Berikut surat-pembaca saya kepada Houston Chronicle mengomentari editorial mereka "Vietnam Syndrome" dari tgl. 10 Mei y.l.. Salam, Waruno
------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Vietnam Syndrom (editorial of May 10, 2007) Thank you for the very insightful editorial on the war in Iraq and its possible perspectives and consequences. There is only one inaccuracy perhaps, when you assume that "In Iraq, the United States again is allied to a democratic government that cannot successfully defend itself". The regime in South Vietnam was not democratic by any standards, and having to defend it was merely necessitated by circumstances of the cold war of that time, to forestall further expansion of the communist block. In Iraq, the government may formally seem to be democratic by most standards, but it suffers from the circumstance that it was formed without adequate understanding of how democracy works. Modern democracy is the government form of choice under conditions of political supremacy of the middle class (it won't function otherwise), and requires the collective insight of all involved parties that any missuse of power, be it military, economic, judicial, or other, would lead to grave loss on the part of the missuser itself in consequence of the destabilization the whole. It is thus a collective compromise (I would even use the word "conspiracy") that secures the optimal economic conditions to let private initiative and business flourish. The interest in that of the middle class is the intrinsic condition that makes democracy feasible. At formation of the Iraq government, that was left to remain unclear to most parties. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq fortunately has a rather well developed middle class in all three of its ethno-confessional communities (Shiite Arab, Sunnite Arab, Sunnite Kurd), but initial tactical mistakes of the US forces actually quite directly antagonized (without real reason) some of the parties that should have been brought together. With regard to ways out of the present predicament, the Baker Commission seems indeed to have formulated the principle points (I only disagree about cutting Iraq in three: when there is no discrimination, a developed middle class aptly bridges ethnic diversity, because additional boundaries are not in interest of business and trade). Unfortunately, however, some recent undiplomatic expostulations of the present president will probably make soliciting for the indeed prerequisite Syrian and Iranian cooperation "too expensive". Furthermore, after the end of the cold war, there was quite a fascinating renovation of expertise in the rank and file of US government ministries and agencies with regard to foreign affairs and development, but this came to a standstill with the coming of the present admnistration. We must therefore perhaps indeed wait for the next president in the US, before peace comes to Iraq. As macabre as this may sound, has anybody reckoned how many US soldiers' (and Iraqi) lives may still be saved, if the president stepped down?
