WASHINGTON, 12 April 2004 — “’No one starts a war, or rather no one in his senses should do so,” Clausewitz wrote, “without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to achieve it.’” Mistake number one in Vietnam. Which led to Clausewitz’s rule number two. Political leaders must set a war’s objectives, while armies achieve them. In Vietnam, one seemed to be looking to the other for the answers that never came.’’ — My American Journey, by Colin Powell
Was the Bush administration clear in what it intended to achieve by invading Iraq? In the weeks leading up to the war, the answer seemed clear. President Bush and his advisers, in a series of public statements, repeatedly cited Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s link with Al-Qaeda as threats to the United States and reasons for going to war. That’s not what we’re hearing today.
A different set of war goals has emerged over the past year. We are now in Iraq, according to various administration pronouncements, to: bring about self-government and create conditions for economic growth and development; build a unified Iraq that does not pose a threat to international peace; leave behind us a constitution and Parliament; help build a disarmed, law-abiding Iraq that is whole, free, at peace with itself and its neighbors, and that no longer supports or harbors terror; and to help Iraqis assume responsibility for their own defense and future. These goals are worth revisiting in light of current conditions in Iraq.
The political reconstruction of Iraq is going poorly. A reclusive but powerful Shiite cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, is jerking the United States around, throwing monkey wrench after monkey wrench into a political process that’s supposed to produce a sovereign Iraq on June 30. The current Iraqi uprising has caused more American fatalities and injuries that have occurred in any single week since the fall of Baghdad a year ago and shows signs of spreading in the country. And there are ominous indications that Sunni and Shiite Muslims at the street level may be making common cause against the US occupation.
So how does the Bush administration intend to accomplish its postwar goals? Sloganeering — “stay the course,’’ “don’t cut and run’’ — won’t do the trick. How are the administration’s goals going to be achieved when some US-created Iraqi national police and civil defense units seem unwilling to fight and die defending their country against armed insurgents? Those aren’t Americans cutting and running and abandoning their posts in Iraqi government buildings and police stations, they’re Iraqis. Why should it fall to the US Central Command to put down the unrest in Baghdad and Fallujah while Iraqi police are turning over their weapons, vehicles and offices to the insurgents? “Stay the course.’’ As Iraqis abandon the fray?
US forces, at some cost, can put down the insurgency and stabilize the country. But if ever there was a moment for the president to explain how he expects to build a law-abiding Iraq that is whole, free and at peace with itself — and how Americans will know when that goal has been reached — it’s now.
‘’I recently reread Bernard Fall’s book on Vietnam, ‘Street Without Joy.’ Fall makes painfully clear that we had almost no understanding of what we had gotten ourselves into. I cannot help thinking that if President Kennedy or President Johnson had spent a quiet weekend at Camp David reading that perceptive book, they would have returned to the White House Monday morning and immediately started to figure out a way to extricate us from the quicksand of Vietnam.” — My American Journey, Colin Powell
Powell’s right; if only we had listened to Fall. I was a student in three of Fall’s classes at Howard University in the 1960s. We saw each other for the last time in 1962 at a New York airport. I was in uniform wearing the gold bar of a second lieutenant and en route to Fort Niagara in upstate New York. Fall had been in Detroit and was headed out of the country again. He died five years later in Vietnam, killed by a Viet Cong booby trap. Fall’s message still has resonance. Today in Iraq, as in Vietnam, we are up against an enemy who is prepared to pay the price in bodies. And now, as then, the enemy unsportingly refuses to play the game our way — an observation Powell made in his book. Rather than engage us in a knockout battle, the Viet Cong refused to cooperate, Powell said. They “would melt into their sanctuaries ... refit, regroup, and come out to fight again,’’ he said. Sound familiar?
We went into Iraq knowing next to nothing about the Arab world, its culture, customs or the role of Islam in the lives of people. Instead, for information we relied on a handful of self-serving Iraqi exiles and Arab intellectuals skilled in handling and indulging Western conceit and arrogance. It was tantamount to foreigners’ seeking out elite black conservatives and think-tank experts to explain the thoughts and ways of inner-city folks.
‘’I had gone off to Vietnam in 1962 standing on a bedrock of principle and convictions. And I had watched that foundation eroded by euphemisms, lies, and deception.’’ — My American Journey, Colin Powell
Iraq one year later: more than 600 Americans dead; casualties rising; billions of dollars out the door; fighting raging; no weapons of mass destruction.
What about now? What about now?
