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

[jpsb]

"Neither world nor American opinion would put up with the carnage involved."

Then we can't.

[gcruse]

Pat Buchanan increasingly rides to the sound of his own gums.

[VRWC For Truth]

Oh, I did read it.

It's the same tirade that Fascist boy has been on, since he got booted out of the loop.

[Age of Reason]

The Philippines have been fraught with turmoil, with martial law, with political violence--for much of the hundred years since the U.S. acquired it from Spain.

Even more than a century later, the success of the Philippines is too early to judge.

[gcruse]

but once mortage rates go back up above 8%, then the public will see that deficits do matter

That's a good point.  But the debt now is financed by issuing bonds at the current interest rate, which debt holders buy.  When rates go up, the face value of these bonds will decline, but only if they are sold before their expiration date..  Otherwise, they mature at today's low rate and are retired.  Does current debt have to worry about future interest rates?   I'm not sure it does.

[fourfivesix]

I bow to your logic and learned reasoning.

[fourfivesix]

post 42

[fourfivesix]

I'm a little slow this morning. Explain to me how Buchanan is a fascist for opposing war when fascism has been proven to be agressive, bellicose and pro-war?

[Beenliedto]

Pat, what B*LL!! We ALL know that 80% of US Federal budget is non-military. that is right $400 billion on military and $1700 billion on the rest. If we have a deficit, it is due to domestic boondoggles, medicare and other things - NOT the fact that we are spending some small slice of our budget (and it is small, even the $80 billion was just 4% of the budget) in stabilizing Iraq.

I think you're putting words in Pat's mouth here. He wasn't arguing about what was causing the deficits and the related fall in the dollar.

He was only making the argumant that the dollar is in trouble. And that nations with currency problems typically don't go on empire building adventures.

[RichInOC]

Pat Buchanan is afraid of the sound of guns.

(Real ones, of course. The ones he used to hear in his head as he rode off to run for president don't count.)

[Light Speed]

To really understand Pat..one must see him in his element...on The McLaughlin Group Program.

Pat is much like the youngest boy in a family..who has chosen his sister..[In this case..Eleanor Clift]....as the solution to his inner need for total attention of the family.

Pat is very smart..has a great memory,
yet...Sister[Eleanor Cift] undoes him in a millisecond.
Pat fires back...Eleanor transfixes on Pat..the burning eye's hint at possible physical detriment if this were not a public program.
and of course..... Pats mischevious grin after the volley's.

Like a semi dysfunctional Family at the breakfast table..this program is a classic for one liners and body message language.

Father John can hardly contain himself at times..the laughter and head posturing..

"So Pat....where you ever a Boy Scout"?

"Exit question...on a scale of 1-10...10 being the fall of Pompeii.....Eleanor will jump Pat upstairs before bedtime"

[KC_for_Freedom]

The Iraqis don't want our version of liberty. They either watch us die or take part in killing us.

I have heard often that the Arabs/Islamics are going to the trouble of trying to kill us all to keep western democratic ideas out of their country. Lets assume there is some truth here.

If this is the case, then Bush is pushing a big new western type of state into the heart of the Middle East. He may or may not succeed. And the country that results may or may not be a democracy. But there is no doubt that the western ideas have a toehold in the country and the message is, Keep atacking the west and you will see more of this. End result, if they are attacking us to keep us out, their attacks are bringing us in. It seems like a tit for tat policy and one we should follow. I don't agree with Pat that winning this war is not worth a few American lives, but I do agree that the number should be kept minimized and if this is what is behind Bush's current policy, I can get behind it.

As to their attitude about our help, it would appear that we underestimated the idea that people everywhere yearn for freedom. I agree that Iraq does not deserve to be free at this point.

[jpsb]

I'd be very happy if Iraq turned into another Philippines, but like you say, it would take many many years of American rule. I don't see it happening.

[fourfivesix]

"it would take many many years of American rule"

and many, many American lives.

[x]

Judging from the article, Werwolf doesn't seem to have aroused any enthusiasm among the general population or to have drawn foreign volunteers into the battle. They seem to have been hardcore adherents of the old regime with little broad or deep appeal to most Germans who kept their heads down and got on with the rebuilding. Average Germans might have been less likely to work with the occupying powers, but that's about it. I don't know just exactly who is fighting against us in Iraq, but the potential is for a far worse situation than in Germany when one adds religious fanatics, foreign volunteers, and nationalist fervor to hard-core Saddamists.

At the same time, from 1945 to about 1949, there was also guerrilla fighting going on in Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland and elsewhere that was bloodier and more disruptive than what was going on in Germany. The Greek Civil War was even worse. It's too early to say about Iraq, but in the context of the times and in retrospect, postwar German resistance doesn't look like much.

[iconoclast]

What we NEED are Iraqi security forces that can help patrol the streets that are reliable.

Perhaps I'm just a little ole ignorant feller from flyover country, but isn't turning control over to a Republican Guard general just a little like as if we had turned over security in Germany to the Waffen SS in 1946?

[fourfivesix]

there is very little to compare between post-war Germany and postwar Iraq. People don't seem to understand that we're making history not reenacting it.

[iconoclast]

Obviously you didn't read the article.

They never do!

They call Pat fascist as our nation creeps in that direction with every passing day.

They are zombie-like neocons who ironically ask regularly "what is a neocon?".

[ASA Vet]

Then we can't.

We missed the 9/12/01 window.

[Petronski]

The very premise of the article--'empire'--is defective.

Trouble is, I can't tell if Buchanan is being deliberately devious or just is dumb as bag of Sakrete.