Rumsfeld’s nation-building pure folly

Donald Rumsfeld’s op-ed column in Saturday’s Bangor Daily News, “Looking beyond nation-building,” was remarkable for its studied air of self-deception. Rumsfeld celebrated the “success” of nation building in Afghanistan, predicted a similar success in Iraq, and dramatically wrote of “future international efforts to help struggling nations recover from war and regain self-reliance.” The careful reader couldn’t help but wonder whether the wars from which such struggling nations would need help recovering would be pre-emptive invasions as fraudulently promoted as the recent conquest of Iraq.

To call the current effort in Afghanistan a success is to turn a deaf ear to Afghanistan’s titular leader, Hamid Karzai. In the same issue of the BDN he is quoted as saying that unless the world provides more financial aid and troops, the Taliban would regain control of the country.

Of course the quagmire in Iraq that Rumsfeld failed to anticipate prevents any meaningful increase of American forces or aid in Afghanistan. Karzai remains little more than the Mayor of Kabul, and the rest of the country is in control of regional warlords.

This fractionalized country is as much an exemplar of successful “nation-building” as China was in the warlord chaos of the 1930s: The Chinese people suffered through invasion, civil war, revolution, purges and the Cultural Revolution before peace and stability (but not democracy) returned. Afghanistan, because of Rumsfeld’s pre-occupation with Iraq, may face a similar fate.

But the preoccupation with Iraq is bearing an even more bitter fruit. Rumsfeld tries to contrast what is happening in Iraq with United Nations’ efforts in East Timor and Kosovo. In neither country is the United States or the United Nations spending the treasure of young soldier’s lives or the $87 billion that Rumsfeld and Bush have now requested from an American people already facing a $500 billion annual deficit.

In neither country is there a systematic guerrilla war of resistance that is drawing recruits from around the Muslim world. No single East Timorese or Kosovar would trade places with an Iraqi.

The brutality in East Timor was ended with diplomatic pressure; the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo was stopped by a NATO bombing campaign led by Gen. Wesley Clark that cost not a single American life. The United Nations entered both countries clothed in legitimacy, which will never bless the American occupation of Iraq.

Rumsfeld and Bush were fond, in the pre-war days, of dismissing both overwhelming world opinion (polls throughout the world showed support in only a single country, Israel, for the invasion) and the wiser voices of what Rumsfeld derisively called “Old Europe.” Having shown his backside to the nations of Europe, should Rumsfeld be surprised that aid is not forthcoming from the handful of nations in the world that could help us share this burden?

Neither Rumsfeld nor Bush is a student of history. At the 2001 commencement at Yale University, Bush bragged about his poor academic performance. Rumsfeld can perhaps blame the confusion that comes from having worked closely with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. (As Reagan’s special envoy to Iraq, Rumsfeld gave Hussein a pair of golden spurs, perhaps to better ride the Iraqi people) But both, as they face this quagmire in Iraq, should read these words explaining why Hussein was not toppled following the 1991 Gulf War:

“Trying to eliminate Saddam … would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably possible. … We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq… there was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”

George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft wrote these words five years ago. Undoubtedly, neither Rumsfeld nor uncurious George read them at the time. They should read them now.

Rumsfeld has perhaps deceived himself. He should no longer try to deceive the American people. He owes it to himself and the nation to resign.

Arthur J. Greif is an attorney in Bangor.