PARIS, 25 August 2003 — What’s French for quagmire? I learned the answer in the wake of the bombing attack that struck United Nations offices in Baghdad, Iraq.
The word is bourbier. As the left-wing daily Liberation put it, America has found itself in a “bourbier sanglant a la Vietnamienne’’ — that is, a “bloody quagmire, Vietnam-style.’’ The even more left-wing l’Humanite argued that it’s a bourbier into which “American leaders are sinking, day to day.’’
The other papers here were kinder, but not much more hopeful. Atop The Wall Street Journal Europe’s front page was this banner: “Bomb Attack on UN HQ in Iraq Underscores US Security Crisis.’’
On the front page of Le Monde, the paper of record here, a front-pager was “Disarray in Washington.’’
And Le Parisien, the daily for the city’s working-stiff subway riders, offered nearly the same header: “Disarray in the United States.’’
Should Americans care what the French think about our occupation of Iraq? Not if they’re happy with the way things are going over there. But for those Americans who think that the United States could use some help extricating itself from this bourbier, maybe it’s worth pondering the experience of a country that’s been down this same quagmire road.
That is, France.
The French, too, went through their expansionary phase. They first set about colonizing Vietnam, for instance, in the late 19th century; but in 1954 they were defeated and expelled.
Too bad Americans weren’t paying attention to that dolorous French precedent when they launched their own Vietnam crusade in the early ‘60s.
Today, the French seem to have a better feel for the dynamics of anti-Western insurgencies than the American government.
President Bush insists, as always, that there is light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq. But in the words of Le Parisien: “This new act of violence confirms that the country is far from from being secured. Even if the Americans are congratulating themselves for having arrested or killed most of those close to Saddam Hussein over the last three months, the situation is deteriorating from day to day.’’ So one might ask, “Who’s got a better handle on the Battle of Baghdad — the man in the White House or the reader in the Paris subway?’’
Indeed, the words of Le Figaro, the pro-American daily, seem particularly pointed — and poignant. In an editorial titled ‘’Irak: les erreurs americaines,” the paper begins by asserting, ‘’In the West, everyone hopes — or should hope — that the American pro-consulate won’t come to a bad end.”
So far, so good. But, the piece continues, ‘’No one, even in the United States, really believes it anymore.”
Next, the editorial considers the origins of the Bush policy.
American neoconservatives, described with Gallic precision as ‘’a powerful lobby of ideologues,” believe that ‘’the best of all possible worlds is the one where America uses its power to impose its views and its model of social organization, whatever the other nations may think.” But in following that logic, this lobby has made three errors, according to Le Figaro.
First, the neocons ‘’faked” the danger from Iraq, thereby reducing Washington’s ability to deal with ‘’the real menaces,” Iran and North Korea. Second, the neocons thought that they could ‘’nation-build” a democracy in Iraq; instead, “the Americans are now realizing that political surgery on a foreign body is an art much more difficult than they imagined.”
A third error was for the United States to think, ‘’I am the strongest; therefore I don’t listen to the advice of others, even if it comes from realms as diverse as old Europe, Russia, India, China, Latin America.”
That third item goes to what was always at the heart of the anti-Iraq war argument. And that is, if Uncle Sam couldn’t convince the rest of the world that ‘’regime change” was a good idea, then maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.
After all, alliances and international law are the friends of the peaceful and the law-abiding; the United States, for example, put consultation and consensus at the heart of its strategy in two world wars and the Cold War.
And we won those wars — which is more than we are likely to be able to say, in the long run, about Iraq.
