Maybe it was watching some of Ken Burns’ latest documentary triumph, The War, which led me to thinking about the wars the United States has waged since that brutal, necessary victory over the totalitarian regimes that made up the Axis. Three disastrous land wars in Asia: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq – I’ve taken to calling them “Die for a Tie,” Die for a Lie,” and “Die for a My,” respectively. Each initiated and pursued to its bitter endings (one can hope that W’s Iraq is in its dying throes, but to what endgame?) by incompetent American foreign policy decisions and decision-makers. All three started and exacerbated by a uniquely American arrogance and myopic world view that has caused us to lose many fine young citizen-warriors, to lose enormous amounts of influence and goodwill throughout the world, and to loose our deadly weaponry on countless innocents living amongst the enemies.
For those of you keeping score at home, join me briefly in the review booth. I fully agree that the first Iraq war should count as a major American campaign. Other engagements don’t measure up to the necessary scope of purpose, timeframe, or massive death to be included – Kosovo, Grenada, Somalia, or the botched desert rescue of our hostages in Tehran, for example. But the liberation of Kuwait does measure up. Like the big three listed above, it was most likely started due to faulty diplomacy, wherein Saddam felt the Americans had given him free rein – a mistake caused by actions of key individuals in both countries. However, I choose to leave it out of this discussion because it was not wholly an effort taken on by the U.S. with mere token involvement of our allies. The liberation of Kuwait was a shining moment of the good that can come from a truly international diplomacy and subsequent military response, and served briefly (until W came on the scene) as a warning to future despots that attempting to rearrange international borders can be hazardous to a regime’s health.
Alas, the good that Poppy Bush generated, the hopeful message that blatant land grabs may well be countered by massive international military reaction (if at least you control strategic land or vast amounts of some marketable commodity), has been squandered by his son’s rash cowboy diplomacy. Will it be future historians or psychoanalysts who correctly decipher the true reasons that drove W into avenging daddy’s troubles with Saddam instead of concentrating on the true terrorists holed up in Afghanistan and Pakistan? We may never know, which must be especially vexing to those families who have already paid for this foreign policy snafu with the lives of loved ones.
Arrogance and adventurism
David Halberstam’s final masterpiece, “The Coldest Winter”, examines the war in Korea afresh. Apparently the whole shebang started because Secretary of State Dean Acheson absent-mindedly left South Korea off the list of states in our “defense perimeter” in an otherwise routine speech! Kim Il Sung took this mistake as a pretext to an invasion and a war-weary nation was thrust back into deadly conflict. Further American mistakes of arrogance and adventurism tripped a nervous Chinese response and the killings escalated. American grunts, showing the pithy wisdom and irony of soldiers throughout history, declared the war’s purpose to be “Die for a Tie.” Read Halberstam’s book for the details of American imperialistic overreach on the Korean peninsula.
Vietnam, it can be argued, should be titled “Die for a Lie.” American military leaders, still smarting from the mindless butchery that followed failed diplomacy in Korea, rightly turned down France’s initial missives requesting American troops for Indochina. You might recall that after World War II, the U.S. insisted Great Britain be given Indochina as a sphere of influence, hoping to keep the French from reasserting their colonial rule over Vietnam. The Brits left the Americans flatfooted when they flipped the region back to the French–an action not easily defended (by the Brits or French) nor often questioned (by Uncle Sam).
Not the first time our erstwhile British allies have bested us when interests did not coincide – recall that President Wilson sold the Irish down the river for his beloved League of Nations when British approval for the League hinged on American acceptance that Ireland not be given combat nation status in the peace talks after World War I, even though the vast majority of U.S. states had passed proclamations urging such status. The Irish and their grievances against Great Britain lost their world stage, costing both nations terrible losses before Irish independence for three-fourths of its landmass was grudgingly given. Didn’t work out real well for Wilson either, but a dream that is born on the back of duplicity deserved the fate Wilson’s League received.
But the next time the French asked for American aid, the new American top brass decided they needed another playground for their military-industrial complex (revisit Frances Fitzgerald’s remarkable “Fire in the Lake” for the gory details). So much for heeding warnings about land wars in Asia, or about recklessly opposing a nationalist attempt to overthrow colonial imperialism. Ho Chi Minh understood American ideals better than his American counterparts when he wrote asking for American help in freeing his country from despotic foreign overlords!
A waste of words unfortunately, and then the lies started coming – The Gulf of Tonkin incident? Even William Randolph Hearst would blush at the audacity of that stretch. McNamara’s body counts and light at the end of the tunnel? Number manipulation that Enron accountants could admire. Nixon’s secret plan to end the war? Five long years and bombing hospitals on Christmas didn’t accomplish the goal. Kissinger’s belief that applying sufficient pressure on Russia and China would end the war? He is considered a foreign policy mastermind with that piece of lunacy on his resume? Ford’s request for massive additional American financial aid days before the fall of Saigon? Have you ever heard the rumored story that President Thieu’s plane abandoning Saigon mere days in front of the Communist victors couldn’t get off the ground due to its overbearing weight of gold bullion stored aboard? Lies, we were fed all lies and miscalculations, and who paid the price but American soldiers, American prestige, and untold legions of Vietnamese. How the people of Vietnam can treat American visitors so warmly now is truly a wonder to me. The vast majority of them must have a generosity that dwarfs ours.
The current quagmire
And now we get to our current quagmire – easily the most horrific mistake in foreign policy in the post-World War era. Our current soldiers, and most cruelly, our ill-used National Guardsmen, are being asked to “Die for a My.” My daddy’s attempted assassination, my daddy’s inability to finish the job the first time, my belief that history is calling me to eliminate the evils of Saddam, my neo-con Greek chorus that cries out Iraq is the root of all evildoers, my willful ignorance and obtuseness in conflating Iraq with 9/11 over and over and over again, my “coalition of the willing,” my Justice Department’s shameful redefining of torture, my use of cronies with no practical experience to man key posts so poorly that Iraq still has substantially less potable water, electricity and other basic services than when they were under an international embargo and Saddam’s rapacious administration, my disgraceful use of over 100,000 mercenaries being paid six times a sergeant’s pay for the same work solely to keep from needing a draft and truly forcing a popular vote on the war in 2004, my Rummy’s heavy-handed smackdown of brass like General Shinseki who dared to tell truths, and finally my utter lack of any planning for the day after Saddam’s overthrow.
There is no quick, easy, or painless way out of the miasma W led our nation into. Republican presidents historically have gotten us out of foreign entanglements that Democratic presidents led us into. There goes one of the last reasons I had to vote for a Republican presidential candidate! Not that any of this current batch of Republican candidates offer any hope, or plan, to fix W’s Middle East piddling. Just because this roster of all-white, all-male wise men ignore the elephant in the room doesn’t mean a surprise Republican winning candidate wouldn’t have to deal with this nightmare! Show some true leadership and talk frankly about your view of the post-W Iraq situation – you guys know better than anyone else that he plans to leave the stage with this mess wholly unresolved.
There are many lessons we need to absorb from this misadventure. Few in either party are talking openly about most of them. And yes, I think Hillary would be a disaster if her timidity as the putative frontrunner mirrors the type of president she would be.
The current administration will shuffle off the stage determined to ignore and minimize the damage it has inflicted on American military strength, American moral standing in the world, and American foreign relations. The next president will face bankrupt coffers, a damaged military, domestic problems grown overlarge through inattention, and a cynical if not hostile world unwilling to believe our words or our actions. God bless the party and the person who accepts this dubious task.
God Bless America, and God Bless Every Nation. May we all be part of the solution. It will require something from each and every one of us.
