Post by Moses on Dec 22, 2004 12:48:20 GMT -5
Post-Civil War era a template for Iraq
Reconstruction of South was called a 'fool's errand'
Cynthia Bass
Sunday, December 19, 2004
It has a familiar ring: The war is won. The United States moves quickly to eliminate the old repressive regime, setting up new democratic institutions and holding elections. U.S. troops remain to ensure a smooth transition to democracy, but it's assumed that this transition will be both peaceful and swift, and that a prolonged military presence will not be necessary. Tragically, this is not to be.
Much of the population sees the United States as an occupier. A violent insurgency develops, undermining the new institutions. The United States is unable to win over the hearts and minds of the people, or crush the insurgency. Finally, after more than a decade, with both Washington and the nation losing interest, the effort is abandoned. Troops are withdrawn, the new institutions collapse, and an evil, repressive regime emerges in its place.
A vision of Iraq's future? No. Not yet.
It's a short history of a previous U.S. effort to introduce democracy to a defeated but restive population in the American South, after the Civil War. Optimists looking for hope in the Iraqi situation repeatedly point to the successful nation building performed with Japan and Germany after World War II.
But the situation in Iraq differs from that in post-war Germany and Japan in one vital respect: the view of the future. Once the war ended, Germany and Japan immediately realized they faced a severe threat from an expansionist Soviet Union. Embracing American-style democracy and accepting U.S. hegemony was an easy choice compared with the possibility of becoming a permanent Soviet satellite.
In today's sole-superpower world, no such outside threat faces Iraq. In fact, many Iraqis see America as the expansionist bully, with their country as possible victim.
Which returns us to the South after the Civil War.
In the post-Ken Burns era, the Civil War often is seen as a sort of hockey game with guns -- beautiful, apolitical white guys all valiantly met, for unclear reasons, on the field of honor. Too often this knightly mist obscures the fact that, after Appomattox, both sides didn't exactly just bow to each other and agree to forgive and forget.
Quite the contrary. The North viewed the South as conquered territory badly in need of reconstruction (i.e., nation building) before it was worthy of readmittance into the United States. And many in the South viewed the North as an occupying power deserving unwavering resistance. Conquerors bent on instituting change; conquered wanting the occupiers out ... sound familiar? A further parallel between the South and Iraq involves racial and ethnic issues. The North wished former black slaves to have equal rights and a role in government. White Southerners, the beneficiaries of the previous system, did not.
Iraq wasn't a slave society, but clearly Sunni Arabs, who benefited from Saddam Hussein's repression of the Kurds and Shiite Arabs, are the most resistant to the U.S. presence and the interim government. And finally, although the Iraq insurgency is far more violent, the insurgents are quite similar to the well-organized, militant, hate-filled ideologues of the post- Civil War South: the Ku Klux Klan, the Sons of Midnight, the Knights of the White Camellia. Like today's insurgents, these groups sought to disrupt daily life through acts of terror. And one of their favorites was kidnapping and murdering -- occasionally even beheading -- ex-slaves and whites who cooperated with the U.S.-imposed state governments.
In their violent, anti-democratic nature, Southern night riders and today's radical Muslim terrorists in Iraq have much in common. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general who founded the Klan, and Abu Musab al- Zarqawi are virtual twins in their fanaticism, hatred of the United States and love of brutality.
What was the outcome of 11 years of nation building in the South? It failed.
In 1877, all the Confederate states were readmitted to the Union. Meanwhile, without U.S. troops propping up state governments and protecting freedmen, the South became -- for almost 100 years -- a nation unto itself, poorer, more economically backward and less educated than the rest of the nation, with a unique legal system unashamedly founded on racism. So divorced was the South from the rest of America that Vicksburg, Miss., which had fallen to Gen. Ulysses Grant on July 4, 1863, did not celebrate Independence Day until World War II.
So what's the lesson for us in Iraq? It's simple. Iraq is not Germany or Japan, which wanted our protection. The Iraqis just want us to leave. Those who draw comfort or inspiration from our post-World War II successes are deluding themselves.
Iraq is not the post-Civil War South either. But the similarities are real. American politicians and policy-makers would be well advised to look to our own past for a realistic understanding of the challenges we face. The time is now for them to ask whether we want to continue wasting blood and treasure on what a disillusioned Northern reconstructionist bitterly called "a fool's errand."
East Bay novelist Cynthia Bass writes about history and politics.
Reconstruction of South was called a 'fool's errand'
Cynthia Bass
Sunday, December 19, 2004
It has a familiar ring: The war is won. The United States moves quickly to eliminate the old repressive regime, setting up new democratic institutions and holding elections. U.S. troops remain to ensure a smooth transition to democracy, but it's assumed that this transition will be both peaceful and swift, and that a prolonged military presence will not be necessary. Tragically, this is not to be.
Much of the population sees the United States as an occupier. A violent insurgency develops, undermining the new institutions. The United States is unable to win over the hearts and minds of the people, or crush the insurgency. Finally, after more than a decade, with both Washington and the nation losing interest, the effort is abandoned. Troops are withdrawn, the new institutions collapse, and an evil, repressive regime emerges in its place.
A vision of Iraq's future? No. Not yet.
It's a short history of a previous U.S. effort to introduce democracy to a defeated but restive population in the American South, after the Civil War. Optimists looking for hope in the Iraqi situation repeatedly point to the successful nation building performed with Japan and Germany after World War II.
But the situation in Iraq differs from that in post-war Germany and Japan in one vital respect: the view of the future. Once the war ended, Germany and Japan immediately realized they faced a severe threat from an expansionist Soviet Union. Embracing American-style democracy and accepting U.S. hegemony was an easy choice compared with the possibility of becoming a permanent Soviet satellite.
In today's sole-superpower world, no such outside threat faces Iraq. In fact, many Iraqis see America as the expansionist bully, with their country as possible victim.
Which returns us to the South after the Civil War.
In the post-Ken Burns era, the Civil War often is seen as a sort of hockey game with guns -- beautiful, apolitical white guys all valiantly met, for unclear reasons, on the field of honor. Too often this knightly mist obscures the fact that, after Appomattox, both sides didn't exactly just bow to each other and agree to forgive and forget.
Quite the contrary. The North viewed the South as conquered territory badly in need of reconstruction (i.e., nation building) before it was worthy of readmittance into the United States. And many in the South viewed the North as an occupying power deserving unwavering resistance. Conquerors bent on instituting change; conquered wanting the occupiers out ... sound familiar? A further parallel between the South and Iraq involves racial and ethnic issues. The North wished former black slaves to have equal rights and a role in government. White Southerners, the beneficiaries of the previous system, did not.
Iraq wasn't a slave society, but clearly Sunni Arabs, who benefited from Saddam Hussein's repression of the Kurds and Shiite Arabs, are the most resistant to the U.S. presence and the interim government. And finally, although the Iraq insurgency is far more violent, the insurgents are quite similar to the well-organized, militant, hate-filled ideologues of the post- Civil War South: the Ku Klux Klan, the Sons of Midnight, the Knights of the White Camellia. Like today's insurgents, these groups sought to disrupt daily life through acts of terror. And one of their favorites was kidnapping and murdering -- occasionally even beheading -- ex-slaves and whites who cooperated with the U.S.-imposed state governments.
In their violent, anti-democratic nature, Southern night riders and today's radical Muslim terrorists in Iraq have much in common. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general who founded the Klan, and Abu Musab al- Zarqawi are virtual twins in their fanaticism, hatred of the United States and love of brutality.
What was the outcome of 11 years of nation building in the South? It failed.
In 1877, all the Confederate states were readmitted to the Union. Meanwhile, without U.S. troops propping up state governments and protecting freedmen, the South became -- for almost 100 years -- a nation unto itself, poorer, more economically backward and less educated than the rest of the nation, with a unique legal system unashamedly founded on racism. So divorced was the South from the rest of America that Vicksburg, Miss., which had fallen to Gen. Ulysses Grant on July 4, 1863, did not celebrate Independence Day until World War II.
So what's the lesson for us in Iraq? It's simple. Iraq is not Germany or Japan, which wanted our protection. The Iraqis just want us to leave. Those who draw comfort or inspiration from our post-World War II successes are deluding themselves.
Iraq is not the post-Civil War South either. But the similarities are real. American politicians and policy-makers would be well advised to look to our own past for a realistic understanding of the challenges we face. The time is now for them to ask whether we want to continue wasting blood and treasure on what a disillusioned Northern reconstructionist bitterly called "a fool's errand."
East Bay novelist Cynthia Bass writes about history and politics.