The Middle East Mess
You’ve heard the cliché, “hindsight is always 20/20.” This
has become a kind of mantra for all the pundits who now agree
that invading Iraq
in March 2003 was a really bad idea especially since Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and
Wolfowitz concocted the WMDs that never existed simply to justify their “shock
and awe” extravaganza.
As President Obama prepares to send
another 400 plus “trainers” to Iraq,
the radio/tv talkers and op-ed writers are outdoing themselves with 20/20 hindsight
on all the Bush administrations post invasion goof ups. Number one in the “stupid stuff” category is
the disbanding of the Iraqi army of some 400,000 well trained troops and highly
efficient officers. Now it turns out
that after the Bush-installed Iraq overseers humiliated the top Iraqi military brass
and kicked them out, those generals are now directing ISIS operations in Iraq
and Syria and rather efficiently. The
American-trained new Iraqi forces seem to have no stomach for a fight and drop
their weapons and run away whenever they get into heated battle with ISIS.
No matter how accurate hind sight
may be, we have to deal with what is happening now so Obama’s solution is to
send in more “trainers” to train more incompetent Iraqi soldiers. This brings
us to another famous quotation. In his
1905 work The Life of Reason, George
Santayana wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat
it.”
Let’s flash back to the 1950s and
1960s. (I served in the Navy from 1959
to 1963 and remember it well.) That’s
when America
decided it was going to save the world from Communism and established Military Assistance Advisory Groups (MAAGs).
The most famous one was in South Vietnam. You all know rest of the story. We started with a few “advisors” (as they
were called then) and ended up sending about 2.5 million military personnel to
fight South Viet Nam’s
war. In case you have forgotten, despite
all our vast military might and our American exceptionalism we lost that
war. In fact we were ignominiously
routed because, as many historians pointed out afterwards, the war was fought
with passion on the other side—not so much for political ideology, but because
they wanted to force out the “invaders” that is, the Americans.
We are now seeing the same pattern.
We are sending in “trainers” to train Iraqi soldiers who have no passion
to defend their country and who must fight an enemy who not only has the
passion to achieve its goals but is also fired by religious zealotry. In other words, we are getting involved in yet
another military adventure that we simply cannot win. (Several of our generals are saying the same
thing with some qualifying it by adding unless we send in massive numbers of
troops which is unacceptable to the American public. Massive troop commitments didn’t work in Viet Nam why would it work in the Middle East?)
Things are even more complicated when you consider the convoluted
animosities of Islam. The dreaded ISIS is a Sunni organization. The vast majority of Muslims in the world are
Sunnis (87 to 90 percent). So now we
have to get Sunnis to fight against Sunnis which is problematical at best. (Saudi Arabia our so-called ally is Sunni so
factions in that country have been bank rolling ISIS).
Shia have the majority in Iraq and Iran. But the Iraqis aren’t very good fighters
despite their American trainers and we can’t enlist Iran in the fight because they
might get atomic weapons and our Republican hawks want to bomb them rather than
negotiate because they love Netanyahu.
Another thing going against us is our cultural mind set. We expect not only instant gratification but also
instant goal achievement. (Remember
George W. and his “mission accomplished”?)
Other cultures do not think our way.
Here is what North Vietnamese
Prime Minister Pham Van Dong said in 1966.
“How long do you Americans want to fight? One year? Two years? Three years? Five years?
Ten years? Twenty years? We will be glad to accommodate you.” This applies to Middle
East mentality as well. Sunni and Shia Muslims have been at odds
with each other for 1,500 years. Do you
think they are in any hurry now?
Since we Americans like price tags on things, the Pentagon just released
figures that put our cost to fight ISIS at
$9,000,000 per day and that we have spent $2.7 billion just since airstrikes
began last August. Your tax dollars at
work.
Unfortunately, it is far easier to define the problem than to propose a
solution. Many Americans, myself
included, believe we never should have gotten involved in the Middle East mess in the first place. But we did and we can’t change that. There are others who say we created the mess
by invading Iraq
and Colin Powell was right that “if you break it you own it” and we have a
responsibility to fix it. I don’t agree
with that because we have been trying to “fix it” with very little help for 12
years so more years going virtually alone and more millions of American dollars
isn’t going to work.
But let’s take another look at the Viet Nam analogy. We ignominiously pulled out in 1975. We lost that war, period. Face it, America is not invincible. Forty years later we are doing business with Viet Nam and
tourism between the two countries is booming.
Our government was wrong insisting that losing Viet Nam meant
the Commies were going to take over the world.
We are once again in a war we cannot win.
Why can’t we just admit we made a huge mistake, get out and let the Middle East resolve its own problems?
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