The prevailing question in Washington and around the globe among governments and people who don’t have other things to worry about, such as having food to eat, medicine for a sick child, or protection from sadists of every stripe, is what to do in Iraq.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island gave a press conference today on the subject, broadcast on C-SPAN. He said a lot of things we’ve heard before, those who have been following the debate – things like we need to redeploy our troops; we need to eliminate sectarian militias; the Iraqis must begin to stand up; Prime Minister Maliki has 4-6 months to get everything under control; there is no civil war; there is a civil war; there is a low-level civil war; the U.S. is not prepared to hand over total control to the Iraqi military for security in certain violent areas, like Al Anbar, but that is our goal, over the next fill-in-the-blank-and-disregard-it-later months.
I heard the same sort of thing earlier in the day as General Pace was giving a similar press conference. I turned it off. This is very unlike me. I turned it off with one swipe of the hand and said, “I’ve heard that,” to no one in my car but me.
I don’t know why I didn’t do the same thing with Senator Reed. Maybe he didn’t seem quite so phony, quite so self-deluded as General Pace. General Pace’s remarks had the monotony and cynical self-assurance of someone successful in telling the same lie over and over. He sounded like someone who had drunk his own Koolaid time and again to the point of preferring the flavor. Senator Reed sounded more honest than that, and so I continued to listen.
Still, one couldn’t help but perceive the futility of it all, everything he was saying. If this. If that. If this doesn’t. And so on. He did say one thing with which I’d like to conclude this post. In discussing the Iraqi leadership, both those within and outside the government, he mentioned the rise of Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, and various events which could give al-Sadr an increased role in Iraq, about which he offered a comment along the lines of, “which I’m not sure is in our interests.”
And I thought, “Ah. There it is. That’s why we won’t succeed.” And I extrapolated further why America is viewed so unfavorably in the Muslim world, and many other parts as well.
We will fail so long as the question we pose is “Is it in our interest?” So long as that is our question, we are a colonial power in a colonial age. But if we want to help people, truly build nations, and not colonies, then our question must be, quite obviously, “Is it in your interest?”
If we played a facilitating role in working with al-Sadr, Maliki and any other leader or political group in Iraq to accomplish that which is in the interests of the Iraqi people, and we asked for nothing – and I mean nothing – in return – no military bases, no listening posts, no oil price or production guarantees, no airspace privileges, no promise to make the U.S. their primary supplier for weapons or construction contracts or corn or whatever other global market interest we have – then we would advance peace and cooperation and construct the foundation for a long-term friend in Iraq, and a friend whose willing testimonial would have validity and credibility with other Arab and Muslim leaders around the globe.
The United States would be on its way in a new age of foreign affairs, an age of cooperation, offering the prospect for prosperity, health and peace in areas of the world that have not seen them for a long, long time. Such motivations and actions on the part of the United States, if then emulated by other first-, second- and third-world countries, would truly spell the end of colonialism in world history.
Subjugation - the dominant strategy since the time people first organized themselves into groups, tribes and countries, and built on fundamental human emotions of paranoia and greed – is replaced, finally, with cooperation and mutual assistance, help with no strings attached, other than those which naturally develop from such acts, which just happen to be the strongest and most dependable strings of all.
If our foreign policy till now has been one of pursuing national interest internationally – whether through colonialism, isolationism, detente, stabilization, human rights, globalization, securing the supply of oil and fighting terrorism – what a seismographic shift it would be, a truly historic change, yet one not new but as old as the League of Nations, for our foreign policy to become, without any attendant laughter or sneers, “What is in your interest, and of all your people, and how can we help?”
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