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Essays | March 2006 Vanity of Vanities
As we remember
on May 1st the third anniversary of what then was proclaimed
the end of major combat operations in Iraq, I have re-examined, as have
many Americans, my opinion of a war now lingering far longer and
exacting a human and financial toll far greater than we expected. In his
2003 speech on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, with the now much
maligned “Mission Accomplished” banner behind him, President Bush said,
“The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on
September 11, 2001, and still goes on.”
And on. War,
it has been observed, is much easier to begin than to end, and, once
started, takes on an existence which defies those efforts of men to end
it. We now are bogged down in a conflict degenerating into civil war
that three years ago had the noble promises of a safer world and the
birth of a fledgling democracy. Like many, I thought it high time for
Saddam Hussein to go. Saddam, as we were told and I believed, no doubt
had unspeakable weapons of mass destruction and certainly had hosted in
his deserts our terrorist enemies who trained and practiced and refined
their murderous craft with his blessings and support. Most tactlessly,
he managed to remain in power despite Gulf War I, mocking us as he
looted his country of what little wealth it could generate and,
allegedly, plotting the assassination of George H.W. Bush, the
President's father, in 1993.
And, of
course, Iraq had all those addictive barrels of oil under its sands, of
which precious little was flowing to the world's refineries, keeping our
gasoline prices well-above $2.00 a gallon in early 2003, trickling out
of Iraq under what we now know to be the disastrously corrupt United
Nations Food-For-Oil program. More importantly I thought, it was the
right thing to do and our right to do so. After all, if the
United States couldn't be counted upon to keep the world's peace with
the most powerful military in the history of the planet, who would?
Three years
later, I have changed my mind. I do not believe the United States
should, as a matter of foreign policy, maintain the unilateral right to
initiate pre-emptive regime change. Many others agree, here and
abroad. In a recent Time magazine interview, former Soviet Premier
Mikhail Gorbachev, now 75, said, “I think some people may have been
pushing President Bush in the wrong direction. I don't think the U.S.
can impose its will on others. This talk of pre-emptive strikes, of
ignoring the U.N. Security Council and international legal obligations –
all this is leading toward a dark night.”
September 11,
2001 began our war on terror. But at
this date, and after such a costly “victory” in Iraq, I wonder what is
the real reason we made war against Iraq now that the President has
acknowledged the absence of WMDs and terrorist training camps. To rid
the world of a notorious despot who might
have caused more serious trouble for us and our allies? That we did. To
prevent future terrorist attacks? Maybe. To light the beacon of
democracy – flickering dimly here at home - in the far-off sands of the
Middle East? Conceivably. To have better access to a huge source of oil?
Possibly (it was
represented that the war would pay for itself with Iraq's renewed oil
exports). Or also, perhaps, as an opportunity to settle a personal score
– a family vendetta - that has festered for more than a decade?
Unthinkable I would hope, but do not know, although presidential vanity
is not without precedent.
At the beginning of our involvement in Vietnam,
conspiracy theorists suggested that oil had discovered in Vietnam and
that the United States wanted it. In fact, our involvement largely was
predicated on President Kennedy's view that, after committing more than
20,000 troops as military advisers to South Vietnam, he, as he told
friends, had “to go all the way with this one” to secure his stature as
a “wartime” president. “Without the Civil War,” Kennedy is quoted,
“whoever would have heard of Lincoln?” Kennedy expected Vietnam would be
a short test of U.S. resolve to – officially - contain the advance of
communism after his embarrassing Bay of Pigs failure in Cuba and the
construction of the Berlin Wall. It also would be a chance to
demonstrate to our Cold War enemies the capabilities of our Special
Forces in a “brush fire” war, much the way President Truman in 1945
demonstrated to Josef Stalin, using Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets,
the efficient destructiveness of our newly invented nuclear weaponry.
The Vietnam-era conspiracy theorists
had it wrong, as no one then in government had in mind anything so
“reasonable” as the mere theft of oil, as author Gore Vidal observed, which, coincidentally, also has
been suggested by present-day conspiracy theorists to explain the true,
underlying motive behind our current war in Iraq. Regrettably, Iraq also
may have begun as a war of vanity – presidential
vanity – under the cover of national security and terrorism and our
inalienable right to cheap gasoline, as Vietnam was vanity in the guise
of a free, democratic Southeast Asia.
I believe the President wants to protect us from further
terrorist attacks. But I have changed my mind about our continuing
involvement in this exercise of pre-emptive presidential power (is Iran
next?) that, three years after “victory,” now has us searching – as with
Vietnam – for an honorable exit.
October 18, 2005 © Tom Tomorrow
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www.thismodernworld.com
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