Irakornam Syndrome

While it is impolitic to the dominant paradigm to speak of the United States as ever having lost a war, we can surely agree that there are three wars that the United States has not won. These three wars were fought in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, and they all betrayed the same fundamental ignorance of the imperial American president.

In all three wars, the American president deluded himself into thinking that he could wage war in another power's neighborhood and realistically expect that other power to refrain from aiding its anti-American allies, even though this hostile power knew full well that the United States could not attack it directly.

In Korea and Vietnam, this power was China. In Iraq, this power is Iran and, indirectly, China. The United States escalated the wars in Korea and Vietnam until each reached the borders of China. China then inevitably intervened, whether with waves of infantry or with fleets of trucks. American presidents then continued to fight in Korea and Vietnam while acknowledging that they could not attack China directly.

After Americanization of the Korean and Vietnam Wars caused Chinese intervention, American presidents decided to continue these wars, even as they acknowledged that they would never strike at the base of their enemies' support. This is as clear-cut a recipe for an unwinnable war as one can fathom. I am not arguing that the United States should have gone to war with China over Korea or Vietnam; I am arguing that the wars there should never have been Americanized.

With the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has committed a similar error with regards to Iran. While not nearly as powerful as China was, Iran is the preeminent power in the region that America chose to invade. In choosing to invade this region, it seems never to have occured to the Bush Administration that the regional power, an American enemy, might seek to influence postwar Iraq. Thankfully, Iranian influence in Iraq has involved clerics and currency rather than human wave attacks. The hubristic error of Bush is familiar, though; Iran? They won't have the balls to intervene!

Not only did all three American wars completely fail to account for regional powers which had been established for thousands of years (China and Persia), but they insisted on seeing its wars as American wars, which were to be defined, conceived, and executed according to American interests and ideals, and for American interests.

Korea in 1950, Vietnam in 1965, and Iraq in 2003 were all societies in varying stages of profound revolutions. There were several wars raging within each of these countries far before American intervention. Americans consistently fail to understand that there was no more an American solution to these wars than there was a French solution to the American Civil War.

Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq were revolutions, civil wars, and proxy wars. They were revolutions because all three societies were emerging from various forms of tyranny, whether Japanese imperialism, French colonialism, or Ba'athist despotism. All three were civil wars because segments of the nations, all of whom had been either divided or grouped against their wills by western powers, disagreed amongst themselves as to what course to take following independence. And they were proxy wars, all between America and China, to varying degrees.

Iraq is now a civil war between those who want Iraq to exist and those who don't, between those who want to modernize Islam and those who want to Islamize modernity, between those who love their children and those who hate their neighbors. This situation knows no American solution, as we must acknowledge before we degrade our military further.

The real question in Iraq is not whether we can defeat the insurgency, which we can't, or stop the civil war, which we can't, or stop the money and weapons from flowing in to all sides, which we can't, or provide electricity, which we can't, or create an atmosphere where a white man can walk down a street in Baghdad, or make it safe for people who live in Baghdad to go shopping, which we can't. It's about whether we can contain Iran. Which we can't.

The specific cauldrons of Korea and Vietnam have faded somewhat back down to their proper dimensions; they are places a westerner may not necessarily want to live, but neither are they the existential threats to civilization that our leaders sternly assured us they were. Iraq, with time, will be no different. The real issue is China.

China is a global power. It will, in time, be the global power. Why? It is the oldest continuous and centralized state on Earth and it has more soldiers and workers than America has people. Chinese power is inevitable. What we, as Americans, need is a fundamental shift in how we feel about America's place in the world.

The National Security Strategy laid out by President Bush in 2002 and 2006 is really rather elegant in its simplicity, which is the rarest of attributes for federal documents. This document, which was renewed three years after invasion of Iraq, soberly informs the reader that the United States controls, and always will control....North America? No. Earth.

China will not be the power of East Asia, because that would threaten the United States. Iran will not be the power of the Middle East, because that would threaten the United States. What of the fact that China and Iran (Persia) have been regional powers for millenia? Isn't is likely that China will be the power in Asia since, as opposed to the United States, it is actually located in Asia? Since Persia has been in the Middle East for thousands of years and the Americans have been there for sixty years, isn't the safe bet on the Persians having more influence? Don't be a pussy; they are threats to the United States.

When you state total control as your policy, two things are inevitable. First, you are threatened by everything. For example, Saddam Hussein in 2002 was threatening only to one whose goal is domination of the globe. Therefore, he was threatening to us, but not to the 191 other, weaker nations, who didn't define their lack of global domination as the end of the world. Second, failure is inevitable. The world is more stable now, in certain ways, than it ever has been, but we are all doom and gloom. Why? Because we are measuring ourselves against a childishly naive set of assumptions.

One thing that Americans aren't told by the liberal media is that the United Nations has been successful beyond expectation at its ultimate task: preventing war between member states. The world has moved on from the paradigm that saw physical force as an acceptable political tool. In fact, there is just one foreign war being waged by a member of the UN right now, and we are that member.

Americans are in for a world of hurt if they don't realize that it is more likely for gravity to fail than it is for the United States to militarily dominate the globe. We need to ease away from the self-importance that tells us that anything short of Global American Empire would be medieval savagery. For example, I've been to Europe. It's nice.

In the relatively near future, America will not be the most powerful country on Earth. Our terminal descent began with shock and awe. We will not, however, become just another nation. America is, say it with me, the most important nation of modernity. It is modernity. American ideals, if not practices, are accepted by an unbelievably broad cross section of humanity. America will always be powerful. Our task as patriots is to guarantee that, as our total military and economic dominace gradually erode, we do not allow our ideals to do the same.

American ideals are not different from Islamist or Communists ideals; they are better. Respect for individual dignity, contempt for authoritarian governments, legal equality for women and all minorities. These beliefs are superior to the alternatives offered by our rivals. We must have faith that, after our bases in the desert are abandoned, our ideals will remain to be self-evidently just by most the the world. That is power.