The Crisis of the 'Made in the USA' Wars

Western public opinion is increasingly skeptical: Exporting democracy does not work.

In the past 12 years the West, led by the United States, has fought three wars — and now the American president, almost by himself, wants to launch another against Damascus. But from Afghanistan to Libya via Iraq, intervention has lost its shine.

After Sept. 11, 2001, the B52s in stars and stripes which hammered the Taliban station north of Kabul were meant to free forever the unfortunate country from the darkness of Islam. Too bad that over 10 years of desperate attempts at pacification, with our soldiers in the front line, hasn’t been enough. Democracy, unfortunately, cannot be exported like washing machines; on the eve of our withdrawal from Afghanistan we are left with the nightmare of the Taliban’s return. In this country at the crossroads of Asia, they have voted, but it hasn’t been enough to transform it into a Swiss canton. During the re-election of President Hamid Karzai in 2009, in a remote village in the western part of the country under Italian command, a senior local chief gave us a lesson in Afghani democracy. If his people went to the polls, the Taliban threatened to cut off their hands, or worse. Luckily, on the eve of the vote a general of the police and tribal chief of the area passed through. To solve the dilemma, he took the registration cards and went to vote for the whole village — obviously, in favor of Karzai.

In 2003, the Allies invaded Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction, but there were none. They didn’t have the courage to explain to the world that they wanted to take down Saddam Hussein, the real weapon of mass destruction to his people. He, along with his cousin “Chemical Ali,” had cheerfully gassed 5,000 Kurds, but at that time was still well regarded by the Americans because of his war of attrition against the Iranian ayatollahs.

A sergeant in New York, who saw the collapse of the Twin Towers, went to war in the Iraqi desert with a helmet on which was written, “Sept. 11, God forgives, I do not.” U.S. troops have lost 4,000 men, shot down by Saddam’s forces, in a bloody guerrilla war fueled by al-Qaida cells which weren’t there before. It was expected that at least the oil would remain firmly in American hands after the withdrawal of the troops. Instead, it turns out that it is the Chinese, who in 2003 were firmly opposed to the intervention, who get to eat up the largest slice of the black gold pie, half of the 1.5 million barrels of oil extracted every day in Iraq.

While bogged down in Afghanistan, we have given ourselves a calm period before the call to arms of the Arab Spring plunged into a dangerous winter. In 2011, the French and the Americans — that old couple brought back together against Damascus — believed Al-Jazeera’s propaganda about the non-existent mass graves on the outskirts of Tripoli and other atrocities that were not always true. A death warrant was put out for Colonel Gadhafi and his regime, and Italy bombarded for simply taking into account our energy interests in Libya. And the Americans have fared even worse. In Benghazi, the “capital” of the uprising, the most extreme fringe of the anti-Gadhafi crowd killed the U.S. ambassador.

It is no wonder that Western public opinion is increasingly skeptical of new military adventures — especially after two years of civil war in Syria, where it is difficult to separate with ease the good from the bad. We cringe, rightly, at the horrors of chemical warfare. Nobody, however, has so far moved on account of the 100,000 dead, including many from the government, 90 percent of which were caused by artillery and fighting house-to-house, as admitted by the Pentagon itself. President Obama, despite the fact that the “humanitarian” war is already losing its shine, has ordered the aircraft carrier Nimitz to approach the Mediterranean. If he really wanted to bomb Assad, to create a level playing field he should also hit the al-Qaida extremist threads that are linking up to conquer Damascus. In many cases these extremists have come from Iraq, where they have already cut their teeth killing Marines.