Fox and Crow

By: John Liechty

Sooner or later, unless I miss my bet, Gulf War II will enter some version of a gloating aftermath, and Newsweek/Time will release a Special Victory Issue, as it did to commemorate the "end" of Gulf War I. I remember that Victory Issue well - I read how we'd "kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all", how our victory was "almost biblical", and how George Bush in triumph was an avatar of "Joshua". I remember the somber paragraph mourning the nearly 60,000 Americans who died over a nine year period in Vietnam, placed a few crowing paragraphs away from the information that 100,000 plus Iraqis had been killed in 100 hours of Desert Storm. (And some people have the audacity to suggest that we proceed as if an American life were worth more than that of a mere human being!) A dozen years and another Bush later, it's happening all over again. Shock and Awe will likely be succeeded by Crow and Gloat, at least in that circle of hell encompassing FOX News at its center.

Yet one wonders if this time round there might be a significant number of Americans who cannot so easily summon an appetite to jump up and down crying: "We won! We won!" There are too many misgivings that won't go away despite the dismissals and distortions of those who consider it unpatriotic to have misgivings. Let's look at ten:

1. The U.S. is now in the business of attacking countries that have not attacked the U.S. Where does it end?
   
   
2. Liberation and invasion are not the same things. Which is it? If it sounds, looks, and smells like invasion to 85% of the world, why can't we bring ourselves to call it that?
   
   
3. We are winning precious few hearts and minds, and appear content to have bought most of the handful we've got.
   
   
4. It grows increasingly hard to see what is harming American freedom more. Is it Osama, is it Saddam, or is it the myopia of our own leaders?
   
   
5. As we persist in protecting one set of American interests with bombs, we persist in throwing respect, admiration, and trust out the door. But then I guess it's hopelessly "old America" to include respect, admiration, or trust on the list of American interests.
   
   
6. American "pre-eminence" increasingly has to be bought, bombed, or twisted into shape - old Americans fancied they had to earn it.
   
   
7. The kind of thinking that bears at least some, and possibly much, responsibility for September 11 is the kind of thinking favored by those currently protecting us from further terrorist attacks.
   
   
8. Though God and Micronesia are both listed among the coalition of the willing, not everyone feels certain of either's convictions.
   
   
9. The American people have been handed an era of war, debt, fear, and international disrepute. In return, we're invited to hand the architects of that era their first election in 2004.
   
   
10. We may not be the lamp of civilization we seem to think we are. "Kill 'Em All" reads the logo on the helmet of a front-page marine. While this may be marine-speak for "Have a Nice Day" or "I'm Tough", the phrase is disturbingly reminiscent of the "Exterminate All the Brutes" found in Kurtz's papers at the heart of darkness, and is a far cry from the "Liberate the Iraqi People" we've been hearing of late from the war promoters. One wonders which logo more candidly expresses underlying sentiments in an administration so often distinguished by a style of conspicuous contempt.
    

This is a shortlist. Once Gulf War II is over (and Gulf War III is gestating), and you still feel like jumping up and down and shouting: "We won! We won!" so be it. But if you don't feel inclined to crow - if by some chance you are left with a sense that whatever victory we draw from Gulf War II is another in a series of American setbacks, and another in a long list of tragic miscalculations made by the West at the expense of the Arab people, (before anyone shouts Saddam Started It, please bear in mind that the West started and perpetuated Saddam) consider an observation made 50 years ago by Muhammad Asad in The Road to Mecca: "...Every active Western intervention [in the Middle East] is sanctimoniously described by its authors as aiming not merely at a protection of 'legitimate' Western interests, but also at securing progress for the indigenous people themselves."

The words are 50 years old, yet go far in explaining where today's 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' is at. It is far easier to perpetuate a mistake than to correct it. We continue to behave as if the Middle East was not populated by human beings with legitimate interests and aspirations of their own. That resentment exists in the Arab world is far from surprising. More surprising is that its patience has held as long as it has. As Jordan's Amir Abdullah put it, in reference to Western intervention: "We do not want to be guided to wisdom by people who have no wisdom themselves - who have only power, guns, and money, and only know how to lose friends whom they could so easily keep as friends." Trouble is, those words were uttered 80 years ago - but if they'd been said this morning by the contemporary King Abdullah of Jordan, they'd be perfectly, tragically appropriate.