Vietnam and Iraq

"We are tired of fighting. We don't want to kill anymore. But the others are treacherous and cannot be trusted." - Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature

Some historians studying the Vietnam War have come to the conclusion that the entire war can be based on massive misunderstanding by both sides; each side had their idea of what the other side was like and what their goals were. Neither bothered to actually find out what the other side was like and what they wanted and what they would be willing to trade to get what they wanted. Thus, the Americans launched a massive bombing of North Vietnam (by my definition, an act of terrorism as its only purpose was to intimidate the North Vietnamese into surrender) while the Vietnamese engaged in an increasingly fierce "people's war" in the South (terrorism on the cheap). While both sides were increasingly desirous of a negotiated peace, neither side was able to present a peace proposal that the other side considered more than pure propaganda because, even after years of war, neither side understood the other. Millions died.

As has been pointed out, this current mess in Iraq shows every sign of becoming another Vietnam, except worse. And it is very likely because they do not know us and we do not know them.

James Mill, in "An Essay on Government" - first published as a supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 5th edition - argued that there are two basic methods for a government (or, in a broader interpretation, for any organization) to insure that the labor which the nation needs is provided. That is, there are two ways to get people to do what you want them to do: one is force, the other is allurement.

Force is the easiest to implement: do what I say when I say or I will beat you, kill you, imprison you, confiscate your possessions or harm your family and friends. Terrorism is an attempt to control by fear, by the threat of force. As James Mill recognized, under the rule of force, the citizens become slaves.

While in the short term this may be useful, in the long term it is disastrous: a slave does what he is told to do, when he is told to do it and provides the minimal effort he can get away with: after all, why should he break his back? What is in it for him as a reward? Another day of working for Master and singing happy songs in the field? Slave economies tend to be economic failures in the long term: see the Old South, the Soviet Union and Japan under the Shogunate. Likewise, political structures which rely on terror tend to only control what they can directly supervise and collapse when the number of people to be controlled grows to be too much greater than those who can be trusted to monitor them.

With allure, on the other hand, the organization provides something in exchange for the worker's labor, (usually money, in a capitalist system, but other rewards can be used such as increased prestige, promotion within the organization, a favored position in the afterlife, etc.). This makes the citizen a partner in the enterprise, allowing him a voice in changing things so that whatever work he is put to prospers and, from simple self interest, encouraging him to work harder and smarter to gain the rewards promised.

However, to use allure one must know what the other person wants. It is futile to try to bribe Eskimos with ice cubes or a rich man with a bright, shiny penny. We Americans are woefully ignorant of what other cultures value and we have a tendency to consider foreigners to either be just like us except in funny clothes or aliens with no point of contact with us.

We also tend to buy into the "Good guy/Bad guy" myth. We forget that there are good and bad people on both sides of every conflict, World War II included, and that in any extended conflict, the good guys become more and more like bad guys and that the bad guys get even worse. As far as diplomacy and war goes, "talk, talk", while less exciting, is certainly less costly than "fight, fight".

Let me discuss the American political scene for a bit: we are essentially a two party system. We have elections for president every four years with term limits on the office of, I believe, ten years. As a result, unless there is a strong belief on the part of the candidate or his party on a particular subject, a new president has two mutually exclusive default options: if the prior president was of the same party, the new president does the same as the old except more so. If, as was the case with our current President Bush, he takes over from the opposing party, the default is to do the exact opposite of what his predecessor did. Clinton was deeply worried about the Middle East, bin Laden, al Queda and various other radical groups and believed that carefully considered action was vital. Therefore, having no prior experience with the Middle East himself except with the various Saudi oil magnates, Bush decided to totally ignore the Middle East and anything to do with it. As most senior advisors are political appointees here, there was no one around to argue against this decision until September 11 rolled around.

Then, of course, our government reacted most strongly indeed. Our assault on Afghanistan was arguably a legitimate counter attack against a threat to our country.

But then we invaded Iraq.

I have no idea why we did so.

The Bushies, as we call them, feebly point to the Weapons of Mass Destruction which they claim as the pretext for this invasion and, somewhat more forcefully, argue that Saddam Hussein was a Very, Very Bad Man. Before the war, I agreed with both points: i.e. that it was very likely that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction and that he was (and is) a Very, Very Bad Man indeed. And I still considered the invasion of Iraq to be an incredibly bad idea. A lot of people have WMD, a lot of governments are ruled by very, very bad people, and, barring a strong link between Iraq and any attack on America, there was no better reason to invade Iraq than to invade North Korea. You will notice that we have not invaded North Korea and, barring them (or us) doing something incredibly stupid, we are very unlikely to do so. In fact, at least while we remain in Iraq, we may be incapable of invading them. Our commitment in Iraq prevents us from using our military in other, perhaps more vital, areas.

Some people claim that this was armed robbery writ large, that this was a direct attempt to control the Iraqi oil supplies indefinitely. I disagree with this because I see no evidence of profit being garnered by anyone from the captured oil, nor that there was any reasonable expectation of profit. On the other hand, one can argue that Bush and his advisors are not reasonable people . . .

(7/15/05-Later note regarding the profit motive for invading Iraq: It recently occured to me that it is not necessary for the profits to come from oil, or even from Iraq itself. War profiteering may be quite attractive to organizations supplying our military in Iraq, and the money would actually come from the United States instead of Iraq.)

I tend to lean towards the "family feud" theory, that our current President Bush looked upon this whole Iraqi War mess as a chance to settle scores with Saddam Hussein as his father had not been able to do. There is evidence that Bush was planning this war long before September 11 gave him the excuse to actually execute it (See the Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's allegations at CNN - INSIDE POLITICS - O'Neill: Bush planned Iraq invasion before 9/11 or the book based on his statements: The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill by Ron Suskind ).

No serious military mind on the planet doubted before the invasion that the American military would crush the Iraqi military with minimal American casualties, and, in fact, the war phase was extremely successful.

But there was absolutely no plan for after the war had been won.

In an amazing display of naiveté, our government apparently expected peace to break out immediately and for the Iraqi populace to compete in throwing rose petals onto our advancing troops and to rubber stamp anything the Great Army of Liberation did. We completely neglected the fact that only Saddam Hussein and his political allies made it possible for Iraq to exist as a single state rather than three or more feuding ethnic groups. We are now faced with three unpleasant alternatives:
1.) Creating a new Saddam Hussein, who is very probably going to be worse than his predecessor, in order to maintain the nation of Iraq as a counterbalance to Iran and, to a lesser extent, Syria.
2.) Staying in Iraq until the sun goes out to keep Iran and Syria from dividing it up between them.
3.) Allowing Iraq to fragment more or less gracefully into several smaller nations and discretely withdrawing, in the hope that Iran and Syria will not immediately devour the smaller states and become even more powerful and more scary to us than was the case before all of this mess came down.

A great weakness of our (American) culture is that we seem to pay no attention to history, acting as if our desires and intent are all that are needed to accomplish any goal. We do not concern ourselves with earlier attempts that succeeded, much less with earlier attempts that failed. Thus, often things become worse rather than better when we act unilaterally as we did in Iraq. We need our allies, not just for their resources, but for the fact that they often have a better grasp on what is doable and what is not than we do.

As it is, we seem to be running out of feet to shoot ourselves in.