War draws to a close / Lessons to be drawn

A few columns back, we wrote that US victory in the Iraqi war was a foregone conclusion. It wasn’t really a war. It was a bull elephant trampling down a helpless antler, or if you will, a Pacific cyclone knocking down a girl’s panties from the clothesline. But the rationale was that America had to invade Iraq because (1) the bloodthirsty anti-American tyrant Saddam Hussein had to be captured dead or alive and (2) Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction had to be destroyed lest they eventually ravage the heartland of America. So, the US had to "go it alone" since the rest of the world had lost their moral guts to fight terror.

All right. Now that the war is drawing to a close, what lessons can be drawn? We have culled our answers from a bevy of critics and observers the world over, particularly Western even American critics. They contend the US went berserk. America’s defenders are few and far between. And yet victory over Iraq was cause for some euphoria. It was short and sweet.

The first lesson is that Carl von Clausewitz is right. The world’s outstanding authority on military matters, the Prussian savant warned no nation should ever get into a war without first thoroughly analyzing what it was getting into, its prime objectives, its repercussions. President George W. Bush dragooned America into that war. The events of 9/11 outraged him as it outraged all of America. It was an ugly, perverse mood. Bush declared war on international terror. He rode that mood with more vigilante swoop and swashbuckle than the brains of a superpower blending military might with coldblooded strategic thinking.

The second lesson is that no superpower, no matter how rich and mighty, can afford to be without allies. All previous American presidents knew that, and behaved accordingly. As Joseph Nye (The Paradox of American Power) said: "America needs the respect and help of other nations. We will be in trouble if we do not get it." Nye had foresight and was very canny. He wrote his book after the 9/11 catastrophe. Nye never imagined America, whose government he had served in many capacities, would war on Iraq.

Now, America is in big heap trouble. It does not really know what to do in an Arab country whose citizens increasingly get nervous and hostile vis-à-vis the US with every passing day.

The third lesson is that brute power alone does not a superpower make. Especially when it wars against terrorism. Terror is an enemy hidden in a thousand crevices, without national borders, hissing and crawling across borders like night snakes, lying low for months and years if necessary, then lunging when least expected.

What now? Will America continue to beat its breasts and hurl that battlecry of the cave dweller: "If you are not for us, then you must be against us."

That was a blunder. Now the leaders of America are laying it thick on Syria. The warning is that unless Syria, according to the US allegation, stops giving refuge to pro-Saddam Iraqi leaders fleeing Iraq, then it too will experience American wrath. So will the vast American invasion armada that laid siege on Iraq now get marching orders to attack Syria? The world no longer believes that baloney that Syria – like Iraq earlier – harbors weapons of mass destruction.

And after Syria, will it be Iran? And after Iran? North Korea?

And then again, was Iraq really worth it? The capture of Iraq, the seizure of Baghdad, now the occupation of Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, was no stroke of military genius. Their capitulation was on easy schedule. How could the US army with its awesome overload of firepower be stopped? But America overlooked one thing. And that’s where their total ignorance of the world’s variegated culture showed. The Iraqi people do not like America at all. This is contrary to fevered Pentagon pronouncements the Americans would be welcomed prodigally, with cheers and flowers, with florid expressions of support and admiration. That didn’t happen.

What was worse was that the occupying forces just stood by as one of the most extravagant and destructive looting sprees in history occurred. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld chuckled at first. He said the Iraqis for the first time tasted freedom after being pent up for decades. They should be understood, pardoned even. Really? When the Iraqis started to loot hospitals, museums, libraries, palaces, banks, historical places, any building they fancied, even the Chinese embassy, anything they could lay their hands on, oh my god, Bethlehem broke loose.

This was a nation’s whole heritage going up in smoke.

The whole city, entire cities, the whole country became paralyzed . Water, electricity, medical and food services, garbage, folded tent. Iraqis preyed on Iraqis. Robbed of their pride, their government, their nation, their institutions, the Iraqis behaved like wolves, goaded and famished, and wrought widespread destruction. For almost a week of unabated looting, the Americans did nothing. This is probably a lesson they will never forget. They refused to behave like an occupying army which they were. They were still gorging on the pretense they were liberating the Iraqis. Really? The same Iraqis started to denounce them for allowing the historic legacy of Baghdad and Iraq to be destroyed. Go home! Many Iraqis shouted.

The Americans forgot one essential thing.

A great civilization can only remain great if it reaches the highest levels – or surges close – of morality, philosophy, technology, martial, economic and political competence. This was the Roman Empire. And this, too, to a much lesser extent, was the British empire. America could easily have followed suit if success did not go to its head. Once America hit the last two decades of the 20th century and the initial years of the 21st century, its exceptional balancing act on a world scale began to wobble.

And it began to wobble because of one single event, Sept. 11, 2001.

Never had American pride so wounded as that event when three suicide aircraft downed Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Coincidentally, America’s leadership was Republican of the extreme right fairly brimming with fanatical fight. Coincidentally too, the American ethos prided success more than anything else. Success was the bitch goddess – success, often success at any cost, at any price. Failure was the monkey’s tail, derided, held in utter contempt. "Nothing succeeds like success," declared Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the Korean war. And so it was.

Orlando Patterson, one of America’s ranking psychologists, and a historian to boot, wrote that the Achilles heel of US culture, was failure. You were a social outcast if you were a failure, a bum to all intents and purposes, an outsider, a cast-out. Patterson said the passion to succeed overpowered everything else, and therefore upended moral standards. There was everything wrong here, he indicated.

Today, success in American terms means being the mightiest nation in the world. Mightiest here has its emphasis on military muscle. Only America’s aircraft carriers, battleships, cruiser, destroyers, B-1 and B-2 bombers with 20,000-pound payloads, nuclear submarines, mini and mammoth helicopters, predators missiles of every category, enemy-sniffing spy satellites can project America’s might anywhere in the world. Iraq was a very good excuse to test this state-of-the-art weaponry. And so what if no weapons of mass destruction were found? Or Saddam Hussein disappeared into thin air. They would eventually track him down. We were suckered by Bush’s mantra on WMDs.

If America is on a war momentum, the whole world has a right to be scared.

If Syria is indeed next, and after Syria, North Korea, America, I am afraid, will be biting off more than it can chew. If in Iraq, the civilized world recoiled, an American attack on Syria or North Korea will bring in Russia, China, Japan and South Korea. The limits of American power will be tested – and beaten back. Why? Law and order, according to Prof. Samuel Huntington, "is the first requisite of Civilization." If law and order’s hold gradually evaporates, it will "generate the first image of an unprecedented phenomenon, a global Dark Ages, possibly descending on humanity."

These are dark thoughts, darker possibilities.

So far, I haven’t mentioned China. Americans, as a general rule, are wary, even afraid of China. Prof. Joseph Nye cites polls that show "half of the American people thinks China will pose the biggest challenge to US world power status in the next one hundred years, compared to eight percent for Japan and six percent for Russia and Europe." But where I differ with Professor Nye is his contention China has generations to go before it can look America in the eye as a world military power.

It took the Soviet Union less than two decades. All it had to do was engage in the mass manufacture of atomic and nuclear bombs to achieve superpower parity with the US. China has had the bomb since 40 years.