Opinion | Editorials
Perle's wisdommisguided
Three years late a neocon claims he knows what went wrong in Iraq, no De Gaulle.
- Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 December 15, 2006
Nonsense, nearly four years after the Iraq invasion, continues to be uttered from the lips of discredited neocons. The latest example comes from Richard Perle, a former architect of George W. Bush's foreign policy. He said what the Iraq invasion needed was a De Gaulle figure to lead the tanks into Baghdad. As a flight of fancy it ranks up there with previous wisdoms of Perle such as that US troops would be welcomed with cheering crowds and rice thrown from balconies as they entered Baghdad.
First, the Americans had chosen Iraqi figures to lead the country but they suffered from being linked to corruption and unpopularity among Iraqis. Second, if the Americans had gone in with a military strongman in the De Gaulle mould, they would have been rightly accused of replacing one military leader with another.
In 1945 the French were a defeated and demoralised nation, genuinely grateful to the Allies for liberating them from the Nazi jackboot. In 2003, the Iraqis lived in fear of Saddam and had endured impoverishment as a result of UN sanctions. Whatever gratitude they felt for America toppling Saddam soon dissolved into mistrust and anger at the ineptitude of the occupation. To give just one example of the occupation's disorganisation, the borders were not sealed for more than a year and thousands of unregistered cars were allowed into the country daily.
Perle is deceiving himself if he believes even if a De Gaulle figure had existed for Iraq the Americans would have listened to what he said. Iraq's post-invasion troubles stem from Washington's political and military incompetence. The plight of Iraq today is not because a De Gaulle figure did not lead the troops but because there was neither a Truman nor a Churchill to comprehend the consequences of invasion and plan accordingly.
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