President Bush has said he wants to increase the size of the U.S. military, obviously with an eye toward sending more troops to Iraq. If we are going to try to bring a degree of sanity and peace to that region, that's a necessary step. However, he fails to mention how long he believes those troops will need to stay in Iraq. I would say about forty years might do it. That's how long it took Moses to raise a new generation, capable of self government and military action and, I believe, that's how long it will take the U.S. - with generous contributions of military and financial aid - to allow a new generation of Iraqis to mature and come to power. Hopefully, this new generation would be able to leave terrorism and partisan conflict behind them and govern and protect their own country.
Then, and only then, could we hope to depart Iraq and not leave a bloody civil war in our wake. As I've pointed out before, there's historical evidence that only such a measure will suffice - witness our "successes" in Korea, Japan and Europe where, decades after military victory, we still have thousands of U.S. troops stationed.
Speaking of which, instead of spending billions of dollars on expanding our military, why not consider taking 30 or 40,000 of our troops out of Europe and sending them to Iraq? World War II and the Cold War are over. We won. Surely the time has come for a reduction of our troops in Europe.
The Iraq Study Group has issued its report and, from what I've read so far, I could swear I've heard it all before. At the heart of the ISGrecommendations is the belief that the U.S. should concentrate on training the Iraqi army, put its trust in the Iraqi government, and think about going home. For those of us who came of age during the Vietnam War, it all has a familiar ring.
Personally, the whole affair brings home the historically supported point that the U.S. is great at kicking butt. However, we often fall short at nation building.
President Bush was not totally delusional when he landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and proclaimed "Mission Accomplished." Indeed, the invasion portion of the mission was accomplished. What was still to come was the occupation and nation building portion of the task. And it was here we stumbled - just as we often have in the past. A quick look at our history can provide ample examples:
Indian Wars. The Indian War's military phase was not painless - certainly not for the indigenous tribes, but also not for the U.S. Army. Still, the history of those wars is largely one of U.S. soldiers being victorious over the Indians. Custer's Last Stand is primarily notable because it actually resulted in an American defeat.
Still, anyone who would look critically at the reservation system that resulted from those wars would see it as a near total disaster at nation building. The autonomous nations we left behind were from the start drenched in poverty, unemployment and alcoholism. Ironically, legalized gambling has done more good for many tribes than all the well meaning attempts of the U.S. government to build and maintain self sufficient tribal nations.
Reconstruction. The Civil War was the bloodiest, and hardest fought, conflict America has ever tackled. Still, the U.S. was able to overcome the Confederate States in a little more than four years. The nation building that followed, however, was far from successful. By 1877, U.S. troops had been pulled out of the former Confederate States, leaving former slaves largely at the mercy of their former owners. Any goal of a "one man, one vote" democracy would have to wait for nearly another century to come to fruition. It should also be pointed out that the southern states - as a region - still, to this day, lag behind the other areas of the country in everything from unemployment to high school graduations.
Vietnam. This is often touted as the only war we lost, which must come as quite a shock to both Native Americans and Southerners. Still - to stay with my original thesis - Vietnam was indeed the only war the U.S. government (as opposed to tribal or Confederate governments) lost. But even in Vietnam, it must be pointed out that we did not lose there militarily. We won every battle in the war. What we failed to do was create a government in South Vietnam that was capable of defending itself. So long as America called the shots, the North Vietnamese were held at bay. However, when we pulled out, the South Vietnamese nation we left behind fell within three and one half years. Which brings us to:
Korea and World War II. Usually held up as our greatest successes at nation building, it needs to be said that in none of these cases have we actually pulled our troops out. We have nearly 33,000 U.S. troops still stationed in Korea, more than half a century after our military role there supposedly ceased. A real test of our nation building there has yet to be tested. Is South Korea capable of protecting itself from Kim JongII's army in the North? Who knows? We still have our troops there bolstering the southern government.
Europe is an even stranger case. We have more than 100,000 troops there, more than 60 years after Germany was defeated and 15 years after the end of the Cold War. I still have anyone to offer me a sound reason why our troops are still stationed on German soil. It certainly doesn't speak highly of our confidence in our nation building capabilities.
Likewise in Japan. We still have more than 35,000 troops there.
All of which brings us back to Iraq, where - based on history - I believe we are left with only two options. Either we resign ourselves to a long-term commitment - such as in Korea - or we watch a nation degrade into bloodshed, as happened in Vietnam.
There is, perhaps, a third option. We can partition the country into three parts - one each for the Kurds, Sunnis and Shia. Then, we move all of our troops into the northern portion controlled by the Kurds, who have been, after all, the closest thing we have to an ally in Iraq. Then, we can at least protect the Kurds (and some of the richest oil fields) while letting the Sunnis and Shia battle across the Tigris river until one conquers the other, or until they finally bleed themselves into an understanding.
