The Last Worst War

The Iraq Study Group report has been made public. It's being characterized as a devastating indictment of the Bushwar policies, not only in Iraq but in the entire Middle East. Last week President Carter said he thought GW would go down in history as one of our worst Presidents; Wednesday, President-elected Al Gore called Iraq "the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States" but urged Bush to get over himself and understand that it's about the troops (ten more died Wednesday) and the Iraqis and America's future and not about him, so do the right thing. Some people don't think Bush will, or is even capable of that. And some aren't very impressed with what the Group recommended anyway.

But before this all gets lost in details and then forgotten, I want to make one point. While this is clearly among the worsts war this country has ever perpetrated, the real shame--and the shared shame--is that we didn't learn enough from the previous ones.

We have a President whose first impulse and first resort is to make war--to kill and destroy--in order to achieve his ends. He is the American Presidency's first fundamentalist warmonger--it's war first, last and always. The progress made over more than a century in governing the world and settling disputes and solving problems regarding crucial and deeply important and deeply dangerous matters through diplomacy and treaty, negotiation and agreements and commitments, has all been reversed. It was progress paid for partly by the blood of millions, utterly disrespected by this U.S. regime.

And how did this war happen? Because we let George do it. Once again, this country injected itself with War Fever, as if we were born yesterday. This is the shame of this generation. Or one of them anyway.

The Bush legacy has already permeated domestic politics and changed the international arena. Internationally, nobody with half a brain trusts the United States, and trust is the basis for world order. Domestically, it is permissable finally to be against this war, but now more than in a generation, the idea of war as the last resort, as horrific, and the priority of solving problems without violence, are all considered signs of weakness.

In the midst of the past campaign, one "progressive" blog railed against a Republican charge that the Democrats want to start a Peace Department as more reprehensible GOP slander. Clearly the blogger felt that this could lose the election for Democrats. Strictly speaking, it wasn't true (just about the only Democrat to go on record in favor of a cabinet level Department of Peace is Rep. Dennis Kucinich) and the intent was to slander Democrats.

But here at the dawn of the 21st century, that's where we are. In the 1990s, the military challenges the U.S. faced had to do with something called "peacekeeping," which we failed to do in Rwanda but finally did attempt in Bosnia. But U.S. commanders quickly realized that they didn't have any idea how to do it. Their troops are trained to make war, not peace. They haven't called it "peacekeeping" in Iraq, but for much of the past 3 years, it was pretty similiar.

What they found was that it takes skills--different skills, but just as war requires skills, so does peace. A civilized society in the nuclear age, faced with challenges of terrorism arising from a complex of disputes over land and rights, involving poverty and hopelessness, cultural and ethnic conflict, oppression and disrespect--would be devoting as many resources to developing and using the skills of peace as whatever skills of war are finally necessary. A Department of Peace is long overdue.

What did this report say about Iraq, what have generals been saying from their experiences in Iraq but this simple fact: there is no purely military solution. And there never is.

The only way to redeem this shameful time--and we will be paying for this for years---is to see to it that it is the last worst war. And that will require a commitment to developing, learning and using skills of peace--and doing so with the utmost dedication. They go beyond "peacekeeping" in the Bosnia sense, and they involve us all, from understanding as well as practicing diplomacy, communication and conflict resolution, to conscious self-innoculation against push-button War Fever. The survival of civilization depends on it. There are those among us who don't much care about that. Those who do should think very carefully about what this war is really telling us.