| More than 200 years ago, Napoleon Bonaparte led a series of revolutionary wars across Europe. His aim, ostensibly, was to bring liberty and equality to the oppressed peoples of that continent. The outcome, however, was very different. As French armies fought their way across the continent, eventually to perish en masse in the retreat from Moscow, they unwittingly provoked a new sense of nationalism among the peoples they "liberated."
Napoleon’s ambitions ended in defeat and exile, and in 1815 the victorious allies met at Vienna to re-establish a balance of power in Europe. That balance – based on a network of treaties and alliances – prevailed, more or less, for the next century. But the beast of nationalism had been unleashed and eventually would destroy the fragile equilibrium. And so it was, in the 20th century, that Napoleon’s legacy brought not just Europe but most of the world to the brink of destruction, not once but twice.
Is U.S. president George W. Bush the reincarnation of Napoleon? In seeking to bring his own cherished values – freedom and democracy – to the oppressed people of Iraq, has he instead provoked a fervent backlash of violence and vengeance far more destabilizing than any threat that the former dictator Saddam Hussein may have posed? Or is the American game plan for Iraq still on course?
Events of the past two weeks are certainly not encouraging. A full year after the capture of Baghdad, clashes and casualties continue to escalate in Iraq, blurring if not extinguishing the line between war and peace. Moreover, the recent bombings in Spain and last week’s kidnap and threatened execution of three Japanese hostages underline the fact that (a) this is no longer (if it ever was) simply a U.S.-Iraq affair and (b) civilians have become front-line targets, even when not on the front line itself.
Even more precipitous, perhaps, is the fact that Bush seems to have achieved the previously impossible. Shia and Sunni Muslims have, for the moment at least, buried their differences and joined forces in their hatred of the U.S. "America doesn’t know what kind of people are in Iraq," one Shiite remarked last week. "The Iraqis have 3,000 years rooted in the ground… and we are all one." Much as Napoleon’s French armies inadvertently sowed the seeds of national self-determination among Poles, Italians, Germans and so on, so Bush has united Iraqis in common cause.
There’ll be no Waterloo for Bush, however. Instead, he and his advisors stand by their intention to "return sovereignty" to Iraq at the end of June. Leaving aside that nice phrase – how do you "return" something that, to the best of my knowledge, was never yielded in the first place – just what does this mean?
Politically, the former brutal yet stable regime has been replaced by a hand-picked cartel of pro-American administrators, who must now prepare to share or surrender power according to the democratic wishes of the Iraqi electorate. If the coming elections are truly free, then there can be no guarantee of a U.S.-friendly government. If American coercion influences the outcome, then we’re back to square one.
Economically, Iraq’s basic infrastructure is still in disastrous shape, bearing the scars of the U.S. bombing campaign. American companies are now in place to help rebuild, for sure, but that in turn will result in a net outflow of Iraqi wealth and so pose a problem for the future.
What’s the alternative? Should the U.S. abandon any such artificial deadline (now less than 90 days away) and instead stay to secure the basic conditions necessary for a stable post-Saddam Iraq? And just what would those conditions look like?
The problem here for the U.S. is twofold. First, if the original war was waged with the aim of bringing democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people, Bush has an open-ended responsibility to deliver on that mission. He is not at liberty simply to back away from the mess he helped to create whenever he feels like it. Second, it seems that, once again, the U.S. lacked, from the outset, any clear "exit strategy." Starting wars is relatively easy; ending them, short of obliterating the enemy, rarely is, if only because it’s impossible to return to the pre-war status quo. Thus the American "declaration of victory" a full year ago failed to bring about an end to the conflict. Who’s to believe that the looming June 30th deadline will, in any real sense, restore peace?
Testifying before the bipartisan panel last week, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice declared that there was no "silver bullet" that could have prevented the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Fair enough, maybe, but who ever believed that such a magic remedy existed? Americans remain uniquely wedded to the notion that the world operates in such simplistic fashion – as when it mistakenly equated the capture of a stunned Saddam Hussein last Christmas with the surrender of an entire people.
At least, the complex web of cause and effect, action and reaction, stimulus and response appears to be beyond the grasp of the man in the White House. Instead, in the face of a new civil war in Iraq, he clings to the safety blanket of absolute moral certainty. "It was a tough week," Bush said last Sunday, "(but) what we’re doing in Iraq is right."
Funny — that’s just what Napoleon said on the way to Moscow. |
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