What was remarkable about the war against Iraq was not the performance of U.S. troops...for that was expected, but the incompetence of their opponents.
It was not so much that the Iraqi military made a pitiful adversary for the U.S...but that Iraq seemed not to have a military at all. The small groups of resistance fighters seemed to be acting on their own, with no general, coordinated plan of defense. Bridges were left intact for the enemy to drive over as if commuting to work. Defensive positions were abandoned...or never put up in the first place. Oil wells continued to pump...and Saddam, at what appeared to be a crucial moment, did not lay waste to the country in front of the enemy's advance...nor did he appear on the battlefield, like Napoleon or Lee, to bolster his troops...instead, he went out to lunch!
Even before the war began, foreign correspondents in Iraq reported very little preparation for war. And then, when the war began, Iraqi soldiers did not rush to man the defenses, for the country had none.
The whole spectacle was not so much tragic, as pathetic. It was as if Goliath attacked David and found the lad without a slingshot. Worse, these hapless Davids didn't even know how to use one.
Last week, we wrote to express our disappointment in George W. Bush. Today, we write to express our admiration. We now see more clearly the genius of the Bush Administration's hawks: threaten your enemy with war if he fails to disarm...send inspectors to make sure he has disarmed...and then attack him because the weapons inspectors failed to turn up anything.
The tactic was worthy of the ancient Romans. No one likes to be the first one to attack; the gods of war do not favor an aggressor. But if you must attack first, you usually try to find a good reason...or pretext...for taking action.
"The Romans would send over the sacred chicken," my friend Michel explained a few weeks ago. "They would send a chicken to the barbarian tribes as a 'peace gesture'. Of course, the barbarians - not realizing the chicken was sacred - would eat it. Then, the Romans felt they were justified in going to war - because their enemies had eaten the sacred chicken!"
All over modern Rome are monuments to its imperial wars...or to the emperors and generals who led them. They are built into the basement walls of breweries and churches...or stand out in the open, after centuries of dirt have been pushed aside.
We have come to Rome, dear reader, not to study the history of empire, but to wallow in it. We roll around in it as if in mud...until it sticks in our hair and under our fingernails. And what we notice is that America's wars against Iraq and Afghanistan...while they may be extraordinary...are hardly unprecedented.
From its very beginnings, in the 8th century B.C., Rome saw the need to defend its frontiers by subduing enemies - actual and potential. The Etruscans, Sabines, Ligurnians - one tribe after another...the Sicanes...the Sardinians... Picanians...Illyrians...Euganians...Celts...Gauls... Germans...Parthians...Medes...Carthaginians...
The list goes on and on, with each mention marked by battles, wars, and triumphs...and occasional defeats...
But we needn't go back to the ancient world to find wars as extraordinary as the war against Iraq. Indeed, as recently as the 19th century, the colonial battles fought by the British as they expanded their empire were not so different. In these encounters - such as the battle of Khambula against the Zulus in 1879 - small, well-organized, and disciplined groups of British troops, armed with the latest technology, were able to defeat armies far superior in number...and subjugate land areas many times the size of Britain itself.
Or perhaps we could compare it to the Greek War of Independence...in which Britain intervened against the Turks early in the 19th century. The Turks were so badly organized and so badly trained that British naval officers maintained that "the safest place to be is in front of the Turkish guns". The war might have been billed as Operation Greek Freedom, if the British had had more regard for opinion polls; the liberators thought they were freeing the descendants of Plato and Euclid from the shackles of Moslem oppressors. The English were soon masters of the military situation...but they had no idea of what they had gotten themselves into.
Lord Byron, for example, went to Greece to help finance, personally, the war of independence. He was soon appalled and embarrassed by the whole thing. For what the Greeks wanted was not so much independence as an excuse to cut the Turks' throats...and what the English had begun was not so much a noble war of liberation, but a general bloodbath - in which Turks and Greeks killed each other by the thousands.
So many men were killed on both sides that a lively traffic developed in widows. Women were bought and sold even before the war...but in the carnage, the price of a woman dropped to a fraction of the pre-war level. Enterprising Englishmen donned turbans and acquired harems. Soon, dashing portraits appeared in English salons...a monument or two were set up in London...and then the whole affair was forgotten.
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