A quagmire?: Watching our rhetoric
Lopez, George A.
George A. Lopez A QUAGMIRE? Vietnam, Iraq & other analogies s Americans contend with an increasingly dangerous and uncertain situation in Iraq, the language we use to debate our policy becomes...
...liberation" in both Vietnam and Iraq...
...One month earlier, La Civiltn Cattolica, a Rome-based Jesuit paper whose contents are approved by the Vatican, published an article on Islam markedly different in tone...
...Each begs for international assistance, especially from U.S...
...forces leveled the houses of suspected resistance fighters and Baathists, and the reaction of the civilian population was predictable...
...As in Vietnam, the security situation in Iraq has become more complex and difficult than we had anticipated...
...Comparing it to the situation in Vietnam is not an argument for bringing our troops home immediately or for denying the value of establishing democracy in Iraq...
...troops as the work of Saddam loyalists and foreign terrorists...
...In Vietnam, we were told © WHITTEMORE / ROTHCOthat the fighting was essential to winning the war against a larger enemy: communism...
...Vietnam, Iraq & other analogies s Americans contend with an increasingly dangerous and uncertain situation in Iraq, the language we use to debate our policy becomes more and more important...
...Americans are reluctant warriors...
...They believe that our battle is about more than this current war...
...Although Saddam Hussein is now captured and the principal reasons George W. Bush initially gave for going to war against Saddam are now discredited, the Bush administration has resorted to a mantra similar to President Johnson's: victory in Iraq is the key to winning the larger war on terrorism...
...Although Italy is a secular state, laws from the 1920s re-quire schools to display crucifixes...
...Benedicta Cipolla HOW ECUMENICAL...
...Success in Iraq may still be feasible, but its costs, economically and in U.S...
...Our political leaders do not grasp that we face a more diverse group of enemies, one whose political motives are fueled in part by growing frustration with the economy in Iraq, and by a reaction to our own style of military action...
...The Civiltd article made few waves...
...Critics held a "hands off rlt1lpllrl/ I ANTONUCCI Commonweal 12 January 16, 2004...
...Moreover, both wars were also justified by government falsehoods and propaganda...
...Vietnam-era phrases like "credibility gap," "quagmire," and "exit strategy" are now frequently heard...
...We must bring viable political, economic, and social development to the Iraqi people, no matter what our prior failures or disagreements with our traditional allies...
...Still, important similarities can be drawn between our handling of the nationalistic resistance to U.S...
...George A. Lopez is director of policy studies at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame...
...Our presence in Vietnam seemed only to confirm Communist claims about U.S...
...Each represents a potentially disastrous miscalculation...
...Like the Johnson administration, the Bush administration has increasingly emphasized the presence of "foreigners" in the resistance, only later to be contradicted by military testimony from the front lines...
...Italy was never a colonial power, so historically it did not draw as many immigrants as, say, France or Britain...
...But in a recent offensive, U.S...
...President Lyndon Johnson predicted that unless we stood our ground, "all those other little countries in Southeast Asia" would fall prey to the Communists...
...he ex-claimed...
...sentiment in the Arab and Muslim world...
...Predictably, the war has swelled anti-U.S...
...At stake is the fate of the Iraqi nation, the Middle East, and ultimately that of the United States...
...More worrisome and dangerous is how the current president and his foreign-policy team share several fundamentally flawed beliefs with their Vietnam-era counterparts about the challenges we face as a nation...
...Policy strategists in Vietnam took far too long to understand the evolving, complex character of the enemy...
...With a number of colleagues, he has recently written Toward a More Secure America, available at www.secureamerica.us...
...The letter sounded much like others written since 1967, when the first one was sent: cordial holiday greetings mixed with a call to Christians and Muslims to work together toward peace...
...More recently, many Italians reacted negatively when a judge ordered a crucifix removed from a public class-room in response to a lawsuit brought by a Muslim man...
...Our casus belli needs to serve superior ideals, and we want to believe that our efforts are directed at achieving a greater good...
...We are committed to staying the course...
...Not everyone has signed on to this lexicon...
...This familiar domino-theory approach dangerously over-simplifies how the world works...
...Did the designers of this plan fully under-stand how humiliating and anti-Arab this technique of home destruction appears to Iraqis and Muslims in general...
...The author, an elderly Jesuit, is neither involved in interreligious dialogue nor an expert on Islam...
...Criticizing predominantly Muslim countries for their treatment of Christians, Giuseppe De Rosa, SJ, wrote of Islam's "warlike face" and obsession with conquering Europe...
...During the past year, Muslims have been working with the Italian government on an accord similar to the ones Italy has signed with other faiths...
...imperialism...
...Having made the decision to essentially "go it alone" in Iraq, we are now following Johnson's pattern of "staying the course" while failing to reassess new obstacles and opportunities...
...Still, faced with an in-creasing number of foreign-born residents, including an estimated 1 million Muslims, the church is also facing a demographic shift that, to some, threatens the country's identity...
...Still, the striking departure from the Vatican's usual stance signals, if not a shift in official policy, then a minority voice that should be taken into account...
...He blamed the dwindling numbers of Christians in Muslim countries on their inferior status under Islamic law, and accused radical Islamists in Algeria, Sudan, and Nigeria of countenancing anti-Christian violence...
...While administration officials acknowledged the presence of the Viet Cong, at home the public heard mainly about the invader from the North...
...troops in Iraq with what happened in Vietnam...
...The Bush administration has eerily embraced at least three assumptions that proved disastrous in Vietnam...
...These terms serve as more than 1960s catch-words for analogizing the recent difficulties facing U.S...
...As in Vietnam, our large military commitment in Iraq delays real progress in achieving our more important, wider goals...
...In 2000, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi of Bologna provoked a great uproar when he suggested that Italy favor Catholic immigrants over Muslims who, he said, integrated into Italian life less easily...
...From the outset of our current war, Washington characterized the attacks on U.S...
...The Catholic Church, of course, has a long history of ministering to immigrants and lobbying for social justice, and the church in Italy is no exception...
...that we know the enemy, their purpose, and their methods...
...When it be-came clear to U.S...
...blood, will continue to escalate unless the administration moves beyond tired labels and assumptions...
...Yet over the last two decades, Italy's long coastline and fairly generous immigration policies have spurred an influx of immigrants—legal and illegal—from the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and North Africa...
...The capture of Saddam Hussein could make asking for this necessary help considerably easier...
...One step for-ward occurred on November 15, 2003 when the United States A Commonweal 1 I January 16, 2004 announced a new plan to transfer governing power to Iraqis by June 2004...
...He argued for greater religious liberty in Islamic countries, noting that while Christians were not allowed to worship freely in Saudi Arabia, the Italian government had donated the land for Europe's largest mosque, constructed with Saudi funds "in the heart of Christianity...
...Rather, the similarities between our failure in Vietnam and the in-creasing dangers in Iraq should prompt the Bush administration to rethink its policy assumptions...
...The occasion was Eid al-Fitr, the Islamic celebration that marks the end of Ramadan...
...Similarly, although we want the Arab world to believe that we are not making war on Islam, our Iraq venture fails to persuade them otherwise...
...In commenting on the pundits' new passion for juxtaposing Vietnam with Iraq, one Vietnam veteran, Colin Powell, remarked that such comparisons were "rather bizarre historical illusions...
...hardly anyone noticed it...
...We know the enemy, their purpose, and their methods...
...If nothing else, it reflects the complex reaction to Muslim immigration in Italy and in the rest of Europe...
...But the following month the administration took two steps backward by prohibiting those countries that had not supported the war from bidding on contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq...
...No one should find pleasure in the quagmire Iraq has be-come...
...Likewise, Bush claims that creating democracy in Iraq will lead to its spread throughout the Middle East...
...field commanders last fall that our overwhelming firepower was doing as much to alienate Iraqis and mobilize new enemy forces as it was to catch Baathists, they curtailed these missions...
...There is no right to invasion...
...The most important issues that still need careful, flexible attention are: the Iraqi army, Iraq's economy, providing security, police functions, and the judiciary...
...If the issues have to do with fighting terrain and casualty figures, then I agree...
...allies...
...They reveal a governmental mindset that once mired this country in Vietnam and is at work in our current occupation of Iraq...
...The Vatican on Islam n November 2003, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, wrote a letter to the worldwide Muslim community...
...It would likely guarantee work absence for prayers, Islamically accept-able meal options in cafeterias, and the ability to collect charitable donations from Italian citizens via income-tax returns...
...and they reiterate that we are committed to staying the course...
...If the United States is going to bring stability to Iraq, the administration must revamp its original strategy...
...Our battle there is about more than this war...
...Essential to peace, Archbishop Fitzgerald wrote, is forgiveness, "for it opens up the possibility of beginning again, on a new basis, in a restored relationship...
Vol. 131 • January 2004 • No. 1
