The "Q" Word

Back then it was about halting the spread of communism. Now it's about furthering the spread of democracy. In both cases, we got ourselves into a royal, stinking mess from which it was a lot harder to extricate ourselves than to get involved in the first place. As a result of our interference--no matter how purportedly noble the motives--tens of thousands of people were subjected to horrific deaths and injuries, and the lives of millions more were permanently disrupted.

I'm talking, of course, about Vietnam, Bush. And Iraq. And how little we have learned--thoughts prompted by yesterday's public television program about the last days of the Vietnam conflict, and the eventual desertion of the field by Americans too tired, too lost, too dispirited, too bewildered to continue to fight on the losing side of what had always been a civil war. It was essentially a betrayal, Bush. It's not a nice word, but that's the truth of it. A betrayal of expectations that we had created, and of promises that we made--mistakenly, in confusion, and even with the best intentions. We can surely see that now. We had backed ourselves into a situation where betrayal was the only exit left.

I know you'll argue that Iraq is different, Bush. That it was not a civil war--though perhaps it's edging over towards exactly that at this point. That we marched in to free the Iraqi people--and the world--of an evil dictator. But it's still a case of America blundering into a situation which it has not bothered to fully appraise and a culture it fails to understand, underestimating the power of internal politics and passions until it is too late.

The U.S. military is confronted, yet again, with an implacable, highly motivated enemy that fights on its own terms, with tactics to which we are ill-equipped and ill-trained to respond. And a political resolution continues to elude us. What has become of that election, back in January, when thousands of brave Iraqis chose to risk their lives in exchange for an ink-stained finger? Today, months later, there's still no government to create the order and stability needed for the country to survive and its people to thrive. We're confronted with the spectacle of a U.S. army still unable to protect the people that we claimed to liberate, and a culture of such squabbling, irreconcilable diversity that peace remains a distant dream.

No matter how your people try to spin it, Bush, it's another quagmire. We have to stop playing "America knows best," and learn that leadership, in the world today, has more to do with listening, and stepping softly, than with wielding the big stick. It's sad, but at the same time healthily instructive, to observe how easily a canny opponent can foil even the biggest stick with ruthlessness and absolute dedication to a cause. We should have learned this lesson, Bush, back then, in Vietnam. We could have spared ourselves ths quagmire.