Iraq and other mistakes

Yesterday the last contingent of American combat troops left Iraq. I wonder how many of them felt ashamed, discomforted, guilty about what they did to that country. The war cost over 100,000 Iraqi lives, about 4500 American lives, and about $1trillion, and left the USA mired in debt that may prove insurmountably burdensome. Yes, they deposed a brutal dictator and a power elite that for decades had dominated that artificially contrived nation, and yes, they installed a form of governance that masquerades as a democracy. But most Iraqis are worse off than they were before their country was invaded, its infrastructure wantonly destroyed, its priceless museum of antiquities looted, sectarian tensions inflamed, indiscriminate violent death a daily reality. Under Saddam, despite his brutality, Iraq had efficiently functioning health care, universal state-financed education, little or no discrimination against women. The Iraqi physicians and other professionals I've worked with in WHO and interacted with in other settings were all very knowledgeable, well trained, competent; and about 50% of the physicians were women. Years ago one of my friends in WHO showed me proudly the superb dental work he'd had done in Baghdad when he'd broken a tooth while working there and consulted more or less randomly the first dentist able to see him on a street where there were several practising dentists.

I remember watching the discussion at the UN Security Council when Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State showed photos of what he said were storage sites for "weapons of mass destruction" and thinking at the time his presentation lacked credibility. Now we know it was all lies, that the entire case for war, like the sanctions and "no-fly zones" inflicted on Iraq between the two Gulf wars, was based on lies, that the Bush administration came to power determined to bring down Saddam Hussain's regime and install a puppet state in its place, one that would do America's bidding (and, inter alia, remove one potential threat to Israeli security). For a few years it looked likely that Saddam's fascist regime would be replaced by a failed state. That didn't happen, but 2011-2012 Iraq is certainly a fragile state with the potential to descend readily into the same kind of anarchy and violence  as Somalia.

American foreign policy has been inept for decades. They mistook the Vietnamese war of liberation from colonial rule by the French for an expansionist frontier of the People's Republic of China, when a less paranoid view would have had them helping the Vietnamese break free from French colonialism, helping Vietnam to become a democracy instead of an authoritarian state. That mistaken. paranoid policy cost many thousand American lives, perhaps ten times as many Vietnamese lives, catastrophic genocide in Cambodia, tropical forests destroyed by toxic herbicides, and a generation or more of birth defects caused by dioxins in the herbicides used to destroy the forests.  In Latin America they have repeatedly supported dictators rather than democratically elected leaders. In South Africa they supported the apartheid regime, the CIA led that regime's agents to Nelson Mandela and approved his imprisonment. Almost everywhere they have made enemies of people who could and would have been their friends. If Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and other Arab countries are soon ruled by Islamic fundamentalist governments, it will be because American foreign policy in the region backed dictators rather than encouraging nascent democracies.

As a friend of many Americans it saddens me deeply to spell out these American mistakes, but many more voices than mine are needed to speak these truths to American power, and turn US foreign policy in righteous directions.