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Notes from the Boonies

By VVAW

By the time you read this, the election will be over. If Bush loses, there won't be much point in kicking him around anymore. It'll still be fun, but pointless. If he wins, well, we have to play the hand we're dealt. Either way, we got 150,000 American troops with their asses on the line in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whatever rare humor may pop up in my columns will understandably be lost on them.

If Kerry wins (not my prediction at this moment), he will be wise to remember that about half of the American voting public wanted Junior to Stay the Course. If anything goes wrong in Iraq — imagine that — he may expect to hear from that half. Fortunately, those "underinformed Americans" won't be able to vote for president for another four years. We've had to suck it up since 2000; maybe this time it'll be their turn.

But back to Iraq, which may not be expected to disappear from Veteran columns anytime soon. I have no professional credentials as a historian, political scientist or sociologist, and readily defer to the more educated members of our organization for analysis. However, absent another four years of John Ashcroft, I am still allowed to read. Of course, I'd be well advised to borrow books rather than check them out at the library, but that's another issue.

If you walk up to the average guy on the street in Tuscola (or Chicago) and ask him how long Iraq has been a country, he will probably say, "I dunno, four or five thousand years." Close. 1922. Iraq was created by the victorious Allied powers at the Paris Peace Conference at the close of World War I. The last British troops pulled out ten years later, and the newly-created sovereign entity of Iraq entered upon the world scene. Gertrude Bell, a journalist covering the Conference, noted that "it was an amazing thing to see all Iraq, from north to south, gathered together. It is the first time it has happened in history."

What happened, according to my very amateur analysis of history, was that all those rich, white Christian guys who kicked the kaiser's ass did exactly what they'd been doing in Africa for the past few decades. They carved up Mesopotamia the same way they carved up the Dark Continent — according to whatever formula met their collective military, economic and political needs. They couldn't have given a rat's ass less who lived there or what may have been those indigenous populations' preferences. It was a lot like 'Nam. "Trust us: we went to Oxford and Harvard and the Sorbonne; we know what's best for our dark-skinned brothers who deny Christ."

But enough about other people. In April of 2003, a local attorney penned a guest editorial in the Tuscola Review, lauding Bush for his brilliant plans for handling our post-9/11 world. I called the editor the next day, and said, "Randy, I want either my fifty cents back, or a rebuttal column." I got the latter, which of course was what I was looking for.

If I may quote from my year-and-a-half-old editorial (which was not preaching to the choir): "You all remember 1095. That was the year Europe launched the First Crusade, which was the first time Western civilization decided to colonize and civilize the Islamic world. Even the amateur history student will recall how well that one worked out. (It didn't.) Nine hundred years later, this administration's stated goal is to establish representative democratic institutions in Iraq. As much as I'd love to see the House of Burgesses resurrected in Baghdad, I have to tell you that democratic institutions are not a flowering shrub you can pick up at Wal-Mart and transplant into your front yard. They take time, a whole lot of time, to develop. We've been working on ours since 1607, and I have yet to talk to anyone, Republican or Democrat, who thinks we've perfected them. When we pull out of Iraq — and I'm only assuming that's the plan — I do not see long-range Jeffersonian democracy as our legacy to that part of the world. If that is your prediction, I would respectfully suggest that you've spent too much time flicking channels between Cartoonworld and presidential press conferences."

Aren't I the cynical bastard? Like all of us, I would love to see our Iraq adventure end well, especially to the betterment of those poor beleaguered souls who reside within that entity which Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and M. Clemenceau decreed a "nation." I'd love to see a national legislative body convene in Baghdad, in which some senator stands up and says, "I respectfully disagree with my learned colleague from Mosul, and I yield my floor position so that he may better inform me of his position." This stuff happens here, phony as it sounds and usually is. I just don't see it happening anytime soon in Mesopotamia. (Excuse me: Iraq.)

So what's my point? (Lisa and Jeff tell me that this is a Frequently Asked Question among my readers.) Who died and made me Carnack the Magnificent?

When I talk to my history students about Vietnam, I suggest that if you've been doing something really stupid, especially something that gets lots of people killed to no good end, you have two choices. You can keep doing it, or you can stop doing it. This time around, neither Bush nor Kerry, and probably not even Nader, advocates that dreaded "cut-and-run" approach. That would suggest the unsuggestable: America made a mistake.

I've been wrestling with this dilemma for several weeks, which means I've been trying to figure out how to end this column. I'm also approaching the deadline for submission of an article to the editors, and if I miss it they'll replace me with a couple of Frank and Ernest cartoons. (I know; you don't need to say it.) Lacking an answer, let me retreat and throw out some questions. Does anyone really believe that our indefinite presence in Iraq will stop rather than prolong the bloodletting?

Does anyone think that our 130,000 pieces of cannon fodder have Iraq under control? That they'll ever get it under control? That Iraq is right around the corner from becoming a representative democracy? And finally, that the future of that oddly-fashioned entity will be any different, whether we pull out tomorrow or five years from now?

Hell, I don't know, and I certainly don't have the answer to that last question. So let me refer you to a higher authority: "The moral of this story, the moral of this song, is that one should never be where one does not belong." (Robert Zimmerman, "John Wesley Harding" album, 1968.)

A simple but timeless truth.