LESSONS FROM IRAQ
After the American War in Vietnam,
there were many books and articles written about the Lessons of Vietnam,
but we as a nation basically did
not learn those lessons,
perhaps because too much time had passed
between the Vietnam war and the occupation of Iraq.
And in the next few years, there will be a new set
of lessons
that we are supposed to have learned from our Iraq misadventure:
1.
REINFORCE CHECKS-AND-BALANCES
SO THAT NO FUTURE U.S. PRESIDENT
WILL BE ABLE TO CONDUCT A PRIVATE FOREIGN
POLICY
USING THE MILITARY FORCES OF THE USA.
2. THE UNITED STATES SHOULD NOT BE WORLD POLICEMAN.
3.
SOMETIMES EVEN MILITARY DICTATORSHIP
IS BETTER FOR THE PEOPLE
THAN NO GOVERNMENT AT ALL.
4.
THE POLICE SHOULD ALWAYS SPEAK
THE LANGUAGE OF THE PEOPLE.
LESSONS
FROM IRAQ
by
James Leonard Park
1. REINFORCE
CHECKS-AND-BALANCES
SO THAT NO FUTURE U.S. PRESIDENT
WILL BE ABLE TO CONDUCT A PRIVATE
FOREIGN POLICY
USING THE MILITARY FORCES OF THE
USA.
The United States of American is supposed to be a
democracy,
which means that the people rule.
But in the case of the American take-over of Iraq,
the voice of the people was
not heard.
Rather, this military adventure was devised
by a very small group of men in Washington DC.
What went wrong with American democracy in this case?
The United States Congress is supposed to be a check
against the excesses of any President of the United States.
For example, only the U.S. Congress has the power to declare war.
But that did not work in the case of the occupation of Iraq.
The U.S. Congress was bamboozled into believing
that Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction,
which required us to take over that country
in order to protect the world from certain destruction
if Saddam Hussein had anthrax or the atomic bomb.
Colin Powell appeared before the Security Council of
the United Nations
presenting what was supposed to be evidence of such weapons.
But only the United States (and a few others) were convinced.
And in retrospect, the rest of the world has turned out to be right:
There were no weapons of mass
death.
One glaring error in Powell's story was
presenting drawings of canvas-sided trucks
which were supposed to be mobile
labs for creating biological weapons.
They turned out to be trucks for generating hydrogen gas for weather
balloons.
Any person who has taken science in high school
knows that no person in his
right mind
would make biological weapons
in a truck-trailer with open
sides.
Biological weapons would have to be created by real scientists,
not just soldiers who lacked knowledge of the hazards involved.
And real scientists would not endanger themselves
by creating germs and toxins
that would be extremely dangerous to
everyone
in the trailer with removable canvas sides!
But the Congress of the United States was convinced
in sufficient numbers (there were many who voted "no")
for the Congress to endorse any
military action that the President
wanted.
The checks-and-balances we all learned about in
school had failed.
What can we do now and in the future to prevent
any other President from doing something similar?
Perhaps there are no easy answers.
But one thing we could attempt to do
is to elect more Representatives
and Senators
who are able to think for
themselves.
The political leaders of most other counties were not taken in
by the fantasy or lie about weapons of mass
destruction.
And millions of ordinary Americans were not deceived.
Nevertheless, our Congress voted to authorize taking over Iraq.
Later the occupation was justified as
spreading
democracy to Iraq.
But only a failure of
democracy in the United States
permitted this military misadventure
to begin.
Better democracy
in the USA would have prevented this
disaster.
2. THE UNITED STATES
SHOULD
NOT
BE WORLD POLICEMAN.
It
was a fundamental mistake for the United States
to overthrow the government of another country,
especially when few other countries could be persuaded
to join in such a military adventure.
Before the military forces of the United States
moved in 2003 to get rid of Saddam Hussein
(who had just been re-elected President of Iraq),
the United Nations was conducting meaningful and effective
weapons-control inspections.
Weapons that were not permitted after the 1991 Gulf War
were being destroyed.
This was a quiet but effective program.
And subsequent events proved
that there were no more
weapons of mass
death in Iraq.
No matter how evil and destructive any government
might be,
it is not proper for any one nation (or small group of nations)
to decide to overthrow any particular form of government
and to attempt to replace it with another form of government.
The Charter of the United Nations specifically forbids
interference in the internal affairs of another member state.
The Earth has plenty of nation-states
governed by military dictators
and other forms of government that we do not endorse.
One reason the President of the United States
decided to overthrow the
dictator of Iraq
was because it could be done.
The military forces of the USA easily overcame the military
forces of Iraq.
But then the United States did not know how to govern
Iraq.
What if other nations decide to become political
purifiers
and use military force to overthrow governments they do not like?
A long-range
alternative is suggested here:
"WHAT WOULD THE WORLD
PEACE FORCE DO?
Separate
the Warring Factions in Iraq":
3. SOMETIMES EVEN MILITARY
DICTATORSHIP
IS BETTER FOR THE PEOPLE
THAN NO GOVERNMENT AT ALL.
There is no question that Saddam Hussein was a
brutal dictator.
He kept law and order in Iraq by threats and terror.
He killed thousands of his own countrymen in the north (Kurds)
because some of them tried to resist his rule.
And, later, he was justly convicted and executed for this crime.
But the chaos that followed the U.S. take-over of
Iraq
has resulted in many more
deaths than Saddam committed.
When we are faced with a similar military
dictatorship in another country,
we should consider how many people will die with either option:
How many will die if the world does nothing?
How many will die if other nations try to intervene?
In retrospect, we might conclude
that we should have allowed Iraq to continue at it was.
Saddam Hussein would have died from natural causes
and his sons would have taken over.
But at least the factions and tribes of Iraq
would not kill one another at every opportunity.
And eventually democracy might have arisen in
Iraq,
created by the intelligent people of that country
rather than a new government supported by a foreign army.
We should have learned from Vietnam
that there is no way for
foreigner occupiers to set up a government
that will be supported by the
people.
4. THE POLICE SHOULD ALWAYS
SPEAK
THE LANGUAGE OF THE PEOPLE.
The 'war in Iraq' soon became policing Iraq.
There was no front line
of soldiers fighting each other.
Rather, we created a failed state with limited law-and-order.
The tribes of Iraq took the occasion of the lack of a central
government
as a good time to kill as many of their 'enemies' as possible.
Even the local police of Iraq were not really loyal
to the
nation
as much as they were loyal to their own tribe or clan.
The police accepted American money for their work during
the day.
But at night, they joined partisan protectors to combat their enemies.
This situation did not change until the American
soldiers
stopped trying to patrol the streets of Baghdad and other parts of
Iraq.
As long as American troops were walking around Baghdad
and driving around in convoys,
they were the targets
for any Iraqis with weapons.
Such patrolling by U.S. soldiers did not create
law-and-order.
It created more opportunities for murder and mayhem.
Many Iraqis did not care about the lives of Americans.
And the feeling was mutual:
American soldiers and security contractors
sometimes showed little concern for the lives of Iraqis.
Whenever foreign military forces try to enforce law
and order,
they will commit many mistakes
just because they do not understand what the people are saying.
How would we feel in New York City, for example,
if Arabic-speaking soldiers with huge guns visited our
apartments
searching for people who did not support the government?
They might come with interpreters,
but there would still be lots of confusion created by the language
barrier.
And many New Yorkers would be killed and imprisoned by mistake.
The same mistakes happened in Baghdad.
This problem of foreign occupation will not be cured
until law-and-order is established by Arabic-speaking police forces.
The police must be trusted by the people.
And that trust will only be earned
by some months
of positive experience with the new police force.
Do the police in fact
enforce the law without any ethnic bias?
Have they been able to prevent further mutual genocide?
In 2010, U.S. forces ended their 'combat operations'
in Iraq.
Almost 50,000 U.S. soldiers remained,
supposedly to train and advise the new police and soldiers of Iraq.
In December 2011, the last of the remaining U.S. soldiers were
withdrawn.
The aftermath of U.S. occupation began to unfold.
The lesson to be drawn from this mistake
of thinking that we could police a foreign country with U.S. soldiers
is that the police should
always speak the language of the people.
If any nation cannot police itself,
it should hire peace-keepers from other nations
that speaks the same language.
This
option is explored in another essay:
"Exit
Strategy for Iraq: Arabic-Speaking Peace-Keepers"
5. OTHER LESSONS
There are doubtless other lessons to be learned from
Iraq.
Some of these might be added here, in later editions of this essay.
What did we learn from overthrowing the dictator of Iraq
and attempting to occupy that country for eight years?
Created
September 20, 2007; Revised 10-4-2007; 10-6-2007; 11-11-2007;
11-16-2007;
10-1-2008; 9-10-2010; 6-12-2011; 12-22-2011;
2-3-2012; 5-19-2013; 8-29-2014; 1-24-2015; 2-21-2020;