OR: Underneath The Surface Lies All of the Substance
The current daily loss of life in the "Middle East Experience" (Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, etc.) seems to be weighing less and less heavily upon the psyche of the American mind as, much like a Shakespearean tragedy the body bags and parts add up. American newscasts spend more time talking about the "American Idol" Experience or whether Tiger Woods is in a slump than doing any real in-depth coverage of what is now considered old hat.
But below the surface of the matter we see an evolution of the struggle between those who think we are involved in another Viet Nam (no clearly defined purposes or exit strategy and a vaguely humanitarian reasoning for what we would like to do there) and those whom are sure we are there for a real, strategic purpose that scares most everyone not in agreement with it (including the people who live there).
The first group might remember that Lyndon Johnson talked about turning the Mekong River in Viet Nam into a Tennessee Valley Authority project, educating the children of the Southeast Asia region (Thailand, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Indonesia) and making capitalism and democracy the by-words of prosperous countries. As the Viet Nam war roared on into the late 60's and this dream became less and less likely we talked more and more about how communism would overtake the region if we didn't keep control until finally we got sick of the whole mess, didn't care if it became communist or not and vacated in the early 70's.
So, when we hear visions from the neocons saying we must establish secular democratic states in the Middle East and allow capitalism to flourish by overcoming the forces of communism, excuse me, Islamic terrorism, we may hear the echos of not so long ago.
Of course, to the surface view, communism did overtake Southeast Asia so the hardliners in the 60's were in fact correct to an extent. What is under the surface is that it is far from the communist totalitarian regime set-up that was feared and most of that area is seeking now, 30 years later, what we tried so hard to force upon them then. The truth is that communism, even in China, which is not the only communist society but the most successful, the idea that Mao might wake up tomorrow and smile to know his vision for their society was going forward is ridiculous.
So, can we bring a vision of democracy and capitalism to the Middle East by what we are doing now? Here is where you have to look at the competing forces and ask 2 reasonable questions. First, who has the bigger stake in the future of the area? The U.S. says we want peace and prosperity but the people of the Middle East (even our friends like the Israelies and the Saudis) think we want oil and power. The so-called Road Map to Peace in Israel was ditched the moment the 2 sides started disagreeing and nothing the current Isreali unilateral approach would do has any relationship to what we proposed. The Saudis are deathly afraid of the U.S. because they live in a society where constant acts of terrorism by the government itself are the rule, so understanding how strong Al Queda is within their society should take little understanding. Time after time history has shown that massive military buildups in occupied lands does not lead to the people abandoning 1000's of years of THEIR history to become part of ours. They are the ones who were there, are there, and unless we intend to put them on reservations (the last time an occupying force achieved victory somewheres--just ask the American Indian) the current inhabitants are probably going to outlast us, regardless of how much we dislike them or their culture.
The second question is: Are we willing to spend the time, money and resources to achieve the victory we claim we want? This is where I think we are the weakest and most likely to fail. When we become less and less outraged by the daily body count it is the sign of the beginning of the shift towards wanting to get out of the situation. This happened in Viet Nam also. Daily tolls of life became more and more a reminder of our failure to achieve anything. Questioning of policy led to a greater and greater sense of change being needed. One might forget but the election of 1968 saw Richard Nixon (the peace candidate) beat Hubert Humphrey (the Vice President war candidate) by the slimest of margins. We weren't ready as Americans to spend the 70's fighting the war in Viet Nam. Today we have almost a mirror. Kerry (the peace candidate) takes on Bush (the war candidate) to see if we are willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, the next 10 years, and thousands of American lives trying to outlast the organic society that the Arabs have been running for as long as anyone can remember.
Are you willing to bet we can win?