Fallujah: High Tide of Empire?

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[fourfivesix]

Fallujah: High Tide of Empire?

by Pat Buchanan

At Versailles, 1919, Lloyd George, having seized oil-rich Iraq for the empire, offered Woodrow Wilson mandates over Armenia and Constantinople. “When you cease to be President we will make you Grand Turk,” laughed Clemenceau.

As there were “no oil fields there,” writes historian Thomas Bailey, “it was assumed that rich Uncle Sam would play the role of Good Samaritan.” Though unamused, Wilson accepted the mandates.

Fortunately, Harding won in 1920 and reneged on the deal. Lloyd George and Churchill were left to face the Turks all by their imperial selves. Had we accepted Constantinople, Americans would have ended up fighting Ataturk’s armies to hold today’s Istanbul.

After 9/11, however, our neoconservatives, who had been prattling on about “global hegemony” and a “crusade for democracy” since the end of the Cold War, sold President Bush on their imperial scheme: a MacArthur Regency in Baghdad.

And so it is that we have arrived at this crossroads.

What Fallujah and the Shi’ite uprisings are telling us is this: if we mean to make Iraq a pro-Western democracy, the price in blood and treasure has gone up. Shall we pay it is the question of the hour. For there are signs Americans today are no more willing to sacrifice for empire than was Harding to send his nation’s sons off to police and run provinces carved out of the Ottoman Empire.

In bringing Bush’s “world democratic revolution” to Iraq, we suffer today from four deficiencies: men, money, will, and stamina.

First, we do not have the troops in country to pacify Iraq. Some 70 percent of our combat units are committed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Korea already. If we are going to put more men into Iraq, U.S. military forces must expand.

Those who speak of democratizing Iraq as we did Germany tend to forget: in 1945, we had 12 million men under arms and four million soldiers in Europe. German resistance disappeared in 1945 with the death of Hitler. There was no guerrilla war against us. Today, our army is only 480,000 strong and scattered across 100 countries. And we have 129,000 troops in an Iraq that is as large as California and an escalating war against urban guerrillas.

Second, we are running out of money. The U.S. deficit is $500 billion and rising. The merchandise trade deficit is headed toward $600 billion, putting downward pressure on a dollar that has been falling for three years. Nations with declining currencies do not create empires, they give them up.

Then there is the deficit in imperial will. President Bush sold the war on Iraq on the grounds that Saddam was a man of unique evil who could not be trusted with a weapon of mass destruction. Today, whatever threat Saddam posed is gone.

While America supported the president in going to war, we have not bought into the idea that we must democratize the Islamic world or we are unsafe in our own country. Polls show that nearly half the nation believes we should start coming home.

Which brings us to our fourth deficiency, stamina. Empire requires an unshakeable belief in the superiority of one’s own race, religion, and civilization and an iron resolve to fight to impose that faith and civilization upon other peoples.

We are not that kind of people. Never have been. Americans, who preach the equality of all races, creeds, and cultures, are, de facto, poor imperialists. When we attempt an imperial role as in the Philippines or Iraq, we invariably fall into squabbling over whether a republic should be imposing its ideology on another nation. A crusade for democracy is a contradiction in terms.

While it would be nice if Brazil, Bangladesh, and Burundi all embraced democracy, why should we fight them if they don’t, and why should our soldiers die to restore democracy should they lose it? Why is that our problem, if they are not threatening us?

What Iraq demonstrates is that once the cost in blood starts to rise, Americans tend to tell their government that enough is enough, put the Wilsonian idealism back on the shelf, and let’s get out.

If attacked, Americans fight ferociously. Unwise nations discover that. Threatened, as in the Cold War, we will persevere. But if our vital interests are not threatened, or our honor is not impugned, most of us are for staying out of wars.

That is our history and oldest tradition. It may be ridiculed as selfish old American isolationism, but that is who we are and that is how we came to be the last world power left standing on the bloodstained world stage after the horrific 20th century.

Americans will cheer globaloney. They just won’t fight and die for it. Nor should they.

May 10, 2004 issue Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative

[Veracious Poet]

Buchanon has always made sense, so much so it makes the neo-cons squirm - Remember the 1992 GOP Convention speech Pat gave?

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Pat Buchanan-
Someone who has forgotten 9/11 and the Islamofascism across all the countries of the Middle East that brought it about. This handwringing about "empire" is nuts. And Fallujah may be the high water mark, not because Americans were afraid to lose the dozens of casualties we would have lost - or shrink from shedding the blood of thousands of Iraqi fighters and civilians - but because our "leaders" got wobbly afraid that we would. We should make it clear to them: Buck up. Turn around now before it is too late and get the job done.

Or we will not forgive you.

[iconoclast]

And worked for a while until the limeys gave up and allowed their entire country to be taken over by millions of Muslims, Pakistanies and Turks..The UK looks more like the UN now.

Not just the UK, but the entire western world including the US have thrown their borders wide open and the Muzlims are walking right in! Once in they reproduce like rabbits.

Given the continuation of this foolishness, they will crush us without ever raising a gun!

Got a mosque?

[Spandau]

Was that the soul of America speech?

[Veracious Poet]

Yeppers, here's an excerpt from Pat in that 92 speech:

Elect me, and you get two for the price of one, Mr Clinton says of his lawyer-spouse. And what does Hillary believe? Well, Hillary believes that 12-year-olds should have a right to sue their parents, and she has compared marriage as an institution to slavery--and life on an Indian reservation.

Well, speak for yourself, Hillary.

Friends, this is radical feminism. The agenda Clinton & Clinton would impose on America--abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat--that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call God's country.

http://www.buchanan.org/pa-92-0817-rnc.html

[Veracious Poet]

The Neo-cons plan's for a Global Police-State to ensure a safe environment for Global Corporate-Business, aka New World Order, is as doomed as Europe's Imperialist/Colonialist vision for the New World.

That's what Pat is really saying here and I think those that call themselves conservatives and back this Pollyannaish way of thinking had better start thinking of the consequences...

Fortress America is sustainable, but it won't be if our economy is laid to waste.

[Spandau]

I remember that, but at the time I probably dismissed him. I was ready to vote for Buchanan in 2000 but was too scared of Gore.

[iconoclast]

I was ready to vote for Buchanan in 2000 but was too scared of Gore.

Dim-fear has caused many of us to waste more than one vote.

[deport]

Yep ol' Pat makes a good subject.

[Joe Hadenuf]

That's because Pat is doing his best to follow the vision of the Founding Fathers, something the neo-cons detest as much as the liberals...

I completely agree.

[Joe Hadenuf]

Buchanon has always made sense, so much so it makes the neo-cons squirm - Remember the 1992 GOP Convention speech Pat gave?

Squirm they do.

[Joe Hadenuf]

You bet.

[steve-b]

Do you know what their reason for attacking us was?

Because the existence of Western Civilization offends them, and, worse, threatens to erode the theocratic order on which their status* depends.

*Re this point, I am of course referring more to the Saudi sponsors of Islamofascist terrorism than to the poor deluded schmucks who physically carry the bombs.

[Veracious Poet]

Even though I don't see eye-to-eye with Pat on every issue, for the most part his description of what has and is happening to the country is more accurate than ANY elected politico inside the beltway...

That he is so attacked and maligned on FR is proof in itself that those that dispute his defense of the Conservative values are themselves not truly Conservative at all (i.e. Neo-cons and/or Liberals).

[hchutch]

Precisely. Buchanan's folly lies in the fatc that he does not grasp the notion that that we FAILED to respond to earlier attacks in a manner that would have told those who conducted the probing attacks (and observers) that it would be a Very Bad Idea.

When Hitler started to violate the Versailles Treaty by militarizing the Rhineland, France did not respond. It was a mistake. Had they opposed him with force, or even LOOKED like they would do so, German generals would have probably deposed Hitler.

When the SS City of Flint was seized by a German warchip in October of 1939, had the United States responded forcefully, I think Hitler would have reconsidered his course of action. Instead, he thought we were weak and wouldn't stand up to him.

When Japan attacked the USS Panay, we did not respond. We accepted their apology and went on with business. They thought we were weak, and that we'd roll over if they hit us hard enough.

A perception of weakness only encourages bullies. That is what the Islamists are, when it comes down to it. We CANNOT afford to do that. Pat Buchanan's policy is that of a wimp - don't do anything to upset them, and hopefully, they will leave us alone.

I'd like to think we learned that lesson. Sadly, Buchanan's isolationist policy is appealing to some. I think that the neoconservatives are right about what needs to be done. In 1941, their solution was pretty much followed. We imposed REGIME CHANGE on Germany and Japan, and turned `em into demcoracies. A fitting response to tan unprovoked sneak attack.

[Tribune7]

If we don't need more troops then why are we keeping troops in country past their rotation date?

That doesn't mean we don't enough troops in Iraq. That means we don't have enough troops to provide for the planned rotation of troops from Iraq.

[Tribune7]

Nobody can state clearly what we're trying to accomplish with this war,

We are trying to make the liklihood of terror -- especially on U.S. soil and against Americans in non-war zones - less than it was three years ago.

[johnb838]

Germany *did* have a resistance against us. Japan was a remarkable case. MacArthur was a remarkable leader, and we were out in what, five years? In Germany, George Marshall was in charge and we're still there. The Marshall plan was opposed by Marshall, btw. At least Ger. is a successful country now. Same with South Korea. I would add the Phillipines and Panama to the list but I could be wrong about those.

[johnb838]

I say the least they owe us is to allow us to keep some bases there betweem Syria and Iran. If they don't want us in Fallujah, fine, but we have to keep an eye on it because we can't let Iraq become an exporter of terrorism again.

[Tribune7]

what forces and power would you have used?

First, the Fallujah project is not over.

Second, it's not what power we would use but what power would could use. We COULD on use on crowded Golan slums -- where Wretched's blog indicates the resistance has been bottled up -- incendiary bombs or napalm. We could us MOAB as some have advocated.

I suspect, however, our military planners figure it would be counterproductive to our long-term goals. You want to argue with them?