Monsicha Hoonsuwan Critical Book Review U.S.

Interventionism Professor Cardwell 17 December 2010 When Old Wounds Burst Open I have some news for John McCain. There was no such things as al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq, Barack Obama asserted during the 2008 presidential campaign (p. 269). His statement was not a mere rebuttal to his opponent John McCain, who remarked with firm conviction that al Qaeda had already been in Iraq, and the terrorist group would take over this U.S.-occupied country if the U.S. government withdraws its troops. Obamas comment, more than anything, represented an enlightened U.S. public, who was once convinced that the invasion of Iraq would contribute to effective counterterrorism after the horror of 9/11. Yet, the why or rather howquestion frequently asked during the Vietnam War still lingers. Jumping right into newly classified U.S. documents, Lloyd C. Gardner exposes a road that leads the U.S. into Iraq in The Long Road to Baghdad. The road, starting as early as the first Gulf War, connects the Vietnam road to the Gulf Wars and traps the U.S. in the same unwinnable war it once fought almost five decades ago. As much as the U.S. wants to run away from the Vietnam wound, Gardner concludes, like a shadow, Vietnam has never been far away. In fact, the desire to escape post-Vietnam trauma launches the U.S. into conflicts with Iraq and produces another Vietnam-like pain. This road is a mix history of alliance and enmity, cooperation and broken

diplomatic ties. It started with Irans Islamic Revolution in 1979, says Gardner. The two stable regimes of Iranian Shah and Saudi Arabias royal family (p. 65) were the U.S. landing zone (p. 64), protecting the U.S. interests in the Gulf region. Therefore, the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran alarmed President Jimmy Carter, who authorized a covert campaign to undermine the new regime in Iran. In addition, the Iran-Contra scandal, in which the Reagan administration supplied weapons to moderate Iranians as a way to influence them and get hostages held in Lebanon released, was exposed. President Ronald Reagan, then, changed his strategy, siding with Saddam Hussein on his war with Iran instead. Reagan believed that Iraq should be the instrument to contain Irans revolutionary regime (p. 69). He hoped, prematurely, that Iraq would emerge as the new regional stabilizer after almost eight years of Iran-Iraq War. However, because this war had exhausted Iraq financially, and no one was willing to relieve him of debt, Saddam let out his frustration on Kuwait who, in addition to not lending him money, was driving down oil prices by producing more than the quota set by OPEC. Saddams invasion of Kuwait, although did not receive President George H.W. Bush support, was not deterred by the administration either. In fact, Gardner argues, the U.S. government was being unpredictably ambiguous about the consequence of Saddam invading Kuwaitas if to give Saddam a green light (p. 76). As it turned out, the invasion of Kuwait was not an international crisis, Gardner argues, but more of a basis for American-Iraqi standoff (p. 85) that allowed Bush senior to succeed in reversing the antimilitary psychology of the Vietnam War and its immediate aftermath (p. 90). Once the U.S. decided to turn against Saddam, it went all out. Iraqi leader became an evildoer, Adolf Hitler, and an owner of nuclear weapons.

Yet, what exactly was the reason the U.S. turned against Iraq? Why did the U.S. not help Iraq when it needed aid? Why did the U.S. not warn Iraq against U.S. military action before it decided to invade Kuwaitwhen it could? These were not made clear in the book. Perhaps, there was not enough available evidence. Perhaps, it had nothing to do with Gardners argument. Nevertheless, Gardner did leave open a possibility that Iraq invasion of Kuwait was part of the U.S. plan to erase the bad Vietnam memory. That, suddenly, the U.S. realized it could seize this opportunity and turn Iraq into a bad guy that the U.S. had to tackle, as a part of redeeming the U.S. damaged reputation after the Vietnam War. Since Bush senior decided not to go after Saddam during his term, the myth of Iraq having weapon of mass destruction and Saddam being the Nazi leader continued into his sons presidency. George W. Bush, whose administration looked very much alike his fathers with key actors including Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell. Dick Cheney, Bush seniors Minister of Defense who was put on the ticket to watch over the Oval Office until the dauphin learned the ropes (p. 120), had been longing to rescue the imperial presidency (p. 120) from post-Vietnam trauma ever since he served as Gerald Fords White House chief of staff. Vice presidency provided him with the ideal opportunity to do so, and Cheney had exercised it extensively. Cheney has been instrumental in trying to sell the invasion of Iraq to both top government officials and the U.S. public, from convincing people that Iraqis will greet the U.S. as a liberator to planting a story about Saddam attempting to build nuclear weapons in the New York Times (p. 152). Cheneys eagerness to go into Iraq is probably the clearest evidence that

supports Gardners argument regarding the effect of post-Vietnam trauma on U.S. foreign policy. As official documents on the Iraq War gradually being declassified, The Long Road To Baghdad becomes one of the first historical books that tackle the controversial invasion of Iraq after 9/11. Gardner handles the information he has discovered with a cynical attitude, posing irony in the titles of all nine chapters. Not only the titles, but the narrative itself is filled with jeering comments, such as when he says that Bush senior did not demonize Saddam or accused him of having nuclear weapons initially. These charges would come later, Gardner writes. When it became clear that simply standing up for Kuwait as a victim would not sell Congress on war (p. 78). Sometimes, however, Gardner is too critical he does not give the government any credit. The most important example being the decline of violence in Baghdad after Bush authorized 30,000 additional troops, which Gardner regards as being whether from exhaustion on both sides of the Shiite/Sunni struggle, or a realization that the best way to get the Americans to leave was to stop the attacks (p. 258). The reality was neither of them. The 2007 Surge originates from deliberate strategic planning that marks the shift of U.S. military focus in Iraq. The Surge worked as it was designed to do, not miraculously, but calculatedly. Having studied from the father of U.S. interventionism field, Gardners logic undoubtedly reflects heavy influence by William Appleman Williams argument on U.S. fundamental ideal that propels its expansionist policies. Williams believed that the ingrained faith in freedom and capitalism has blinded the U.S. people from seeing any alternatives as being legitimate. If a human being were left to choose for oneself, he or

she would eagerly choose the way of capitalism over others; any deviation from this assumption suggests an involvement of a dark, evil force misleading people down the wrong path. Gardner puts it a little differently, nevertheless, as metaphor of progressessentially U.S. exceptionalism. He links former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcrofts failure to foresee the power of non-state actors in the aftermath of Gulf War I to the U.S. ideaalmost an obsessionduring the Cold War that revolutions were always the result of agents, or subversive forces, operating from Kremlin central (p. 98). The U.S. government saw the end of Gulf War I and the collapse of the Soviet Union as the end of history. This history was a chronicle of ideological evolution that the U.S. government believed had ended with the emergence of Western liberal democracy as the ultimate form of human government. Gardner raises an unanswered question of whether there were any possible variants or humankinds ideological evolution rode along a narrow track (p. 102). His book, in sum, does not only resonate Williams idea, but also expands it to include the Gulf Wars, when communist threat started to disappear and was a minorif at allreason why the U.S. thrust itself into the center of Middle Eastern affairs. It is, indeed, ironic that the 2003 invasion of Iraq originated partially from Vietnam defeat; an effort to overcome the wound Vietnam has inflicted on the U.S. collective memory drove many U.S. leaders to work to reclaim what had been lost during Vietnamnamely the president power. The metaphor of progress holds that the U.S. history is a narrative of steady progress, but in terms of foreign policy, unfortunately, the U.S. has never seem to evolve from its pattern of missteps. One may wonder if the nations narrative of progress is still true, or has ever been true at all.