What do you mean by that?
Scan: “The Parallels of Wars Past: In Lebanon, Israel Saw the Ghost of Vietnam; And Some See, for the U.S., a Lebanon in Iraq,” by James Bennet, New York Times, 10 Apr, p. A1.
Good article in the sense that it is balanced and lacks the usual hysterical tone of so much analysis right now on Iraq. Basic judgment is that Vietnam is a stretch for a lot of obvious reasons, but that the lessons of Israel in Lebanon have much to teach the U.S.
While I buy that reasoning, by and large, I am still wary of it. Yes, I know that to radicalized Muslims in the Middle East, equating the actions of the Big Devil (U.S.) to the Little Devil (Israel) only makes sense, but to me, saying we have to lose in Iraq eventually just like Israel did in Lebanon is like hearing that we’d get bogged down into a never-ending guerrilla war in Afghanistan just like the Sovs did, or end up abandoning Iraq just like the Brits eventually did.
Like anybody else, I want to learn from the past, but I honestly believe that when America takes something on, we do it better—or at least very differently—than anybody else has in history. I believe that because we are the most amalgamated system/network/society/people in human history. If our unique mix of just about every type of person on the planet can’t pull it off, then it simply cannot be done. Like my friend, James T. Kirk, I don’t believe in the no-win scenario when it comes to the United States because—after all—we are the states united, not just the French, or the English, or the Russians, or the whomever. We are the everybody assimilated.
Hmmm. Sounds like the Borg on some level. Ah yes, the super-connected hive . . .
But I digress.
All we can really take from the Israeli experience in Lebanon is that it is incredibly hard to reconnect a severely disconnected Arab state, and that the only states really compelled to try such an insanely difficult task tend to be democracies whose very existence is anathema to the forces of disconnectedness who currently hold sway over so much of that region, forces that constantly tell individuals what they can’t have, can’t listen to, can’t say, can’t do, can’t visit, and so on. So we will have to learn to accept our status as pure devils in the eyes of these people, understanding that behind every terrorist hell-bent on disconnecting some chunk of the Middle East from that Westoxification called globalization stands large numbers of individuals who really do want to connect to the outside world and all the opportunity and freedom it represents.
Don’t be fooled by any talk of Arab or Iraqi nationalism driving this process. This is a fight between those who want to rule that society as they please and those who want Iraqis to choose for themselves how and under what conditions they will live in a larger world.
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