Sometimes I wish we had more history professors in the White House. Or, barring history professors, at least a few good mythologists who understand that there are lessons to be found in every good story. ??
Perhaps the bookish types would have recognized by now that the failures which have plagued America's war in Iraq-an unexpectedly chilly welcome by Iraqis, apparent overextension of our forces and so on-are due as much to our ignorance of the Middle East's history as they are due to overconfidence, amateurish battlefield strategy and shortsightedness. ??
To be sure, the administration has made plenty of mistakes in the latter three departments. Donald Rumsfeld's \blitzkrieg"" push toward Baghdad with underwhelming force has displayed all the nuance of starting a campfire with jet fuel. The momentary blaze which characterized Rumsfeld's opening act has quite predictably left coalition forces without a strong bed of coals to build upon. Territory that was initially swept through like a brushfire has since revealed itself to be housing some smoldering resistance. ??
Indeed, having mentioned campfires, one wonders whether the Department of Defense might not have been well-advised to hire a few consultants from the Boy Scouts of America while planning this war. No doubt there are a number of Eagle Scouts out there wondering, like me, why so many of our ground forces-the Army's entire 4th Infantry Division, for example, among several other Army and Marine units-are deployed in the Iraqi desert wearing deep-green ""woodland"" combat fatigues, as if they were fighting a war in Northern Wisconsin. ??
Apparently the Pentagon goofed and forgot to order more sand-colored battle-dress uniforms (they forgot the sun-block, too). What's next-going off to war and forgetting the bullets? ??
You'd think Donald Rumsfeld, of all people, would love the Boy Scouts' motto of ""be prepared""-it's so simple, yet so sublime. He could transform the Scouts' motto into one of his wonderful catch-phrases, right up there with ""shock and awe"" and ""collateral damage."" Perhaps White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who has previously informed America that the President is conversant with the teachings of Aristotle, Cicero, George Eliot, William Wordsworth and others, could add the Boy Scouts to his list. ??
""Be prepared"" could come to characterize the administration's foreign policy, and the White House could trumpet its new mantra: ""the essence of pre-emption is preparation.""??
Still, even if the Pentagon had approached this war with a bit more logistical preparation-that is, even if they'd shown up to the party dressed right-they'd still be dancing to the wrong tune because they simply didn't do their homework. They were too busy reading adventure books when they should have been hitting the history books.??
Maybe if the architects of war in Washington had taken a few moments to study the region they were planning to attack before letting the bombs fall, they would not be so shocked-shocked!-that Iraqis have been slow to embrace American infantry as ""liberators."" ??
Flipping through a history text would have made it clear to the administration that the Muslim world has typically felt humiliated and degraded by Western invasion. When Muslim North Africa was colonized by France in 1830, for example, it was seen as total disaster by a people whose empire had once spanned, in the Middle Ages, from the Middle East into much of modern Spain.
Looking at more recent history, many Iraqis felt betrayed after the first Gulf War when American promises to help overthrow Saddam were not kept. Those Iraqis who did revolt, thinking they would be backed by the American military, were brutally crushed. ??
In Washington, of course, why the Iraqi people don't trust us is anybody's guess.??
The point is, despite the President's assurances, it is clear that things in Iraq are far from going as planned. In the face of guerrilla warfare, street-to-street fighting and suicide attacks, America's military is a lot less flexible than it wants us to believe. ??
Assuming that war in Iraq is merely a dress-rehearsal for conflict in North Korea-a prospect which is far less outrageous than it may sound-I hope President Bush learns the lessons to be learned in the Middle East. Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, is almost certainly paying very close attention. ??
One thing seems certain: if we're as inflexible on the battlefield as we are at diplomacy, we're in for a lot of trouble.
