“Everywhere I’ve traveled recently … I’ve
run into Americans, ranging from generals down to privates, who ask
perplexedly, “˜What are we Americans supposed to be doing
here? Are we going to take over this place and stay here
forever?’ Not one American political leader fully realized at
the outset how formidable our … commitments would prove to
be.”
This quote is a scathing critique of a certain U.S. war, a
brutal and long war. Yes, you guessed it ““ World War II.
After defeating Nazi Germany, the Allies went to occupy and rebuild
the country, but not without skeptics.
In 1946, the aforementioned quote appeared in the Saturday
Evening Post in an article titled “How We Botched the German
Occupation.” The author was convinced that Hitler’s
defeat was being squandered by the Allied forces a year after the
war had ended.
Life magazine also published an article, titled “Americans
Are Losing the Victory in Europe,” by John Dos Passos. His
bleak assessment went as follows: “Never has American
prestige in Europe been lower. … All we have brought to Europe so
far is confusion backed up by a drumhead regime of military courts.
We have swept away Hitlerism, but a great many Europeans feel that
the cure has been worse than the disease.”
All of this rhetoric should sound eerily familiar. It is
precisely what we hear about Iraq on a daily basis. But the pundits
were wrong then, as they are now.
The Allies did not end up losing the peace, as some predicted.
Similarly, most Europeans today do not feel that “the cure
has been worse than the disease,” in the not-so-prescient
words of Dos Passos.
It has been two years since the liberation of Iraq. Two years is
a fleeting moment in history; it is the blink of an eye.
Nevertheless, some expect immediate perfection.
Apparently, two years should be enough to take a country which
was tortured, raped and utterly pillaged for 35 years and transform
it into a fully functioning democracy. If Iraq isn’t
democratic by now, they say, we’d better get the heck out
quickly. Better yet, the fact that Iraq isn’t totally
democratic and secure today is unshakable proof for them that Iraq
will never be democratic.
Yet how supremely shortsighted and totally devoid of historical
recollection this assessment is.
Germany did not hold its first federal elections until four
years after the war had ended. Today, that country is a beautiful
and functioning liberal democracy. But for a time, it was under
total Allied occupation. The occupation was certainly not pretty,
and it lasted far more than two years. Rebuilding a devastated
country ravaged by war is not exactly a quick or easy task.
After the Japanese were defeated, Supreme Allied Commander
General MacArthur set up his headquarters overlooking the Imperial
Palace in Tokyo. Japan endured almost seven years of American
occupation until it assumed full sovereignty. That occupation too
was difficult and prolonged, but today Japan is democratic and a
leading industrial power.
The progress Iraq has made since its liberation a mere two years
ago is nothing short of spectacular. Just over three months ago,
millions of brave Iraqis went to the polls and elected Ibrahim
Jafari as prime minister. Just recently, the post of defense
minister was filled by a Sunni, a minority sect in Iraq. The
remaining post of human rights minister should be filled shortly,
as well.
An Iraqi human rights minister, of course, would have been
unimaginable during Saddam Hussein’s tenure, to say the
least.
For the first time in decades, Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis are
sharing power and negotiating with each other. For the first time
in half a century, Iraq has an elected government. How supremely
impressive this victory is! Progress is occurring amazingly fast.
Iraq, mind you, had a higher voter turnout than our very own United
States. But who can be surprised? Iraqis embraced their first
partaking in the most basic of civil duties with unmitigated
exuberance. They risked bombs and death threats to elect a
representative government.
All of this has come at a great cost to the United States and
its allies. Soldiers far braver than you or me have put their lives
on the line so that others can experience that which we take for
granted. They have made sacrifices to allow other nations to vote
freely and live without tyranny. They are truly our finest men and
women.
Benjamin Franklin once said, “He that can have patience
can have what he will.” The fate of Iraq has not yet been
sealed. It can be free, but not without firm resolve and great
patience.
Keyes is a third-year Middle Eastern studies student. E-mail
him at dkeyes@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.