[Mb-civic] It Didn't Work By William F. Buckley The National Review

[Michael Butler]

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    It Didn't Work
    By William F. Buckley
    The National Review

    Friday 24 February 2006

    "I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes - it is America."
The New York Times reporter is quoting the complaint of a clothing merchant
in a Sunni stronghold in Iraq. "Everything that is going on between Sunni
and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America."

    One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same
edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.
Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of
the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samara and what that
has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that "The bombing has
completely demolished" what was being attempted - to bring Sunnis into the
defense and interior ministries.

    Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved
uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human
reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt
they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the
ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.

    The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that
Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors.
And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault
of the Americans.

    The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elucidates on the complaint
against Americans. It is not only that the invaders are American, it is that
they are "Zionists." It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously
cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed
to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each others' throats.

    A problem for American policymakers - for President Bush, ultimately -
is to cope with the postulates and decide how to proceed.

    One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people,
whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order
to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious
freedom.

    The accompanying postulate was that the invading American army would
succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymkers to cope with insurgents
bent on violence.

    This last did not happen. And the administration has, now, to cope with
failure. It can defend itself historically, standing by the inherent
reasonableness of the postulates. After all, they govern our policies in
Latin America, in Africa, and in much of Asia. The failure in Iraq does not
force us to generalize that violence and antidemocratic movements always
prevail. It does call on us to adjust to the question, What do we do when we
see that the postulates do not prevail - in the absence of interventionist
measures (we used these against Hirohito and Hitler) which we simply are not
prepared to take? It is healthier for the disillusioned American to concede
that in one theater in the Mideast, the postulates didn't work. The
alternative would be to abandon the postulates. To do that would be to
register a kind of philosophical despair. The killer insurgents are not
entitled to blow up the shrine of American idealism.

    Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the
kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation
of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His
challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality
without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.

    He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are
expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but
to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

    Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And
the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.