Why DID we do it? And was it worth it? In the wake of commission and congressional hearings, for a moment let's put aside sarin shells and Abu Gharib.
One word, actually one number says it all: “1936”. Let me explain why by relating a story, a true history, recorded now just 68 years ago. Yet it ends up a tale of what never happened, and therefore a great calamity, the greatest shared tragedy the world has ever known, did happen. Such are the missed opportunities to change history by bold, and perhaps righteous, action.
The imperialist powers of Britain and France, for indeed they were still masters of colonial empires that stretched around the world, looked to the east and worried about the foe they had defeated 18 years ago, defeated with the help of a coalition of nations that led to it being termed the World War.
This foe was rebuilding its industry and its military. Though clearly violating the Versailles Treaty ending the Great War and the subsequent provisions of the League of Nations (precursor to the United Nations), such a move was restoring the pride and sovereignty of this nation. The nation, Germany, led by a former foot-soldier who had survived the deprivations of the trenches, and had returned along with many others, with a burning sense of humiliation and need for a renewed, strong, “pure” nation. As time went on, he claimed that other races, other cultures were corrupting forces. And Britain and France were such hypocrital nations, decadent with corruption and mixing of races, and they oppressed Germany with reparation payments that impoverished the people as a vain attempt to keep them down. The West had even “invaded” the industrial region of Germany several years back to get their “pound of flesh” of reparations, and the upshot of that were those pictures everybody has seen of wheelbarrows full of worthless German money.
But NOW was the moment for Britain and France to act. A defeated foe was rising again, a foe that had premiered the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield in 1915. The Nazis were already oppressing certain portions of the population, most notably the Jews, beyond the limits of normal European cultural patterns of racial discrimination and anyone who read Hitler’s Mein Kampf should have known where it was heading.
YET though many were the international protests of treaty violations, they DID nothing. Why? Was it “imperialist” guilt? Did they just want to avoid a conflict, wanting desperately not to bring back memories of so much loss in the trenches? They dared not believe that this rude upstart Hitler would re-make Germany from a defeated foe into the most aggressive power the world has ever seen, and made unlikely alliances with a true "axis of evil" to threaten the whole world.
1936 – I hope I showed you it was not all black and white – there were “reasons” and “excuses” for inaction. And YET – if France and England had acted, whether or not from pure hands and selfless motives, a PRE-EMPTIVE invasion leading to the overthrow of the Nazi regime would have been the RIGHT thing to do, even if some innocents would have died and the Western powers “look” like the aggressors. So MANY lives, so much loss could have been spared. How would history have been different?!
Do I REALLY need to close the analogy with Iraq? In fact, we did not strike decisively, completely, until after Saddam has committed horrible crimes against the Kurds, the Shiites, in fact all of his people. Even after the Desert Storm defeat, he was able to use the United Nations sanctions program, now infamous as “Oil for Food” to build palaces, have his sons torture athletes and train terrorists, and send blood money to suicide bombers’ families in Palestine each time Jews died.
Maybe Saddam is a penny-ante Hitler, but he is still is the Hitler of our age. We could not let HIM represent a restored pride in the Middle East, not Saddam! Is it a forlorn hope that democratic institutions can flourish in Central Asia? Uh, ask Turkey,India, Israel, or even Russia that question? Can anyone believe that a federation of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites will hold together – or will it fall apart painfully like Yugoslavia or Lebanon? I mean, who can believe that a multi-racial society can survive and thrive? Oh wait, jeez, look around you right in your neighborhood, I certainly hope so!!
Yes, it is messy, it is painful,it is costly, maybe it is a “bad” situation. But look at Iraq, where it’s been, where it can go. What has happened in Iraq is the least “bad” scenario that a just God (or Jehovah or Allah or however you may deem to call the Almighty) could have conceived as a fate for the Iraqis.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and the peace of Baghdad. And God Bless America!!
