resting on our shoulders. But can we exit the country without doing all we can reasonably do to help provide security and help quell the unrest and killing? Ah. here is the moral and political dilemma. This thoughtful article is worth considering. Paschal Baute, November 25, 2006.
Long After We Withdraw
By DAVID RIEFF
New York Times Magazine, 11.25.06
As the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate and as policy makers debate how to extricate the United States honorably from what increasingly appears a war without end, it is worth remembering that all wars do end eventually, and that postwar relationships between the bitterest of enemies can turn out surprisingly well. President Bush’s recent trip to Vietnam, where he attended the annual meeting of APEC — the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization — illustrates this reality and even offers a measure of hope at a time when battlefront reports are almost unrelievedly bad and when America’s foreign policy seems to lurch from crisis to crisis.
It often seems as if the U.S. presence in Iraq has created so many new enemies in the Muslim world that the clash of civilizations described by Prof. Samuel Huntington has gone from being the hypothesis of a Harvard political scientist to a historical inevitability. Even many of those who resist the notion that Islam and the West are on a collision course still worry that the harm that has been done in Iraq to relations between the U.S. and the Islamic world will be almost impossible to undo.
And yet the example of Vietnam suggests otherwise. If anything, the trauma of the Vietnam War on the American psyche was and for some still is far deeper than anything the Iraq war has yet produced. These days we speak — probably too glibly — of an America almost evenly divided between so-called red and blue states. But for anyone who remembers what this country was like during the Vietnam era and in its immediate aftermath, these contemporary divisions seem rather shallow. Vietnam truly split the country and brought millions of people into the streets against their own government. People died protesting the Vietnam War on campuses like Kent State. On the battlefield, there was also tremendous savagery. Think of the C.I.A.-run Phoenix program of targeted assassination or the systematic torture of American prisoners of war by the North Vietnamese.
Nevertheless, 30 years after the end of a war that left Vietnam in ruins and America in turmoil and confusion, the issues left over — accounting for the missing in action, reuniting families and even paying compensation for Agent Orange-induced maladies — are far less central to U.S.-Vietnamese relations than issues of trade and investment. America is now Vietnam's leading trading partner, and Intel has just announced the expansion of its factory near Ho Chi Minh City. While Congress dealt a temporary setback to President Bush’s efforts to promote trade with Vietnam, few doubt that such efforts will succeed. As Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, has put it, Vietnam is "reforming" and "booming." (Of course, he might have added that it is hardly a paragon of human rights.)
Remarkably, President Bush's cordial reception to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai in 2005 was accepted with little protest except from small groups of Vietnamese-Americans. On the Vietnamese side, the dour commissars who fought the French and then the Americans, at the cost of more than a million of their own dead — “born in the North, die in the South” was a well-known saying in the North Vietnamese Army at the time — have given way to proud capitalists who, despite their Communist affiliations, are far more interested in deepening trade relations with America and in warding off their historic rival China than in pulling the scabs off old wounds.
Is there a lesson here for Iraq? The answer is that, in fact, there are many. The first, and perhaps the most important, is that history is not predictable and even the most deep-seated enmities can evaporate over time when the conditions are right. As President Bush himself said when he was in Hanoi last week: “History has a long march to it. Societies change, and relationships can constantly be altered to the good.” There is no iron law of history that says that the bad relations between America and the Islamic world, and even between the United States and radical Shiite groups like the one led by the militant cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, are fated to continue this way indefinitely and immutably. Nor is there any reason to believe that an American withdrawal from Iraq will harm these relations any more than the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam permanently damaged U.S.-Vietnamese relations.
After the searing experience of Iraq, few among us believe that outsiders can impose democracy at the point of a gun. Nations and peoples simply have to find their own way. Of course, it is crucial not to romanticize this process. For the Vietnamese, the first decade after the fall of Saigon in 1975 was an appalling one — an era of mass repression and mass hunger. It is entirely possible, likely even, that in Iraq the situation will get considerably worse after a U.S. withdrawal, as it did in Vietnam. To put it starkly, however, the effort to foster democracy in Iraq has failed, and with that failure, short-term suffering may have to be the price of long-term coexistence. Is this perspective harsh to the point of cruelty? Perhaps. But it may be a necessary and sober one as well.
No one in his right mind should imagine a rosy future for Iraq — regardless of whether American commanders choose to preserve the status quo, start withdrawing or even add more troops to try a "final push" this spring. But again, all wars do end eventually. And in their aftermath, in the peace that follows, possibilities arise that seem almost unimaginable as people lie bleeding. It is conceivable that 30 years from now, one of President Bush's successors will travel to Baghdad not for crisis meetings in the Green Zone or to serve Thanksgiving turkey to the troops but to talk about peacetime matters like trade, tourism and the environment. Yet given America’s inability to guarantee the security of ordinary Iraqis after an occupation that has lasted almost as long as our participation in World War II, it is possible to speculate that the sooner American forces leave Iraq, the sooner such a trip is likely to happen.
David Rieff is a contributing writer for the magazine.
posted by Paschal Baute at 8:49 AM
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