Given how little most Americans apparently know about world history, especially anything outside of the U.S. or Western Europe, and given the U.S. record in trying to effect regime change, either directly or behind the scenes, in other areas of the world with more familiar social structures, I’m not so optimistic. Please convince me why I should be…
[warning, the article is long, but IMO worth it]
“The Wall Street Journal on ‘Desert Quicksand’: Past Mideast Invasions Faced Unexpected Perils”
By HUGH POPE and PETER WALDMAN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
As President Bush steers the U.S. toward war, history offers a sobering lesson.
For two centuries, foreign powers have been conquering Mideast lands for their own purposes, promising to uplift Arab societies along the way. Sometimes they have modernized cities, taught new ideas and brought technologies.
But in nearly every incursion, both sides have endured a raft of unintended consequences. From Napoleon’s drive into Egypt through Britain’s rule of Iraq in the 1920s to Israel’s march into Lebanon in 1982, Middle East nations have tempted conquerors only to send them reeling.
Little wonder that even many Arabs who revile Saddam Hussein view the prospect of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq with trepidation. “Unless the Americans are far more subtle than they’ve ever had the capacity to be, and more subtle than the [colonial] British, it’s going to end in tears,” predicts Faisal Istrabadi, an Iraqi- born lawyer in Michigan who has worked with the State Department on plans to rebuild Iraq’s judiciary. “The honeymoon will be very brief.”
Again and again, Westerners have moved into the Mideast with confidence that they can impose freedom and modernity through military force. Along the way they have miscalculated support for their invasions, both internationally and in the lands they occupy. They have anointed cooperative minorities to help rule resentful majorities. They have been mired in occupations that last long after local support has vanished. They have met with bloody uprisings and put them down with brute force.
[really big snip with lots of historical examples]
“The idea that you can change the Middle East with guns and bayonets is wrong,” says Bob Dillon, U.S. ambassador to Beirut at the time [during the Suez crisis].
Some in Israel worry U.S. leaders may harbor the same illusions in Iraq that Israel brought with it to Lebanon. If the Americans conquer Baghdad, says reserve Col. Meir Pial, author of a dozen military histories, “they’ll have to sponsor a new government. It will be
seen by the people as a government cooperating with the conqueror, so it will need support.” He predicts that “the longer the Americans stay, the deeper they will find themselves in the mud.”
Bush administration officials acknowledge the minefield they’re facing but express confidence the U.S., with its record of democratizing defeated tyrannies in Germany and Japan, can succeed in Iraq. In particular, the administration believes it will avoid past pitfalls by
mounting a devastating military strike and following it quickly with billions of dollars in reconstruction and humanitarian aid, according to a Bush official. U.S. officials are also optimistic that Iraq, with its deep-rooted educational and civil-service systems, its history of secularism, its utter exhaustion after three decades of totalitarianism – and its oil wealth – is exceptionally ready to leapfrog forward.
“Iraq’s a sophisticated society,” Mr. Bush said on March 6. “Iraq’s got money … . Iraq will serve as a catalyst for change, positive change.”
