Another reader contributes to the debate over foreign policy in the Middle East:
To some extent I agree with your long-running argument that insufficient troops were on the ground to accomplish our goals in Iraq. But, as Losing Faith now understands, the United States could not by itself provide those troops. In the first place, the American public probably would not support the manpower needs. More importantly, as we have seen, America, acting by itself, is too easily vilified, leading to exactly the opposite result intended. If we’d been able to put together a real coalition of countries, with the overwhelming force Colin Powell wanted, we might then have been able to make a difference. A real coalition may have had to stay for years, but with the vast majority of the world lined up against a single deviant state, our chances at eventually creating the liberal democratic nation we wanted would have been maximized.
But Bush’s missteps have been a disaster. He could not build a coalition in Iraq because unlike the press and the American public, other countries around the world knew that our stated reasons for intervention were nonsense. They knew Iraq was no threat. Now, where there may well be good reasons to intervene in Iran, which is clearly underwriting Hezbollah and others, we have alienated our historical allies, blown our credibility, squandered our resources and set the precedent that individual nations should have the right to define their interests, even if it means invading another country that is no threat. The probability of building the coalition we need now is made practically impossible, and we cannot go it alone. In one of the tragedies of the last fifty years, Bush wasted our chances at real change by swaggering into Iraq with no sense of history.
The American public has got to grow up. We cannot export our way of life unless we are willing to use overwhelming force and we have the support of a large percentage of the major powers in the world. War is ugly and it involves subjugation of a culture in order to recreate that culture. Noble war is nonsense. It is always savage, but sometimes necessary. If we are unable to build these coalitions, we must show restraint, engage in diplomacy and work with regimes that are not like us. Democracy by itself is no panacea. We are different because we recognize the individual. Without that characteristic, no country, whether it lies in the Middle East, Asia, Africa or anywhere else, will likely practice democracy as we understand it.
The Dish 