NSF Occasional Commentary
On the 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War
Time to Move Forward Cautiously
By Jeff Saperstein
“Let us do what we have to do, but no more than we have to do.” –Ariel Sharon
On the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War there appears to be a great deal of second-guessing and pronouncements about the demise of the Republican Party as the result of miscalculations and ineptness in the conduct of this war of choice. Others accuse President Obama of having an ineffectual foreign policy because we are not intervening strongly enough in conflicts such as in Syria. Rather than blame political parties and who did what when, perhaps it may make sense to realize that we are now in an era of a historic transition that no longer fits our preconceptions about the world order and America’s past leadership role. Better our leaders be pragmatic than have overarching doctrines that ignore complexity. The global economic, political, and social transformations that we are encountering should not be dumbed down into bumper sticker thinking for American intervention.
Obama is cautious in the way Republican Presidents Eisenhower, Reagan, and GHW Bush were: hesitant to commit US resources and prestige to civil wars and conflicts among peoples whom we do not understand. The nations in the Middle East are an artifact of the West and the divisions among Shia, Sunni, Alawite, etc., are far deeper than the national boundaries drawn for the Arab states of Iraq, Syria and other countries by Britain and France less than a hundred years ago.
More importantly, we should be careful with American lives and treasure we put at risk. If more armchair warriors understood the tragedy in war, they might not be so cavalier with the lives of someone else’s son or husband. A good comparison is the way Israel has demonstrated taking limited action when it must against those who attack its citizens, but usually showing caution when it comes to committing major combat. Eighteen years of punishing war in Lebanon from 1982-2000 was humbling; it was their equivalent of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
President Obama just returned from a historic visit to Israel where he challenged the Israeli youth to be as resilient and relentless in pursuit of peace as their country has been in pursuit of security. All Israelis are familiar with war, which is why so many yearn for peace. Israel has universal conscription; everyone who is killed or wounded in combat is considered family. In the Israeli movie “Gatekeepers”, the last surviving heads of the Israeli Shin Bet are interviewed; see how they agonize over the cruelties of war. Israeli career military and high command are the most hesitant to commit to unnecessary endangerment for their troops and country. As former field commander and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said,” Let us do what we have to do, but no more than we have to do.”
That would be a good motto for our American leadership to follow. The Middle East has had millenniums of conflict and we neither completely understand nor can control what happens there. American direct intervention and military involvement should be a last resort and only when national interest is clearly at stake or there is imminent threat to our allies or us.
Jeff Saperstein is a university lecturer, marketing consultant and author, who resides in Mill Valley, California. He lived in Israel from 1972-73 as a volunteer and witnessed the Yom Kippur War from a Kibbutz shelter on the former Syrian border. He has led missions to Israel for US marketing/media professionals and bloggers. Jeff wrote a popular blog during his trip to Israel in 2006 and was on the Gaza border when the Gaza War commenced. jeffinisrael.wordpress.com
(Editor’s note: We have begun a series of Occasional Commentaries by recognized experts who are also participants in the NSF)