American Imperator? By Donnel Jones, April 28, 2003

The other day a friend of mine, who has plenty of reservations about the current war against terrorism, challenged me to accept what should have been obvious to me: the United States is going to be in Iraq for a very long time. He continues to be skeptical about the true motives for the war but effectively pointed out that my belief that the U.S. presence in Iraq will be brief to be naive on my part.

So now there's Niall Ferguson's New York Times article, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan's website, detailing the need for an imperial American presence in Iraq.

Ferguson, a Brit, begins with a nudge at American contemporary tendencies that do not flatter.

So -- can we, like, go home now?

You didn't have to wait long for a perfect symbol of the fundamental weakness at the heart of the new American imperialism -- sorry, humanitarianism. I'm talking about its chronically short time frame. I wasn't counting, but the Stars and Stripes must have been up there on the head of that statue of Saddam for less than a minute. You have to wonder what his commanding officer said to the marine responsible, Cpl. Edward Chin, when he saw Old Glory up there. ''Son, get that thing down on the double, or we'll have every TV station from here to Bangladesh denouncing us as Yankee imperialists!''

In short, Americans have one debilitating weakness: The need to be liked. That does not bode well when you have the dirty business of transforming a backwater like Iraq into a living, breathing democracy.

Did I write that? Did I just refer to Iraq as a backwater? Not only am I not on someone's payroll (oh glorious Web!), I am an American who doesn't care if he is disliked. I am a neo-con/social libertarian living in the heart of Manhattan Isle! Being among the opposition sharpens the senses, if not the temper.

Look, if a nation has been brutalized for almost thirty years by a tyrant whose cruelty would have impressed Ivan the Terrible, the lives of his citizen-slaves eviscerated, their freedoms pulverized like flesh through a plastic shredder, and their children put in prison, you can imagine that such a terrorized place is not going to be a waterfront like Malibu, say whatever you will about California. Iraq is a mess. It is, in the spirit of savaging French, a "derriere du l'eau."

It is time for Americans to get real serious. War, now imminently to be declared concluded by President Bush, is one phase of the task in Iraq. Americans have largely stayed focused. The so-called "winning the peace" or the touchy-feely 60s style "hearts and minds" are a no-starter. Civility is certainly recommended. Cultural sensitivity, where and if applicable, should be observed. But rebuilding Iraq as a functioning democracy requires law and order, stability, persistence, and consistency. In other words, authority. Which means, like the unpopular school teacher you nevertheless respected, being disliked.

I can already hear the cries of "racism" and "paternalism" in my employing the metaphor of school teacher to imply the Iraqis are school children. Nonsense. It is not racism to apply this analogy to the Iraqi people who by and large have not a clue what is in store for them and know not at all what democracy must be, regardless of what public intellectuals are saying otherwise. That is why the Iraqi people need firm guidance. Don't confuse the intelligensia in exile, or formerly underground in Iraq, to be representative of the Iraqi population.

Besides, Americans can act like children too when they behave as if they should be loved. Perhaps this is the excess luxury of having it so good. Look at Sheryl Crow with her "karmic" nod to Hinduism of which she must know next to nothing, let alone her assumption, borne of false humility, that Americans have an overwhelming prerogative to be "nice" even in the face of mortal enemies who would kill her in a nanosecond.

Americans need to trim the fat off their psyches.

Ferguson gets down to business. He challenges Americans: Besides the presidential time frame -- which is limited by the four-year election cycle -- the most obvious symptom of its [American power] short-windedness is the difficulty the American empire finds in recruiting the right sort of people to run it. America's educational institutions excel at producing young men and women who are both academically and professionally very well trained. It's just that the young elites have no desire whatsoever to spend their lives running a screwed-up, sun-scorched sandpit like Iraq. America's brightest and best aspire not to govern Mesopotamia, but to manage MTV; not to rule Hejaz, but to run a hedge fund; not to be a C.B.E., or Commander of the British Empire, but to be a C.E.O.

A failure in breeding rulers, no matter how awkward or unattractive that phrase, shows our potential lack of resolve in bringing real change to the Middle East. If we do not rule, change will not come. Do we have the will to bring that change by encouraging the brightest among our youth to take charge in places like Iraq? Do we have staying power? Will America not abandon the ship before it can sail on its own?

Isn't this all so self-important? No. It is the clarion call to duty. To commitment. Not so long ago we had leaders like MacArthur and Marshall. No doubt we have great men and women today. But will we use them? Allocation of human resources for a prolonged period of no-nonsense quality time with the Iraqis is what we and the Iraqis want. Let the naysayers whine about anti-Americanism among some Iraqis who are especially the ones calling for law and order, which should be provided them. Let the U.N. and the Euros who opposed the U.S. say what they will about unilateralism and America the bully. They can play a large part in humanitarian aid but they should not be part of the reconstruction. That's America's job. Sorry, you failed us when we needed you. We clean up our own shop. Yes, it is our shop. To imply we are in Iraq as guests is the worst form of self-deprecating euphemism not worthy of the American people and only serves to patronize the Iraqi people. The U.S. invaded Iraq. It is not paying a house visit.

So my friend was challenging me to face the raw truth of war or, rather, its aftermath. Let the Shi'ites have their rallies. Only clamp down just enough to ensure they don't take control. Let Iraqis bitch about the Americans. That's good. Americans can handle that as they like to mouth off at authority, even if respectfully. Just don't let dissent become bombs wielded by children. If we want to instill new values into a foreign land, we need deep and long-lasting resolve. Not the attention deficit of curbed expectations for fear we'll be denounced as Yankee imperialists!

But is America to be the iron lady of Victorian rule? Ferguson paints a stern picture of the Brits at the height of their world rule: The British regarded long-term occupation as an inherent part of their self-appointed ''civilizing mission.'' This did not mean forever. The assumption was that British rule would end once a country had been sufficiently ''civilized'' -- read: anglicized -- to ensure the continued rule of law and operation of free markets (not to mention the playing of cricket). But that clearly meant decades, not days; when the British intervened in a country like Iraq, they simply didn't have an exit strategy. The only issue was whether to rule directly -- installing a British governor -- or indirectly, with a British ''secretary'' offering ''advice'' to a local puppet like Faisal.

So much for good manners. The Powell Doctrine has got to go. At least this time. No exit strategy, but in the press all you hear about is the imminent departure of the U.S. No doubt this seems to be the "official" party line of the Bush administration. Wolfowitz is now on the record as saying "not one day longer." Let's hope he doesn't mean what he says.

Ferguson also takes American provincialism to task: Now, ask yourself in light of this: how many members of Harvard's or Yale's class of 2003 are seriously considering a career in the postwar administration of Iraq? The number is unlikely to be very high. In 1998/99 there were 47,689 undergraduate course registrations at Yale, of which just 335 (less than 1 percent) were for courses in Near Eastern languages and civilizations. There was just one, lone undergraduate senior majoring in the subject (compared with 17 doing film studies). If Samuel Huntington is right and we are witnessing a ''clash of civilizations,'' America's brightest students show remarkably little interest in the civilization of the other side.

He also points out other factors that underscore America's unreadiness to rule. Among them is the interesting fact that Americans don't particularly like to live abroad and that over 10% of the U.S. population are foreign-born. America is a place you go to. Not leave. Americans who do live or travel abroad usually prefer the developed world. Not the backwater nations.

Beyond his sometimes quaint exaggerations of American character, where even a kernel of truth can be found, Ferguson overlooks something Americans do not forget: our resolve. He rightfully asks that American society be mobilized to take on the task of transforming Iraq, or potentially other parts of the world, into a functioning democracy. Such mobilization is possible. It occurred during the Cold War when science and math were pushed heavily in the curriculum of America's schools, when a young person's career path led to engineering and other disciplines of applied science. As Ferguson recommends, why not mobilize our brightest youths today, giving them the handsome choice of rewarding careers in the languages of once distant lands? How many Arab speaking Americans will it take? How many to gladly live in Syria after Bashar is history? Can it be done? In three words popular today: bring it on.

But only if we choose to face up to what is our duty. The gap between the Democrat and Republican world view, where even the neo-con hawks are saying "not one day longer," could greatly destabilize our efforts in Iraq if the party not curruently in power assumes office in 2004. The resolve to bring change to Iraq, to rule it until it can truly rule itself must go deeper than party differences. What is the likelihood of that happening today? Only time will tell.

Which begs the question, is America an empire? Not really, if you use the British model. Andrew Sullivan insists the words "American Empire" are an oxymoron. I can just see Leftists rolling their eyes. It is obvious I am referring to the Marshall Plan model when speaking about reconstruction in Iraq, which has been carelessly bandied about by neo-cons to show it can be done. Yet today's world is different. Factors, at home and abroad, introduce new variables not found in the aftermath of the Second World War. One of them is that not all Americans are convinced this war, unlike that previous war, was righetous, despite images of celebrating Iraqis. Many of the same Americans, in the spirit of an increasing and perhaps unstoppable preference for internationalism, will insist the U.N. should play a more active role in reconstruction. More importantly, the corrosive effects of over-ripe liberalism, as well as past abuse of American power, have compromised to a significant degree the once wide-spread American faith in America and its identity. Still others may feel squeamish about the newly empowered CIA rubbing elbows with unseamly characters as it has done in the past. In other words, enough of an electoral push could slow, compromise, or even reverse the efforts we need to apply to Iraq.

But let's believe that America in Iraq is an American Imperator, an American Caesar. Before the Leftists shout "You're hedging!" consider that things could go one of two ways: resolve and staying power bring about something in Iraq like that wrought in post-war Western Europe or, as in Vietnam, an unwillingness to achieve one's goal, such as the refusal to cut off supply lines from China and the Soviet Union and to invade and occupy enemy territory, could wreak future chaos in Iraq. In either case, this is not empire in any classical sense, all post-modern parsing of mass media and globalization (which cuts both ways) aside.

In the former case, an occupying American force established the autonomy of the nations it liberated from Nazi tyranny and eventually left those nations in the hands of their peoples. The 71,000 troops in Germany, put in place to defend these recently freed nations from the threat of another tyranny, are a twelve year waste of an invaluable human resource. In the latter case, a great military and political power shamlessly wasted its bravest and finest soldiers. Either way, America did not behave as an empire. Temporary but firm resolve in the first; catastrophic dithering in the second.

These two examples serve as stark bookends to our current experience and there is much that is different in today's world compared to the ones that shaped the experience in the other two wars. Yet we know resolve when we smell it. Long held hostage to the cult of psychotherapy, the self-loathing guilt of being denizens of the First World, the consumerist piety of new fangled non-religion, the hoopla over "conflict resolution" and "race relations," the narcissitic belief you can do anything (often mistaken for resolve), and the post-modern "quest to seek oneself," will Americans become weak and care too much of what other nations think if the U.S. applies prolonged muscle to establish law and order in Iraq? For, without law and order, free elections in Iraq later on will mean nothing. Let us hope our better angels, fierce yet righteous, will win the day.