Andrew Bacevich: Anti-Imperialist

Israeli wariness about the prospect of living alongside a genuinely sovereign Palestinian state is entirely reasonable and perfectly justified.

Given the vast quantities of blood, both Israeli and Palestinian, spilled over the past 60 or more years and given the current realities of Palestinian politics—weak moderates vying for power against radicals more prone to violence than to compromise—it requires a remarkable leap of faith to believe that the so-called “two-state solution” will deliver anything remotely approximating a meaningful peace. Throw in the long baleful tale of Jewish history over the past couple of thousand years, and a Robert Frost strategy—good fences make good neighbors—makes all the sense in the world. 

Were I an Israeli Jew, that would certainly be my view. The status quo in the Holy Land might fall considerably short of perfection. Yet from an Israeli perspective, it certainly qualifies as satisfactory. 

Why should sins committed generations ago at the time of Israel’s founding or back in 1967 still require expiation? Other nations engage in self-forgiveness—the United States offering a prominent example. Will Americans return Massachusetts to the Indians? Will they “give back” California to Mexico? Not likely. Why should Israel be held to a different standard?

By what logic should Israelis put at risk all that they have accomplished since achieving independence? And should Palestinians decide that sovereignty over just part of Palestine is not enough, why expect the world to come to Israel’s rescue?

Yet the insistence of growing numbers of Americans that the creation of a genuinely sovereign Palestinian state qualifies as an urgent U.S. strategic imperative likewise qualifies as reasonable. 

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week, General David Petraeus became the only latest notable to express this view.

Here is what Petraeus had to say:

The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the [U.S. Central Command area of responsibility or AOR]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas.

Viewed from an American perspective, Petraeus states simple, unambiguous, and undeniable truths. The language is measured, but the message is unmistakable: When it comes to deciding the fate of the West Bank and Gaza, U.S. interests and Israeli interests have sharply diverged. 

By extension, any actions by the Israeli government that make a resolution of the Palestinian problem more unlikely—as settlement expansion in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem surely does—is profoundly antagonistic to vital U.S. security interests. 

We remain friends, but we find ourselves at cross purposes. Furthermore, the “peace process”—moribund, if not simply fraudulent—can no longer serve to camouflage this divergence of interests. To pretend otherwise serves no purpose. It’s time to call a spade a spade.

“Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood.” So wrote T. S. Eliot in his 1930 poem “Ash Wednesday.” Neither Americans nor Israelis can afford any longer to indulge the falsehoods that have insinuated themselves into the U.S.-Israeli relationship. 

Candor can’t guarantee a solution to the issues that divide us. But surely to deny reality will only cause those differences to fester and increase the likelihood of greater misunderstanding or of an outright rupture in relations that will serve no one’s purposes. 

A friend writes:

I'm just back from Vietnam and Cambodia, after two weeks in Thailand. I imagine you would not recognize much anymore—but perhaps I am wrong about that. The famous hotels of Saigon that you may have known have all been redone, plus myriad new ones have sprung up. In a sense this "Communist" state is more capitalist than George W. Bush's fondest dreams. People who were in Hanoi five years ago told us it had been a bicycle city then; now it is motor scooters—millions of them. And they are being added at the rate of thousands a month, even in a few days. That is the basic signature item of Vietnam's youth culture—scooters and cell phones.

Government bigwigs are in on the bonanza of land values, because they know where investment will go next. Outside Hanoi—which remains an ugly stepsister to Saigon—huge factories have sprung up employing thousands of Vietnamese, who do not have labor unions to protect them, or unemployment compensation or good health plans supplied by the employer. And, we are told, the population which is 65 percent under 30, have little interest in politics. A major source of income for Vietnam comes from foreign remissions of the overseas Vietnamese—family members of the boat people. These funds will dry up, but tourism has become a major factor with more than 5 million Americans visiting last year. In addition, the U.S. invested (we are told) $10 billion last year.

A classic scene of the way Vietnam has gone would be China Beach and the Danang area—on the ocean side of the main road are (quite literally) miles of luxury hotels. Cemeteries have been moved, with a small compensation to families, who then can't buy new houses because values have gone up. On the other side of the road, the ruins of the old airbase. And this is true of several of the cities we visited, Nha Trang, Dalat, etc. We had dinner at a luxury hotel on the beach at Nha Trang near Cam Ranh Bay—and it was out on the beach that could have been Hawaii. One entrepreneur purchased an island near Nha Trang for less than $100,000. Now his hotel and spa and the island are worth $7 million. People sunbathe while Vietnamese wait on them with cold drinks, and facial massages. Above you, near the beach, people soar off in hang gliders.

We had dinner in one of the newest luxury restaurants in Saigon….  I asked [the owner] if it was difficult to get permission to build and open up. Looking around he said, no, and indicated by gestures that it was money under the table. I did not see a single Vietnamese eating in the restaurant, but the waiters seemed very happy. The key to becoming something or somebody in Vietnam is to be found in learning English. That is crucial. You can't fight your way up to the top without English.

Fifty years ago the operative assumption in Washington was that the Vietnamese people were incapable of managing their own affairs. To allow them to do so would yield dire consequences. Were the United States to step aside, the results would be twofold. First, in Southeast Asia, totalitarianism would surely triumph, with millions enslaved as a result. Second, according to the domino theory, that triumph would surely embolden America’s adversaries in the global Cold War, thereby endangering the security of the United States itself.

Faced with this prospect, Americans had no choice but to draw a line in the rice paddies and make a stand. So insisted several successive administrations and any number of pundits.

The woeful results of that insistence remain painful to contemplate even now.

Today, of course, presidents and pundits insist with equal assurance that various and sundry populations in the Islamic world—Afghans currently occupy the spotlight—are incapable of managing their own affairs. Further, were the United States to allow Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, Pakistanis—the list goes on—to self-determine themselves, we would surely open up ourselves to attack, at least on the scale of 9/11 if not far worse. 

So the United States finds itself engaged in a war that has gone on longer than the Vietnam War, with no end in sight. Much like their predecessors back in the 1960s, the Wise Men (and women) of present-day Washington are unable to conceive of an alternative to open-ended conflict on the other side of the world. 

Although the discomfort that many Americans feel in recalling Vietnam is all too understandable, our present circumstances demand that we make the effort. 

When the Vietnam debacle finally ended, discerning its “lessons” became for a time a cottage industry. Yet only now, decades later, are the war’s real lessons becoming evident. Two lessons in particular cry out for our attention.

First, peering across a vast cultural and historical divide to discern what it is that others “want” (or “need”) is exceedingly difficult. To imagine that American power, wealth, and know-how offer a neat recipe for reducing those difficulties is surely a delusion. American tutoring serves primarily to squander lives and money while annoying, if not altogether alienating, the subjects of our ostensible beneficence.

Second, allowing others to exercise real self-determination just might serve U. S. interests better than insisting that things be done our way. In Da Nang and Cam Ranh Bay, the Americans came and went, leaving behind a few ruins. Vietnam remains stubbornly Vietnamese. And yet when offered the chance, the Vietnamese take from us what they find useful for their own purposes. They choose, rather than having choice shoved down their throats. As a result, the Vietnamese people today have gained for themselves what American nation-builders once aspired to create: a dynamic, increasingly prosperous society that poses little threat to any of its neighbors and none to the United States.  

Is the result a Jeffersonian democracy? Maybe not. Yet the outcome—which the U. S. war and all that it involved merely served to retard—works for the Vietnamese and works for us as well. 

The Vietnam War was unnecessary and counterproductive. Is it not at least possible that the same might be said of the Long War as well?

I don’t go to bed at night worrying about gay rights. Chalk it up to the provincialism of growing up Hoosier during the Cold War or perhaps to all those years in Catholic schools. Or blame it on a lack of empathy. Whatever.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t oppose gay rights. I believe in equality. Indeed, I fervently hope that my dealings with others do not betray whatever lingering homophobic (not to mention sexist or racist) inclinations still fester in my sinful soul. That said, advancing the cause of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Americans is just not one of my core issues. 

Still, I find myself increasingly irked by the way senior military leaders are responding to this whole “don’t ask, don’t tell” business. Above all, what irks me is their shilly-shallying. Forgive me for being harsh: But the appropriate word is “gutless.” 

Here’s army chief of staff General George Casey testifying before a Senate committee on the question of whether gays should be allowed to serve openly: “I do have serious concerns about the impact of repeal of the law on a force that is fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for 8 1/2 years,” Casey said.  “We just don't know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness.”

For DADT or against it? The chief of staff of the whole United States Army is not prepared to say: He just has “concerns.” Casey has been out taking the temperature of the troops. “There is apprehension. There is uncertainty, and that is why it is so important to study this.”

Here is air force chief of staff General Norton Schwartz on the same subject: “This is not the time to perturb the force that is, at the moment, stretched by demands in Iraq and Afghanistan….”

If General Casey really cared all that much about readiness (not to mention the effects of uncertainty) and if General Schwartz wanted to avoid perturbing the force, perhaps they should reflect on the implications of perpetual war. But no: It’s the prospect of gays serving openly that has them wringing their hands. State a principled position? Not a chance. What they propose to do is to study the problem—the standard response of bureaucrats looking for ways to stall. 

There are three points to be made here:

First, we’ve got too much war and too few troops to fight them. With even President Obama now committed to more war not less, one way to close the gap is to maximize the pool of Americans deemed eligible to serve. To make sexual orientation a bar from service shrinks the pool of eligibles (and also creates a convenient “Get out of khaki” card for those already in uniform, but having second thoughts). With open-ended war now a core principle of U.S. national security policy, DADT makes about as much sense as declaring people ineligible for military service just because they have tattoos.

Second, rather than providing a rationale for inaction, war demands the swift elimination of dumb-ass policies. History provides ample precedent for this. When President Harry Truman ordered the military to desegregate in 1948, the armed forces (the Air Force partially excepted) dragged their feet. As a consequences, when General Matthew Ridgway took command of U.S. forces fighting in Korea at the end of 1950, he found himself with an army that still consisted of white units and black units. Fending off the Chinese made Ridgway’s life complicated enough without having to worry about the prospect of a white rifleman being assigned to a black unit or a black truck driver ending up in a white transportation outfit. Segregation was interfering with the effective conduct of the war, so Ridgway ordered 8th U.S. Army to integrate forthwith—without asking the troops if the results might “perturb” them.

Third, and perhaps most important, is this: Our culture is in the midst of a vast historical revolution that is transforming American attitudes on anything that touches on gender, sex, and family. The revolution began in the 1920s, really picked up steam in the 1960s, and shows no sign of stopping any time soon. Whether its effects are good or bad is beside the point. What is undeniable is that those effects are massive and irreversible. 

Now individual Americans retain the right to opt out of that revolution: In their own thinking and behavior they can choose to remain fixed in the ostensibly idyllic world of Ozzie and Harriet. Yet large institutions such as the armed forces do not have that luxury.  In a narrow sense, the military can and should seek to preserve a distinctive value set, cultivating virtues such as discipline, self-sacrifice, and esprit d’corps. Yet in a broader sense, the military that relies on willing recruits to fill its ranks cannot long stand against the prevailing cultural winds. To do so is to put yourself out of business. And that applies today to the issue of gays serving in uniform.

Several reporters called me this week, asking for comment on the Afghanistan war’s latest milestone: The total American war deaths in that conflict have surpassed one thousand.

My initial reaction was to wonder why anyone would think the issue sufficiently noteworthy to merit a story. It struck me as one of those situations where journalists grab a random factoid and try to endow it with significance, recruiting people (like me) to unearth its hitherto unappreciated meaning.

The real story—which just about no one seems to have noticed—is this: In Washington, the bipartisan consensus in favor of open-ended global war has been restored. As far as national security policy is concerned, this may well stand as the Obama administration’s principal accomplishment to date.

Recall, please, the immediate aftermath of 9/11. President Bush and his lieutenants wasted no time in committing the United States to a global war. America’s purpose was to eliminate terror—perhaps even evil itself—and to spread democracy around the world. Bush and others in his inner circle were quite candid in declaring that this enterprise was likely to require decades if not generations before achieving complete success.

In Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike responded with applause, with blank-check authorizations, and with massive appropriations of money. Few voices were raised to wonder if open-ended war might not be such a good thing. Bring 'em on: That was the order of the day.

Only when Bush decided to go after Saddam Hussein—innocent of very little, but uninvolved in the 9/11 attacks—did cracks begin to show in this consensus. When Operation Iraqi Freedom produced not victory, but a shipwreck, consensus all but collapsed. Democrats turned (belatedly) against the war. From out of nowhere, Barack Obama—who, unlike Senator Hillary Clinton, had not voted in favor of invading Iraq (he hadn’t yet been elected to the Senate)—emerged as the anti-war/peace presidential candidate. Obama promised to change the way Washington worked. Surely that implied a rejection of Bush’s recipe for endless war.

Didn’t it?

Well, no, as it turns out. Once elected and after due deliberation, Obama decided that endless war remains an imperative. The new president just wanted to focus on Afghanistan and “AfPak” rather than on Iraq and the Persian Gulf. So he hired his own version of General David Petraeus and announced his own version of the surge. In Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike responded with applause, with blank-check authorizations, and with massive appropriations of money.

Which leaves us pretty much back where we were after 9/11—except that no one any longer believes that the concerted use of military power will enable the United States to eliminate terror—much less evil itself—or to spread democracy around the world. The fighting continues. The bills mount. To what end?

Helluva job, Mr. President.

Here is the way that U.S. military officers describe their purpose in Year Nine of the Long War: “Our goal is to take care of the people, not kill the Taliban.” The speaker is Captain Ryan Sparks, commander of the Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, currently engaged in operations that aim to deliver good governance to the people of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.

Yet this sort of thinking finds application well beyond war zones. The same edition of The Washington Post that quoted Captain Sparks included a column in which Michael Gerson paid tribute to America’s “tenderhearted legions.” Gerson was reporting on U.S. military contributions to earthquake relief efforts in Haiti.

Haiti, it turns out, is Afghanistan all over again, only with weapons kept on safety. One Marine officer interviewed by Gerson put it this way: “It is very similar to Iraq and Afghanistan, except that here there is no bad guy. We're helping the populace, winning their trust. This is right up our alley.”

U.S. forces today don’t win wars by defeating enemy armies; they win trust by distributing alms and doing good works. The Centurion has become the Good Samaritan. Gerson, for one, is impressed.

U.S. forces have distributed tens of thousands of jars of peanut butter to Haitian schools, he reports, while onboard a navy warship “a 96-year-old Haitian woman in intensive care is attended like an admiral.” All of this reflects what Gerson calls “a dramatic shift in military thinking,” credited to General David Petraeus, which today finds U.S. forces “practicing a kind of noninvasive surgery—providing structure and security, but cultivating community institutions that must continue to stand after America leaves.”

In Gerson’s world, the peanut-butter-distributing United States military just now discovered Haiti. His column contains no allusion to the fact that from 1915 to 1934 Marines occupied Haiti and ran the place. The “community institutions” that remained after they departed—mostly a corrupt, rapacious indigenous officer corps—didn’t exactly serve the interests of the Haitian people.

But why recall such unpleasantness? Forget history, and it becomes so much easier to persuade yourself that the presence of U.S. forces in the Caribbean or on the other side of the world represents not a latter-day version of imperialism, but the benign and generous purposes of the United States itself, helping to bring light to a dark and troubled world.

Here’s hoping that Haitians, Afghans, Iraqis, and other targets of American beneficence have memories as conveniently selective as columnists employed to produce sentimental drivel for The Washington Post.