Some Good Questions...
...from a surprising source.
An op-ed piece on the Iraq War in today's Los Angeles Times carries a rather unusual caveat: "CHRISTOPHER J. FETTWEIS is assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. These opinions are his own."
Professor Fettweis's opinions are rather surprising, coming as they do from a military war college. He starts from the premise that the Iraq War is lost. Period. He then proceeds to examine what caused the loss and what the result of that loss is likely to be, both to the US and to the world.
The American people seem to understand, however — and historians will certainly agree — that the war itself was a catastrophic mistake. It was a faulty grand strategy, not poor implementation. The Bush administration was operating under an international political illusion, one that is further discredited with every car bombing of a crowded Baghdad marketplace and every Iraqi doctor who packs up his family and flees his country.
The only significant question still hanging is whether Iraq will turn out to have been the biggest strategic mistake in U.S. history. Vietnam was a much greater moral disaster, of course, and led to far more death and destruction. But, just as the war's critics predicted in the 1960s, Vietnam turned out to be strategically irrelevant. Saigon fell, but no dominoes followed; the balance of Cold War power did not change.
Iraq has the potential to be far worse. One of the oft-expressed worst-case scenarios for Iraq — a repeat of Lebanon in the 1980s — may no longer be within reach. Lebanon's simmering civil war eventually burned itself out and left a coherent, albeit weak, state in its ashes. Iraq could soon more closely resemble Somalia in the 1990s, an utterly collapsed, uncontrollable, lawless, failed state that destabilizes the most vital region in the world. [Emphasis added]
Prof. Fettweis then asks some pretty key questions which, while rhetorical, also deserve to be answered:
Hopefully at some point during the recriminations to come, the American people will seize the opportunity to ask themselves a series of fundamental questions about the role and purpose of U.S. power in the world. How much influence can the United States have in the Middle East? Is its oil worth American blood and treasure? Are we really safer now that Iraq burns? Might we not be better off just leaving the region alone?
Only in seriously considering each of these questions and then extrapolating those answers to US foreign policy throughout the world can we avoid acting under any further "international political illusion." We need to stop having to relearn this tragic lesson every generation; it is simply too costly in too many ways.
An op-ed piece on the Iraq War in today's Los Angeles Times carries a rather unusual caveat: "CHRISTOPHER J. FETTWEIS is assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. These opinions are his own."
Professor Fettweis's opinions are rather surprising, coming as they do from a military war college. He starts from the premise that the Iraq War is lost. Period. He then proceeds to examine what caused the loss and what the result of that loss is likely to be, both to the US and to the world.
The American people seem to understand, however — and historians will certainly agree — that the war itself was a catastrophic mistake. It was a faulty grand strategy, not poor implementation. The Bush administration was operating under an international political illusion, one that is further discredited with every car bombing of a crowded Baghdad marketplace and every Iraqi doctor who packs up his family and flees his country.
The only significant question still hanging is whether Iraq will turn out to have been the biggest strategic mistake in U.S. history. Vietnam was a much greater moral disaster, of course, and led to far more death and destruction. But, just as the war's critics predicted in the 1960s, Vietnam turned out to be strategically irrelevant. Saigon fell, but no dominoes followed; the balance of Cold War power did not change.
Iraq has the potential to be far worse. One of the oft-expressed worst-case scenarios for Iraq — a repeat of Lebanon in the 1980s — may no longer be within reach. Lebanon's simmering civil war eventually burned itself out and left a coherent, albeit weak, state in its ashes. Iraq could soon more closely resemble Somalia in the 1990s, an utterly collapsed, uncontrollable, lawless, failed state that destabilizes the most vital region in the world. [Emphasis added]
Prof. Fettweis then asks some pretty key questions which, while rhetorical, also deserve to be answered:
Hopefully at some point during the recriminations to come, the American people will seize the opportunity to ask themselves a series of fundamental questions about the role and purpose of U.S. power in the world. How much influence can the United States have in the Middle East? Is its oil worth American blood and treasure? Are we really safer now that Iraq burns? Might we not be better off just leaving the region alone?
Only in seriously considering each of these questions and then extrapolating those answers to US foreign policy throughout the world can we avoid acting under any further "international political illusion." We need to stop having to relearn this tragic lesson every generation; it is simply too costly in too many ways.
Labels: Iraq War
posted by Diane at 3:59 AM
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