Did US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice say the Bush administration’s made “thousands of tactical errors” in Iraq, but the “right strategic decision?”
Or is that Napoleon, speaking through Condi from the grave?
If it is, it won’t be the first time the White House has sought advice from the dead.
When Sen. Hillary Clinton was America’s first lady, she claimed to regularly “channel” the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt, a deceased first lady who, like Hillary, was controversial and whose husband philandered. So maybe Condi’s channeling Napoleon is the same thing, only more meaningful for current events because Napoleon was a great warrior in battle, and he and his soldiers did leave their mark on the Middle East — their graffiti abounds on Egypt’s public places, pyramids and citadel.
Napoleon also relieved the Middle East he “conquered” in 1798 of a bunch of neat obelisks now centering ritzy Paris boulevards and some very nice art and antiquities now sitting in the Louvre — looting and pillaging being that “messy” democratic element even then. But is the Middle East any more French today for Napoleon having conquered it?
Kinda. Sorta. But not in the dramatic way that Condi and her fellow neocons envision.
You can hear French spoken in Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and sometimes in Egypt and elsewhere; there’s a smattering of French civil law limping about; and every once in a while, the odd architectural element pops out at you when you least expect it.
And you can usually rustle up some very nice cuisine that hints at an older French influence. But what about liberte, fraternite, egalite? Did any of that stick?
Napoleon, being a semi-benevolent despot — like the deposed Saddam Hussein — didn’t actively promote genuine democracy.
But he did talk about it, and unlike the neocons, had the prescience to bring Arabic speakers along to make sure the masses heard his message. As George W. Bush would do over two centuries later, Napoleon assured Egyptians he’d come to liberate them from their oppressive Ottoman rulers, and he lauded Islam. Few Egyptians believed him, though, and the administration he put in the Mamelukes’ place struggled from internecine nationalist attacks — insurgencies.
Does that sound familiar?
Muslims have always understood liberte, fraternite, and egalite, perhaps even better than the French.
Equality among believers is Islam’s basic tenet, and although social, economic, ethnic, and even racial inequalities exist, these defy Islam.
Fraternity?
Muslims call each other “brother” and “sister” and mean it.
And liberty in the Muslim world has long been correctly equated with justice.
Even Orientalist scholars like Bernard Lewis, the neocons’ chief ideologue, recognize that Islamic liberty is infinitely a richer and more complex idea than Bush’s “freedom.”
True, Islamic governments occasionally lapse into authoritarianism, most often as a brake on anarchy.
But Lewis is correct in pointing out those aspects of Iraqi political life that the Bush administration finds disturbing and worth destroying are actually not Muslim or even genuinely Middle Eastern, but are European imports from modern France and Germany, such as the fascistic Baath Party.
History will indeed judge America’s Iraq invasion and occupation, as Condi suggests.
But history takes its time.
And scores of people are dying in Iraq right now. How much are our “thousands of errors” to blame?
Condi says Saddam had to go to “change the face of the Middle East,” but “thousands of errors,” and one “right strategic decision” to topple Saddam Hussein later, how changed is the face of the Middle East?
Well, it looks a whole lot more aggressively Shiite than before we committed our “thousands of errors.”
This is the inevitable, inescapable result of whatever genuinely democratic process may now be in play in Iraq, since most citizens who’ll vote are in fact Shiites.
Does this create problems for truly representative governments charged with protecting minorities, who suddenly find themselves not exactly disenfranchised, but on the fringes of a political structure they once ruled as masters?
It surely creates problems for those Iraqis who aren’t Shiites.
Our “thousands of errors” are causing thousands to die, and many thousands more to live in fear. When Condi says “the strategy” is worth it, is it she, or the ghost of an unrepentant Napoleon talking?
What will we leave behind in Iraq?
Hopefully, more than all the dead.
And more than Napoleon did.
But it will take different and better leadership than what Americans have now.
