Iraq and Afghanistan

Let us understand the Iraq War at its most idealistic. Most liberals who supported the war never believed that America was in imminent danger if we did not "take out Saddam" in March of 2003. It is true that they believed there were more WMDs in Iraq than we actually found. They feared, and especially the military feared, that chemical and biological weapons would be used against American forces. However, they still felt we should invade Iraq to get rid of one of the world's most oppressive and bloody tyrants. They also believed that if we did invade we would be able to reconstruct Iraq as a democratic country. After all, in Iraq we were not dealing with a country sunk under the weight of illiteracy and poverty, but rather with one of the more developed and modern states in the developing world.

Fern Holland, grew up in poverty in a small Oklahoma town , but from an early age was able to achieve high grades in school at the same time as she helped those less fortunate than she. Wherever she went and whatever she did, she did it in an American "can do" spirit. She obtained a law degree, but even before it was obtained, she had embarked on a worldwide effort to make the world a better place. She helped dying children in Russia and assisted in a squatter camp in South Africa; she joined the Peace Corps and was off to Namibia. She moved to Washington and quickly became involved in the legal problems of African women and children. She tried to set up an African Institute for Democracy. When Iraq came along, she decided that she wanted to be a part of the democratization effort. In Iraq, Shi'a women told her of the struggle against Saddam and the thousands who had died after the Gulf War because of the betrayal of the Americans. She became convinced that whatever the flaws in the reasons for the war, these graves were a sufficient reason. She went to work for the American representative of the Provisional Authority in a province south of Baghdad. They worked together on setting up Human Rights Centers and soon she was focusing on democracy education and liberating Iraqi women. The Provisional Authority didn't seem to have very clear ideas of what to do, so she just went ahead, setting up provincial women's centers.

She developed many friends, men and women, who gladly worked with her. Sometimes she worked with an idealistic former marine who had come back after his tour of duty to help the Iraqis. But along the way in the local bazaars, she also came to be seen as a threat to men of authority and local customs. Rumors spread that she was handing out pornography, was conducting abortions, or was a Jewish spy. On one occasion, she took women to Washington so they might better understand the United States. Bremer and colleagues were impressed. They flew in occasionally to see her projects and heaped praise on her work. But on March 9, on the way back from one of her projects, a jeep pulled alongside her car and killed Fern and the Marine at close range with AK-47s. They were the first civilian employees of the Provisional Authority to be killed in Iraq.

Since then, security in much of the country has crumbled; there are now fewer Ferns in the field; the women who worked with her have mostly given up on the movement; her women's centers are largely abandoned.

There are many reasons that Iraqis have for hating Americans: some are crazy, some are reasonable. But two reasons are most important. First, like many peoples in the world Iraqis simply do not understand the impetus to help others that moved Fern. Many loved or respected her. But too many could not help feeling that she must have ulterior motives, that she wanted to destroy their culture, to make them all Christians, to lay the basis for a permanent occupation, or to gain personally in some as yet unfathomable manner. For them, she was "too good to be true". Second, "nobody asked you". That is, they did not feel that anyone had a right to come into their country and try to impose their beliefs and practices on it, no matter how ideal these might seem in theory.

What can we learn? We should learn that the more intense our effort to transform a society, the more resistance will be encountered. This should teach us that if we are going to go out to a people with organizers and educators whose mission is to fundamentally change their way of life. then we must also have a large number of people in the field willing and able to protect those agents of change that we employ to carry out such a policy. It was foolish to have people like Fern out in the field day after day without protection. (I think we know that now, but I believe we have very few Ferns still in the field.)

We should also learn to moderate our aspirations and goals as we attempt to instill democracy. We need to remember that the relatively open and egalitarian society we have today evolved over centuries from a society with beliefs and attitudes not too different from those in modern Iraq. We must remember that even after a civil war, Americans in the South continued to treat African Americans as inferiors for a hundred years in spite of the efforts of northern educators, some of whom lived and worked in the South. Often they fought back violently against the idea of equality. Only after several generations of racists had come and gone and after communications North and South had greatly increased, was there a widespread acceptance of equality in the South. Why then should we expect the men of Iraq to suddenly accept the idea that women have the same rights as they do? People in countries such as Iraq are often ready to adopt the forms of Western democracies along with some of the reality. But we are not likely to be able to force down their throats the latest ideas of a liberalized West.