ALL COMMON KNOWLEDGE IS WRONG:

In Umm Qasr, fears of a second Bush betrayal are fuelled by bitter memories (Andrew Buncombe, 01 April 2003, The Independent)

The petrol queue was long and Mahmood was keen to explain the fears that Iraqis feel over the arrival of Americans and British troops.

Mahmood's brother owns the petrol station, an important position in a town where there has been no fuel delivery since the war began, and he led the way into the office in Umm Qasr. The concern of Mahmood and the other men gathered there was straightforward. They had been in this position before and it had cost them dearly. After the 1991 Gulf War, with Saddam Hussein's forces beaten, George Bush Snr, father of the current President, urged the largely Shia population of south-eastern Iraq to rise up and seek their freedom. When they did, America and Britain failed to support them and the Iraq regime ruthlessly suppressed the rebels. In this region the bitter memory of that betrayal still burns.

"People are very frightened," said Mahmood. "They think the Americans and British will go and then the Iraqi regime will come back. People are frightened to say anything.'' This is a serious obstacle for British and American forces as they pursue their "hearts and minds" operation to persuade civilians that the US-led war may bring them some good. [...]

Mahmood knows the reach of the Baath Party. "[Under Saddam] there were too many police and too many Baathists. In Iraq everybody is Baathist. You know why? Because if you want to get a job at the port you have to be Baathist, if you want to be a student you have to be Baathist, you want any job – it is the same."

Mahmood, 43, knows the empty promises Westerners can make. He learnt English more than 20 years ago when he was employed by an Italian geological firm in Umm Qasr. Afterwards he joined the army – fighting against Iran during the eight years of conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of young men on both sides. He suffered four shrapnel wounds. He also knows the promises of the Iraqi regime.

He said he and his friends wanted to shed the yoke of the Iraqi regime but not to have Washington or London as their new masters. "We don't want Saddam Hussein. We want freedom," said one. "We want government from the Iraqi people."

Nearly as unfortunate as our misunderstanding of the wars we've lost (Vietnam and href=http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1190>the defensive phase of the War with Terror) is our inability to honestly face the failures of the wars we "won": WWI, WWII, the Cold War, and the First Iraq War. All of these "victories" and "defeats" are having an impact now, though often, because of our failure to comprehend their deeper meanings, that effect is paradoxical.

Vietnam is the most obvious, a war where we fought well and successfully for a worthwhile cause, but have accepted the very worst spin that opponents put on our involvement. The legacy of Mogadishu too is apparent, just in the way the Ba'athists are conducting their futile but cagy defense and their obvious belief they can make us cut and run...again.

But it is the high price we're paying for the past triumphs that eludes us. Our tragic intervention in WWI saved the British and French dreams of empire and led to their being allowed to carve up the Middle East and stifle the very aspirations to self-determination in the region that Woodrow Wilson had done so much to stoke. At the end of WWII we made the disastrous mistake of leaving the Soviet Union in place, to spread its message of Marxism/Stalinism in the region (as elsewhere). This led to the Cold War, where the Soviets founded, funded, and trained terrorist organizations and where both America and the Soviets supported fundamentalist when they thought it served their purposes. And, finally, and again obviously, leaving Saddam Hussein in place at the end of the First Iraq War was a mistake, since here we are fighting him again. But it's only becoming apparent to us now how deep is the sense of betrayal on the part of those we convinced to rise up against him in 1991. The war we think of as a win, they see, correctly, as a great betrayal and are justifiably wary of trusting us again.

Now, it may be the case that democracies are just incapable of waging war in any serious and thorough fashion, that they are too skittish about its cost in lives and dollars, and therefore all too ready to bolt as soon as the stated enemy's capital falls. If this is true and we are fast headed for the moment when the Ba'athists are removed from power in Iraq but are allowed to remain in Syria and terror regimes are permitted to continue also in Iran, Palestine, Libya, and the rest, then this war is foolish and we should have saved ourselves the aggravation. If we're going to walk away and leave Mahmoods by the millions in the surrounding states then what will we have really achieved? But if, for once, we're ready to honestly face our past failures, even the failings of our victories, and follow through until our broader objectives have been won--which means here the pacification and liberalization of the Islamic Middle East, whether through reform or force--then, by all means, on to Damascus.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 1, 2003 9:19 AM