What Iraq Tells Us About Ourselves

By Col. W. Patrick Lang, Jr.

In the four years since the United States invaded Iraq, it's become
clear that our campaign there has gone terribly awry. We invaded Iraq
with too few troops; we destroyed the Iraqi civil administration and
military without having a suitable instrument of government ready in the
wings; we expelled from public employment anyone with a connection, no
matter how tenuous, to the Baath Party—which included most people who
could be described as human infrastructure for Iraq. The list of errors
goes on and on. Even the vice president acknowledges that "mistakes were
made" (although, presumably, not by him).

But how did the highly educated, wealthy, and powerful American people
make such a horrendous, catastrophic series of blunders? As Pogo, the
cartoon opossum, once famously said, "We have met the enemy and he is
us!" Yes, that's right: We, the American people—not the Bush
administration, nor the hapless Iraqis, nor the meddlesome Iranians (the
new scapegoat)—are the root of the problem.

It's woven into our cultural DNA. Most Americans mistakenly believe that
when we say that "all men are created equal," it means that all people
are the same. Behind the "cute" and "charming" native clothing, the
"weird" marriage customs, and the "odd" food of other cultures, all
humans are yearning for lifestyles and futures that will be increasingly
unified as time and globalization progress. That is what Tom Friedman
seems to have meant when he wrote that "the world is flat"—that
technological and economic change are driving humankind toward a future
of cultural sameness. In other words, whatever differences of custom and
habit that still exist between peoples will pass away soon and be
replaced by a world culture rather like that of the United States in the
21st century.

To be blunt, our foreign policy tends to be predicated on the notion
that everyone wants to be an American. In the months leading up to the
start of the Iraq War, it was common to hear seemingly educated people
say that the Arabs, particularly Iraqis, had no way of life worth saving
and would be better off if all "that old stuff"—their traditions, social
institutions, and values—were done away with, and soon. The U.S. Armed
Forces and U.S. Agency for International Development would be the sharp
swords of modernization in the Middle East.

How did Americans come to believe that the entire world is embarked on
the same voyage, and that we are the navigators showing the way to a
bright future? Our own culture is a rich blend, brewed from such
elements as enlightenment, optimism, Puritan utopianism, a Calvinist
tendency to not forgive sinners, and the settler's lack of respect for
the weak and "native" peoples of the world. In the United States, such
threads have pushed us to believe that we are all in a melting pot of
common ideology. This belief system has been fed to us in the public
schools, through Hollywood, and now in the endless prattle of 24-hour
news networks. It has become secular religion, a religion so strong that
any violation of its tenets brings instant and savage condemnation. So
called "neoconservatism" isn't some kind of alien ideology; it's merely
a self-aware manifestation of the widespread American belief that people
are all the same. The repeated assertion by U.S. President George W.
Bush that history is dominated by the existence of "universal values" is
proof in the pudding.

Americans invaded an imaginary Iraq that fit into our vision of the
world. We invaded Iraq in the sure belief that inside every Iraqi there
was an American trying to get out. In our dream version of Iraq, we
would be greeted as not only liberators from the tyrant, but more
importantly, from the old ways. Having inhabited the same state for 80
years, the Iraqi people would naturally see themselves as a unified
Iraqi nation, moving forward into eventual total assimilation in that
unified human nation.

Unfortunately for us and for them, that was not the real Iraq. In the
real Iraq, cultural distinction from the West is still treasured, a
manifestation of participation in the Islamic cultural "continent."
Tribe, sect, and community remain far more important than individual
rights. One does not vote for candidates outside one's community unless
one is a Baathist, Nasserist, or Communist (or, perhaps, a believer in
world "flatness" like Tom Friedman and the neocons). But Iraqis know
what Americans want to hear about "identity," and be they Shiite, Kurd,
or Sunni Arab, they tell us that they are all Iraqis.

Finding ourselves in the wrong Iraq, Americans have stubbornly insisted
that the real Iraqis should behave as our dream Iraqis would surely do.
The result has been frustration, disappointment, and finally rage
against the "craziness" of the Iraqis. We are still acting out our
dream, insisting that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite
sectarian government "unify" the state, imagining that Maliki is a sort
of Iraqi George Washington seeking the greater good for all. He is not
that. His chief task is to consolidate Shiite Arab power while using the
United States to accomplish the deed. To that end, he will tell us
whatever we want to be told. He will sacrifice however many of his
brethren are necessary to maintain the illusion, so long as the loss is
not crippling to his effort. He will treat us as the naifs that we are.

Through our refusal to deal with alien peoples on their own terms, and
within their own traditions, we have killed any real hope of a positive
outcome in Iraq. Our mission there will be over some day, but there will
be other fields for our missionary work, other dreams to dream about:
Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran ... Let us seek within ourselves the
wisdom to avoid another such catastrophe.
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Col. W. Patrick Lang, Jr., a retired Army colonel and member of the
Senior Executive Service, served with Special Forces in Vietnam, as an
Arabic professor at West Point, and as chief defense intelligence
officer for the Middle East.